A Special Drag Of His Day

Alexander Zesroth is a 15-year-old boy who is raised in a privileged family under the wings of breezing protection and love from his parents along with growing up around his brothers so that one can't ever think he will be alone... At least not until all three brothers decide to split themselves away to study in different places far away from each other that will give their parents enough time to take a rest and do whatever work they want. At the same time giving the brothers the time to build and make pieces of themselves, or gather and collect pieces to create themselves all on their own after a long time within a safe zone. And so, Alexander is moved away from his parents in Innriver City, to Brightwill Lake City, Nation of Lotus. Whereas his older brother is abroad in the Highlands in a country called the Nation of Windmills. The other one, the youngest, is abroad in London, Nation of Mist.


Currently, Alexander is a student in one of the most qualified and respected international colleges in the nation - Peak Blossom High. Ranking at number six by the 'Excellent Students Rate' in the Brightwill Lake City and famous for putting the students towards opportunities to study abroad like trained global citizens into powerful nations. For that, it is well known for its modern aesthetics and advanced facilities. From the outer shell, it looks like a colourful mansion that contains a few hundred rooms inside with advanced complex facilities within it. Its size expands across large 5 coffee shops around the area, facing the long river.


He is sitting inside of the class, looking and staring at the 'campfire' in which his male friends are around. The circle they formed is apparent yet somewhat disoriented because a few sit on desks and some sit on the chairs, some stand on the ground but all gazing at each other to talk and have soft conversation during the breaktime to refresh themselves, seemingly standing around a campfire. Each of the boys are comfortable enough to space out large gaps between each other, that are big enough to swing their hands up in the air without hitting each other despite how close their gazes are to each other. On the other side of the classroom, the girls are chanting lively to one another, full of energy as well. They stand wrapping around Erika and Deckard who sit next to each other at two sides of Erika's desk. The girls standing are tightly close to each other, their legs are kept closed as their hands are knitted into their body, remaining still not to hit one another in small gaps that they leave for each other.


Their voices slip through the empty seats and desks that have been left out ever since they all fragmented themselves away from the orderly seats during class times. Their noises bounce expand across entirely through the classroom yet are kept within their space and their own group bubble.


Even when their homeroom teacher enters the class busting open the door, creating unusual sounds that might abruptly fight the sounds of conversation to each other, but they seem unbothered about such things, and his presence seems to be largely unnoticed by the eyes of those students, or even their ears. The teacher strides in with a file of paper in his hand, the size that of small envelopes, have rectangle shapes, fitting firmly into his palm. Then he sits down onto his desk and starts to tap the stack of papers with pounding knocks on the wooden table, making the students notice and turn their faces and eyes towards his presence.


Unlike most students, Alexander has seen him the moment he walks into the class, for he is largely silent within the 'campfire' of the boys, and largely ignorant about the topic of their conversations. So all he did was striding his pupils around every corner until they hit his homeroom teacher.


"We have the results for the 'Living Area': Living Avatar 15-minutes exam." - He announces.


One of the girls comes up, and so does Alexander as he gets sent by the boys to the teacher's table collecting all the papers. Alexander takes 11 out of 24 pieces of that paper, then he hands it to the boys in the group.


"Hah!" - Gerald slaps his paper, flicks it in front of all the boys. "A 9.25!"


"Sike! A 9.75!" - Devon shoves his paper at Gerald's face


Above the 9, not hitting a 10, is a summarisation and all that is about the grades of the boys. Alexander silently looks at his 9.5 paper himself.


Alexander starts to think: "This test is so simple, only expands your Living Area, presents them with school subjects you are good at and talents... It's like remembering how much you scored on Maths and about you playing football then mould your Avatar more expanding based on that... By presenting your character and your grades through Living Avatar to make sure you 'look' good in accordance to the 'mark standard'. Everyone has been doing this shit for 10 years of school!"


"Gerald having 0.25 marks lower than me is insane! He is the school's Team 1's midfielder, fourth highest GPA achiever in grade 8, he is also a good good good person! A chill feller who has a lot of friends." - He keeps thinking.


"How many do you have?" - Gerald asks.


"Oh?" - Alexander says. "I got a 9.5."


"Damn, that is good. I saw your Living Avatar presentation connecting through my Area, it was good, man!" - He says.


"What the hell did I even do??? I just followed the standards because that is the only thing that I could do, the only thing I identified with!" - Alexander speaks out loud but inside his mind chamber.


Gerald then turns back to the boys then talks to them again.


Then, Alexander turns to all the students around him. He looks at the girls turning their back outwardly, facing towards Deckard mostly. He scans his eyes through their legs, strolling from their slim legs all the way up to their thighs and stops at their hips. And only a thought pops up his mind, "How does Deckard get all them girls?". Then, an image of Sang appears next to his head, answering: "Very capable. Have fame. Competent and rich!"


"I'm rich as well? Should I be considered interesting?" - Alexander answers abruptly to Sang.


Alexander turns back to the boys, hearing them talking about the matter that he is largely ignorant of. But there are keywords that he can identify: three-nil, last night, Ganazola, and Italy the Bootland. Alexander turns towards the faces, and the smiling from the boys talking so passionately about this topic makes him wonder, "What was so fun about the football match last night?" - The 'football match last night' part is what he thinks actually happened and what they are actually talking about, it is just something he made up to fill up his own answer about what they are talking about. Because in actuality, he doesn't know if there was a football match yesterday or not, only an answer that fills in his large ignorance about their ranting topic. And so, he only thinks, and listens.


"But that is what is so fun about these boys, I guess.
Look how they fill up their lives with that, all in their bests." - Alexander thinks.


Alexander thinks, "They start to form their preferences on football, then all of them make it to the school's Team 1 and build them good images about themselves, and get many friends that might make their lives more colourful and thus, their Living Areas."

"They could have mould it better, in these tests that I tried so hard in, in these exams that I pour all of my goddamn soul into the cold frame of 'mark scheme' to push up my grades!" - Alexander voices inside his head.


"Erika, Devon,..."- and a few more names of his classmates... "They are all something... man." - He talks to Sang popping next to his head.

"They are all good students with some kind of talents or interesting abilities.
Like with them, life is just a door that they can be contacted with a bunch of keys."


"But life isn't just one door, Alexander..." - Sang says.


He stares deeply into the ground. "Erika is a great student, she is also so cool, she plays video games really well and still hits the 9.5s and the 10s constantly whilst being somewhat outside of the schooling frame. She has lots of friends, really talented with piano and so her Living Avatar - always deep and colourful, in which she associates it with her Living Area aspects so well... Fuck! What's more, she is also an aspiring mage, cutting out for a scholarship in Elemental Magic in Duporth Uni in Highlands. I can't believe she is way closer to William than I am!"


"And then there is Devon, another Team 1 footballer, also a good gamer, somewhat a charmer, and the strongest boy in the class, life smart and academic smart as well." - His mind flickers around more and more as he expands his thoughts more, as he dips his hands into the sea of substances of his thoughts even more. "These students here, they do interesting things. Even the most normal ones in this class, they still do things, interesting and Living Areas things. They draw and make art, they make music for fun, they still study and have connections with their friends really well, they aren't grounded and down on the surface. They branch with each other on this flat surface and also spring out a tree up to the air. They have colours, and souls and variations of themselves, and moreover they seem to be 'good' at what they are doing."


"They contribute in life, as well as to their life
Crafting delicate pieces for themselves, and collecting friends on the way."


Alexander thinks, "Just a stone makes its way rolling to another brushed stones and gems..."


Probably being a male is what makes him a part of the boys group in the class.


After all, the thought process stops abruptly as if they are wrapped, an empty feeling of his chamber of mind filled with words and voices of himself. However they are put in a coherent shelf that displays right in front of his face for now on. Flushing the words away through a drain won't do anything for him. But now, as he and Sang put all of the words, and objectified thoughts onto the shelves in his mind chamber. Alexander pops up a few words expression off his chest, "What does my Living Area consist of?"


"Does it have intentions, hearts, minds and talents?" - Sang asks Alexander.


"Does it....?" "Minds, hearts, intentions and talents?" "Have actions and works?" "Does it have...???"


"I don't, Sang... I am not like any of them who share love for anything, who do good at anything, who thinks about anything or is intended to do anything... I only want to go back home and fiddle on the phone, everyday. And yet, I am just a student, who walks in the same school as them, who is ordered in a certain way..."

"I used to think it's the system's fault, the system! The social system's fault that I am like this! Now come to think of it, it comes down to me..."

Alexander looks at Sang who stands next to him in his mind chamber, but he remembers that Sang is slowly disappearing just like a ghost. "Right... You set off on an adventure... I am still under their shadows."


"Everyone's shadows are so big, so huge, their light shines so bright that they dim us with their shadows..."

RIIIINNNGGGGG!!!!! The school speaker muffles the sound of the bell that bursts into the classrooms, telling all people that 45 minutes of a class have passed and the students should stand up to go out of the class. 5:30 in the afternoon, in the agentic bell sound of the speakers, the students stand up slowly from their seats, standing upright with their legs straightened up, aligning the joints in their legs from calves to thighs to hips. They arch their backs to drag them into straight alignment with the legs and the face is towards the teacher. All of them, altogether, synchronise their muffled voice after a long day saying:


"Goooood-byeeeeee teaaa-cheeerrr. Seeee-- youuuu- aaagainn-."- They all chant together the farewell to their teachers seemingly all at the same time.


All the students from different classes all stand up and say farewell to the teachers on the same beat. Maybe there are slight differences but still the same thing in the end. The same thing that they do after every class.


Alexander himself also shoves all of his stuff into his backpack. The textbooks, the digital tablet from a thin projector that resembles a soft light metal stick, his laptop and his pencil case all get shoved down into his bag when he puts his phone into his pocket then swings his bag onto his back and walks away from the Mathematics Majoring Class.


Majoring Classes,
Are classes that specify
In particular things and topics
That consist of school subjects
Like Maths, Literature or Physics
And consist of out-curriculum fields
Like Sports, Engineering, Computing,...
Sometimes even expands on the Living Area subject and its other branches.
These classes are different
And each holds place at their own particular class
Which situate at the Majoring Block next to the Main School, where these class are also classified
In different Levels: From Extra, Intermediate to Scholar.


5:30 PM, the students rush out from their Majoring classes like an army of ants that very quickly occupy the empty spaces of the hallway. At each floor, the corridor are alway flooded with the walkings of some students and runnings from the most excited ones, want to bust out from their Majoring Classes flopping their backpacks against their back as they run. After that, the voices of the students shatter into each other noisily, their footsteps clapping on the cold brick floor, expanding the collapsing of noises throughout the entire school at each corridor, each floor, staircases and each hallway. Eventually, swarms of students rush down then take over the spaces of the hallway of the ground floor of Main School, slipping into the sport fields and spectating seats at the school's massive backyard. Some flush out of school, and some detach noise back at the quiet library.


Now that there aren't any of the boys with him, most of them are out somewhere but not with him, most of them are in the sporting area and it is all occupied by so many people choking his atmosphere so much he has to get out. And still, he has to pierce through the crowd of massive amounts of people that are both parents who go into the school's area to pick up their kids, and the students who stack into each other to get out of the school as well. There are footsteps of people colliding in different paces, beats and flows; some are slow and quiet, some are loud and quick. However, people occupying his atmosphere isn't enough, but also the air vehicles that line up and stacking next to each other up above the sky and they cast their shadows down to his head, which makes it hard to ses with a lack of light.


"Huff huff," - Alexander turns his back towards the golden gate, staring at the school's symbol: A torch that is lightened up in flame, but not just any flame, the flame that grows into a huge glowing red and radiating yellow phoenix that doesn't just burn and radiate but shine bright up high. It is the symbol of rising and it strikes Alexander everytime with its burning light. He looks at the symbol being carved into the golden circle on the soft bright wooden gate. After that, he stands on a pavement where electric motorcycles stand onto, and the parents or the riders sit onto those motorcycles doing different things, fiddling their phones or strolling their eyes and faces around their surroundings. There are students like Alexander on the same pavement as well. Outside here is less clapping, colliding compared to the inside before yet it is still somehow 'eventful' and full of motions with people's activities and whirring buzzing sounds from the electric vehicles running on the road splashing onto his ears, onto the pavement.


Now Alexander only waits for his taxi after calling them...


Alexander stands on the pavement fiddling on his phone, ignoring all of the sounds from outside despite their whirring-ness buzzing through his brain filter every time, and his ears seem to can't catch muffled sounds from the blast of his phone volume as if the volume from his phone is too small. So Alexander puts his backpack down, takes out pieces of his earbuds. Waiting for them to connect the audio with his phone, he puts them on and goes back on a roll of scrolling his phone, immersing himself into the screen, not caring about the environment around him. His ears are blocked from the sounds of the whirring engine from electric vehicles, and the clash of people's chatter. Sounds of rustling trees and its half-mechanical movements are devoid from Alexander's ears and so are their presence, and the sounds of their phones blasting out as they dive into their own world drift away from Alexander. The sight of the gray road and the streets, along with tall palm trees under the towering presence of all dimming white buildings is covered by a bright colourful phone screen.


Footsteps rumbling closer to him are unnoticed by him. Even when somebody's huge silhouette casts over himself and his phone screen, Alexander doesn't look up at all. Until he hears the roaring voice of that 'somebody' calling his name deeply, "Alexander Zesroth!".


Alexander widens up his eyes but he tries to enclose them with his eyelids, and his pupils start to vibrate quickly but are stuffed to vibrate in miniscule range of motion. His eyes expand and the curtains try to drag into each other to enclose his eyes. Slowly, he unstraps his eyes off his phone and turns his face towards the guy who just called him, it is Kuga!


Standing at such a towering height over his peers, that such presence casts his shadow over Alexander's head whilst being in front of him. Alexander feels the blood rushing through his heart, and something anxious just starts to gently tickle nerves within his mind, when he is faced with the huge cold wall, a stone cold statue in Alexander's eyes. Strong carved muscles with mushy fat designated into the man's being. Kuga's broad shoulders cover his wall-like torso, stretching out his school shirt he's wearing with a few unbuttoned shirts and no tie unlike his peers. When he gazes at Alexander, his face expands over Alexander's eyes with squinted eyes and his slick back hair that pulls out the size of his forehead.


"Kuga! Yo! How is everything?" - Alexander awkwardly takes his phone away into his pocket. Stuttering his fingers to cling onto his earbuds to take them out; as he looks at Kuga, he awkwardly smiles at him, with his teeth and lips cluttering against each other.


In response to Alexander's words, Kuga shuts his lips tightly, expands them downward pulling down his cheeks. Alexander feels like Kuga's squinting is pressed against him.


After a slight silence, Kuga asks: "You don't really hang out with us anymore. It's been so long."


"Oh..no!" - Alexander silently thinks, but he replies: "Well, things are a little inconvenient for me."


"So." - Kuga. "You bring any money?".


Before Alexander can answer, Kuga's roaring voice shoots right at his face: "We haven't been hanging with each other for so long. You think it would be good if you...generously cover our meal in a restaurant."


"Uuuuuhhh..." - Alexander says. "But I can't spend too much..."


But he gets cut by some voices from Kuga's group: "Come on!", "Oh, don't worry about it", "Just simmer down a bit!"


Kuga says continually: "Yeah, this is one of the few times when you get to see us, as your friends... Come on, you are a generous man, right? Then you should be a good friend to cover your money for our good time together right?"


Alexander turns his eyes to a corner: "Well, I... You're right!"


Alexander thinks about this, he thinks about going with this group and paying for the meal. He feels the nerves lingering in his mind at these thoughts. There are eyes and people's presence pressed at him, and he feels a need to hold his framed image in front of them.


Soon, a car - his cab arrives splashing a razor electric sound splash to his face, behind Kuga and peers. Then Alexander turns to all of Kuga's group, saying that the car is his cab. A black 4-seater car that has a gleaming, reflective skin tone on it. Just like any ordinary car, except that their wheels are thinner, flatter and smaller but fits perfectly into its whole body. Alexander jumps onto the seat, at the front next to the robot driver and Kuga's 2 male friends also hop on the car at the backseats.


"Alex, what restaurant?" - Kuga asks him.


Restaurant? Alexander doesn't know any, and definitely not the ones he seldomly passes by to eat with his best friend - Lawden Smith.


"Ahhh... Whatever you want!" - Alexander bursts out a wide smile as he speaks to Kuga.


"Then Tenkai restaurant!" - Kuga answers.


"Tenkai?" - Alexander mouths tinily.
All doors are shutted, Kuga's boys are stuffed at the backseats. But Alexander doesn't feel more comfortable, matter of fact, he feels stuffed and stuck at the same time inside the solid frame that he puts himself an image to present in front of Kuga, in front of people's eyes regardless of his being is a slimy gooey thing that is unstable and will leak out from the frame if a crack is made on the image's frame by the pressure. When that happens, Alexander isn't sure how he can hold himself together anymore...


But until then...