Chapter 11: The Group assignment
*"You never fully run away from your fears, eventually they catch up to you, what then do you do? Face them or continue running?"*
Khalid twirls his house keys around his finger tip as he makes his way down the dormitory's lobby. A place where once upon a time he had considered hell, a place where before he passes along he has to prepare himself mentally for the unnecessary attention from strangers who want to say hi, some even suddenly thought it was alright to stop a random stranger and ask him about the basketball match they had missed or seen and just wanted to share the news with someone who might have been Khalid.
He had to pretend that he understood their passion, their sentences, their excitement then he had to fake it until he makes it, nod and say nothing but lies, at the end of the day they finally say goodbye dude and let the boy allow that fake smile to fall off from his face. It is usually more exhausting than running up the mountain several times, it's almost too easy for Khalid to change himself to adapt sometimes but the weight of it all gets to him, perhaps that's why he feels more comfortable sticking to himself, because he believes that's the only time that he could just be himself without any external stress or fear of Judgement.
But today it almost seems like the students had mostly left for class or gone for sports or something else, there's a specific seminar going on so that's probably where most of the students had gone. This time Khalid had decided to put the seminar time into better use instead, as he stopped in front of a door and pressed softly on the handle, lucky for him the door was unlocked so he just used more strength to push the door open, with a smile on his face, and just like he had believed earlier on, none of them looked like they were about to go attend a seminar, which was great.
James looked up from his device at the sound of the door hitting the wall, his eyes widened in disbelief.
"Khalid, hey man what are you doing here?" James exclaims.
"What a nice way to tell me I am not welcome," Khalid replies in a playful tone.
"Ah don't say it like that, you know what I meant" James defends
"Actually I mean it like that Khalid, after all this time you have ditched us" Frank chooses to say instead making Khalid let out a sigh.
" oh how could I ever ditch you guys?" Khalid asked making the boys roll their eyes at the obvious question.
"Well, You did for over two months, should I go onto the specifics?" Frank states the obvious making the other boys let out words in agreement, indeed it has been over two months since he moved out, he has not come to visit them ever since then, so Frank's words, that's definitely something he deserves.
"Frank, I couldn't help not dropping by, you know how fresher's year usually is so busy, I've been trying to deal with attending lectures and going for all of the fresher's events and also let's not talk about how I still have to catch up with reading, and my photography plus we really are receiving random impromptu tests out of nowhere these days" He tries to explain
" geez, we get it, you are a fresher" Pete states making Khalid's brows to furrow in disbelief.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Khalid questions obviously taking offence on what was said
" that you keep flaunting it in our face that you are a new student we get you, we were all once there" Frank rephrased his words not that it was helpful in any way at all.
"Flaunting what Frank?, I will not stand for your random accusations!" Khalid exclaims in disbelief.
"Who told you to stand?, just listen" Frank says dismissively, making Khalid want to let out a scream but he succeeds in holding it in this time.
" okay guysss enough, Khalid took his time to come and visit us instead of going to the seminar, we should be more welcoming " James states interrupting the upcoming argument, he could see how stressed Khalid was becoming by all these accusations that his roommates were throwing the boy intentionally trying to make him have a whiplash, knowing how stressed he could become by the smallest of things and situations.
"Proud of the fact that he is finally breaking a good boy rule" Pete says playfully.
"Ah you guys" Khalid sighs
"Oh but It's nothing but the truth" Pete states with a laugh.
"That seminar doesn't seem like a bad choice anymore honestly" Khalid mutters, obviously annoyed by all the trading that was currently directed towards him.
"We know you miss us" Pete says confidently making him roll his eyes at him.
"Oh you wish" Khalid states in a dead tone
" wish that what?" Pete asks with a raised brow
"I'll Miss you?" Khalid stated the obvious
"Then why are you here if you don't?" Pete questions out of amusement obviously
" because I needed to pass time and your room was just sitting right on the way." Khalid states making the boys send him an incredulous look before they all bursted out into laughter.
"On the way to the filmmaking department? oh wow tell me more of your lies oh you kind sir" Pete says playfully.
"Seriously, I just felt like it honestly, now let me breathe" Khalid complained knowing that this argument would eventually go on for hours so he had to back off.
"James, pass me the second gamepad let's play, and before you ask me, yes I can play on your laptop" Khalid says, making James let out a small smirk while raising his hand in surrender, before throwing a gamepad at him, which Khalid caught by miracle. Khalid made his way towards James bed, while James made space for the both of them to sit and play comfortably, And just like that they got lost in the game world, hours passing like smoke, along with reality of course.
After several hours of screams of excitement by the pair and the other roommates who eventually joined in, they all played turns surprisingly even the likes of Frank joined as uptight as he could be but regardless it was fun, being able to spend time with them once again, doing something together, perhaps being alone or having your own space is fun, but every once in a while you realize how much humans are social beings.
The smallest form of interaction can create room for endless memories just like the one that Khalid and the other boys were creating here, by next year they all probably won't be together anymore, not only because they are not in the same departments but also there would be the issue of internship coming up for James and Pete, and then there's Frank graduating, yes I know Khalid has spoken about how himself and Frank were age mates but what he hasn't mentioned is that ever since Frank was little he has always being a somewhat gifted kid, intellectually brighter than most kids for that sake.
He had been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome at age 8. Asperger's syndrome is a term applied to a condition characterised by persistent impairment in social interactions and by repetitive behavioural patterns and restricted interests. What are the Symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome? Children with Asperger's Syndrome exhibit poor social interactions, obsessions, odd speech patterns, limited facial expressions and other peculiar mannerisms.
They might engage in obsessive routines and show an unusual sensitivity to sensory stimuli. Asperger's disorder is one of autistic spectrum disorders; sharing clinical features with autism, but without developmental delay in language acquisition. There have been some studies of intellectual functioning in autism so far, but very few in Asperger's disorder. An Intelligence test (test of fluid reasoning) administered to 17 children with Asperger's syndrome and those without showed that children with Asperger's disorder outperformed on the test of fluid reasoning than typically developing children which suggests that individuals with Asperger's disorder have higher fluid reasoning ability than normal individuals, highlighting superior fluid intelligence.
Now that's the explanation of what Asperger's syndrome is, we can go back to explaining why Frank was in his last year, he had been given double promotion boost multiple times due to his mental capacity being higher than most of his age mates and even those older than. He was at age 14 when he found himself walking down the hallways of college, looking ever so awkwardly out of place, no one would really understand him too, due to his poor social skills so they just let him be, that was until he was assigned roommates with Pete in his second year, no matter how hurtful the boy was Pete never pulled away, they went from tolerating one another to becoming best of friends even though Pete was several years older than Frank.
And now look at where Frank is now, about to graduate at 19 when in reality at 18 he is supposed to just be graduating from highschool, and now he is expected to be in his first year at college, just like Khalid is just in his first year at that same age, but Khalid wishes him nothing but the best in life, everyone has their own separate journeys, some get to start earlier than others and besides Khalid is still yet to believe that he is ready for the outside world yet, he might be yelling about how he is an adult but to be honest he is still quite unsure of how this whole adulthood thing works.
Khalid shakes himself out of his train of thoughts and looks away from the screen where Frank and James were currently playing Call of Duty, he looks down to his phone to check on the time only to see that he is currently a few minutes late for his class for the day that was to start at 2pm, dang how many hours has he been playing that video game with the boys?.
Khalid hurriedly picks his backpack up from the where it laid carelessly by his feet and bids the guys farewell, but none of the boys even paid him a glimpse as their minds were in the game that was before them, making Khalid to shake his head and choose just to let them be for now at least, he is going to be late if he doesn't leave as soon as possible anyway!.
After the usual race and awkward greetings, Khalid marches into the lecture hall with an exhausted look on his face, regardless of all of his efforts to run, He still got to the class kind of late but was lucky the lecturer had not arrived yet, so he made his way in and took a seat as he sipped water to calm himself. In between dozing in and out of what looked like sleep, he was rudely awakened by the sound of the door hitting the wall and the class going deadly silent at once, so he forces himself to sit up straight and more direct, opening his notes.
The lecturer walked into the class in a hurried manner as he signals for the class to keep quiet, which they did and then he invites the course rep to come to the front of the class while the whole class stared at the two as the lecturer whispered to the course rep back and forth before he turned to face the class.
"Take this he said lastly to the course rep as he hands the class rep what looked like a sheet of paper with something printed on it, and then he went on " We won't be having any class today, due to the seminar, I'm here currently without the schools permission, we were ordered to not hold classes for today" the lecturer explains.
And almost immediately everyone in the class screamed in what looked and felt like joy and delight but the joy was cut off as the lecturer signalled for silence and continued to speak once again,
"Like I said, we won't be having a class today BUT I've given out a list to your class rep, and it has to do with a group assignment I've assigned you to, make sure you work together as a team to achieve your specific tasks. You can use today's class period to meet your group members and start making a plan. Have a nice day" and he made his way out of the class, while the class roared once again, Khalid can honestly feel a headache coming up at this point, a group assignment?, can this day get any worst?.
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