I’m Not Shouldering This Blame

The shop signs fell on the street and got soaked in muddy water.

Several old houses tilted, its roof gone with the continually pouring rain washing the furniture inside. Many things are floating in the stagnant water: Clothes, plastic bowls, and a half-deflated basketball.

You won’t know where the fuzzy sound of radio came from: ” *zi zi*……fourth day of Hurricane Jennifer’s attack on Southern State……Hurricane Jennifer, which was originally predicted to land on Mexico，changed direction on November 7th this morning, and eventually landed on the Southern State at seven in the evening……most areas near the Gulf of Mexico suffered serious losses, and traffic is paralyzed *zi*……”

The wind is small, but the momentum of the rainstorm has not diminished.

An apple is in the rushing water, half-floating and bumping into all kinds of debris. The rain continues to drop. The apple drifted to the top of a sheltered place, continuing to move.

Suddenly, this “difficult” journey was interrupted.

A thin hand stretched out from the dark. It quickly fished the apple out of the muddy water, and casually wiped the apple on his clothes, acting as if it cannot wait to bite into it.

Rain hit his face and reddish-brown hair wetly attached to his forehead.

His appearance of biting the apple is like a frightened hamster. His freckled cheek bulging, and his restless eyes always looking around. After a minute of subtle chewing sounds, the teenager reluctantly threw away the apple core into the muddy water.

His name is Johnson Brown.

Fourteen years old, just a ninth grader.

About four days ago, he blew up his school……

For an American boy at this age, Johnson is very thin. Because of his poor family, he wore ill-fitting, old clothes from the relief station, dirty sneakers and often don’t wear socks. His hair is also not well-groomed. All this makes Johnson look very sloppy, becoming a subject of ridicule in his public school.

His textbook was torn to pieces, and the homework he handed in was missing, making him be severely reprimanded by the teacher.

The finished product for the handwork class was smashed, lockers are often forced open, the inside covered with sticky with mud. There’s even a mouse’s body. Once, it was a rabbit that was just skinned.

Johnson does not know who did it, but the people around him whistled at seeing him make a fool of himself.

If he tells the teacher, not only can’t they find out who, he will also suffer from more retaliation.

He did not say anything and endured. Gradually, this cold violence escalated.

The students playing basketball ruthlessly pushed down the passing Johnson. Their mouths saying sorry, but grinning at the tooth they had knocked off. The fourteen-year-old boy squeezed his fist, but his arm is not as thick as the other students, like a chicken. The other person “unintentionally” hit him with their elbow, and he fell to the lawn again.

Since then, he often has purple bruises, all because he “accidentally” fell and hit the ground.

A new teacher came in the past year who kindly helped him, but Johnson’s situation has not improved.

Lawyers who offer free services to victims of school violence came to the school. But except for that teacher, no one from the school came out to prove that Johnson was bullied.

People always have a misunderstanding, it is the proper students who they think are victims of school violence.

Sometimes, the ones using violence is precisely those proper students, the sunshine boy that everyone loves. And the victim is the one that the teachers don’t like, children that are hated by their peers.

By bullying this filthy kid in the dark, the campus idols will receive more worship from the public.

Johnson is “the dirty student who doesn’t hand in homework” to the other teachers. In his same age group, he was called “small bug” and “lazy pig”. His family lived in the slums two years ago, so who will speak up for him?

Even the only female teacher who spoke for him, because they can’t get valid evidence, was dismissed by the school two months ago.

With his scarred arm exposed to the rain, Johnson climbs onto a small steep slope of furniture and fallen windows, shrinking behind a big wardrobe. He wore a metal bucket to shield from the rain.

Thinking of the disaster four days ago, Johnson went pale.

***

That morning was an overcast day. The morning algebra class just started when the school broadcast rang, an emergency transfer notice was issued.

The hurricane changed direction. The new predicted landing site is the nearest town which was 100 kilometers away.

Although the Southern State is often affected by hurricanes, few hurricanes directly landed here. The teachers panicked and arranged all students to sit on the school bus.

The school was chaotic. Parents who got the news came to school. There are also calls from parents, and students going to the elementary school to pick up their brother or sister.

Johnson waited for a long time and failed to get on the school bus. Seeing the campus become empty, he bowed his, ready to go home. But when passing by a grove, several guys who often picked on him jumped out. They put a black plastic bag on his head, and with a few punches, knocked him unconscious. Then the people carrying him threw him to the school’s substation.

They also locked the door.

Johnson had previously been lured to stay a night at the gymnasium, and the warehouse, laboratory and many others.

Johnson is an orphan. He lives with his unmarried Uncle Rick. Rick is a gambler, not coming home for 20 days in a month. If Johnson did not come back for a night, he wouldn’t even look.

This group of teenagers, absolutely do not recognize how dangerous their own bad behavior is.

The hurricane, for them, means that the trees are destroyed, and they can’t go out. There’s also the occasional power outage, and flood on the streets. This is the annoying time when the school stops classes, and the parents don’t go to work.

In their making fun of Johnson, they have endless evil ideas.

At first, they listened to Johnson’s screams from the locked gymnasium. After a few more times, they found out that this kid wouldn’t cry or yell, and can only stay the night. They have long felt it boring and thought of more exciting ways.

This is not the same, there’s a Hurricane warning！

The teenagers are excited right now. They believe that this will lock Johnson into place, and will be discovered after two days！Thinking about it, in the windy pitch darkness, the wretched Johnson locked up in the substation with no one coming, wouldn’t he be so scared that he’d wet his pants?

After thinking about it, this group of teenagers escaped the teachers, avoided their parents, and sneaked out to attack Johnson.

Behind the grove is the substation which is just right！Anyway, all the school’s switches are off, so it was pitch black. After throwing Johnson in, by the time someone else found out, this lazy pig would be starved for not eating anything for two days.

Locking the door outside, the teenagers proudly returned home. Their anxious parents scolded while dragging them to the car. The boys are clamoring to bring their tablet computer, baseball bat, and roller skates. The results were that it was all ignored by their parents.

Sitting in the back of the car, they watched as people from the whole town went out in a hurry. The teenagers finally felt that something was wrong. Isn’t it that when hurricanes come, shouldn’t they stay at home eating hot dogs and playing games all night?

“The city may be flooded.”

“It’s a category three hurricane, God Bless our house！It’s too old, so I’m afraid it won’t hold.”

“We have insurance for the house. What? You forgot to bring the insurance policy！Quickly go back!”

“Shut up！Do you want to go back to court death?”

The adults are so anxious to curse, clamoring noisily, that they totally ignored the child’s scared face.

The school’s building is newly built, very strong. Before the hurricane came, nothing happened. So this time, it will indeed be okay. The boy thought so. The teenager dared not say that Johnson is still in school.

Because if he said it, it would mean he was bullying his classmate.

Perhaps even more severe, he would be sentenced to jail because of school violence.

Johnson is not entirely unconscious, after a period of time when the teenagers left, he woke up.

The substation has no windows. It was dark everywhere. Johnson groped his way to the duty room, pressing the wall switch but the lights do not come on. Thank goodness there’s a monitor that let out a weak light. With the faint glow, he also found a fully charged flashlight on the table. Turning the duty room upside down, his reward was a bag of chips and two cans of beer from the watchman.

Johnson puts these things at his feet, ready to get through these two days.

His thoughts are the same as those teenagers.

Johnson is not too scared. The school’s substation is not small, and there are also vents. There’s nothing to be afraid of except for the darkness.

Two days maybe a little rough, but compared to his house in the old neighborhood, perhaps the school is safer.

This idea disappeared in a few hours. The terrible wind came through the heavy doors, like the devil’s roar from hell. The fence on the vent was sent flying, and the dust goes straight inside.

Johnson trembled under the table.

The wind is getting louder, like a screaming ghost, and mixed in with confusing noises.

——Hurricane Jennifer goes north along the Gulf of Mexico after changing direction. The wind speed reached 220 kilometers per hour and was promoted to Category 4 Hurricane. People thought that it would land at the Southern State at the morning of the 8th, but as a result, it arrived on the evening of the 7th.

People who have not evacuated faced the disaster.

What is a desperate situation?

Johnson curled his body in fear. After surviving a few hours of panic and anxiety, he finally found that it was just a prelude to the hurricane and that the real storm has just arrived.

He is kneeling on the floor, but the ground is shaking, no, the building was shaking.

The creaking sound is so clear among the roaring winds. Everything is moving. Johnson never wanted to stay in the building. It’s the same as sitting on a boat, his vision was shaking, and there is no fixed thing as it cracked and fell.

Sparks appeared in the substation, and something smashed on the devices。

The third-floor collapsed, then the second floor……when the ceiling came down, Johnson closed his eyes tightly, grabbing the table’s legs in vain. Suddenly, the terrible sound in his ear disappeared.

Johnson opened his eyes, blankly staring at the strange sight.

The world is silent.

Above his head is a dark sky. Like a messy oil painting, it was sprinkled with creamy squid ink with a messy trail of wind and air.

Many things that were blown away stopped in mid-air. The raindrops froze, not falling to the ground. Johnson carefully touched it with his hand, making his palm was wet.

Outside, the substation was half-destroyed, the school buildings collapsed, and the grove has been razed to the ground.

The water rose to half the height of Johnson, and the familiar campus turned into an ocean.

The storm came at the end of the day. As far as the eye could see, it was a blurred curtain of rain everywhere.

This doomsday-like scene, makes Johnson think that he had fallen to hell.

His emaciated body uncontrollably shook, and a terrible force burst out——

“Aaahhhh！”

With the substation as the center, a thunderbolt appeared from the clouds.

The sky is like a torn canvas. There is a constant leakage of light connecting heaven and earth. This dazzling gold is full of terrifying power. Instantly, the entire public school was submerged in a curtain of thunder and lightning.

The remains of some school buildings collapsed, and the surviving buildings collapse. The electricity from the lightning spread out through the water, like a vast golden net.

Next came the whirlwind, pulling smoke and wreckage to the sky, and the storm laughed like the devil.

An S-level ability awakened.

The Abandoned World disappeared, and the hurricane’s horrible sound re-appears.

Johnson was swept to the sky by the wind. He panicked and struggled. An invisible force wrapped around his body, taking him very far away.

Eventually, he fell unscathed at the ruins of a house, only to realize: He seemed to have blown up the school……

The author has something to say：

Johnson’s awakening is similar to Li Fei’s awakening.

Between life and death, he got himself pulled into the Abandoned World——charged——ability awakened——back in the real world，use your ability to keep yourself alive →_→