𝐁𝐢𝐠 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 | Xiao/Scaramouche x Reader

Chapter 3

Marked on my calendar with a red circle, today's date signals the important event in the life of all and any Sumeru students. Although awaited, I stand in the all-too-familiar hall thinking melancholy thoughts.

"I can't believe we are finally done!"

Yea, we are graduating.

I turn around to find Candace holding me by the shoulders (she's a little taller), giving me that big grin of hers. The rest of the gang – namely Cyno, Alhaitham, Faruzan, and even Nilou – are there as well, giving me small smiles and rolling their eyes at Candace. A bright smile shines on Faruzan's face.

"I don't think I have ever seen you smile so brightly in my life!" I exclaim, gasping in an exaggerated manner.

"Well, you better stare at it while you can. School has finally ended, so now I am truly free," Faruzan states, giving me a proud side glance. She did mention before that finishing school is her dream, although she didn't tell me whether there's anything that special that she wants to do afterwards.

"Remember the taxes," Nilou mumbled, sending Faruzan a crinkle-eyed smile in exchange for a glare.

I couldn't help but giggle. I almost teared up at the thought of this being the last time ever that I'd get to see them all act stupid together like this. I brushed my young tear away with my fingertip, covering it up as tears of laughter. Wishing for school to end is fun and all, until the very point that it actually happens. And in this moment you wish that it would never end.

All the memories made together with your friends, classmates, group-project mates, competition buddies, nice teachers that feel like the wonderful parents some of us never had, and even those made with the grumbly teachers and those who need to work on their temper do not make me wish for this to end anymore. I wish it could go on forever. That way we wouldn't have to really feel this sudden rift between childhood and adulthood.

Nilou carefully took my hand in hers, and for once I looked at her without remembering that she is Cyno's girlfriend; the place that I could've occupied if he had loved me. I think she felt the same way I did, and perhaps to many students, excluding Faruzan, this hallway had the same melancholy feel today as it did to the both of us as we came closer and closer to the Main Hall.

Hundreds of students in green robes sat in rows of grey seats, making the golden-rimmed platform of the soon-to-come speaker seem like a stage in a grand theater.

I don't remember everything that the old man up there told us, nor the speeches of the many students and professors and else-who-not. I just clapped along, or shed an occasional tear which seemed like it wasn't related to any of their topics at all.

I stood on the stage then, along with many others who were graduating with us, and for a moment I forgot how to live and whether I was living at all. I looked at the big amount of people in their seats, younger perhaps, although I could not see their faces. They were too far away to hug, and yet close enough to identify their Sumerian features. It felt like I have accomplished something on my own that doesn't seem any special. Soon, we will be replaced upon this stage of marble.

After we were dismissed, with more noise than anyone could ever imagine a prestige academy having, I climbed up the stairs to the second floor one last time, walking up to that one familiar open door. That was not my classroom. But somehow, its doors will always be open to me. As long as I'm a child. This is the classroom I used to study in. My favorite classroom.

Never again will I be able to come up here and find an excuse to hangout with the young teens who are perhaps not interested at all in seeing this older girl just doing weird things around the class; collecting papers, hanging out at the teacher's desk, and whatnot. I just love this classroom, the one which I will see for the very last time. And the teacher who teaches here. I remember how she was the new teacher that got me irritated when I first sat down at my desk. It was a bad enough day back then, as I did not get the window seat.