That was a real question. What was I going to do if I couldn’t graduate in the end?

Actually, I didn’t have to think too hard about this question because the seniors who had done just as badly in school had used their lives to answer this question. And now, I was merely following in their footsteps as I stood on the highest floor of the block where they once stood and looked down at the ground.

The building I was in right now was originally named the Block for Grooming Talents. It was only six stories high, but this city was close to the sea and was often misty, so looking down from the top floor gave the illusion that one was standing above the clouds in an unreachable place.

Of course, it didn’t matter if you just liked to look out from time to time. But if you were at this block around June or July, it was better not to stand around on the ground floor. This was the time of the year when someone would suddenly come falling down from above.

The seniors had chosen to jump off this block to end their lives purely because it was in the most secluded part of the school and few walked past this building. As a result, this wonderful geographical location had also become the reason why it was known as the Suicide Spot.

According to rumors, those seniors had jumped to their deaths from the window right at the end of the corridor on the highest floor of the Block for Grooming Talents. The other windows along the same corridor were too small and couldn’t fit most people, so those who intended to jump would choose the now famous Suicide Window.

After some time, some pretentious wannabe writers among the students decided to rename the block to the Block of Envied Talents, because of a Chinese idiom. The idiom was actually used to refer to talented youths who tragically passed away at a young age, but the words literally meant that the heavens were jealous of the gifted (and thus their lives were taken away). The unofficial renaming of the block made it even more famous than it already was.

It wasn’t so famous that the entire country knew about it, but anyone who talked about this Block of Envied Talents would definitely give it a thumbs up and shout in praise from the bottom of his heart, “Incredible!” It was like the Weiming Lake of Peking University*, or how Tsinghua Garden was synonymous with Tsinghua University.

Come to think of it, our university wasn’t famous for any research or anything like that. Instead, it was super famous for the number of students who had jumped to their deaths. I wasn’t sure if I ought to laugh or cry at that fact.

When the number of deaths hit double digits, the Department of Education finally took notice. The dean realized that he might lose his position if he didn’t resolve this problem, so after thinking hard, he came up with a solution that solved the symptoms and not the root of the problem – he built a one meter by one meter platform on the second story of the building right below the Suicide Window. That way, even if a student attempted to jump off the building, he would land on this platform instead of falling to his death on the hard cement floor below.

After the platform was constructed, the death rate reduced significantly. The rate at which people were getting badly injured had risen tremendously instead, but the school managed to protect its reputation and the dean also got to keep his position.

Also, now that this block had a platform that made sure nobody could die from jumping off the top floor, very few students attempted suicide anymore. But I wasn’t going to give up. During this period just before graduation, I often went up to the highest floor and spent a long time there just hanging around aimlessly.

When I looked out of that window at night, I could see that the library directly opposite the block was fully lit and I could even see the students inside clearly. They were either reading a book or hunched over a table to study. Everyone seemed so peaceful and relaxed.

This scene was less than a hundred meters away from where I was standing, but it felt like they were from a different world. It was true that I was too far gone and there was no way I could turn around and become like them. But I still enjoyed watching them from here.

I eventually decided to seriously treat this place as my final resting place. I had tried to imagine many times what would happen when my body came hurtling down. I spent several moments leaning against that window and peering down while picturing several scenarios in my head.

Unfortunately, I still couldn’t find a suitable angle by which I could avoid that platform and land on the ground. I even thought of doing a short sprint to help me jump further, because I figured that it would only take me a few additional steps to launch myself easily beyond that small platform and fall to my death.

But I soon realized that this wasn’t going to work for one very simple reason. The window itself was half a meter above the floor. Not only did I have to run from a distance to gain momentum, I had to also jump at the correct moment such that my body would leap neatly out of the window. That was way too hard for even the famous hurdler, Liu Xiang, never mind someone like me.

Even so, I still wasn’t going to give up. I compared myself against the size of the window and was glad to find that the window was indeed large enough. If the window were closer to the floor, I just had to bend over slightly and I would be able to run right through it. But the windowsill was half a meter above the floor. If I started running from a distance, then I’d have to put one hand on the windowsill and use it to pivot my entire body out of the window. But if I did that, my body might get stuck in the window itself. And even if I did somehow manage to fly out of the window, I wasn’t sure how far out I could propel myself with that one hand. Would I definitely be able to leap past the edge of the platform and onto the ground?

I racked my brains long and hard but couldn’t find a solution to this. But perhaps my resolve to die had moved the heavens. It pitied me for having no attachment to life on earth and placing my hopes for a better life after death, so it finally decided to help me with my mission to cross over to the nether world.

The previously clear and blue skies suddenly turned to gray. A strong wind began to blow, followed by a flash of lightning!

When that happened, I was leaning against the window and looking out. I couldn’t avoid that flash of lightning in time, so I shut my eyes and thought, it doesn’t matter. I was already hoping to die anyway, so I might as well let this flash of lightning strike me dead.

The heavens seemed to have seen through my thoughts. The flash of lightning that had made its way toward me magically changed course slightly to land elsewhere close by.

Even though that flash of lightning hadn’t struck me, it was bright enough to light up the entire floor. Before I could marvel at how lucky I was for the lightning to have missed me, I noticed something else.

What were those things?

Those were classroom desks! These were the old long, rectangular ones we used to have in the classrooms that had already been replaced and were now piled up in this corridor to gather dust. They were all stacked up in a dark corner of the corridor.

That was the darkest corner of the corridor and very few people would have noticed the pile of condemned desks. If that flash of lightning hadn’t been so bright, I wouldn’t have noticed them either.

An idea hit me the moment I saw those desks. The intelligence inside my brain that had been frozen for many years suddenly came to life.

Those desks were long and rectangular, plus they were also about half a meter high. If I placed a desk perpendicular to the window, it would form a stage of sorts. If I used these desks as a runway, wouldn’t I be able to perfectly achieve my aim of leaping out of the window and landing beyond the platform?

I had a plan, so the only thing left to do was to see if it was plausible.

The floorplan of this block was the same for every floor, including the placement and size of the windows along the corridor. Since there wasn’t anybody around, I secretly dragged one of the desks to the second story to try my idea out.

The desk wobbled quite a bit when I first tried standing on it. But after some time, I started getting used to balancing on it. Thankfully, I just needed it to run an additional two or three steps, so the shakiness didn’t bother me. After that, I tried to actually do it. I ran across the desk for momentum, bent my body a little and made it right out of the window, eventually landing at the edge of the platform.

This test run was on the second story, so I had jumped from a very low height. If I did the same thing at the top floor of the block, flying across the length of the platform and falling to my death was going to be a piece of cake.

Now that the problem I had been thinking about for days had finally been solved, I felt all relaxed. The next thing I had to do was choose a date to die.

I started counting off my fingers pretentiously. Graduation day was definitely the best time to do it.

While everyone else was wearing their graduation gowns and taking photos excitedly to remember this day, I would suddenly land with a loud thud and send panic waves through the happy crowd! That sounded exciting!

Then again, I didn’t want to die just like that either. I had to accomplish something with my death. After all, nobody would have thought of killing themselves in this fashion…

Just then, I thought of something else. If the desk were moved back to its original position after I had jumped off, would anybody still be able to tell that it was a suicide? Since nobody could see how I could have done this myself, would the police consider it an unnatural death and investigate it as a murder instead?

For example, I could have been pushed out of the window. If one pushed hard enough, it was possible for the other person to fly out beyond the edge of the platform and land on the hard ground instead.

That was an idea. Perhaps I could disguise my death as a murder.

The more I thought about it, the more excited I got. I even thought of purposely turning my body midair so that I’d land on my back. That would make it look even more like a murder.

Since I had already decided to disguise my suicide as a murder, I now had to think of a murderer. Or rather, I had to decide who I wanted to frame as my murderer.

The faces of all the teachers I hated appeared in my brain. Eventually, Mr. Chen, the one who constantly picked on me and even barred me from taking the exam, became my final choice.

Mr. Chen was famous for being harsh to delinquent students and both the pioneer and leader in picking out and attacking the worst performing students of the school. Making him the scapegoat was significant since I would be that bad student who would finally bring our greatest enemy down.

My heart started palpitating just thinking about this. I tried my best to control my emotions as I began to think about how I should actually go about doing this.

I imagined it would look like what normally happened in dramas and movies. I would hold onto a button that belonged to one of Mr. Chen’s clothes, then jump off the top floor of the building. As long as I could cover up how I jumped down, nobody would think I committed suicide, while that button would make the police turn their attention to Mr. Chen! The best would be to get into a heated argument with Mr. Chen in front of everybody on purpose before jumping off. That would give Mr. Chen a motive for murder!

A vital question suddenly came to mind just when I was gleefully imagining this scenario.

If I had already jumped to my death, who was going to put the desk back where it belonged?

This was definitely going to be a problem. Before this, I would have asked Daning to help me with setting up this whole thing. But now, he had decided to study seriously again. Would he still want to help me with something like this?

Would he? Or would he not?

Honestly, I wasn’t sure.

TL notes:

*Weiming Lake of Peking University: it’s an actual lake in the middle of the campus, and while it’s famous for being a nice lake, apparently a lot of people end their lives by drowning there too.