In the Counseling Room
Today’s visitor is a boy. The moment he sat down, his very first words startled me
“I am afraid of all teachers.”
What kind of boy is this?
During this hour meant for class, why would he come here to me instead of attending his lesson?
And why do the sounds of shoes treading the sports ground and PE teachers calling the roll drift continuously through the window? Like background music, it served to better explain what the boy was going through.
Afterward, he answered nothing at all. He just stared and stared at my shoes to the point where I felt embarrassed. After I flipped the hourglass, his attention seemed to fixate entirely upon it—anything to avoid looking into my eyes. Not once did he look me in the eye.
He also said that after all this time, he couldn’t even clearly remember what his classmates looked like, because he didn’t dare look at their faces. And the reason he didn’t dare look at their faces was that when you look at someone’s face, you inevitably look into their eyes first—look into their eyes! Heavens, he lamented so, yet I cannot see others’ eyes clearly at all. My eyes are nothing but a murky chaos, my pupils merely a monotonous brown; I have nothing. I do not have fair skin, I cannot write a neat hand, I do not have a pleasant voice.
Really? he said.
He still remembers with crystal clarity the few people who had praised his voice, treasuring those fond memories like a sweet spring, locked away to be recalled only on occasion, whereupon they tasted as sweet as aged nectar.
The first was in seventh grade, when he mustered the courage to share a reading at the podium for the first time. To the girls who had not heard him speak a word several weeks into the semester, the voice of this introverted boy was nothing short of a mystery. Later, online, he was told that his voice was lovely—an anonymous message from a girl in his class who herself had a lovely voice.
The second time was his ninth-grade science teacher. He was very young, and another aspect of his youth that the boy admired immensely was how he spoke frankly before the whole class about the injustices he had suffered at the school, openly confessing his thoughts of dying and of resigning. The boy felt that a man like this was far more sincere than all those other hypocritical teachers. Toward all the other teachers, even those who treated him kindly, he harbored an inexplicable fear. At the time, the teacher called on him to answer a question, and afterward smiled with genuine surprise, saying, so your voice is this pleasant to hear. He sat down silently and said nothing, yet at that moment, he was truly, truly happy.
The third time was during a summer camp in eighth grade, on the journey back to school after it ended. He sat next to the most outstanding girl in the school. She had simply noticed there were no seats left in the back while the one beside him was empty, so she sat down right next to the boy, entirely free of the habit shared by other boys and girls of never sitting with the opposite sex. She shared her potato chips with him; he only dared take one piece at a time, his hand trembling each time he reached out. She praised how nice his voice sounded, yet he foolishly tried to explain why his voice sounded nice—if you never speak, your voice naturally becomes nice.
Since then, he never again heard anyone praise his voice, because he stopped speaking altogether, to the point where quite a few strangers wondered if he were mute. He always wore a gloomy face. Occasionally he was indeed in a foul mood, yet even when his spirits were high, he would still over-manage his expressions—a fact evident from how he would hold back his laughter upon hearing a dirty joke, only to be caught holding it back countless times.
His father passed away very early on, which was routinely assumed to be the cause of his illness. Yet he repeatedly emphasized that he did not care in the slightest about his father’s death, so much so that his family thought him cold, heartless, and incapable of loving anyone. Still, he said his father was an incredible man, because he had successfully quit smoking for his mother’s sake.
He said he was truly afraid of teachers.
Yet upon my questioning, he added: You are pretty nice, though.
I smiled.
He seemed to deeply hope that I could change his life at school. Only then did I notice that even though the wind outside was bone-chillingly cold, as if on the verge of snowing, he was still wearing his autumn school uniform rather than a winter padded jacket.
Why are you dressed like this? Are you cold?
He said that on his way to this building, the wind blew so hard it made him cry. He felt as though every part of his body had been snatched away by the cold wind, leaving him entirely out of control. He felt an endless agony spreading through every inch of his body, as if the freezing wind were about to dismember him. He struggled with all his might to hug himself, yet could only shed a few tears.
Then why not wear something thicker? The school should have issued winter padded jackets, right?
Because that would be so strange! he said. Isn’t putting on the winter uniform an utterly strange thing to do? Just as strange as wearing a padded jacket in the summer—though obviously, wearing shorts in the summer is also a strange, incomprehensible behavior.
In what way is that strange at all? I truly couldn’t quite understand.
I don’t understand myself very well either. Yet the only words I can think of are strange, or out of place, and my brain really hasn’t told me why it is strange. Thus he spoke.
Do you know how cold I am during the winter in the dormitory? Do you know how, because of my father’s carelessness, after my mattress was mistaken for a duvet cover, how narrow and cramped my quilt became how freezing how helpless in the icy night keeping me from falling asleep?
I curled myself up tightly with all my strength, spreading the narrow quilt half beneath me and half over me, clutching my thighs tightly like an infant, while trying my best to avoid any further unstable contact with the quilt. Because the quilt was simply made of ice, as freezing as trouser legs in winter. I was so cold I was about to cry again. Yet not a single person noticed my coldness that day; everyone treated my silence as just as ordinary as on any other day. I found that rather absurd, really.
I wanted to give him a hug, but his body was somewhat stiff.
He said he wasn’t used to hugging others, that it made him feel an inexplicable fear.