When I was in middle school, there was a bully named A. He was an arrogant guy who hung around with a few followers, harassing and beating up weak-looking kids. Needless to say, nobody outside of his cronies liked him.
We stayed in the same class for two or three years, but I just ignored him, wanting nothing to do with him. Then, in mid-September of our third year, A died in a traffic accident.
Our homeroom teacher announced, "His wake will be on such-and-such a day, so those of you who want to go, please go." Honestly, I had no intention of going. As soon as the teacher left the room, a cheer erupted across the class. The kids he used to bully were pumping their fists and high-fiving each other, and the girls were chiming in, "Ugh, he was so annoying, right?"
The day after the wake, I heard what happened from the class representative. Apparently, the only student who attended the wake was the class rep, who had been forced to go. Even A's followers hadn't shown up. Perhaps because everyone knew what A was like, the teacher didn't punish anyone for it.
After that, the whole class started retaliating against A's former followers—well, it was basically bullying them back—and every single one of those followers stopped coming to school.
As an aside, I just got an email from one of my old classmates from back then. It said, "Remember that guy, what's-his-name? One of A's lackeys. Apparently, he killed himself lol. He'd been dropping out of school ever since back then. Serves him right, what a joke lol."
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Reading the post above made me remember an incident that happened in Hokkaido a few years ago. A middle schooler went to the house of a classmate who used to bully him, intending to kill him. When he got there, the classmate's mother told him he was out. He thought about heading back, but then he thought of "the ultimate revenge." He immediately went back to the house and killed the mother instead.
Sure, it's the ultimate revenge, and the bullied kid is pitied, but when you think about the bully—having his mother killed because of him, and having to live the rest of his life hated by his own family—it leaves you with a really complicated feeling.
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