The most depressing and traumatizing time of my past was when I was in high school. Honey, you must have heard that high school is the most beautiful period of one's life, but that doesn't apply to me. You said you didn't want to see the women who beat you again, right? Similarly, I don't want to see some of my high school friends again. I don't want to deal with them anymore, even if it's just a social media group. Are they that bad? Yes, they are.
Well, let me tell you. I graduated from junior high school with very good grades. I continued my education at one of the best high schools in Mayakarta. And I was put into a topper class with other students with the highest grades. Well, because we are smart, we here compete fiercely for class rank. That's a very natural thing. However, I really dislike the arrogance and false cohesiveness of my friends. Look, I might sound bad. It may seem like I'm trying to provoke you into hating them, but I'll tell you the truth. You've always been able to understand me, Rose. I'm used to seeing fakes because I lived with one myself. That was my own father. And because I'm used to seeing it, I've developed a special kind of skill that allows me to detect which people are sincere and which people are fake. In my professor's words, I'm a good judge of character.
There's a gang in this superior class, which consists of six students. 3 boys and 3 girls They're smart kids and are often in the top 10 of the school's general rankings. Oh yeah, I myself used to be in the 3rd, 4th, or 5th. Rose, they really annoyed me with their arrogance. They refer to themselves as "the next Einsteins."
If there's a kid who gets the top ten marks from outside our class, they will openly insult that kid. I say again: openly. They would accuse him of cheating during exams or getting good grades only because of luck. As if only they deserved to be number one. I feel sorry for the kids they bully.
And you know what? They're the ones who cheat during exams. They would pretend to go to the toilet to pee right in the middle of the exam. They keep the paper with the summary of the class material behind the tiles and memorize the answers there. They exchanged answers with each other. I really managed to uncover it all. And I had so much fun imagining how their smug faces were smeared. What was horrible was that they were so proud of their achievements and blatantly called cheating barbaric, even though they themselves obtained those high grades by cheating.
Later, I reported it to the teacher. After I reported their actions, they were disqualified from the exam, and their lies were exposed. They were laughed at, and I was applauded. That group of narcissistic, deceitful students had been unmasked.
However, that's where my suffering in high school began. Until after that, they continued to bother me, Rose. At first, they just bumped into me, and I could still handle them. However, they continued to bully me. These are some of the things they said to me:
"You are Caucasian. How come you're so fat? Your body is already like a pig, you know?"
Rose, did you know I used to be fat? Maybe it was because I ate a lot of mother's homade cakes. However, I don't think it's appropriate for them to insult me physically like that, let alone call me a pig. Oh yes, they call me caucasian because I have fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes (as stereotypical as caucasian). It's true that I have Caucasian blood from my mother. If you look a lot like your father, then I look a lot like my mother, Rose.
The next time, they didn't even call me Reiner anymore—just that pig word. Of course I was upset. Reiner was a good name that my mother had given me long before I was born. She said that she had planned that if she had a son, he would be named Reiner. However, they called me instead:
"Hoi, fat pig." like that, in front of everyone too.
Finally, I couldn't contain my anger anymore and said to one of them:
"You calling me a pig won't make ..e bad. It's your loss. You will be labeled as an arrogant person with no manners. You are a cheater, remember. You're really short too."
I was the tallest in my class, Rose. and probably the tallest in the school. A few years ago, I checked my height and it was 190 cm. Because of that, after school, they dragged me to the back of the school garden, precisely to a school shed. Four burly students whose names I didn't recognize held me down, while the narcissistic gang stripped off my pants and took photos with the camera they had prepared. Then, you guessed it, the photo went viral. That's how bad they were. And I don't know how they found out about my family background. They knew that my father had failed in election. And they openly talked about it in class so that all my friends knew. For this, I didn't really care. To me, the father's failure was not the son's failure either. I became silent when all my classmates gossiped about me.
They even went so far as to bully my mother and father. They slandered me in front of my family. They said that I was caught kissing a girl in the school restroom. That was a complete lie. I don't even have a girlfriend. I explained it to my mom and dad. My mom believed me. However, dad believed they more. And you know what that means, right? I was beaten with a belt. To top it off, they stole my final semester exam results. In my school, after the students' answer paper were checked, the paper would be returned to each student. The students were then asked to show the exam results to their parents and get their signatures. After that, the answer paper were returned to school. My exam paper was lost. My grades were reduced a lot. My ranking dropped sharply. My father scolded me severely. And you know what? A month later, they returned the answer sheet, laughing at me. They threw it in my face and said:
"That's why you shouldn't be so bold."
Oh, did they want to get good grades so badly that they cheated so much?In those dark days, part of the peace I got was from looking at Roxelana's face displayed in the form of a painting on the wall of my room. The painting was very beautiful and calmed my heart. Every night, I looked at it until I fell asleep. Even though years had passed since I found Roxelana's painting, I never got tired of looking at it.
In 12th grade, my problems increased. The pressure came not only from them but also from my parents. I had a lot of problems. I was seventeen years old at the time.