"Hey, what the hell do you think you are doing?"
A sudden loud voice drowned out the store's peaceful atmosphere.
"Come on, hurry up dude. We don't have all day like you."
"What did you say?"
"I said hurry up moron!"
"Who do you think you are calling moron huh?"
Apparently, trouble was brewing by the register. A little dispute had broken out between two students who were glaring at each other. I recognized the one with the ill-tempered look on his face. It was the student from my class, the guy with red hair. His hands were full of snacks.
After looking at the situation I looked towards Amanda, who also equally looked at me and I gestured for her to help them, but she glared at me.
Looking at the situation getting worse, I decided to step in.
"What's going on here?" I asked.
"Huh? Who the hell are you?"
I had meant to appear a little soft, but the guy with red hair scowled at me. He was under the impression that I was also here to argue with him.
"My name is Philip. I am from your class remember. I just asked because it sounded like there was trouble."
At my explanation, the red-haired guy looked somewhat mollified & lowered his voice. "Oh. You are that guy from class."
Definitely, he didn't remember me.
"So what's the problem?" I asked again.
"I forgot my student ID card and forgot that it pretty much work as our money from now on."
I looked at his empty hands. He had put the snacks away. He was probably heading back to dorms, where he had likely forgotten his card.
To be honest, the fact that the ID card was necessary for payment had not yet sun in for me, either.
"I can pay for you. I mean, it would be annoying for you to go back all the way to dorms & come again."
"That's true. You are right, it would be absolutely annoying. Thanks for paying for me."
"No problem," I said.
The store was not that far from the dorms, but by the time he got back, there will be a long line of students buying & given his attitude he would probably start another ruckus.
"My name is Donald. Thanks for helping me out. I owe you." He said.
"Nice to meet you, Donald."
Donald handed me his snacks, and I walked over to the cashier and paid for them. It cost me a total of 10 points – $10.
After noticing our short exchange, Amanda sighed.
"You are acting like a pushover from the very beginning. I thought you said you hated trouble, but right now you look like someone who is very eager to help. Or are you doing this to make friends?" she asked.
"As you said, I very much hate trouble. But if I had not intervened, it was destined to become a pretty chaotic situation, so why not stop it from the beginning then regret it. And I didn't care about making friends."
"You don't seem to be afraid."
"Afraid? Why? Because he looks like a third-degree villain." I asked.
"A normal person would try to keep someone like him at bay."
"I guess, but he doesn't seem like that much of a bad person to me. And you don't appear to be afraid of him either?"
"It's mostly the defenseless & weak people who stay away from those types. If he acted violently, I could always give him a taste of his own medicine. That's why I don't care."
Amanda's words were always a little bit difficult to understand. And what did she mean by giving him the taste of his own medicine? Did she carry some sort of weapon or anything to keep off these types of guys?
"Let's finish things here. We will be a bother to other students if we dawdle." She said looking at her half-filled cart.
Wrapping things up, we presented our student ID cards to the machine by the register. With a beep, the machine read our cards & we were done.
"These cards are sure convenient huh…" I said.
After paying & exiting the store we slowly started to walk towards the dorms.
Anyway, this school was strange.
What merit could every student possibly have that would warrant such a massive allowance? Considering that there were 200 people enrolled in my grade, a simple calculation suggested that there were 600 people total in this school. That alone means 6 million dollars each month. Annually, that would equal 72 million dollars. Even for a government-supported school, that seemed to be overkill.
"How does the school benefit from giving us this much money, without any condition?"
"I wonder. This campus has more than enough facilities for the number of students, & I would not think it's necessary to hand out so much. Students who should be studying might slack off."
Perhaps it was some kind of reward for working hard, passing a test, or something. Student motivation might increase if offered an incentive. However handing $10,000 dollar to everyone, with no strings attached seemed too dubious.
"I won't tell you what to do, but I think it would be best to avoid wasting money. It's difficult to fix vacuous spending habits. Once a person gets used to an easy life, they find themselves needing more & more. When you lost it, the shock can be huge to deal with & I don't believe the school is giving us this much money without any catch, there must be something that we are not aware of, I am sure of it." Amanda said.
"It's funny how both of us think the same. Anyway, I will keep that in mind." I said.
I didn't really intend to waste money on useless things, but she had a fair point.
Not too far from the store Donald was sitting on a bench with his leg spread wide & was eating a bag of potato chips, little flakes were everywhere near his seat.
Noticing me he gently waved me over. I waved in return, feeling somewhat embarrassed, yet happy.
"Are you really going to eat here?" I asked.
"Obviously. It's just common sense."
Donald perplexed me with his matter-of-fact reply. Amanda sighed in annoyance.
"I am going back to my room. I will lose my dignity if I spend any more time here," she said.
"What do you mean by, 'dignity'? We are just students. We are ordinary. Or, what, are you the high-born daughter of some noble family or something?"
Amanda didn't even flinch at his harsh tone. Seemingly irritated, Donald threw his bag of chips on the ground & stood.
"Hey! Hey, listen to people when they are talking to you! Hey!" he said angrily.
"What's his problem? He just got angry." Amanda said this to me, ignoring Donald.
This became too much for Donald to handle, who started shouting.
"Hey, get over here! I will smack that complacent look off your face!" he yelled attracting nearby attention of people walking.
"Look man, I will admit that Amanda has a bad attitude & had no idea how to deal with people, but you are taking this too far."
It was obvious that Donald's patience was on verge of collapse."What was that? She is a brat & has an obnoxious attitude. That's bad, too bad, especially for a girl!"
"For a girl? That's rather outdated thinking. Philip, I would strictly advise you not to become friends with this idiot." Amanda said.
With that, she turned her back on Donald.
"Hey, wait! You bitch!"
"Calm down dude." I held him back as he tried to grab Amanda.
She made her way in the direction of the dorms without even stopping or glancing back.
"What the hell is her problem? Who does she think she is? Goddamn it" he shouted again.
"There are different types of people who exist in this world, you know."
"You shut the fuck-off. I hate those serious types."
He continued to glare at me. Then he just left the spot & went in the opposite direction of Amanda.
Just a little while ago he had fought in front of the register & now this. He definitely had a short fuse.
After looking around I found, two surveillance cameras monitoring the whole situation from the street light just ahead of us.
"This might lead to more problems later," I muttered.
Reluctantly, I bent down, picked up the bag of chips & threw it in the nearby dustbin.
Dealing with this guy was troublesome, I had to avoid this guy at all cost or otherwise I will just become a damage controller for him.
But one thing, Donald had a lot of potential & if used properly he could achieve many things in a short amount of time & about Amanda, her deduction skill actually shocked me, she really thought the exact same thing as I did. She was sharp, really sharp, one wrong move & everything would crumble.
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Bye & see you guys in the next chap.