It was around this time that, in a turn of events that seemed at first to be fortuitous, William's father finally succumbed to a long and unavoidable illness.
"William," He said, lying on his deathbed; "What I have, you see, son, is cancer. Cancer of the lungs. Therefore I am sending you away to a boarding school, you know. It is called Chao Cheng, after the man who founded it, and you will stay there until you are at least eighteen years old."
With this utterance, he died. It was never revealed to William the cause of his cancer: too many nights spent in smoky strip joints, instead of looking after William.
Although William at first thought it quite a godsend that he would no longer have to attend the old school, he soon realised two awful things: one, that he would have to stay in the same place, unavoidably, for the next eleven years; and two, that Bessie, his only (unreliable) ally, would not be accompanying him, since it was a boarding school for boys.
After a short and solemn funeral, to which absolutely no one but William attended, the last of his things were packed up and he was sent away from his home, with the promise that at eighteen he might return and use it as his home once more.
On his arrival at Chao Cheng School, William immediately noticed that almost all of the boys there were richer and more agile and stronger than he was; putting two and two together, he deduced that perhaps he should keep his head quite firmly down, since he already had quite a lot of experience with this sort of boy. Unfortunately, Chao Cheng School was quite renowned as one of the best in the area, and after some disturbing reports of bullying the father of a certain other boy had decided to enroll him. And so it was that William, wandering the corridors in an aimless and lost sort of way, soon came face to face once more with the disturbing monobrow of his bully.
For quite some weeks, the bully stayed away from William, in order to increase his own popularity, and soon he had a little gang of friends. These bullies did not like William at all; in fact, not many people did - he was quite, quite friendless. Try as he might, no one would give him so much as a smile. He was forced instead to spend his time with Pokemon and their ilk, wasting hours evolving doduos into dotrios, spearows into fearows, pidgeys into pidgeottos. He could not even persuade his fellow players to trade so much as an ekans for his illegally-gained mew. To make matters worse, the bullies were waiting wherever he went, to push and shove and call him names.
William did not think there would be any way out of this; he even stopped praying for it to end. Until, that is, the events of November 15th, 1997. At seven years old he was already branded a nerd or a geek, playing too many video games, and spending all the rest of his time concentrating on study. It was at this point that a particularly disturbing incident occured.
"Got my money, William?" The monobrowed bully asked, a phrase which had become merely habitual to him. William handed it over without a word, and the bully quickly slapped him round the face for good measure before heading off, chortling, with his friends.
"Do you want to go get some sweets now?" One of his cohorts asked; but the bully shrugged.
"I think I'll go to my dorm for a bit." He replied casually. He was intending to eat the secret cake he had stolen earlier from the cooks, and did not want the others to know about this. They parted ways, as William watched them warily from some distance away.
The bully returned to his room, as he had promised; but things there were not well. On his bed, the once carefully-wrapped-in-a-towel cake was lying, open, half-consumed, with crumbs scattered every which way about. The bully's first thought was that someone had broken into the room and stolen some of his cake! At first he intended to complain to the headmaster, before he realised that he had in fact stolen it in the first place, and therefore had not a leg to stand on.
At this point, therefore, he began to look about him for evidence of the perpretrator. (Do not be fooled; our bully does not and never will understand the word "perpetrator". He simply thinks of several very rude words, which I will no repeat, for the sake of our gentle readers' eyes.) Thus it was that, eventually, he had no place to look or search but up, and so up was where he looked.
As soon as he did so, his cry of pain could be heard from all the way down the corridor.
Several people came running at once to the source of the noise: one teacher, to see what the matter was; one caretaker, who surmised he might have some cleaning to do, or some mopping of bodily fluid; and quite a few students, who were curious rather than worried. After a few moments, even William himself turned from his solitary walk through the corridors to join the ever-increasing flow of people.
"My eyes! It went for my eyes!!" The bully was crying, and indeed, when William approached the door he could see blood running from his forehead and cheeks.
"Probably pecking off that monobrow." Another student muttered, and his companion laughed; but they were soon shushed by one of the other teachers, who had recently arrived on the scene.
"What's this?" The first teacher asked, looking around the room. "All of these black feathers... he's telling the truth. It really was a crow that attacked him."
As the bully was taken away to the infirmery, he passed by William, and gave him such a look of hatred that William almost flinched.
"This is your doing." He said. "And I'll never forget it."
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