Ending of a Day

The closure of my front door rings out the noise of today coming to an end. As always, there is no one home to greet me. Silence is the only thing present within these few rooms of mine. Even if no one is around to hear these words, I vocalise them anyway.

“I’m home.”

The only reply I got came from my own voice, due to my own words echoing back at me from the award covered walls. The rays of sunlight breaking through the closed blinds serves at the only illumination in the main room, reflecting lightly of those aforementioned awards. I walked towards the kitchen without even glancing at them.

On today’s menu is some basic spaghetti. I managed to grab a good deal on some meat at the local store, meaning I finally have a use for the pasta and sauce I had. Plus,It's not often that I make myself such a dish. It can serve as a reward for today's performance. Saying that I’m proud of what I pulled off would be an understatement. The gamble paid off. If I had lost that exam then maybe I could have made up some excuse, but since it would have been one percent off anyway, I don’t think it would have mattered. If that… Bedwyn, I think that’s her surname, did ace the exam, then I’d finally have a worthy opponent. From the looks of it, she seems to be another George. A person who strives for greater heights, but not fully.

Ah. The meal is done. I take the finished dish over to the main room and eat while listening to the radio present beside the medium sized TV at the wall. My faint clanks of cutlery accompany the evening news coming from the radio. Nothing of note has happened today. Even for myself, today was largely uneventful. I thought that during that assembly or after it I would have gotten more attention. It seems that my reputation hasn’t set in with the crowd yet. Hopefully my reputation marinates in the minds of those people. After all, I live off the challengers. Even if it will be hard, I need people to challenge me if I want to gain more victories.
Sure, some people do have more uses than just for competition. Some of the tutors in this university do stick out for me, and I do appreciate that, but I would not go to them for anything else.

I get lost in thought a little more as I sit at that oak colored table I found at the university. Since everyone there is insanely rich, they can afford to not care about a table like this. It’s another perk of being at this university. Freeloading is pretty easy. Of course, I still have that part time job. I did let them know that I’ll be coming only on weekends now. I’ll have to cut back on my spending and freeload more. That’s manageable. I have the tutors, they can add to my food budget. Like I said, they do stick out for me. There is a group of them that understand my background which leads them to be sometimes overly generous. Call that a perk of being parent-less.

After I’m done with the meal, I wash up and place everything back to where it was. It’s important for this living space to be as presentable as possible in the off-chance that anyone important comes around. Just like myself, this space can show no weakness. All of those awards are meant to serve as a proud flag that reflects excellence onto any viewer. It's proof of my hard work. Proof that I am better than them.

Next comes the preparation for the next day. This involves reading up on the required materials for the starting semester, a bit of resource gathering for electives, and planning ahead for the week. I’ll need to allocate some space for random challenges too. As much as I like them, preparation is key. You can’t prepare if you’re always showing off. As with everything, these challenges have to be in moderation.

That’s another fact. I have never lost a challenge, but I have turned down quite the number as they conflicted with my schedule. They were rearranged and then I won anyway, so it doesn’t matter if I turn them down. As long as I make space for them, then it is fine. Everything is fine.

Those words keep repeating in my head as I soak myself in the small bath. Everything is fine. That is true. There are no active threats on my back. Everything is progressing as it should. Everything is fine. Only the first years had to do their introduction today. Other years will have their own in the following days. I’ll only need to attend my own years. This brings me no cause for concern. It’ll be business as usual.

After the bath, I headed to the bedroom to catch some sleep. I have to be in bed at 22:00 or else I’ll be in a bad spot for the rest of the day. Sleep is important, as everyone says.

Compared to the main room with that kitchen area, my bedroom is decorated with sticky notes. The walls are covered with various pieces of paper that never had time to be taken down. This may seem as lazy behavior, but this method of note taking serves as a good reminder for learning material. That’s a fact that I’ve read somewhere, that being surrounded by information helps you remember it. I’d like to think that this tactic has gotten me this far.

Despite the walls being covered with learning material, the ground is a lot more covered with clothes. Of course I do the laundry, but I don’t have the time or will to properly sort every piece of clothing into it’s place. It’s an unnecessary expenditure of time that I could use for studying. I took off what I had on and put it in the dirty clothes pile, and put on the pajamas I already had lying on the upright mattress. I then pushed the mattress down onto the floor, causing it to audibly slam. I’ve been doing this all year and no one below complained, so this is fine behavior permitted by the neighbors.

Next, and lastly, I fell onto the mattress, covered myself, and tried to pass out. I don’t have to set the alarm since it always rings out at 5:55. It’s great. I don’t have to rely on anyone to wake me up.

I’m a self sufficient powerhouse.
…
That’s an awkward phase to use. It is accurate, but it’s weird. I don’t view myself as one. I’m supposed to be accomplished academically. There is a lot of things that I don't consider myself competent at. There were times where this fact of reality came up during a challenge, but fortunately I was able to learn in short time and win. That’s how I roll. That’s how I’ve accomplished everything so far.

...

I never got to confirm with the principal if that is what he meant by “showing off”. Whatever he meant, I got the results I wanted. This should cause them to fight for my top spot, which will mean more results for my record. Just the thought of those newbies trying to challenge me gets me slightly excited. Today’s spontaneous test was riveting. I got to show off to Miss Bedwyn before the semester even began.

The thought of having more opportunities like this doesn’t help me get to sleep faster. It also doesn’t help that I’m also getting the urge to get more risky with the challenges. The bigger the risk the bigger the reward, and I got rewarded massively today. This has not been my way of operating for a good reason. However, this one challenge has left me with a taste for more. I’ll have to keep the urge in check. I don’t want to lose over something stupid.

Right. I’ve won so much that I’m not sure how I’d handle a loss. It’s unrealistic to imagine that I’ll keep winning.
That won’t do. This is a bad mindset to have.
There is no other option.
I cannot lose.

I repeat that phrase over and over until my consciousness shuts off.