The dorm manager slammed the door shut with a "bang." It seemed like he’d been bored these days and had finally caught someone, planning to interrogate them thoroughly: "Which one of you wants to talk first? What happened?" The dorm manager pulled up a plastic stool, sat down in front of the two of them, then turned to Samuel Clark, "He said you climbed in through the back door?"

Samuel Clark cursed a thousand times in his heart.

If his English were any good, he could have cursed him another thousand times in another language.

"What do you mean," Samuel Clark asked in a low voice, "didn’t we agree on this?"

The student in the school uniform finally looked at him properly. Samuel Clark heard the person’s tone, cold and indifferent, retort, "We?"

"……"

Damn it!

The dorm manager pressed, "I’m asking you a question—did you climb in?"

Samuel Clark had no choice but to grunt in response.

The dorm manager: "Why did you climb over the wall and go out?"

Samuel Clark searched his mind and finally came up with a somewhat reasonable answer: "To clear my head."

The dorm manager: "What do you need to go off campus to clear your head for?!"

Samuel Clark: "Too much academic pressure."

If William Foster or any teacher from the high school department heard this, they’d probably lose it on the spot: What academic pressure do you have? Have you ever studied? Where’s the pressure coming from?

"……" The dorm manager said irritably, "No matter how much pressure you have, you can’t just climb over the wall and leave. If every student acted like you, how would the school maintain order?"

A man under the eaves has to bow his head. Samuel Clark sighed, "You’re right."

"Students these days really don’t take school rules seriously. It’s written right in the third rule: students must strictly enter and exit according to the school’s schedule!"

The dorm manager wanted to use the school rules to put pressure on this student, to make him understand his mistake more deeply, but there were so many rules that he couldn’t quite remember them all. Halfway through, he got stuck: "No… um, no…"

A low, cold voice picked up where he left off.

"No climbing over the wall or entering and leaving the school at will. Those who violate the above rules will be punished according to the severity of the situation."

Samuel Clark clicked his tongue inwardly, thinking, where did this model student come from?

He could recite the school rules backwards.

"Sir," the student in the school uniform seemed unwilling to just stand there. After finishing, he glanced at his phone for the time and asked, "Can I go now?"

The dorm manager’s attitude toward him was completely different from how he treated Samuel Clark—warm as spring to one, and… Samuel Clark was the other.

The dorm manager beamed, "Sure, sure, go ahead. Check your window when you get back, and if there’s any problem, report it to me tomorrow."

Samuel Clark thought the dorm manager was in a good mood now, so he asked, "Can I go too?"

The smile on the dorm manager’s face vanished instantly: "You stay right here. We’re not done yet."

"……"

Samuel Clark spent another five or six minutes there before the dorm manager finally relented, waved his hand, and said, "Alright, I won’t make it hard for you. Let’s do it by the book—go back and write a 500-word self-reflection… Have you ever written one before?"

The self-reflection itself was a minor issue, but Linjiang No. 6 High School had a notorious rule: the word count for self-reflections was cumulative. The first time was 500 words, the second time you had to write 1,000.

And back in his first year, Samuel Clark had already written six or seven self-reflections, big and small, for various incidents like not wearing his uniform.

Which meant, tonight’s self-reflection would have to be 3,000 words.

Samuel Clark forced himself not to think about the back view of the student in the school uniform as he left, lest he actually do something to bully a classmate: "Yeah… I’m pretty experienced."

But Samuel Clark still couldn’t help himself. He pushed open the door, rested his hand on the doorknob for two seconds, then let go: "Sir, that guy just now."

The dorm manager: "?"

Samuel Clark tried to keep his tone calm: "Who is he, what’s his name, which class, which dorm room?"

Before the dorm manager could answer, Samuel Clark forced himself to calm down again, turned the doorknob and said, "Forget it, don’t tell me. I’m afraid I won’t be able to control myself."

The dorm manager, getting more and more confused: "??"

Samuel Clark wrote the self-reflection that night. His handwriting was so messy that no one but him could read it. At the top, he sincerely wrote a big "Damn," then, with great restraint, crossed it out.

Because of this self-reflection, Samuel Clark didn’t get to sleep until two in the morning. The next day, he woke up having already missed morning study. When he grabbed his self-reflection and headed out of the dorm building, it was just time for the morning exercise and flag-raising ceremony.

The national anthem drifted over from the sports field.

The five-starred red flag was raised to the top, fluttering in the wind.

Samuel Clark passed by several classes before finally spotting William Foster standing with his hands behind his back: "Teacher, I’m late."

William Foster had been woken up early by a call from the dean: "Your student Samuel Clark was caught climbing over the wall last night. This is a serious violation of school rules. He must be properly disciplined and make a public self-reflection to the whole school!"

He really hadn’t expected this student to get into trouble again so soon.

"Not late," maybe it was the last straw, but William Foster was surprisingly calm now. "You’re just in time—just in time to read your self-reflection."

"……"

William Foster’s reaction caught Samuel Clark off guard: "…Are you in a good mood today?"