Delinquent High

Chapter 9

Note: I feel like I should give a fair warning right about now. This fic is dark, and will be for a little while longer. The topic I have chosen this time is not an easy or pleasant one. If you or any of your friends have been bullied or inappropriately punished at school, you will know what I am talking about. (This is still a work of fiction so please take it as such.)

Although there are now laws in many countries around the world against physical violence, shaming and bullying at schools, in many other countries, children are still not having the optimal environment for learning. In this story, Wei Wuxian will get rescued from these terrible circumstances, but many children do not and they carry scars, both physical and emotional, into their adult lives.

This fic is intended as a glace into this dark world and to hopefully raise awareness that these kinds of behaviours should have no place anywhere, much less in an education facility. 

As Wei Wuxian soon learned, the Delinquent High was truly nothing like a normal school. He was not the only one to whom the teachers referred to with a number instead of their names. He had never been to a prison and neither did he know anyone who had. But he imagined that this must have been how the inmates were feeling when they were stripped of their own identity and had become a simple number on whose account punishments could be stored endlessly without any damage to one's conscience.

Or at least this was the conclusion he had come up with when he had been consecutively punished in the middle of the class several more times before lunch break. At each occasion, he had been made to come up to the teacher's desk, lean down over it and recite his supposed crime. As the day progressed, he was falling deeper and deeper under the impression that the Delinquent High's objective for him was not to teach him discipline, but completely break his spirit.

How else should he explain to himself that he had been punished also for crimes such as not having his school books on him or not wearing the standard uniform? No one gave him any of those two. Moreover, when he tried to plead with the teacher who pointed it out, he had been punished on top for speaking rudely to him and talking back at all. Jin Guangshan was the teacher's name as Wei Wuxian learned only a lot later and he had taken nothing short of pleasure calling him to stand up and come take his punishment despite it being only five hits each time. In total, he had been called out five times during that single class.

As if all of this was not enough, the amount of homework they got in not even a full half day amounted to that which Wei Wuxian would usually have to prepare for a whole week in his previous school. For nearly all classes, they were asked to write a whole paper on one topic or another and hand it back tomorrow. This is how Wei Wuxian learned that his new timetable was actually more or less the same for every day, endless work and no rest. He now came to suspect that it was less due to the strict discipline and more because of the huge amount of homework that no students from the Delinquent High were ever seen playing outside.

There were also other things which differentiated the Delinquent High from any other normal school. For example, from the moment he had been led to the classroom by the chairman, there have not been any breaks. The teachers just finished their lecture when a new one appeared in the door and started his own class. With the exception of Wen Zhuliu, none of them introduced themselves to Wei Wuxian. They simply looked at him, and then started the class. They only spoke to him to point out any mistakes and rule breaking.

Just like the chairs in front of the chairman's office, also the ones in the classroom were only pretending to be comfortable wooden ones. In reality, Wei Wuxian had never sat on something so hard and so ill shaped. His beaten up and sore bottom was aching nonstop as he could not find any relief regardless of the amount of moving around he did. It only made him hate the school all that more.

After the third time he was reprimanded – and inevitably also punished – for not being able to sit without squirming, he was starting to think that the chairs were actually made like this on purpose. Such a devious facility like Delinquent High apparently wanted to make the life of the students as hard as possible, by any means available.

It was almost lunch time and Wei Wuxian was getting extremely tired. Without a single break, he has not been able to rest even for a second nor make any friends in the class. He did not dare to attract attention onto himself during the lecture time so he refrained from trying to talk to anyone. The students did not look like they wanted to speak to him anyway. Aside for the more or less loud snickering and mocking, depending on which teacher was in the class at that time, they were pointedly ignoring him.

It was becoming irritating for him that he was the only target of the teachers. None of the other students had been beaten in front of the whole class. True, some of them had gotten their very own punishment requests, but those must have been for after classes as they only thanked the teacher for them and went back to their seats.

It was making Wei Wuxian feel very frustrated that he should be the only one to suffer the public humiliation over and over again. No matter how much he was convincing himself that it did not matter, that the teachers were strict with him because it was his first day and would probably become more lenient as time went by, he could not completely lie to himself. It was not comfortable or enjoyable to be called out like this.

There was also another problem which was becoming more and more urgent by the minute. As there were no breaks between the lectures, there was also no possibility to go to the bathroom. Wei Wuxian was now infinitely glad that he had not drank his glass of orange juice at breakfast, otherwise he would have needed to go relieve himself all that faster. However, the fact still stayed, he had to go to the bathroom, and quick, or he would embarrass himself without the teacher's help this time.

That being said, none of the other students had exited the classroom due to this natural need. Wei Wuxian was perplexed but thought that perhaps they were already used to this kind of torture. Still, it was getting really hard for him not to start squirming again, this time not because of his abused bottom.

He was not told when exactly the lunch break would take place, he was even doubting at this point that there was actually any lunch break in the Delinquent High. Moreover, he was not too sure if students were able to use toilets if there would be a break. With the constant supervision they were under – so unlike this morning when Wei Wuxian was walking to the chairman's office – it was possible that they would be asked to not stray from their assigned posts.

He was trying his best, he really was, but it was becoming impossible. The need to go relieve himself was growing stronger and stronger until he could not pay attention to anything else. He was weighing his options: either he would keep this up until the possibly non-existent lunch break, or he would ask the current teacher to be allowed to go use the bathroom. He thought for another five minutes and then decided to try his luck.

This particular teacher did not look too menacing, he was even smiling amicably as he explained the mysteries of Biology. He had not punished him or scolded him once from the start of his class. Perhaps it would be fine to ask him. Anyway, Wei Wuxian felt like this was a now or never situation.