Chapter Ten: Wounds
Just then, the discipline teacher pushed through the crowd and walked to Lin Yu's side. She didn't recognize Lin Yu, and after only glancing briefly at Lin Yu's wound, she mistook her for a naughty student. With her pale, pointed face covered in heavy foundation, she leaned close to Lin Yu and loudly questioned, "Which class are you in?"
The crowd was noisy, and Lin Yu's voice was weak due to nervousness and slight blood loss. "Class One."
The discipline teacher glanced at her suspiciously, then turned and stopped a male teacher who had just passed by, approaching him to question him. Within moments, the discipline teacher stormed angrily toward Lin Yu.
Class time had already ended, and only a few scattered onlookers remained in the corridor. The teacher grabbed Lin Yu by the collar, her sharp voice piercing her eardrums. "I'll ask you one more time, which class are you in?"
Lin Yu was bewildered by her tugging and could only repeat himself blankly, "Class One..."
The moment Lin Yu finished speaking, the teacher slapped her across the face without warning. The sudden slap made Lin Yu stumble back two steps, but the teacher grabbed her by the collar and pulled her back.
Lin Yu was completely stunned, her left ear ringing, and half of her cheek instantly swelled up. She had never known that a slap could have such a powerful impact.
From childhood to adulthood, no one in her family had ever laid a finger on her for any reason, so she was naturally unfamiliar with physical violence. "Didn't you just say you were in Class 7? You dare to lie to me right under my nose, you ill-mannered brat."
The school rarely provides standardized training for external personnel, so the discipline teacher naturally doesn't know how to regulate her own words and actions. As long as all the students are afraid of her and dare not cause trouble in front of her, then her job is not considered derelict.
Lin Yu was terrified. He covered his aching left cheek and couldn't say a word. His eyes were wide with disbelief, and large tears streamed down his face.
The discipline teacher ignored Lin Yu's injury and dragged her to the middle of the first-floor lobby like a chick, making her stand for the entire class period as punishment.
After standing there for ten minutes, the homeroom teacher arrived, and after a brief exchange with the discipline teacher, took Lin Yu away. Lin Yu had no idea what the two said, nor could he deduce from their expressions whether he had been convicted.
Lin Yu's wound was quite serious, and the doctors at the infirmary couldn't handle it, so the homeroom teacher had to take Lin Yu to a nearby clinic. The doctor who examined Lin Yu was indifferent and perfunctory, only performing a simple cleaning of the wound, administering an injection of anesthetic, and then roughly cutting away the rolled-up flesh before starting to suture the affected area.
The moment the needle pierced his skin, Lin Yu tensed his back. The anesthetic was far from effective; each needle felt like a red-hot wire searing into his flesh, and the faint sound of blood and flesh sticking together could even be heard when the thread was pulled.
The doctor offered perfunctory words of comfort, but his hands continued moving. "Just bear with it, it'll be over soon." But pain never yields to such lighthearted words. Lin Yu clenched his teeth tightly, cold sweat trickling down his forehead and into his collar.
Years later, the wound, which had not been treated carefully, still showed faint traces of dark gray soil beneath the healed scar. That scar remained forever on her arm, and the wound never healed.
If I had cried and insisted on going to a big hospital, if Lin Min had skipped her morning reading class and rushed over early, if the discipline teacher hadn't misunderstood Lin Yu's words and had taken me to the hospital earlier, perhaps that hideous scar wouldn't have been left on my skin.
But the cruelest thing about time is that it always gives you the chance to see all the possibilities only after the fact. Those unspoken requests and the help that never came are like rough stitches on a suture, leaving permanent marks on the brief pain.
Lin Min finally arrived late, just as the clock struck nine, more than two hours after the incident. During this time, Lin Yu remained silent and refused to apologize for "lying."
The homeroom teacher had no choice but to postpone her return to class. Lin Yu stood there in the center of the office, like an exhibit in a freak show, being pointed at and gossiped about by all the teachers who hadn't been scheduled to teach her.
The school, this closed little society, is like a repressive greenhouse, fermenting the darkest parts of human nature, making them increasingly distorted. They only had a superficial understanding of Lin Yu's experiences, yet they had already woven a complete story around it.
One is a top student who becomes arrogant because of his excellent grades, and the other is a two-faced person who uses silence to cover up lies. In their words, Lin Yu's introversion is no longer just a matter of personality, but becomes a catalyst for lies, ultimately bearing the fruit of eccentricity and rebellion.
Lin Min's divorce wasn't exactly news, but when the teachers learned she was Lin Min's daughter, they were overjoyed. Lin Min's divorce instantly became, in their mouths, proof that things had turned out this way. They asserted with absolute certainty that a broken family inevitably breeds a twisted mind.
The teachers chattered incessantly, spreading rumors that entangled and enveloped Lin Yu like spider silk, their next step being to seize her by the throat and sentence her to death.
The homeroom teacher stood on their side, letting prejudice weave a complete script, looking at her with a heavy and compassionate expression, as if even if Lin Yu didn't say a word, her inferior character had already escaped the homeroom teacher's eyes.
Finally, the protests were interrupted by the school bell. This little episode could only provide the teachers with a moment of joy. They quickly put Lin Yu's matter behind them, revising their lesson plans and teaching early classes.
When Lin Min arrived, only the homeroom teacher and the English teacher, who was completely bewildered after returning to the office from the morning class, remained in the classroom.
Lin Min teaches at the high school and occasionally interacts with Lin Yu's teachers. The classes she teaches consistently have the highest average grades in the grade, making her quite renowned throughout the school and even the town. Now, her reputation is about to be tarnished because of Lin Yu.
Lin Yu's eyes were swollen like peaches from the constant crying and the anesthetic on her wounds, and her head was spinning. The English teacher pulled her favorite student over, settled her at her workstation, and pulled out a tissue to wipe away her tears.
The homeroom teacher pulled Lin Min aside and whispered the whole story, her eyes glancing at Lin Yu every now and then. Her deliberately lowered voice and feigned sympathy were like a poorly executed silent film, both highlighting her supposed thoughtfulness and revealing her ulterior motives.
Lin Yu stared intently at her mother's expression, trying to discern a trace of trust, but Lin Min's facial muscles remained tense throughout, making it impossible for her to know her inner thoughts.
A short while later, Lin Min walked over to Lin Yu. She greeted the English teacher, reached out and touched Lin Yu's head, and was clearly stunned when she noticed the handprint on her face.
She didn't say anything, but instead looked down and carefully examined the wound on her wrist. She then turned to the homeroom teacher and said, "I'm sorry to have worried you, Teacher Zheng. I will discipline you properly when you get home. But no matter what, beating a student is definitely against professional ethics, and the school should improve the basic quality of its external staff."
Lin Yu suddenly stopped crying, as if an invisible hand had grabbed her neck. She tried to widen her swollen eyes and looked at her mother in disbelief, letting out an unprecedented, trembling, and helpless scream.
"I didn't lie, Mom!" She could endure slaps and misunderstandings from all over the world, but Lin Min was the one person she couldn't have in this world.
They were each other's only support, two symbiotic plants whose roots had long since intertwined in the darkness. That absolute trust was the skeleton that sustained her life, an essential component of love.
She couldn't lose these parts of Lin Min; otherwise, her whole world would collapse in an instant, like a dilapidated building with its load-bearing walls removed. Her soul twisted painfully like misaligned building blocks, and love seeped away little by little through the cracks.
Lin Min asked Lin Yu for an afternoon off, and under the English teacher's questioning gaze, she led Lin Yu out of the office. During break time, students chased and played on the playground, and no one noticed the tense atmosphere between mother and daughter or Lin Yu's swollen eyes.
On the way home, Lin Min held Lin Yu's other arm, which was intact, and explained to her that the tire had been punctured again by some bad student, so she could only walk home today. She said that Lin Yu might be able to rest at home in the afternoon, and for the first time ever, she allowed her to watch TV for a little while.
Faced with Lin Min's incessant chatter, Lin Yu suddenly sneered. "Now look what's happened, I've become the bad student with poor character in Mom's eyes, scheming and prone to lying."
Lin Yu's sharp words pierced through their feigned peace like a steel knife. She stopped, slowly turned around, and gently touched Lin Yu's swollen cheek.
"When your mother divorced your father, she left with nothing and didn't have much savings. Now that I'm standing up for you, not to mention what will happen to my job, will you still be able to stay in school?"
Her voice trembled almost imperceptibly. "What good is it if I'm a good teacher? It will only make others resent me, and resent you too. Nobody cares about the truth. This world has always been in the hands of those who have the power to speak."
"Mom knows you're not lying, but Mom really doesn't have the money to transfer you to a new school."
In a world built on money, power is the only supreme truth.
In this educational cage constructed of reinforced concrete, teachers wield an invisible power of life and death over their students. Like prison guards with sharp blades, some choose to sheathe their weapons, while others revel in the cold glint of the blade.
At this moment, Lin Yu truly felt for the first time the vulnerability beneath his mother's armor—the vulnerability of material things and the vulnerability of her spirit. These vulnerabilities were as exposed as a punctured tire, yet reality, this cruel mechanic, was forcing this single mother to constantly maintain the illusion of being fully inflated.
At that moment, her mother's image, like her father's during their divorce, melted and collapsed in Lin Yu's heart like a stacked butter tower. She suddenly realized that even the strong Lin Min could be crushed at any moment; her soul was fragile. And she herself was still too weak.
At that moment, Lin Yu felt a part of her body that represented trust being killed, and her mother, with love forged into a sharp blade, mercilessly stabbed her with the first blow. She stepped forward and hugged her mother tightly, feeling only a desolate emptiness in her heart.
"Mom, don't worry, I won't pursue this any further."
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