"Will a new class mean, no friends?"
Ever since Crystal didn't make the cut for her desired stream, she is forced to "live with whatever she has". Being alienated by her old classmates, she hesitantly accepts her fate being with NONE of her fire-fo...
"Hey, sit with the other Crystal if you don't know where to sit," one of the boys in my class teased.
"No can do," I replied with sass. "You know I can't stand being with the same person every hour of the school day right?"
"Fair enough. We see that too much. Here, come sit with me." I managed to sit with the boys instead. - That day, we were having our year head talk. Our year head was discussing about how to move forward with ikigai and discipline. He even shared a story about something that happened when he wasn't disciplined and when everything finished, he asked the cohort about what we learnt.
The portion he covered about ikigai really captured my eye, so I joined many to raise my hand. "Yes Crystal?" The year head asked back. The entire level cheered and broke into applause as he started walking to my class and handing the microphone to me. We waited for the applause to die down, and I was able to share.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
My name is Crystal Ong from Secondary 3 Peace. What I learnt from today's talk was about ikigai. It's like our sense of purpose, because only with ikigai can we truly live. (That's what I remembered saying)
The auditorium broke into applause and cheers. After my literature class shared her views, Crystal Yeo was asked to share what she learnt, but unlike the applause I received, everyone was chattering away amidst her sharing, like they treated her like a chair in the auditorium. It was so bad that the year head had to cut in and tell us "let's listen to the other Crystal." Only then did they comply.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
It was at that moment did I realise despite how similar our combinations were, Crystal Yeo and I were parallel lines that would never meet. I was the popular kid thanks to my online dances that started all from a shortcut to celebrate the lunar new year. Crystal Yeo was the art kid and an outcast. I finally realised my made up hierarchy of popularity when I was an outcast like the other Crystal was now taking shape.
The hierarchy of school is really tough, huh? Like even something as simple as sharing your thoughts at a programme has responses varying differently. Even something as simple as your identity in student council can define your friend count, and the number of extracurriculars you join determine how many people know your name. How you behave daily determines how you're known.
I need to be careful if I don't want my new popular kid label to be ripped off.
