A Drum of Injustice Falls from the Sky
Wai is a third grader. One-seventy tall, plays basketball, rich kid, only son of a real estate boss. Insecure, oversensitive, dramatic, twisted up inside. The teacher keeps him and a few classmates after school for “tutoring,” then disappears to a meeting. A handful of nine-year-olds left alone in a classroom—what good could possibly come out of that?
Wai crunches on his snacks. Liu, Gu, Zhou hear the sound of chips breaking, and like muscle memory they rush up:
“Wai, can I have some?”
“Wai, gimme some.”
“Hand it over.”
Could Wai refuse? Of course not. If he did, he’d be guilty of stinginess. With his family money, could he really be stingy? No.
That was the sound of the gavel from heaven.
Wai looks around for a drum of injustice.
Zhou finishes eating, wipes his hands, crumples a tissue and aims for the trash can. Nothing wrong with the paper, nothing wrong with Zhou, only that Zhou can’t shoot like Wai. Wai always sinks it; Zhou never does. Still he keeps trying. Wai does it at home too—it’s part of his basketball drills—so naturally he does it at school.
Wai makes the shot.
Zhou misses.
Kids play games without reason. Wai sometimes pushes too far and gets chewed out. The worst is when the teacher asks, “Why did you do that?” Honestly, Wai doesn’t know. Neither do I. No reason is reason enough. His essays are good only because he grew up forced to invent lies.
Zhou misses again. Gu joins, Liu joins, and soon the three of them are tossing an eraser across the room. Could Wai stay out of it? No. Four kids, four corners, throwing. Still pointless. Wai’s throw is too strong—out the window it goes. The classroom is on the fourth floor. Outside, a metal guardrail meant to keep AC units from falling. The eraser supposedly has a legendary backstory—maybe Cixi used it, maybe some Red Army strategist on Jinggangshan. Who knows. Zhou insists he must have it back.
So someone has to climb. Lightest one, easier to pull back up. Wai thinks, finally not me, I’m tall and heavy.
Zhou climbs out. Balances on the shaky rail, laughing as he tosses the eraser back inside. They laugh the whole time, never realizing death was watching. He jumps to catch the window ledge, Gu and Liu grab his arms, pull him up. Wai does nothing. One person only has two hands.
You think Zhou fell? No. Death wasn’t the fall. Death was the teacher. She walked in right at that moment.
Finished. Done for. What more do I need to tell you, reader? Four kids lined up, confessing the cause, the process, the result. Like a language arts lesson. And every one of them says Wai threw it. They go shortest to tallest, one by one. Wai, tallest, goes last, no chance to defend. He doesn’t even remember if he threw it. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. He doesn’t know what to say.
Because how can a northern kid’s clumsy mouth beat three Shanghai tongues? Their speech is like training. Wai’s mouth feels punched shut—can’t speak, can’t swallow. His innocent look naturally becomes the mark of a guilty schemer. After all, he’s mischievous, his grades are bad, he’s good at sports, his family’s rich. The other three? Good students, every one.
So Wai is scolded half an hour, forced to write a five-hundred-word reflection. He sits in the back row corner, fabricating a story, mixing plot and inner monologue. Exactly what I’m doing right now.
A drum of injustice falls from the sky. They say it was left by some senior, but the drum is broken. No drum, no sound.
This time there isn’t even a gavel from heaven, because the judge up there can’t outtalk three southern kids. The judge is from the northwest, his Mandarin clumsy, only able to mutter: adasi, adasi.