The Stupidity Rewritten

Chapter 29: Deich Bliadhna Bhon Uair Sin (Kayden)

Things were getting intense in the company, being taken to the extreme, but no matter. Let's take a quick distraction, and look back at the ten years past since their primary school graduation.

Heather had not been doing too well. She had gotten one of the lowest grades in secondary school and was ready to drop out. Even after trying polytechnic, her parents got into trouble with certain loan sharks, and student debts piled on as university loomed closer. They were heavily considering skipping college, but they needed money, for which work was necessary.

They had no choice. More loan sharks, more student loans, more moneylenders, until the bills arrived rapidly like machine gun bullets at their doorstep. Heather started getting into unglamorous conversations with her parents, discussing in a manner brimming with the edge of profanity, about her addiction and obsession to video games when she was in her youth; but that had all changed, she insisted, and it did. Her parents mistrusted her, sure, but they needed quick cash, so they waved her off hurriedly to some foreign Australian college nobody had heard of in Darwin.

Heather's parents weren't doing too well after that. They had bills upon bills stacked messily on the coffee table, which soon became Mr Low's home at home, where his pen scribbled, quavering, across signatures and cheques, his stylus sailing across digital keyboards as he sent pleading text messages, promising on oath that he would indeed pay them back, but deep down, covertly, he knew he could never afford it, albeit he tried. Heather's text messages left unanswered, grey-ticked, after a short while of trying to keep up with the constant stream of new diretrct messages roaring and bellowing at Mr Low to be a man and pay up.

In Darwin, however, Heather was in a spot of trouble as well, despite her obliviousness to it. White, black and yellow stereotypical men alike flirted with her all the time, and asked to date, holding her hand like some insane kidnapper and pulling her to random unseen Australian pubs and clubs with unsettling names, cultures, attitudes. Heather went along with it, unbeknownst to the danger that lay ahead if she continued.

Fortunately, there, she met up with Clarice.

Clarice wasn't doing well either, but her problems were neither financial nor of Heather's, but of the rising anxiety of schoolwork, homework, group work, classwork, of all kinds, stacking and stacking upon her poor dining table, much like Mr Low's, as she, in distress, scrawled as many answers as she could across the questions, working out sums she never did understand. She lived in Melbourne at the time of meeting and attended quite a prestigious institute started by the British colonials, but nobody there had a level quite as low as her. Clarice was smart; there was no one denying that fact, but she was never more intelligent, more physical, more silly than her other competitors in this academy. She did well in all her examinations before, but didn't expect to constantly burn herself out in Australia. Instead of seeing the sunrise and expectantly hoping every morning like she'd read in books and watched in tourist advertisements, she woke with dread anchoring her back to her bed and wishing she could blend in with the floor, mix in with the monotony of work, work, work. However, she did not mind, as she knew that it would be the only way to bounce back.

She could help herself.

But she also could help Heather.

Meanwhile, let's go back to present-day Ngiam's World Private Limited.

End of Chapter 29: Deich Bliadhna Bhon Uair Sin