While I retook my 34th exam, a student actually jumped off one of the buildings. A couple discovered the body in the grass when they walked past the Block for Grooming Talents. The block was in a more secluded part of the school and normally, very few people would walk by that area. If that couple hadn’t been deliberately looking for a quiet place to make out, that body might not have been discovered for days.

According to the eyewitnesses, the victim was lying face up. His brain had been smashed to bits and his face was unrecognizable.

Once this awful news started spreading, the previously dull and lifeless school instantly sprang to life. The block that was usually quiet and deserted was suddenly bustling with activity. Perhaps it had been too long since someone threw themselves off a school building, so these stressed out students had finally found something to get excited about. Many of them were taking photos and videos while posting on social media.

A male student who looked like he was in his fourth year started speaking as if he was a senior who knew a lot, “Every year, a handful of students would always jump off a building to kill themselves close to graduation day. Two years ago, the school installed a safety platform, so that reduced the number of students attempting suicide. All of you are astonished by what just happened, but I’m already so used to it.”

These words instantly drew gasps from the students around him and they all praised him for being so knowledgeable.

At the same time, the school had to do something since the students couldn’t stop talking about what happened. First, they tried to disperse the students that had gathered around the block. But the students refused to move, as if they had lost a fellow protestor for their cause. Next, the school told all their staff to find out who the victim was. The victim’s face was disfigured beyond recognition from the impact of the fall, so the staff began to send messages out to the students to check if everyone was fine and the RAs of every dormitory also started calling everybody up to make sure their residents were all right.

And so, all 1,300 RAs of the school began to call up their residents one by one in a frenzy.

I was taking an exam at that time, so my phone was on silent mode. When my RA failed to contact me, he ran around asking the other residents if they were with me. Not only did they report that I wasn’t with them, but someone also said that he had seen me walking around the top floor of the Block for Grooming Talents alone more than once.

Armed with that information, the RA immediately ran to tell the staff in hope of being the first to identify who this victim was.

The staff were shocked, but once they remembered how many classes I had failed, they found it a plausible reason for me to kill myself. They concluded that the victim had to be me and reported it to the school management.

All of a sudden, everyone I knew, those I didn’t know, those who knew about me and even those who had never heard of me gathered around my dormitory. There were so many people crowding around, it was almost impossible to pass through.

Meanwhile, that lousy RA of mine was enjoying his moment of fame as someone who lived in the same block as the victim, as he had become the person everyone wanted to talk to. He had never been in the limelight like this before and was answering questions nonstop when his phone suddenly started ringing. He pulled his phone out to find that the caller was myself, which immediately sent chills down his spine. His first thought was that I was making a long distance call from hell and he nearly dropped his phone to the floor.

After hesitating for some time, he finally picked up the call and said in a trembling voice, “H-hello?”

I said, “Why did you call me so many times in a row?!”

The RA gasped in horror and wasn’t sure if I was a human or a ghost in that moment. He plucked up his courage and whispered, “Where…where are you now?”

“Me? I’m right outside the dormitory!”

The RA got a terrible shock and started looking around for me. When he failed to see me, he concluded that I must have turned into a spirit and was watching him from above. His legs started shaking and he was just about to fall to his knees and bow to pay his respects to my dead soul when I managed to push my way through the crowd.

The moment he saw that I wasn’t actually dead, he became annoyed. Then when he realized that his earnest reporting had turned out to be a false alarm and he was going to get cursed at instead, he became furious and yelled at me for not picking up my phone.

I told him that I was retaking an exam, so I couldn’t possibly answer my phone.

The RA couldn’t argue with that but he didn’t want to go down without a fight, so he sneered, “I don’t understand why people like you bother attending university when you don’t care about studying! Everyone else is busy with an internship or even looking for a job already, but what about you? You’re retaking an exam because you failed a class! So what if the school lets you graduate? What use will people like you be to the society in the future? You don’t know how to do anything else besides play video games all day! You might as well…”

He didn’t finish that sentence, but what he meant to say was obvious. He wanted to say that I might as well kill myself.

In the past, I would have started arguing with him. But today, I didn’t say anything because that was exactly how I felt too. There was no point for someone like me to continue living. I might as well kill myself.

The RA was still fuming, so he continued to speak disdainfully, “And where’s that buddy of yours? I thought the two of you were always together. Where’s he gone? The internet café again?”

I replied, “I don’t know where he is. I haven’t seen him since yesterday afternoon.”

The RA immediately barked an order at me, “Give him a call and tell him to come back right now! Something terrible has happened in the school and every dormitory is confirming if all their residents are all right! Why on earth is he at the internet café at such a time?!”

I gave Daning a call, but nobody picked up even after I had called him three times in a row.

And as if the RA was still hellbent on wishing us dead, he immediately drew a new conclusion, “Do you think…do you think the one who jumped down was Daning?!”

This time, he was careful to phrase it like a question, in case it turned out to be a false alarm again.