Chapter Text
You learned from a very young age that not all people are created equal.
Just like everybody else in elementary school, you believed your teachers who taught ‘everyone was special’. Just because the boy that sat next to you was better at sports, doesn’t mean you were worth less. Perhaps you were better at studying, drawing, or singing. Everybody has subjects they are good and bad at. Which makes everyone the same.
Your sweet parents insisted that you were just as talented as anybody else and even more. They swung you by the arms, coddled you, and whispered about how much of a wonderchild you were, how smart, how brave, how good you were. How you and your sister were the best daughters they could have ever had.
Your naivete was destroyed when you graduated primary school and officially became a student at Muneyuki Junior High School, one of the best middle schools in the Saitama Prefecture. You passed the entrance exam with flying colors, after all. You worked hard like everybody else. Surely, you belonged to such an elite school. Surely, you would thrive there.
Long story short: no, you did not.
You shivered as a breeze wafted through the bathroom’s open window. It was a nice breeze, the kind you would enjoy if you were outside. Not if you were hiding in the last stall of the bathroom, dripping with frigid cold tap water.
The school uniform your mother had ironed out so neatly the night before was completely ruined. Your soaked hair was plastered to your face and every time you shifted your weight, your socks squelched with water.
But you could hardly feel the discomfort. All you could process was the hollow ache that settled into your chest as you heard the high-pitched shrieks of laughter from the girls that emptied a bucket of cold water on you. That was the main thing you remembered from this embarrassing middle school memory; how much your heart hurt. It’s a kind of pain you can’t describe.
They gasped out about how much trouble they were going to get into and how they couldn’t believe they did that between fits of cackles. One girl gleefully cried out how it was better this way because now you can miss the English test next period. Their voices grew fainter and fainter until you couldn’t hear them anymore.
They sounded familiar. You knew those girls. They weren’t delinquents that carried nail-embedded baseball bats on their shoulders, swore in class, or smoked cigarettes behind the school. Those girls were good at academics; they sat in the front of the class in a big giggling cluster and stayed after class to talk to teachers often. They were smart. Very smart. So smart you can never catch up.
And that is the moment you knew that no one is made equal. Including you, the bottom-feeding student of an elite middle school. The worst of the best. The best of the worst.
Maybe in elementary school, you could be better at drawing than the boy that sat next to you in class. Maybe then, you can have an inkling of pride that you were good at something. But it was different in middle school and high school. It did not matter much if you could draw a cartoon character cuter than that same boy when he beat you back-to-back in mathematics, science, literature, and history. And then you would probably figure out that he was also better at art than you anyway because that is what happens when you are just simply average.
Needless to say, you didn’t make many friends in Muneyuki Junior High. Or in high school for that matter.
“Hey, what did you get on the test?”
Although no one was asking or referring to you, you instinctively hide your own exam paper. It wasn’t awful but for the amount of studying you did, you thought you would at least get into the nineties. Your heart practically sank when you saw all the red marks on your paper.
“Another 97? That is so unfair, I only got a 95!” Some boys behind you groaned amongst themselves.
You train your eyes on the empty blackboard. If you don’t look at anyone, no one will notice you. No one will see you. No one will ask you.
A girl with pigtail curls and bright eyes skips past you with a spring in her step. You look down.
“Nao-Chaaaaaaan, do you mind if I take a look at your test paper?” She pouts to your deskmate as she holds her own exam close to her chest. “I want to see what I did wrong.”
The bright red 94 circled on the top of her test gleams like a jewel.
Staring up at the cute pigtail girl is the class beauty and know-it-all, Nakamura Naoko. It isn’t just enough that she is gorgeous enough to be a cover model, she is also a genius. She actually might be the school genius. The district genius.
Nakamura smiles politely at Kei, the brunette pigtail girl. “Okay. Please give it back after you are done.”
You have always been a little afraid to ask Nakamura anything before. She is so tall, smart, and grand looking that you were worried speaking to her the wrong way would get you mauled by her friends. But now that Kei has broken the ice, now is your chance!
“Um,” You raise your hand a little bit to get their attention. They are so surprised you are speaking to them that their eyes widen a bit. “Can I please look at your test too? If it is okay.”
Nakamura’s brilliant gray eyes blink once. Twice. “Sure.”
You and Kei peek at her sacred test paper. 110.
As usual, Nakamura’s friends freak out at her test score. (“A 110? How did you get above 100? Are you a prodigy or something?”) You don’t pay it much mind; the teacher said before that if your previous history project exceeded expectations, she would give an appropriate boost on the next test. It is what kept you from failing this time.
You were hunched over, frantically copying down the correct answers and procedures from Nakamura’s test when Kei taps you on the shoulder.
“Can I see what you got on the test?”
You try to keep your face void of emotion but the slight downward quirk of your mouth gives everything away. Kei’s smile grows a tiny bit wider.
“I-I actually don’t—”
Without another word, she takes away the paper you were so desperately protecting with your arms. Even though she is shorter than you, Kei successfully fends you off with one hand, ignoring your pleas to “please, give it back” before reading out loud:
“79!”
She was loud enough that some people close to your desk turned around to see which idiot received such a low grade on such an easy test. Others pretended not to hear but you can tell they were listening to every word.
“79,” Kei said again. As if the entire class did not hear her the first time.
Your ears burn, burn, burn. Your face is white-hot with shame and you can feel your eyes becoming wet.
“Kocho-san, below class average again ?” Haruka, the girl that sat behind you, asked. Normally she has a very nice smile but you can hardly stand the sight of it as she sneers at you. “That’s so funny. How did you even pass the entrance exam to this school?” Some people in the back of the room laugh and you can’t tell if it is directed toward you.
Kei moans dramatically as she sits on your desk: “You’re bringing our class average down! How are we ever going to beat Class 3 with us carrying you as extra weight?”
They mean this as a joke, you think. Haruka and Kei are usually kind of nice; helping you with problems you don’t understand in math and testing you with your flashcards and everything. But you don’t know why they are like this today.
“I like her, though,” Haruka added on second thought as if to negate her passive-aggressive comments before. Your heart starts beating normally again. “She’s really cute and ditzy.”
Kei nods. “I like how she is so strong-willed!”
For a second, you think that everything has been glossed over nicely and that your classmates don’t actually mean anything they said. You just took it the wrong way.
But then Kei continues. “She has the strength of an ant. After all, if I were to get a bad grade on such an easy test, I would go back to public school with the other idiots.”
And then your heart stops again. The ache is back.
It’s fine that you don’t have many friends. It really is. You have gotten used to lonely study nights, wondering if things had been different, whether you would have gone with friends to karaoke or to the mall. Maybe a sleepover.
(You never had a sleepover before. You see in it Western movies sometimes. It looks fun.)
If you had gone to the local high school instead of Kaneshiro High, you would have been top of your class. Top 10s in the whole school for sure. But instead, you had to push yourself that extra bit. You thought too highly of yourself and you are paying the price now.
You do not realize you are crying until Kei coos at you. “Awwwww don’t cry. We’re sorry for teasing you. We didn’t really mean it.”
She rubs your back and you hate the fact that you were comforted just a little bit.
Haruka tugs a loose strand of your hair that has escaped your braid. “Yeah, we get it. We have poor grades too. We’re basically failing.”
“I am so bad at managing my time. I didn’t even study this time.” Kei adds.
And suddenly, the room becomes very small. There are too many people crammed into this tiny pin-prick-sized classroom. You want to leave. You can’t breathe. Your hands are shaking, snot is going to run down your face any second, tears are pouring down your face, and you can’t breathe.
As you snatch the paper out of Kei’s grasp and run out of the classroom, someone behind you calls: “If you need help finding a job, my uncle runs a chowmein restaurant!” Which cues an eruption of laughter.
You hate them. You hate them. You hate them.
But for what though? Being smarter? Being more talented than you? That was just how the world works. Getting angry at others for surpassing you is something a sore loser would do. Getting jealous of someone else’s hard-earned achievements is not who you are.
You slump down with your back pressed against the wall as you stare at the test score you spend so long studying for. Watching videos, taking notes, and reading the textbook for hours . You skipped meals and sleep for this test. For an easy test.
The number 79 brands into your brain with a sizzling iron. The red X’s and circles lift off the page and swim around you, like schools of fishes. Taunting you.
Nothing in life was going the way you wanted. Failed debate competitions, rejected internship opportunities, not winning awards when you felt like you could. It is basically a pattern now.
The Taika no Kaishin test crumples under your white-knuckle grip. If only you had the courage to give up and drop out of school. Your mother loves you so much and your father is so proud of you. They are going to be heartbroken when they realize what a disappointment you are. All you wanted was to succeed. You just wanted to be good at something.
Only one clear thought can be discerned in the incoherent, cacophonous symphony of your self-hatred.
I wish I wasn’t so lonely.
You press the ruined papers to your face and sob.