"Aftermath"

The end of the week seemed to come so slow, the anticipation, the nervousness, the stress of the scores that awaited us, terrified us. We did know what to expect from the scores, as these test scores counted a lot towards our grades overall. As I made it to school, lines of students waiting for the scores to be posted could be seen along the entrance. The principal walked into main hallway about 20 minutes later to address the students.

I'm sure the principal came outside to attempt to ease the uneasiness of the students, but if anything, he made it much worse. Many students were extremely stressed, and the the extended wait time wasn't helping anyone's nerves calm down. As the scores were finally posted, students rushed inside the school to check for their names. Instantly, many students were in distress. I could see some students from other classes scratching their heads as they looked at the scores. Looking up at the board, I looked for my name, along with my groups names. After a few minutes of looking, I find them...

Shiro Tomari: Rank 2nd
Seira Takanashi: Rank 4th
Takada Suzuki: Rank 7th
Ryuma Hasegawa: Rank 10th
Hiyori Shimuzu: Rank 14th

"I ranked in the top 20! This is a first for me!"

Hiyori exclaimed in excitement as she ran towards all of us.

"Thank you all so much for helping me understand everything better!"
"No problem, that's the point of a study group right?"

All of us gathered around each other, as we cheered on our high scores.

"I knew we could do it guys, we worked so well together."

Seira had said, she was clearly happy to have ranked so high. Although seeing her pass test scores, I believe she would've been just fine regardless. Either way, I was really happy that she decided to join our study group. I was just happy to be around her in general, it didn't matter to me what we were doing, as long as it was with her. But... I wasn't ready to share that with her just yet. I had no idea how she would take that if I told her how I felt about her.

"I can't believe I failed!!! My moms gonna kill me!"

Many students were complaining at the scores, as many of them didn't take them seriously, or severely underestimated the difficulty of the exams. But that didn't matter to me, because I accomplished what wanted. Today at school was a short day, as we were released around noontime. As I walked out the school, a couple students in my class approached me.

"Listen loser, we failed because you took all the smart people in class into your group."

I was confused as they said this, I didn't believe the exams were based off of smarts, just about on how much you paid attention.

"It's not about who's smart or not, we just studied hard and helped each other out... if you got a bad score on the exam, that's your fault. That has nothing to do with me alright."

As soon as I said that, I instantly regretted it. I know at times I can be blunt with my words, but that doesn't always mean its the best route to take. It wasn't surprising to me that my words upset them. But at the same time, I didn't really care because they did it to themselves. Despite that fact, I couldn't take back my statement, and had to face the consequences. A couple students surrounded me and called me names, telling me how I was worthless. Pushing me into a corner as they hurled insults at me. As this happened, the confidence and self-esteem that had been building for the last couple days, began to crumble as their insults began into sink into my skin. As I sat there and let them insult me, I heard footsteps quickly approaching. When I looked up, I see Takada rapidly approaching.

"What gives? Do you get off to picking on people?"

The students surrounding me slowly turned towards Takada.

"Takada this doesn't concern you... because of this loser, we did poorly on the midterms."

This enraged Takada, as he couldn't believe was he was hearing.

"Don't blame Shiro because of your own faults... you got a poor score on the midterms because you didn't work and study hard for them."

After a few more words were exchanged between them, the group of students decided to leave and not drag this out further. As they walked away, Takada approached me and asked:

"Are you alright man?"
"Yea I'm okay, they didn't do anything to me."
"That's good, if you need anything, or need any help, don't be afraid to find me alright?"
"Yea of course Takada... thank you again for that."
"Anytime."

With that, Takada left and headed back home, leaving me alone at the the front. I had looked around to see if anyone was still at the school, but I didn't see anyone around. I thought everyone was just tired and was just ready to go home. After looking around for a couple minutes, I left and walked home. As I got home, my father was sitting on the couch, he turned around and looked at me:

"How were your midterms Shiro?"
"They were alright I guess..."
"That's good."

I didn't say much to my father as I slowly walked up the stairs to my room. It was still pretty early in the day, so I just watched videos on my phone until it was time for dinner. I was thinking about how so many students seemed to blame me for their poor scores. It angered me that, I was the first thing that came to their minds. I couldn't wrap my finger around why so many people at school hated me. I sat in my room for what felt like hours thinking about my life, and things that I wished were better. I also thought about Seira quite a bit. After all, she was the first person in a long time that gave me the time of day. Her warm smile and gentle voice was all I really needed to get through the day. As I continued to be lost in my thoughts, time flew by quickly and before I knew it, it was already 7PM. I slowly pushed myself out of bed in order to go downstairs for dinner. Tonight we ate curry, and as usual, the table was completely quiet.

"Thanks for the meal"

I said as I walked to the sink to wash my plate. I didn't have much energy in me for some reason, so I went straight to bed after dinner.

"I wonder what experiences the rest of the school year will bring for me. These last couple of weeks have really fun. I want to put myself out there, and learn more about myself."

These were my last thoughts before I drifted off into deep sleep. Although I still had quite a few bumps in my life, I could see some of them flattening out as I met more people. Things were looking good for me, and I didn't want this to end.