Unlike Miya, I went to school. Every day. And it was (one of many) source of my misery. Every single day, I sat through the classes, alone, daydreaming and failing. I either ate lunch alone or skipped eating altogether, which was becoming more frequent. It's not that I was bullied or anything, but I was definitely a loner. But I would not say that's why I was unhappy at the school, for I had no desire to make friends anyway. It's just that I found no interest or motivation to interact with people as if it was an even bigger waste of time than my wasted life itself.
There was though one thing that kept me going to school every day – otherwise I would just say fuck it and drop out of school. That would send my parents into manic fits but they can't physically drag me to school every day as they have jobs to go to, and I could probably spend the rest of my days sulking in my room till I work up the courage one more time to try killing myself.
The reason, and the sole positive thing in my life, was a girl in my next class called Rika. It was when I saw her for the first time that I was glad that I skipped the final year of middle school to enter high school one year early. Yes, I was a good student with exceptional grades, not because I studied much, but because these things were just naturally easy for me. But once I entered high school, with everyone being at least a full year older than me I found it difficult to 'socialize' and make friends at the beginning of the year. Not that I was any more sociable in middle school, but let's just say entering high school did not improve anything about my personality or quality of life. I was just good at academics, which meant nothing, and once I joined high school, I wasn't even that good at academics anymore – the gap in my education created by hastily skipping a year actually backfired on me and I was no longer good at any class.
But getting back to Rika – she was a very very pretty girl in my eyes. Spotless pale skin (almost life-less like), yet she had this piercing fire in her eyes that I noticed – and I believe only I noticed them, making me feel somewhat special, kind of a soapy dream of a teenage boy who feels he is somehow connected with the girl of his dreams by invisible strings of destiny.
She was always flanked by two girls who seemed to be her friends, who were obviously loud and chatty while Rika stayed mostly silent, just nodding her head and smiling every now and then.
If, and I mean a big if, by any impossible scenario at the level of cosmic disruption or divine intervention, I had a chance to get close to Rika I might have found a will to continue with my life. But for some reason, I always felt I was unworthy of someone like her, and never even dared to imagine approaching her in the first place. It was good enough that I could catch a glimpse of her every now and then, by lucky 'coincidences' I engineered by walking down the hallways in likely moments.
For any normal boy, this might have been a crush, and he may be swept up in the fever of one-sided love and wild imaginations of puberty. I, though, had no such energy. It felt more like looking out of my window on my death bed and seeing a pretty bird sitting on a bare branch, and thinking to myself 'How beautiful', before I die – unless somehow the bird would fly into my room and sit on my shoulder. I believe I was in love, in one way or another, but it was so far away from attainable that I did not even desire to imagine.