Chen Mo jumped into the river.
He was rescued by Wang Chaoyang, the wealthy second-generation “top student” in his class.
Supposedly, on that day after school, he carried his backpack out of the school’s back gate and walked along the bluestone path, heading straight for the small river about three kilometers behind the school.
He placed his backpack under a large willow tree by the riverbank, weighing down a handwritten suicide note.
Afterward, he jumped in without a second thought.
Wang Chaoyang, a classmate, happened to be passing by. Without a word, he dove in and hauled him out.
It was said that when he was pulled up, he had already stopped breathing. Wang Chaoyang busied himself with chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, eventually restoring his heartbeat before the ambulance arrived.
Chen Mo woke up in the hospital.
Since waking, his spirit had been listless.
He couldn’t quite remember why he had thrown himself into the river.
But whenever he thought of that river behind the school, he couldn’t help but feel bothered. That river… didn’t seem very clean.
When passing it on his way to and from school, he had seen nearby shopkeepers taking their mops to the water’s edge to wash them more than once. The filthy mops would churn in the water, making the already murky river even dirtier. The river maintained a year-round cyan-green color that he disliked intensely, and moreover, many domestic sewage outlets flowed into it along the banks…
If there really was something he couldn’t get over…
Wait, no. What could possibly be so upsetting that it would force him to jump into such a filthy river!
Chen Mo was almost made sick by his own imagination.
He leaned against his pillow to calm his emotions, trying not to think about those messy things. Just then, the ward door was quietly pushed open.
A boy wearing a school uniform and carrying a backpack poked his head in to look. Seeing that Chen Mo was awake, he walked over hesitantly.
“Chen Mo, are you okay?” the boy asked.
Chen Mo gave the other person a dull look, recognizing him as a classmate named Li Hang.
He said absent-mindedly, “Not very well.”
Even though he had already showered twice.
He still didn’t feel great, feeling somewhat as if he couldn’t breathe properly.
“I… heard about what happened to you…” Li Hang said falteringly. “You were also bullied by those people.”
Chen Mo’s jump into the river was because he had encountered school bullying.
That was what was written in his suicide note.
On that sheet of paper torn from an exercise book and weighted down by his backpack, he had written the details of how he was bullied every day, finally appending two sentences: “I can’t stand this world anymore. I want to die. I hope those villains die too!”
The word “too” was very subtle.
Chen Mo looked at Li Hang.
Li Hang lowered his head and said, “They always come looking for me, too.”
Chen Mo looked over in surprise.
Li Hang actually couldn’t stand it either, but he didn’t want to die. Nor did he want Chen Mo to die.
“Those few people often block me, asking for money, hitting me, cursing at me…” Li Hang’s voice carried a bit of a sob. “I also think they are going too far, but…”
Li Hang suffered through every day with great difficulty. He hadn’t expected someone to be suffering even more than he was.
Someone who would rather jump into a river than continue to endure all of this.
“From now on, let’s leave school together,” Li Hang proposed.
What he didn’t say was: Don’t hurt yourself.
Chen Mo didn’t know if it was because he had “died once” by jumping into the river, but his memories of the past weren’t very vivid.
The unbearable experiences mentioned in that suicide note seemed unable to affect him anymore; those intense hatreds also seemed to have drifted far away.
A group of people bullied him every day—bullied him until he couldn’t go on living—yet Chen Mo felt those memories were as if from a very, very long time ago. They lacked any sense of reality.
Of course, it was even more impossible for him to develop the urge to die again because of those memories.
“Okay, let’s walk together from now on,” Chen Mo agreed to Li Hang’s proposal.
Walking with a friend and looking out for each other should make those bullies a bit more wary.
What Chen Mo didn’t expect was that the result of the two of them walking together was, in fact, being bullied together.
On this day after school, Chen Mo and Li Hang agreed to head home together.
They reached the school gate and saw several boys dressed casually waiting at the entrance of the alley.
The two looked at each other and slowed their pace, but that alley was the inevitable path on their way home.
Ultimately, the two sides met on a narrow path.
“Be smart, hand over your pocket money.” The leader was a tall, thin boy dangling a cigarette. He leaned against the wall, glancing them up and down sideways as he made his demand arrogantly.
His posture did not show any restraint just because the two of them were together today.
Chen Mo noticed that this group wasn’t wearing school uniform jackets, but he could tell from their identical trousers that they were all students from this school.
Li Hang trembled slightly. With almost no hesitation, he pulled out the pocket money he had prepared and handed it over with both hands.
He knew clearly that not handing over the money would only result in a beating, and he didn’t want to be beaten anymore.
Chen Mo watched his practiced movement of handing over the money, and a surge of anger rose in his heart.
He didn’t intend to hand over the money. Instead, he sized up these “bad seeds” in front of him, calculating the possibility of knocking them flat in his mind.
For some reason, the moment this thought flashed by, a sudden, sharp pain erupted in his head.
It was as if some kind of power was warning him: You are not allowed to fight back.
It felt as if two voices were constantly arguing in his mind. One voice was coaxing: “Give them the money, be obedient.”
The other voice was very unwilling: “I won’t give it. Why should I?”
The first voice said: “Because you can’t afford to offend them. As long as you are obedient and give them the money, there will be peace in the future.”
The other voice was dismissive: “How could there be peace just by being obedient? I was pushed into jumping into a river to commit suicide before; why didn’t I see them being ‘peaceful’ then?”
The first voice stammered for a while, then said: “Anyway, don’t go looking for trouble for yourself.”
The other voice retorted: “What do you mean ‘me looking for trouble’? Isn’t it trouble looking for me?”
While a fierce mental struggle was taking place in Chen Mo’s mind, the tall, thin boy demanding the money raised his eyebrows impatiently: “Yo, what’s this? Looking at your expression, you’re not willing?”
As he spoke, he suddenly raised his hand and—slap—delivered a harsh blow to Chen Mo’s face.
Chen Mo’s vision went dark. More than the pain, the anger was harder to endure. He gritted his teeth, his fingers tightening unconsciously.
Damn it! He actually hit his face.
In all his years growing up, no one had ever hit Chen Mo in the face!
But he found himself completely unable to strike back.
An invisible force held him firmly in place, making it so he couldn’t move at all—he couldn’t even move a finger.
The voice in his head kept chanting: “Submit! You can’t beat them. It’s just some money, just give it to them…”
What kind of messy, crooked logic was this?
Submit? Why submit? “Just some money”? Wasn’t this money earned through his parents’ hard work? Why give it to these dregs?
But when he used all his strength to finally break through that invisible restraint and clench his fist, a bolt-like pain of electricity suddenly struck, piercing through his entire body. From the top of his skull to the soles of his feet, Chen Mo was shocked until his soul trembled; the pain was so intense he nearly lost consciousness on the spot.
He was shocked into a daze, having no strength to make a second attempt.
What exactly was going on?
Chen Mo thought vaguely; it seemed he simply couldn’t resist, he couldn’t even have the thought of resisting.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, but that he couldn’t.
Did he have to accept this fate of being extorted and bullied?
Chen Mo felt all of this was truly absurd.
Seeing him get hit, a trace of fear appeared in Li Hang’s eyes, but he still plucked up his courage to stand in front of Chen Mo. With a trembling voice, he pleaded for him, saying to the tall, thin boy: “Chen Mo, he… he must have no money left. He’s already at a dead end. He even jumped into the river to commit suicide a few days ago. I beg you… stop pushing him, okay? How about this, I’ll ask my mom for more money tomorrow… just don’t hit him anymore…”
Hearing this, the tall, thin boy sneered.
He threw his cigarette butt on the ground, stepped on it to extinguish it, and looked up at Li Hang: “Fine, being able to bring more money is your ‘filial piety.’ But those are two different things. If he doesn’t give money, he gets a beating.”
“Move aside, or I’ll thrash you along with him.” The tall, thin boy sneered as he stepped back, signaling the people behind him to step forward.
Several delinquent students gathered around, their fists and feet raining down on Chen Mo without mercy.
The punches and kicks fell like raindrops, yet Chen Mo remained unable to resist. The invisible force bound his limbs tightly; he was like a fish on a chopping block, left to the mercy of others.
Countless protests and curses flared in his mind, but his ears were buzzing. The electric-shock-like pain in his mind followed him like a shadow, like the sharpest of awls, constantly piercing his consciousness.
Just then—
“Stop! What are you doing!” A loud roar suddenly came from behind the crowd. “Let them go!”
The delinquent students who were doing evil all froze for a moment and looked back.
The tall, thin boy, full of impatience, asked: “Who’s looking for trouble now?”
One of them replied in a low voice: “It’s Wang Chaoyang.”
The tall, thin boy’s expression turned serious: “The heir to the Wang Enterprise, the top student of the second year at No. 7 Middle School, the one the teachers and the principal treasure, that Wang Chaoyang?”
“Yes.”
The tall, thin boy frowned: “Tsk, what a pain.”
He spat on the ground and signaled his followers to retreat. Before leaving, he glanced at Chen Mo and Li Hang: “Consider yourselves lucky. I’ll let you off this time.”
The alley returned to a brief silence.
Li Hang hurried to Chen Mo’s side, helping him stand up. He looked in the direction the others had left several times, his eyes filled with unease and relief: “They’ve finally gone…”
Chen Mo’s whole body ached, but that was secondary; he felt more of a spiritual exhaustion.
He raised his head and met the gaze of the arriving Wang Chaoyang. In that instant, an indescribable sense of strangeness surfaced in his heart.
“Thank you for saving us,” Li Hang said softly to Wang Chaoyang, his tone carrying sincere gratitude.
Wang Chaoyang smiled affably and said, “It’s nothing. We’re classmates; it’s what I should do.”
Chen Mo remembered what he had heard in the hospital and asked him, “When I fell into the water before, was it also you who saved me?”
Wang Chaoyang nodded gently, a look of concern appearing on his face: “Yes. I happened to be passing by that day, saw you jump into the river, and dove in to save you.”
“However, you really shouldn’t have done that. What could be so upsetting that you had to seek death?”
Chen Mo pursed his lips and didn’t speak.
Wang Chaoyang looked at him and smiled: “In the future, you two just follow me. With me covering for you, no one will bully you again.”
Li Hang couldn’t help but feel happy, giving him a grateful smile.
Chen Mo looked at Wang Chaoyang, and that strange feeling in his heart grew even stronger.