Personal growth often happens when you least expect it. I never wanted to become who I am now, but sometimes my own decisions still manage to surprise me. I don’t face everything I should with the deepest cunning, yet they try to guess my every move with the deepest cunning. What changes is not myself, but the way others look at me. —Henry Foster

Sand Sea I: Phantom Shadows in the Desert

Chapter One: The Injured Boy

"Ten Kings Galloping Formation." David Clark placed a black stone and looked at Eric Bennett smugly. "Well? Impressive, right?"

During evening self-study, the reference books were placed on the floor, and a smaller Go board was set up on the desk. The black stones on the board already held an overwhelming advantage; in just a few more moves, there’d be no point in continuing the game.

On one side of the board, Eric Bennett tilted his head, glancing out the window at the corridor, where the homeroom teacher was still chatting with his dad. He was a bit distracted, pinched the spot between his brows, and made a random move on the board.

"Have some professional ethics, will you? Play properly! You just moved my piece." David Clark turned his face back.

"Oh, really? Sorry about that." Eric Bennett snapped back to attention, but couldn’t remember which piece he’d just moved.

"It’s no use looking now. I’m telling you, after what you did, you’re in for a world of hurt. If you’re this scared now, why’d you do it in the first place?" David Clark scolded as he put the black stone back.

Eric Bennett saw his father glance over at him mid-conversation, and immediately ducked his head, a stronger sense of foreboding rising in his heart.

"Are you going to play or not?" David Clark was getting impatient.

Eric Bennett sighed and shook his head. "Find someone else. I think I’d better make a run for it."

"Hey, running now will only make it worse," said David Clark.

"You don’t know my dad. Look at our homeroom teacher," he pointed at her—a young woman with a good figure, obviously just out of college and teaching at a middle school for the first time. "She’s as pretty as a flower. My dad can’t keep his cool in front of a woman like that. To maintain his masculine image, he’ll definitely beat me up in public."

"But running away isn’t going to help either."

"My old man’s fifty, his energy’s running low. His anger can’t last long. I’ll wait till he cools off, get him a little booze, and he won’t care anymore." Eric Bennett slung his backpack over his shoulder. "How much money do you have on you? Give it all to me for now—consider it interest."

"Forget it, just take it as a brother helping you out." David Clark pulled out a few red bills. His family was pretty well-off, so he didn’t care much about money. Rumor had it that David Clark had over ten thousand yuan on his card; Eric Bennett had never seen that much real money in his life. Even a few hundred was a huge sum to him.

Even knowing David Clark was rich, Eric Bennett was still a bit touched. He glanced at the corridor—his dad and the homeroom teacher seemed about done talking. He bumped fists with David Clark, then ducked out the back door.

Just around the corner from the back door was the staircase. He dashed off at lightning speed, circling around.

The classroom was on the second floor. Down the stairs was the bike shed. He ran, hopped on his bike, and sped toward the school gate. The moment the back of his head left the bike shed, he seemed to hear his dad’s furious roar from upstairs.

Under the streetlights on the main road, Eric Bennett rode along, laughing—not because he’d escaped punishment, but because he wondered what kind of expression the homeroom teacher would have seeing his dad like that.

There definitely won’t be a next time.

He knew in his heart that his father’s temper was terrifying. After seeing it once, previous homeroom teachers never dared call his parents in again. From then on, whatever he did at school, he was safe.

That morning, when he went to play soccer, he borrowed more than a dozen balls and deliberately kicked them into the girls’ dormitory building. He did it over a dozen times, knocking all the girls’ clothes drying outside to the ground. The dorm supervisor, furious, led a group of girls to tie him up and deliver him to the homeroom teacher.

The homeroom teacher had only been there a month, so naturally she had to make an example out of him. What happened next was exactly what he expected.

Actually, he wasn’t a troublemaker by nature, so doing bad things made him feel extra stressed. But to avoid more trouble in the future, he had to go through the motions.

Suddenly, he remembered how Emily Bolton had looked that morning, angry at him in the dorm, wearing a white tank top, her two slender, fair arms waving. He sighed—anyway, there was no way anything would ever happen between them, so it didn’t matter if she hated him.

Eric Bennett’s parents had divorced half a year ago. He didn’t have the same hang-ups as other kids. For a family where there were daily arguments, things smashed every day, and both parents showed their ugliest sides, the breakup was more like a relief from torture. He used to imagine his parents might get back together, but eventually he got sick of it and just wanted it to end quickly.

He had no idea why they divorced. His father drank too much and had a bad temper, his mother was never home—both were to blame, but he didn’t care. After the divorce, he was assigned to his father, a civil servant, while his mother moved to another city. His father was often out socializing and barely had time for him, but Eric Bennett actually felt life was better than before.