In the days that followed, the voices of her classmates were like persistent flies, buzzing around her.
“Hey, trash, do you understand human speech?”
“Stone-faced girl, give us a reaction. This is boring.”
“Is her brain broken too?”
Some of these words were factual — for instance, the fact that she was an orphan and could not speak — but most were twisted, malicious speculations and mockeries.
She tried to shut these voices out, focusing her attention on the workbook spread before her as she always did.
The algebra formulas blurred into a gray ripple before her eyes. She tried hard to see the next step of the problem, but those numbers and symbols seemed to shake and sneer.
Just then, a slightly hesitant voice interjected. “Um… you guys shouldn’t talk about her like that…”
The speaker was a girl named Xiao Wen, who sat in the front row. She was usually very quiet and had average grades; she was the type of person most likely to be ignored by the group and most afraid of being ostracized by them.
She turned her head, her face slightly flushed. Her voice was not loud, but it was enough to make the noise pause for a moment.
After a brief silence, there was an even more violent backlash.
“Oh? Xiao Wen, what’s with you? Do you feel bad for her?” A boy leading the jeering crossed his arms and squinted at Xiao Wen with a playful smirk on his face.
“Exactly. She hasn’t even said anything herself, so why do you care so much? Trying to be a saint?”
“She’s fine with it! Look at her face. Is it changing? No, right? That means she agrees with us!”
“We’re just joking around. Don’t be so serious, okay? You’re no fun.”
Xiao Wen’s face turned even redder. Her lips mumble a few times, but under those mocking and dissatisfied gazes, she ultimately could not say anything else.
She turned back quickly, almost frantically, and lowered her head. she curled herself into a ball, as if doing so could help her avoid those invisible thorns.
Lin Qingxia looked at Xiao Wen’s back. The tiny flicker of warmth that had risen in her heart because someone spoke up quickly went cold.
She did not blame Xiao Wen; she even understood her. She knew the feeling of being scorched by the collective gaze of the group.
The lead boy seemed to feel the atmosphere had gone a bit stale. He turned his attention back to Lin Qingxia, trying to find his “fun” again.
“Hey, ‘Fakey,'” he drawled deliberately, imitating an exaggerated tone. “Look, nobody is helping you. Shouldn’t you show us something? For example… how about you cry?”
“Or, how about a smile? Oh, that’s right. I forgot you’re a stone-faced mute who can’t do anything.”
Several exaggerated laughs echoed around them.
Lin Qingxia’s fingertips pinched tighter. A sour heat tried to well up in her eyes and rush to her nose.
But she suppressed it deathly hard. She could not have an expression.
Any expression was a response, and a response would only bring more trouble, whether to others or to herself.
the Director’s words echoed in her mind once more: ‘Lest you bring even worse trouble to everyone.’
She did not want to be a bad child who brought trouble. She did not want any reaction of hers to escalate this farce or to affect people like Xiao Wen, who occasionally showed a tiny bit of kindness.
She would… just acquiesce.
Just as they said, she would accept being “trash,” an “orphan,” and a weakling who deserved to be mocked.
As long as she accepted it, they would eventually find it boring and disperse.
Moreover, they had not actually used violence or done anything heinous. As long as she did not care, it would be fine.
‘As long as… I… don’t… care… it will be… fine?’
Every night, she forced herself not to care about the nonsense they said. She forced herself to forget these memories and forced herself not to cry, but tears involuntarily flowed during her silent sobs.
As soon as her mind quieted down, she would immediately remember everything her classmates had said. These memories constantly tortured her spirit, yet she could not escape them.
Those voices did not disappear when her classmates left. They crawled into her backpack and followed her back to Hope Harbor.
They buzzed while she ate, prattled while she bathed, and finally crawled into her bedcovers to whisper in her ear until she fell asleep.
No one would want to understand a marginalized person like her who was ridiculed by everyone. If someone tried to care for such a person, they would undoubtedly be standing in opposition to everyone else.
She really could not take it anymore. She decided to tell the teachers. Everyone said to go to the teachers if there was trouble; teachers would solve one’s problems.
She went to the office and handed a note she had written in advance to the Math Teacher.
The Math Teacher only glanced at it. He felt it was just minor bickering between classmates and not worth managing. Instead, he lectured Lin Qingxia, saying she was making a mountain out of a molehill.
So, she went to a second teacher and handed the note to the English Teacher.
The English Teacher immediately showed a look of disbelief and instead questioned Lin Qingxia on whether she had dreamed it. How could the students in the class be so unruly? She must have confused reality with a dream.
Only after Lin Qingxia repeatedly affirmed it while enduring a sense of absurdity did the English Teacher half-heartedly believe such a thing was happening.
Subsequently, the English Teacher told Lin Qingxia earnestly that the reason she was being treated this way was entirely her own fault. It was completely because Lin Qingxia did not socialize that this result occurred.
“As long as you can find someone to adopt you, won’t you stop being called an orphan? You have to look for the problem within yourself. Why can others be adopted while you can’t?”
“There must be a reason why everyone treats you like this. Why do they bully you and not others? You are just too narrow-minded, always lost in your own little world.”
Lin Qingxia then tried to take the initiative to communicate with others. Because she could not speak, she could only write on paper and hand it to them. As a result, she was scolded for “handing them trash” and was cursed at.
The last teacher she sought out was the Chinese Teacher. The Chinese Teacher was quite pragmatic and immediately went to the students who had verbally bullied Lin Qingxia to give them a stern lecture.
In the end, those students settled down quite a bit and stopped bothering Lin Qingxia.
But after a few days, it was as if they had forgotten the pain once the scar healed. They went back to pointing and gossiping about her just as they always had.
The problem was never solved, the status quo never changed, and her efforts never yielded a reward.
Things developed in the opposite direction of what she had hoped. Because she had told the teachers, her classmates’ bullying became even more intensified. They even spread rumors saying that Lin Qingxia would secretly tattle to expose her classmates.