Chapter Two: Mein Leben at Grade School

Let me Introduce myself again, My name is Ben Capaldi, I was a nobody for years. I think I still am. But I was a nobody who achieved great goals. I did what I could do to make myself better, physically and mentally.

Let's start one by one.

I am not great at school. When I was in preparatory, as my mom told me, my favorite color is black; still am today. The school gave out some coloring books as part of the creative subject for prep students. Then, my teacher told us to open the book and color the one that we like and the ones who are the best or have the best coloring skills would have a price. I don't know what the prize was 'cause, you know I like black. If that's what you think, you're right.

I didn't win. They told my mom and told me that when they saw my coloring book, they saw the drawing COVERED IN BLACK COLOR!

I mean, you can't even see the drawings anymore and on top of that, is how did I colored the drawings in the book. One drawing has a circular coloring pattern. Others have either horizontal or vertical ones. Others even have both. When I remember this thing about the color I always thought 'Yeah. Probably I really like black because even today, I wear black.'

Black for me, is like a rainbow, it pairs in different colors and variety, you pair black and white, it causes gray. You mix orange and black you get crimson.

Wait.

Maybe THAT'S why I'm always sad. Gray for sadness and crimson, like red is murder!? Right?

That's cold.

Whoops!

Enough of that, though.

I didn't get much of a life as I was expecting to have, but my parents provided me to what they know I needed most. Because of that dedication, I had my first award. I became First Honor in our school during Third Grade; my parents were so proud and I am proud and glad that my Dad was there to witness it. I remembered when my Dad walked with me and all the parents there were looking at us and they be like: 'Woah! That's him? That's his Dad? Wow!'

I'm really proud of that moment. That was the greatest day of my life.

Then Fourth Grade came and I suddenly dropped to minimal. I was shocked that I was mixed with the brightest students at my school and I can't catch up the way they catch up to our studies. I befriended one of my classmate and as time passed, we became best of buddies.

So this classmate of mine is a little arrogant or 'airy' ("mahangin" in Filipino street word). At least he have some decency unlike the others, I may say this one is pretty unique in a very arrogant way.

His name is Vinny and as everyone knows him 'Vin'. I befriended with this guy as I see potential and I know that I will highly benefit from this man, and I WAS RIGHT!

Everything he knows he teaches me, everything he doesn't know, we learn together. One of our classmate told us that we were like 'bee and flower'. Can't live without the other or as I say, mutual beneficial relationship.

Every Time at recess, foods are being delivered to our room, variety of foods ranging from macaroni soup to snacks, chocolate chips and crispy butter coconut bread. We were assigned to managed the recess, he asks our classmate what they want, he gives them and hand him the payment for it. I, on the other hand, use my Math skills to calculate the exact change for that student because we both don't want to pay if the money gone short for that particular day. See? Just like a slave.

At that school, they give you a particular job and if you're good at it then you reap your rewards. Not just one, but several if you're really into it. My job is to give our classmate the satisfaction every recess even both me and Vin would be late for THAT recess; at least our teacher gives us time for recess longer than what it should be. I am happy that I can contribute to my classroom and to my classmate though we both feel like slaves, we know, we are the only ones capable of that job.

One time, I remembered, during exams, me and Vin would cheat, giving papers and such to one another only on particular questions so hard that I thought I'm not in Fourth Grade anymore, I felt I was in College that time. And then, when i went to College I suddenly realized: 'I want to go back when you just have to find x and not to find f of x's or x of y's.' Those were the times. Times so simple yet I found hard to grasped and appreciate.

As I was saying, we were cheating, we're good at it. It's a secret we've kept for years and now I revealed it. Sorry Vin, if you're reading this, I had to!

As we travel through the learnings for the months to come, we met different types of people in our way. We categorize them as follows:

The extravagant type, students who were spoiled by their parents.

The shy type, maybe shy but friendliest among all.

The friendlies, though friendly they might stab you in the back and believe me, this happened to me.

The tough, easy on them, they're the bullies. Period.

The pawn, also means bait for bullies.

The flirties, students who have multiple boy crushes and gotten to relationship with no more than 2 guys at once.

The brains, these are geniuses. Period.

And finally, The Ones, students whom you've crush with or students who aren't flirty enough to realize their full potential. This includes the smart cute girls or boys and smart but not so cute girls and boys.

Now ask yourself, the next time you go to school, Do you want to make sure you have this list or do you want to see for yourself what this list means? But I think you'll need this.

This is how we survived at this school. Me and Vin, we examined them, their moves, their motives. Sometimes spying on them or pay someone to spy for us. This is real, I'm not kidding, we did this to for years we've been classmates.

We move on to Sixth Grade 'cause same shit happened during Fifth Grade. So we have this newcomer student, a transferee. A girl.

At first glance, you may think she's just a normal local looking girl, but no. She's foreign, from another land far beyond the sea. Its the country who bombed Pearl Harbor.

Fuck guessing.

Its Japan guys!

My point is, she's Japanese and she's cute. Literally. Both me and Vin really don't care about it. It's no big deal. We didn't even tried to talk to her or ask what's her name for like Four months during the start of Sixth Grade.

It was just this Fifth month we actually went to their row and speak with the toughs over there. By the way, Both Vin and I have high position during Sixth Grade that the toughs feared us.

At first, it was just the toughs, then these toughs introduced us to the row that includes the Japanese cutie girl. All of them knows us but the Jap.

Vin was the first one to engage. I don't know what happened but I didn't introduced myself and let Vin do the rest. I think Vin might have mentioned my name to her and I think in the course of another 2 months they became GOOD friends and eventually became partners, that's what I know and also what the toughs knew. In those times, I really don't care or bother what they do, what I'm thinking is: 'How will I pass Sixth Grade?' That's the only question I have in mind.

Then another month came. This Japs friend came to me, her name is Maria. She told me that this Jap girl wanted to know me and asked me If I could come to their row and play with them charades. I said "Sure, why not."

That was the time I got curious and asked "What Vin doing these couple of months with her?"

She answered "Don't you know? They were girlfriends and boyfriends."

"Oh! Okay." The ONLY answer I know for that.

So I went there and played charades and tried to know her more. At the beginning, I was thinking, she's part of the flirties, but as the game of charades gets longer and longer and deeper, I think she belongs to the pawns and eventually at the end--The Ones.

"Hi!" She said cheerfully with a smile

"Hello!" I replied exactly as she did.

I am in an awkward situation right now so I asked another question "What's your name?"

Maria interrupted "Wait, you don't know her name?"

"I know' I replied 'I just can't remember what..." I smirked "I'm sorry!"

She laugh a little with a smile. I smiled to her. Then she spoke "I'm Sakura! Nice to meet you!"

"Oh yes.' I said 'Yes. Sakura. Cherry Blossoms!"

"Yeah, Cherry Blossoms." she added.

"Nice to meet you too!" I said.

I was direct to the point then, when asking questions, so I asked her this: "Have you Had any boyfriends?"

Sakura answered "Yeah. I have."

"Ah." I replied.

Then she just said these words: "I had one boyfriend.' She gazed at the distance "That's Vin."

Of course, I look at the direction she was looking. I said to her "Oh. Vin. Nice!"

That's why I told before a total silence. It's really awkward that time. For her, at least. After that, I was thinking 'How did Vinny, THAT VINNY, caught the attention of this girl. Just HOW?'

By the way, Sakura is not your ordinary girl as I knew, she's different to what I see and what I've heard about.

About this time of silence, Maria asked a question out of the blue "Who's your crush here, Sakura?"

"Whut?" She replied shockingly.

I supported Maria "Yeah, I'm really curious, just who? After Vin, who's your crush, really?"

She can't answer straight. Though there is an answer: Just a smirk and a laugh. That's all we got. We waited and really tried to persuade her to give us an answer, but we just can't squeeze the answer out of her.

Now that's a tough girl to fight with.

It ended with nothing and all we had was 'dead air.'

Too many awkward moments.

I decided to talk with her one on one. I really am curious why she didn't answer that question. Today, I think what I did was very shameful if I did it with a grown up her, it's like trespassing her privately. But years ago I did.

"Why didn't you answer?" I asked her politely with the intent of JUST knowing WHY.

She answered blatantly "I just didn't."

A moment of silence was there, then she added "I didn't want to answer...' she stopped for a moment, thinking. Then she continued "I didn't. Because. YOU WERE THERE."

My eyes glared for a moment. I was thinking what she meant of that. As you know, I don't that stuffs then. What to do with those moments. But then I realised that what she meant was:

"I have a crush on you, Ben Capaldi. That's why I broke up with Vin."