It was a sunny afternoon—sunny outside, shadow inside. The weather was incredibly hot, although it was already September. We were talking and making a noise because we were separated into a new class for this semester since we are high school sophomores and we would be classmates for the next two years. There were 55 students in my classroom at that time. It was the first time that I saw him.

He stood in front of the platform and planned to introduce himself to all of his new classmates. He wore a short and well-worn purple T-shirt as well as a pair of sloppy school uniform peens. His shoes were grey and muddy. He was short and bow-backed and had a really thick shoulder, but his eyes, unusually dark and deep, were shining like stars.

He was finally beginning to speak. what a disaster! He had a heavy rural accent and none of us, no one, was able to understand what he was talking about, so we hooted. We made a lot of noise because no one cared about what he said or where he was from or what past he had ever went through. Actually no one was willing to listen to him even a second. He was so embarrassed that he nearly stopped talking immediately. This was the first and last time that he talked about his own past, but we never knew it at that time.

The teacher began to arrange fixed seats which we would follow his arrangement for the next whole year. Obviously, he was the last person in our class who we want to be desk mate with. No one picked the seat next to him. He sat in the back of the classroom lonely and silently, but everyone was so immersed in a feeling of having new classmates that no one cared about that short and terrible guy in the corner.

We were 17 at that year. We were old enough to not bully our classmates any more. We didn’t bully our classmates. We didn’t bully that weird and ugly and countrified guy, who wore discolored school uniform every day, sprinkled coffee powder into his mouth every morning, ate instant noodle every meal and answered teachers’ questions loudly but incorrectly every class. No one did anything directly to hurt him. Plus, who had the time to care about such a kook when faced with huge academic stresses and romantic issues filling out our lives.

Seven or eight months later, he stopped answering questions in class any more.

A year after, he was out of his mind. He deranged without any reason. He might get a depressive neurosis or something like that, but no one really asked. He became more and more weird. He slept on the ground and laughed sharply in the class like a duck that held its throat.

One and a half years later, six months before the Chinese university entrance exam, he dropped off school which means he gave up the only chance to get into college.

We never heard any messages from him ever since.

One day, I guessed it was a Sunday because we only had vocations of the whole week on Sunday afternoons. I was cleaning up the classroom and I found out a piece of paper from his drawer. It was an essay. He talked about Kant, talked about rationalism and talked about the Enlightenment. The essay was beautifully written and explained profound language theories in extreme simple language. Actually, it was the best essay I had ever met.  

I read the essay intensively, secretly and guiltily. I was so regretful that I never had a real conversation with him even if he was my classmate for more than a year. I was so regretful that we didn’t listen his self-introduction at the beginning of the whole semester. I was so regretful none of us chose to sit beside him when the teacher arranged the seats. I was so regretful we kept teasing his rural accent and weird living habits but never trying to listen to him and to understand his inside even for one time.

What if everything changed?

Would he still be out of his mind again?