Chapter 18: Ten years, the descending scythe of death
The entire senior high division buzzed with speculation and investigations into Tang Wu's background. To Su Can, this was probably an early form of what later became known as "human flesh searches." Class Five's PE lessons coincided not only with those of Class Three, Grade Ten, but also with those of two Senior Year Two classes.
Ever since tenth grade, Class Two, Grade Eleven had been a class rife with trouble and disputes. Led by Wang Haoran and Yue Zijiang, it contained a large group of officials' children. Wang Haoran was the nephew of Wang Jinrong, the current deputy secretary of the Xiahai City Municipal Party Committee. He had many followers at school and was spoiled and overbearing. His crowd had been involved in several violent incidents at school.
Once, they had reportedly even hit someone with a desk hard enough to cause internal bleeding, but the matter had eventually been dropped. Of course, Su Can had known nothing about any of this before. Only after coming to City First Middle School had he picked up the broad outlines from various rumors.
Recently, however, during several PE lessons and breaks between classes, some fairly prominent Senior Year Two students had been appearing around Class Five's activity area and the corridor outside their classroom. Sometimes they would peer into the classroom, seeming to find the object of their attention only when they spotted Tang Wu.
During PE one afternoon, a tall boy holding a basketball finally stood before Tang Wu. This did not cause the same uproar as when Xiao Yunyun had first brought Su Can a Coke, because that incident had been inherently dramatic: a class beauty from Class Three had actually taken an interest in someone as obscure as him,