I'm Not Shouldering This Blame

Fourteen-year-old Johnson carefully stuck out his head from the rubble.

The rain has stopped.

There was a noise in the distance, and a self-made portable lamp with high power emitted a bright glare.

On the water is a raft with people wearing raincoats on it. Using something like a spear to get rid of obstacles, they looking for valuable things.

——They’re not search-and-rescue personnel but hurricane survivors.

Brazenly fighting for valuable items, they crash into a half-collapsed store, forced open the cash register and getting the wet paper bills. A few scattered coins slipped from their fingers, rolling towards the water.

“Look! Old Holly, poor old guy!”

After finding the body lying in the rubble, the mob violently kicked at it, loudly laughing.

“The gold ring on this guy’s hand, who took it?”

“I didn’t see it!” The man who lifted up the furniture and discovered the body raised his hands up, loudly making an excuse.

The others apparently didn’t believe him, and soon, a fight started.

Johnson took advantage of the confusion in the midst of the shouting and the wrestling to run away.

“*pant**pant*.” The panting boy, who is just about to slow down, heard a scream and the sound of a weapon cutting into the flesh just behind him. Johnson shivered, not daring to take a break, and hurriedly escaped in the darkness.

He has not experienced such a terrible disaster before, but he knew that for money, people would do all kinds of things.

Johnson and his Uncle Rick lived in the slums for many years. He saw clients killing prostitutes; he’s seen gamblers who lost pick up a knife and stab people. There are also scammers who lied to get an old woman’s money.

At the age of seven, one of his little buddies died in an alley next to trash cans.

The slums are not large. More than a hundred people lived in this wretched place. There are no strangers here so when a kid sees the face of a criminal who has just successfully robbed someone, apart from anything else, he gave the boy a head shot.

Johnson held the expired food that the bakery threw away, excited to share it with his friend, only to see their cold bodies in the alley, lying in a pool of blood.

The case broke after one month.

The criminal was robbing a basketball player who went to a seaside city for a vacation whose chest also has more than one bloody hole and was lucky to survive. The robber initially only wanted the money but found that his prey is muscular. Worried about not getting it right, he fired the gun first and then took the money.

The noise that the case generated is not small. The criminal is in jail; the newspaper is very concerned about the kid who just died. There’s even a full-page memorial dedicated to him, condemning the prisoner, but also misspelling the child’s name.

The only benefits that the child had after his death was moving to a cemetery beside a church.

Compared to his partner, Johnson is already fortunate. The newspaper lets many people know about the slums in the City of Pedrone that some of them can’t read books and a child is without a full stomach.

It coincided with the year of election, and a candidate seized the opportunity. He founded a charitable organization to pay for these kids until they graduated Grade 12.

Even though Johnson went to school one year later than the others, he can finally study, and can also eat lunch for free at school every day.

He can’t transfer because the tuition was paid to the public school many years ago.

But no matter what, Johnson insisted on reading a book, a hard-won opportunity that people who got it easily will not understand.

——Johnson was determined, and would never have thought that one day, he’d blow up his school.

Avoiding those people fighting over valuable items, Johnson struggled to swim in the stagnant water. When he woke up in this rubble four days ago, he found a force in his body.

But Johnson dared not use it, what he did to the school, he remembers very clearly.

He wants to go out to the areas that aren’t much affected by the disaster, ask for help, and pretend to be an orphan who had lost his family. Fourteen-year-old Johnson Brown thinks that living is the most important thing.

Even if he’s scared, he also had to get out of here.

After two days, Johnson found some food in ruins. Finally out of the disaster area, he saw a small town not affected by the hurricane.

The skinny kid immediately caught people’s attention. Soon, he had a warm blanket, a cup of hot milk and easily digested cookies.

He was starving, but still, he restrained himself.

His movements of slowly drinking the milk make him seem educated. No one doubts that he is a kid from the slums. They asked about Johnson’s family, but the boy did not speak.

“Oh God! This poor child!”

The one who cried out is a fat old woman. She hugged the boy in pity.

Johnson’s body is stiff because he knew this old woman.

The old woman is the owner of the bakery in Pedrone City, who always menacingly scolded the homeless who searched the garbage cans in front of her shop. When Johnson was a child, she also bashed his head. The old woman’s behavior right now, obviously shows that none of them remembers Johnson. She’s just hugging the boy who lost his family to the hurricane, not the dirty kid from the slums, who was raised by scum and dirty gamblers.

It was a very warm embrace, but Johnson’s heart is cold.

The embarrassment didn’t last long since the rescue team is back, and they brought back many survivors. The rescue station is busy, and nobody continued to ask about Johnson’s origins.

The boy quietly relaxed, watching his surroundings when suddenly, someone surprised him.

“Hey, little Johnson!”

Johnson vigilantly stepped back, like a frightened hamster.

The man didn’t rashly approach him, just looked worriedly, “Katie called me, and said she’s worried about your safety. You look alright. This is really great.”

Katie is the female school teacher who helped Johnson. After being dismissed, she left the Southern State.

The man, who has a look of concern and also brought a blanket to tightly wrap on Johnson, is Katie’s friend, the lawyer who wanted to get rid of school violence for Johnson.

“How did you come here, what about your Uncle Rick?”

“I don’t know,” Johnson whispered.

This statement is very vague. It can be understood that Rick went missing during the hurricane, and can also be said that Rick escaped by himself, not thinking of his nephew.

The lawyer looks at the boy in sympathy, “Forgive me, Johnson. Although this is very rude, I still think that with your guardian dead or missing, it is in fact, a good thing for you in the legal sense.”

Johnson looks up, bright eyes looking at the other.

“Children who lost their loved ones in a hurricane have the opportunity to be adopted by other families. You can get a better education, a brand new environment, and there is also a bright future.”

The shackles of poverty, the shadow of school violence, the beatings from his gambling uncle......he had the opportunity to shake off all of it, what is Johnson’s reason to miss it?

“But, I don’t know......”

Johnson bows his head, seemingly wanting to shrink onto himself. He looks so miserable that people want to touch his head.

“I really don’t know where Uncle Rick is, maybe he......he escaped.”

“Yes, this is very likely! God bless, Johnson.” The lawyer touched the boy’s head, intentionally not saying what should God Bless, he was satisfied to see Johnson struggling.

——Expecting his Uncle to die, for a child, the guilt is a bit messed up.

The man patiently told Johnson, “Katie and I will be married next year. Because of our work, we don’t plan to have children for the time being, but we don’t mind making extra breakfast every day. Johnson, the night will not last forever, when you go out, you can beat it.”

Johnson nodded slowly.

“Good boy.” The lawyer pats the teenager’s shoulder, like a father who encourages his children.

Gambler Rick? Of course, he’s already dead. Before the hurricane, he was shot and killed; his corpse was thrown in the ditches beside the road.

***

There was a thick fog for three consecutive days, severely affecting the smooth flow of the Highway.

Long-distance trucks jammed in the high-speed entrance. Several drivers yawn, leaving the car to stroll around. It’s really boring, so some people talked about the strange things that happened.

“......on this section of the road! I used to drive here a few days ago, there’s a police car, and the police were questioning people!” A middle-aged driver holding a cigarrette flicked the ash, “I heard that there’s a young girl who died on the river bank below.”

“Baloney! This is a highway, and there are guardrails. Even if you go over it, you won’t die. Is it a suicide jump?”

“Who knows, I heard my son say that two young girls went to see a movie at night, and never came back. Until now, the other student has not been found yet.”

The middle-aged driver deliberately took out a newspaper from his car, pointing it to all the people, “The missing girl’s family is willing to spend 30,000 yuan to find her. They will even reward you for clues; you better keep your eyes open, maybe you can make extra money......”

Just then, someone suddenly shouted while pointing at the thick fog.

Everyone was baffled.

“Just now, there was a shadow in the fog.” The screaming driver’s voice trembles, “It seems like a female student, look......just like this photo.”

The crowd suddenly laughed.

“Brother, you are so outdated! If you want to be scary, you should have said that there’s a drowned female ghost!”

“It’s true! She suddenly disappeared!” The driver blushed.

There was another laugh. No one paid attention to the truck parked in the dense fog. Suddenly, the car’s door slowly opened, closing after half a minute.

100 meters outside the edge of the riverbank, a girl appears out of nowhere among the tall grass. Her appearance is the same as the missing girl. She opened the little black bag she stole from the truck, satisfied to see a stack of pink banknotes. After doing something to it, she then turned over a newspaper.

Blame the hapless driver, putting this newspaper close to the windowpane just as she rushed to leave Haui City and lacked money.

“Hurricane Jennifer attacks Southern State, incredibly powerful. Not far from the landing site, a school’s substation exploded......” The girl is reading this news when she suddenly sees shadows in the surrounding fog. She was taken aback but activates her ability, her figure instantly disappeared.

A group burst out of the thick fog tossing a big net!

The net tightened with the middle bizarrely protruding, like an invisible box.

“*Pa pa*! ”

From the cuboid, the girl suddenly throws two durians. However, the armed police who cast the net had riot shields, easily stopping it.

“Report to Major Zhang; we’ve captured the target. Please indicate the next instruction.”

The author has something to say:

Sorry, finally finished, tomorrow will not be so late QAQ

PS: Johnson, has a supporting role in this story, it’s necessary to introduce him, but →_→ he will appear much later.

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