“What?” I blinked, staring at the counselor, “The creative writing class was dropped?”

“Yeah, people kept on dropping that class, and there just wasn’t enough for that class to be an actual class.” She pushed her glasses up, “So you have a few choices, and I will say, I highly recommend the AP Euro class. It’s like a college class.”

I stared at the paper of choices. There was either Euro or I could take an extra science class. Apparently, everyone else already took the rest of the electives. With a heavy heart, I looked at her, “I’ll take Euro.”

I’d rather read books about history then figure out what’s in what kingdom.

“Great, you won’t regret it!” she beamed, typing away on her computer.

I quietly walked down the stairs towards my art class.

There were still very few people in the classroom, so I began with my normal routine. Sat down, plugged in my earphones, and began listening to music as I worked. Today, I was getting to play with the watercolors.

After a few minutes, I felt the table move. I looked up and saw a hand in front of me, tapping the table. My eyes shifted up and I saw K.J. looking at me.

“Hey, I just wanted to say sorry about yesterday.”

Surprised. That was what was going through my face at that moment. Complete utter bewilderment. People apologized? As in, the upperclassmen knew what he did wrong and is apologizing to an underclassmen? Maybe it’s just me, and what school I went to prior hand, but this just doesn’t happen.

 “Um, I just feel bad because I know I would want to murder someone that was talking while I was reading.”

“Oh, uh, no, it’s fine, it’s fine now.” I blinked, pulling a lock of my hair behind my ear. “It’s completely fine.”

K.J. finally sat down. “So,” he looked around, “I don’t know anyone else in this class, so let’s continue our conversation”

I felt a bit awkward at that moment.

“Hobbies?”

“Um, if you don’t mind me asking, why are you curious?” I began, “No disrespect, it’s just, it’s throwing me off.”

“Well, I’m just near you, and you also believe that cats are diabolical, so why not talk to you?”

For some reason, that relaxed me. I don’t know, why, really. Maybe it was the cat talk, or that once again, this human was trying to start a conversation with me in which I was very thankful for because I was terrible at casual human interaction.

“I’m…a writer.” Was the first thing that popped into my head—and it was something that I almost immediately regretted saying because the next thing he was going to ask was:

“Really? What do you write about?”

“Oh, you know…” I looked down at my artwork, “Just, fictional stuff. Comedies, really. What about you?”

“Well, I play clarinet.” He smiled—he did that a lot, which calmed me down a bit.

I blurted, “Like Squidward?” before I could stop myself.

Oh god. Oh god. Now he’s going to think I’m childish, and totally boring—which is partly true. I am boring, but now what’s going to happen? Like everyone else, he’s going to think that I’m absolutely uncool, and that I should probably go back to middle school or elementary school! What do I do? How do I fix myself?

Oh forget it! The damage is done. I’m screwed.

I looked down, and then up again, and he seemed confused. Was it because of my Spongebob reference?

We made eye contact, and he gave me a toothy grin, “Exactly! I mean, I hate people also, but that’s another factor.”  He chuckled. “Me and Squidward have lots in common.”

I forced a smile, “Hate people?”

“As you grow older, you tend to dislike people. A whole lot.” he says, “Trust me.”

“Oh, how fun living will be.” I say, my arm punching the air—rather awkwardly if I might add.

He looked at me and laughed. “Wow, so, sorry, what’s your name again?”

“Jane.”

“Asian name?”

I looked at him, “You will not be able to pronounce it.”

“Try me.”

“No, seriously, I can barely pronounce it—and that sounds stupid, but no one ever calls me by it.”

“I think I can do it.”

“Highly doubt it.”

“C’mon! I’m your senior!”

“And I’m your junior.” I say, rather bravely. I could feel myself becoming quieter.

“My name’s Kyu-Ju, if that helps.”

“Yeah, but that’s easy to pronounce.”

“Pff, yeah, if you’re Asian.”

“No,” I shake my head, “It’s extremely easy to pronounce. Kyu-Ju.”

“Whatever.” He rolled his eyes, a smile still on his face.

I bit my lip and quietly said, “Kieu.”

“Nice to meet you.” He beamed. “I’m Kyu-Ju.”

“I suppose a second introduction is necessary?”

“I tend to forget names easily.” He chuckled, “Plus, there’s not a lot of people around us, and I’d rather call you by name rather than pretend I know it, as while figuring it out by someone else that actually remembered it.”

I nodded in an “Okay, that makes sense” way. He was brave for saying that, because for me, if I would’ve forgotten a name, I would spend a week or two just saying, “excuse me” or “hey, um” to get their attention, hoping that someone else would remember it so that I could figure out their name.

“So I’m assuming you’re into anime?”

My eyes shifted to him again, knocking me out of my internal dialogue. I looked down and noticed that I wasn’t covering my artwork like I normally was, and he saw the self-portrait.

“Um, yeah, kind of.”

The bell rang.

“What do you normally watch?”

I dipped my brush in water, “You know, just, girly things. Shojo, mainly.” I felt myself turning red.

God, I hated this. I hate being embarrassed for liking things, I hate not being able to freely talk about the things that I like because of the people that I had to deal with prior. Maybe it’s because I’m dealing with someone face to face and not online to online that I’m scared, but I just…I don’t know.

“You should join the manga club.”

I looked up, “Wait, what?”

He blinked, tilted his head a bit. “Are you okay?”

“No, no, I’m—there’s a what?”

“Manga club.” He repeated, “I think you’d like it there.”

What’s even weirder was that he pronounced Manga right, and not like every other person that I’ve met pronouncing it MANG-ga.

I was silent for a bit to process it all, “What do they do there?”

“Well, exactly what I just said, manga. Read manga, talk about it. Technically, it’s anime club, but it was practically manga club last year because of the amount of freshmen that came last year. Of course, it’s also the place where a lot of the art kids hang out to make manga. I mean, I’m there also, but I just talk about anime with the upperclassmen.”

“Where do they meet?”

“Here. First meeting is tomorrow during lunch.”

“Thank you!”

So there’s a manga club? This school is a whole lot different from my last school, where it was highly looked down upon if you were into anime—people mainly calling you a weeabo or calling you a nerd in a derogatory sense.

To be completely honest, when I was a child, I wanted to be a nerd. I wanted to be a nerd more than anything else, and have nerdy friends that would talk about things like math together because whenever I saw them on TV, I thought they were so cool. Kind of like Steve Urkele, I thought he was super cool—and I always wondered why everyone wanted to avoid him when I saw him always trying so hard!

But then, I suppose middle school happened, and that’s why I stopped wanting to be “nerdy”. Instead of nerdy, I wanted to be girly. Extremely girly, with makeup and all the hair and have a good fashion sense—in which I’m still bad at, because:

1. Make up is expensive and time consuming
2. Waking up early to do my hair is something that I don’t want because sleep is important
3. Trying to figure out what’s on trend is difficult because I’m broke as can be.

This isn’t to say that just because I’m not girly means that I’m honest. It means that I only wanted to be more feminine so that other people would like me, so that I could be okay in the social standards. It was for other people and not just for me, and that’s why I’m not really into the feminine scene. I don’t want to look pretty to other people until I look pretty to myself first.

I know, I get it. Saying that I’m really shy about my nerdiness because I’m scared people would judge me is such a stupid reason, but it’s a reason that I have, and it’s the reason why a lot of people didn’t like me in middle school—that, and I would happily talk about Super Junior a lot—but it’s still a reason.

It’s like how on the internet, people are so fast to call you a weeabo if you’re even slightly interested in Japanese culture because they think you only care about the otaku side itself, and not Japan, in the cultural sense. It was one of the reasons why I stopped being so open about liking anime online, because people are mean—that, and it was hard to find an anime to watch that didn’t have girls owning such huge s.

Kyu and I stopped talking, mainly because I started working on my art and he noticed that I was paying more attention to my art more than him so he was kind enough to stop asking questions. Before I knew it, class was almost over.

“So, what year are you again?” he asked as I was packing my bag.

“Sophmore.” I quickly replied.

“Right, you said that yesterday.” he blinked, “So why did you change schools?”

Lie.

“I just found out about this school, and I thought it was cool since it was a fine art academy where art was integrated into the education system, so I just joined.” I said, and it just came off of my tongue to fast and so smoothly, it surprised even me.

He nodded, “Wow.”

The bell rang, and we both parted ways.

Classes happened, bla bla bla, I hate math, bla bla bla, something about English happened that involved us reading that big blue book of doom (AKA the sophomore literature book), lunch—in which I sat alone again, and then my first day in A.P. Euro.

I walked into the class and everyone seemed older than me. I’m not saying this because there was an abundance of people wearing navy cardigans and navy button ups (which, there were), but because it wasn’t as stupidly loud compared to my other classes. It was a mark of the upperclassmen, knowing when to be quiet and not making a random joke (I’ve heard a lot of them since school started, which never fails to make me uncomfortable).

It was two minutes before class started, so most of the seats were already filled up. I walked over to one of them—which was near the board—and a girl with poofy dark purple hair was sitting there, reading.

“Um, excuse me.” I quietly said.

She looked up, and I felt terrified for a moment. She had a look, that look  in which I wanted to say, “Never mind” and walk away. But instead, I continued.

“Sorry to interrupt your reading, but is anyone sitting there?” I piped.

“No one’s sitting there, go ahead.” She said before returning to her book.

Could she tell that I was an underclassmen?

Could she tell that I didn’t belong in this class?

Did I look too young?

I wonder what it’s going to be like when I’m an upperclassmen next year. I wonder if I’d be like, “How did I not notice this before about underclassmen?”

I sat down, opening my bag to get out my binder full of paper.

Just before the bell rang, Kyu ran in, “Ah hah!” he laughed just as the bell rang.

“You do realize that you have five minutes to get to class, right?” the teacher, an old lady in her 50’s, said.

“Stuco stuff.” He sighed, “Just, just, stuco.”                             

“Well, god.” She muttered, “First male president. That’s a change.” She laughed as she walked in front of the classroom to a table where an old PC was.

Kyu walked to his table and he noticed me, “Oh, you’re here now?” he smiled.

“Hey.” I quietly greeted, waving my hand.

He sat at the opposite table from me, and I really wish I would’ve at least sat somewhere near him so that I would have someone that I knew instead of sitting next to the purple one who scares the heck out of me.

And then before I knew it, class started and ended, and I learned about the black plague—or parts of it. It was just really dark, and dirty…And dead. Lots of dead.

Fifth hour passed, and then it was Chemistry.

“I got in Euro.” I told Victoria, sighing.

She looked at me, sitting down, “I heard that that class was extremely hard.”

My brow rose, “What?”

“Yeah, I talked to some other people around, and they said that the teacher’s good—but by the end of the year, you’ll be stressed out of your mind.”

“What.”

“Mhm, I was Facebook friends with some of the seniors at this school, and some say that you’ll get white hair in that class.” She got out her paper folder. “With all the reading and the assignments, you’ll be dead. That’s why I didn’t take that class.”

I took a huge breather, “Oh…Okay.” I nodded. “That’s always…okay.”

I was not okay.

The bell rang, and the teacher, Mr. Roads, ran into the room. “KINDA MADE IT!” he threw his hands up in victory.

A few people in the class chuckled.

Mr. Roads was the chemistry teacher, and from what I understood so far, he seemed pretty cool. Of course, it was only the third day in school, but he seemed really cool—and very knowledgeable in science. I know, it’s a no brainer that science teachers should know something about science, but the thing is, with the American education system, they’re hard to find. Plus, every time he starts to speak science, I don’t know what the heck he’s saying, which means that he’s doing it right.

~~~

I got home and fell on my bed.  I laid on my bed for a bit, turning it to look at the y, Free and Single poster, particularly staring at Donghae before I forced myself to get up to turn on my computer and changing clothes—once again, in my closet.

“I wonder how much Euro is going to kill me.” I groaned as I looked at the lightbulb—it blinding and hurting my eyes as I stared at it. “Dear Shisus.” I grumbled.

Shisus is a fandom joke. Siwon (Pronounced Shi-won), a Super Junior member, is a major Christian, and some fans just joke around that he’s Super Junior’s Jesus and that the other members (which was ironically 12 other members since Super Junior is 13) are his 12 disciples.

I walked out of my closet, unplugged my computer from the charger before I sat on my bed and went on Youtube to look for a variety show that they were on.

It was still the first week of school, so no homework…Yet. I need to fill up on Super Junior variety shows before I don’t have time anymore. I need this so much.

_______________________________________

Heyyy everyone! Happy new year! :)

Tell me, what are your resolutions?

Here's mine: 

1.) Write more (meaning update more also)

2.) Be happier (If you read my blogposts, you know why)

3.) Work on being a better person and accomplish things that I never thought I could (Including youtube, finishing a book, all the things!)

4.) To not go on a rabbit trail with this story

5.) To always take my time to reply to comments for stories, because you guys take the time to comment! :)