Bustles outside kept pounding against my eardrums, just like the sound of your regular pencil-sharpener, only much louder.
A said: “It starts again.”
B said: “A larger consumption today.”
Their voices drilled into my ears, I could them but nothing, it was pitch-dark here, without any breeze.
So where was I now?
I Had asked this question to myself for a number of times, “You are still confused about it? Actually, we just came a bit earlier than you…”, they laughed with sardonic grin.
Through contact with my hands and feet, I felt that this was not a room, but a huge cement pipe. But it was neither wet nor with crusty articles inside, It felt like wood.
A giant wooden pipe?
To my surprise, before I arrived, the pipe had been already packed with people, quiet and restless, slowly swaying under someone’s command. Groups of people followed me in, and the moment they came into the pipe, the golden sunlight outside, illuminated many faces that were worn to a frazzle, but the light only lasted for a second and then flashed, darkness swallowed them again.
More and more people came and crowded inside the pipe, people stifled because of the squeeze, one man miserably let out a scream, he said that someone’s glasses were broken, and had grazed his face. In the darkness, people fell into silence. Since nobody could see anyone, I had to use “A” and “B” to substitute with their names. A started talking again, he wished that there would be less homework to do today, otherwise it would be rotated to him tomorrow, He didn’t want to become the “Old Dog”.
I knew the “Old Dog”, he was in another class, slender build, with narrowed eyes, he liked to hunched over, ran like a dog starved for three days. Furthermore, he was mild, obsessed with flattering others, so that he got a nickname --- “Old Dog” from the others.
“What is matter with Old Dog?”, B asked.
“He just became a collection of black powder…” A said.
“Tomorrow is weekend, he shouldn’t have any homework...”, C’s voice came out.
“You are daydreaming!”, the retort came wheezing. “I have heard before I came in, test will be in 10 days, no rest this week, teachers assigned numerous homework.”, D said.
Signed by B: “Looks like tomorrow is our last day.”
“Is it everybody’s destiny to become a pile of black powder?”, I asked.
“You could verify it tomorrow yourself.”, A said.
Noises outside ceased, followed by the sound of rain. From the sound of it, it was pouring.
“It starts.”, A said with lamentable voice, everybody fell in silence.
There was less and less air in the pipe, it was harder and harder to breathe. Suddenly, there was a crack, as if a bomb had exploded in the distance.
“It is broken! It was broken! Hahahaha…”, C laughed.
“Why are you laughing? Don’t you know this means you will become powder more quickly!”, A exclaimed.
The enormous noise of pencil-sharpener sounded again. This time, my eardrums were even more painful.
Meanwhile, the crowd continued to move, but more like dashing. The pressure of people behind me, made me speed up, I didn’t know how long I had been running.
The crowd suddenly stopped.
The sound of rain started again, even louder than before, seemed to be not far ahead.
B said painfully: “Will anyone still remember us afterwards? I am not yet fifteen years old?”
A said grimly: “Of course, in this thick homework booklet, every word, every formula, were swapped through our life, our blood is black.”
All at once, the world rotated, the wooden pipe seemed to fly into the sky, and then fell heavily into the ground in an instant.
In the darkness, I struggled to stand up, A mound of earth rose upon my forehead.
 
That student, who had kept doing her homework, wrathfully discarded her pencil to the ground.