Chapter Four

It's an ordinary Monday today, the first day of the week. Norman and I walked to school together. Our school's not so far from our blocks. It's a neighborhood school. Every neighborhood has one school. Each neighborhood has four estates and each estate has four blocks. Not so rich people like me will go to this school. Whereas most rich people, they sent their kids to the national school located in the city central. I've actually never been to Warhem's central. Furthermore I could only dream of going to Ava. Like I said, rich people or anyone living near the government are safe from many ridiculous laws. They are safer from death. Literally.

Our school's not so big. An average neighborhood school is smaller than the size of a small stadium. From what I heard, national schools are bigger than the national stadium, and I can't imagine how big a university would be.

Today's subject was interesting. We don't study the usual in Modern History; blah blah, all the boring stuff about how we move on to the next stage of life and all the details of starting life on other planets. Today, Miss Janet talked about history of Dustromedian. And wow, I was intrigued. Because I don't think that's in the syllabus.

'Let me share something out of topic' said Miss Janet during lesson.

The main reason I was attracted was because I've never heard the story Miss Janet shared to us. She mentioned that there used to be a lot of the diamonds that scientists collected to create the sphere of Dustromedian. At first, many of us were curious. Some even got rude. Fanny Pace was the rudest. Well, not so rude like teenage rude but children's version of rude. We're twelve. I'm twelve. Next year then we're teen. Anyways, Fanny was like "'But teacher, I think you're wrong, my parents said…'" and blah blah blah. Miss Janet simply replied "'Whatever I'm sharing to you stays in this classroom okay? This is something I learned privately and many won't agree with this information'". It's true what Miss Janet said. Even before she finished her story, someone already disagreed. And that's Fanny.

After school, I walked home with Norman and Orion Pierce. He lives in the estate next to us. And we talked about the diamonds. Orion said that he believes Miss Janet. Every word she says. And he reminded us to not tell anyone that Miss Janet mentioned it. He made it seems like a big deal. He's very serious about it. I mean what's so dangerous about telling what Miss Janet said? It's just a story. But I totally kept my mouth shut. I don't mention it to anyone else. Norman and I played near the playground that evening. We have a multi-purpose court in our estate. A multi-purpose court is a sports area where you can play anything there. Any sport except soccer and other big field sports. Yeah, you can play tennis, badminton, volleyball and others. And it's amazing because everything is holographic. An advanced holographic system where it reacts to how you act on it. There's an operator near the entrance. You just need to set the game. First choose what sport then you just customise your game. And the game will follow how you customised it. Totally cool. But we can only play for an hour. The maximum time of any sport. And because many others are queuing to play. On weekdays, after school, if we're lucky, we can take the court first before the other kids. On weekends, we'll wake up early. And the minute the curfew time is up, I'll dash outside and chope the court first, set the game and wait for Norman. It's our usual routine. But when we are too tired for sport, I'll invite Norman up to my house and we'll play chess for hours. We love chess. I'm the champion of course. Haha, not to brag but the only person I can't defeat my whole entire life is my dad. He taught me a lot of moves and because of him I practiced to be better. Like I said, he's old school and love these kind of games. I ever played chess with my dad for one whole night straight. We didn't sleep. And dad regretted doing so, he got scolded at work for resting a lot during his shifts. Luckily they didn't punish him the way they punish normal civilians. But my dad's security guard rank won't save him forever. He definitely have to be careful. And he is. We just have to look out for each other. As a family.