Bad Habit | Armin Arlert

price of perfection

Failure would always be a part of life, but it was certainly not a part of Marley Academy. 

Portrayed as a top-tier private school, the academy was known for its rigorous academic environment and impossibly high standards. It's the very place where students are expected to excel, and its reputation attracted every noble family that ever existed in Marley, it's influence stretching out to engulf the rest of the world. There is a far more complex and nuanced history of the school, but it's not one that matters, at least for right now.

The curriculum is demanding. Every student are expected to perform at the highest levels without fail. Because Marley would want nothing but the best of the best. 

crème de la crème, was that that what you called it?

And it was the school I had got on my knees, begging to attend while watching my father's indifference towards my character. 

It was my golden ticket out of this tragic life I was born into.

My obsession with all of this nonsense started from the young, innocent age of thirteen, though I was really nowhere near innocent. Before that, textbooks and tests had never been of any interest to me, instead, I spend hours alone couped up in the small corner of the library, reading my life away like it was ink spilled on paper. There was not much of a reason Marley Academy would've appealed to someone like me anyways. 

I don't really see how it started. All I knew was that I wanted a way out of my life, a chance to leave those stupid four walls that made up my house, and above all else, an opportunity to make my parents regret casting me away like a broken doll.

And this academy would do just that.

So, never would I have imagined that this day would come. 

I could replay the memory a hundred times in my head, again and again until I became tired from reciting the same lines and seeing the same stupid walls. 

I remembered how it was ten months ago, when the new school term started in Marley Academy, when the snow had melted and flowers sprung from the ground in vibrant colors. It was a new year, and with it came many new surprises. The fresh start had also fueled many students to try their best, just giving them enough motivation to hope. But such teetering feelings would only come as quickly as it went, leaving behind wasted potential and misdirected fortune.

Fortunately for me, I knew better than to rely on something as fragile as emotion. I learnt that the hard way.

A month after that, when the sun's gaze lingered on the earth and engulfed us in it's unforgiving warmth, the academy had made an exception as for a new student to join. Which, in any scenario, was extremely rare. 

I could still remember thinking that it was nothing for me to worry about. 

Oh, how wrong I was. 

Nothing could've prepared me to see his face enter the classroom, with his blonde hair and pearlescent azure eyes. The rims of his rectangular glasses had rested on the bridge of his nose, and he carried a blue back pack, a shade lighter than of his eyes. Then he had smiled with obvious uncertainty while his hands fidgeted with the hem of his cardigan. 

The next week, he chose to take his seat in front of me during lunch. 

"You still like reading?"

I looked up and the first thing that caught my attention was his sapphire eyes. The second, was his bright yellow hair, which was shorter now than it was years ago. I had to say that it definitely suited him more than his old bob.