“Yes. YES Mom! I finished all my homework and stuff.”

“Okay! I was just making sure…”

“But why? It’s not like I don’t do my work any other time. You know how hard I work.”

“Calm down!” I rolled my eyes in agitation. If anyone needed to calm down, it was her.

“I just wanted to make sure. Good night,” my mother said as she closed my door.

I walked away and climbed into my bed. Great, now she put me in one of moods. Ideas of failure and low-pay jobs entered my mind. Why did life have to be this difficult? I have to spend another two years of high school and then find my way into a “good” college to have a happy life? Sounded impossible to me.

Me, Kevin Kim, straight A student with advanced classes, math and science league member, and track runner. Also, not too bad looking if I do say so myself. I had all the parts to get into a place like University of Wherever or even Yale, yet my mother was still worried about my future and thus so was I. I was barely getting enough sleep between keeping my grades up, club and sports responsibilities, and, of course, saving time to read some fan-fics.

Ugggh… and tomorrow was just another day, filled with work. My friends made every day unique, but the days that passed were just so monotonous. Just another day to a life of working to survive. There must be a world out there with a better work system than ours. Sometimes I wish I could just end it right now. Death surely seems much easier than all I’m going through. But I can’t stand the thought of losing all my friends and the sorrows my family would go through. So, I guess I just have to keep moving on. And so, I guess I can just finish that story about Octavia and Vinyl Scratch before I go to bed…

---

“So then I became a scout and with my Force-A-Nature…”

Lunchtime. Just eating my spicy ham and cheese sandwich, while I listened to my friends keep chatting about TF2. Of course, what I actually want to talk about is ponies, but my friends already thought I was overly-obsessed with the show. Or at least I thought I was. I was lucky enough to know that most of my friends were bronies. In fact, I wouldn’t even be one if it wasn’t for them. A few months after getting into the show, I am still in the obsessed phase. Same thing happened to me with Pokémon a few years back. The obsession will eventually burn away, I hope.

Luckily, the rest of the day would be easy, just gym and computers and straight on home.

“But then the Pyro kept on air-blasting me and…”

BOOM!!!

I was sent flying forward out of my chair as a sudden explosion came from behind me. All I could hear was a dull beep as my ears were trying to recover from the intense irritation that just blasted them. Slowly my hearing began to recover. Was that…. screaming? And I could hear just the slightest sound of crackling in the background. I opened my eyes to see a blurry view of the cafeteria engulfed in flames. Waves of yellow and orange were dancing along the floor around me. This would make for an interesting light show if my life wasn’t in danger. My fellow schoolmates were rushing to the doors as they tried to escape the rapidly spreading flames. I should probably start doing the same, I thought to myself.

I managed to stand up. Although my ears recovered, my head still felt as though it was hit by a bowling ball. The room was still blurred, but now it was shaking. Is the building collapsing or is it just my head?

I leaned against the wall and waited. Within a few seconds, my senses were refocused. I looked at the area around me. The front of the cafeteria was swimming in flames. I noticed some people lying on the ground; their mangled bodies obviously hit the hardest by the blast. Smoke was filling the air and I could hardly manage to breathe. I put a hand on my forehead and gasped as I saw my fingers coated with blood. I shook my head. This was no time to be observing the scenery. I had to get out of here as fast as I could, there was no need to help those who couldn’t get up. Was it self-importance? No, it was survival.

I started to move towards the door when I hear…

“Help! Please!!”

I turn to my right to see a girl with her foot stuck under a table. Ouch… that was definitely a broken ankle right there. I had no idea what her name was, she was just a familiar-looking upper classmen. I started towards the exit again.

“Wait, where are you going? Please, I don’t want to die here!”

I stopped. I had to consider my options. If I leave her behind, then I have a really high chance of getting out of here alive. Besides, I don’t even know this person. But on the other hand, how could I just leave someone behind? And then, how could I live with myself knowing that I could have saved someone’s life, but let them die? Time was running out, I needed to make a decision quick.

I rushed over to the table that the girl was stuck under. I lifted up with my strength, but the tables in my school must have been made out of lead.

“Hurry!” screamed the girl.

“I’m trying!” Thousands of ideas were rushing into my head, and my body was shaking. Panic was creeping into my mind. No… keep out panic, panic is the enemy. Keep your mind clear…

“Listen, on the count of three, we need to lift this table together. Okay?” Still able to think straight. Good job brain.

“Okay,” the girl replied.

“One.”

“Two.”

“Three!” I lifted up again. Whether it was our combined strength or the new adrenaline pumping through my body, we were able to lift up the table high enough to slide her ankle through.

“Sweet! Let’s move!” I exclaimed as I started towards the doors.

“Wait! I can’t run like this… I think my ankle might be broken.”

Ugggh… I was afraid of this, but I would have to carry her though the lunchroom. And fast. I didn’t like the look of the ceiling at this moment.

I bent down and picked her up like I would cradle a baby. Good thing I stopped by the weight room the past few weeks, she wasn’t too heavy. Too bad there wasn’t any time to celebrate for me. I heard a snap right above me. The fan above me had fallen off its holdings. I looked up just before. I didn’t have enough time to react. Too fast for me to even see my life flash right before my eyes. All I could feel was my head being split in two. And then blackness.

Funny thing. A lot of people spend their time in class thinking of outrageous stories where they would save their classmates from zombies, terrorist invasion, or whatever else. I was no different. There was nothing better than to be the hero of my friends in my own fantasy world. But in all the crazy situations I thought of, I survived in the end.

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