"Alexei! What are you doing here?" Mr. Sergei exclaims, waking me up. "You're late for school! It's the first day, remember?" "I don't care…" I roll out of bed and get dressed. Mr. Sergei puts a hand on my shoulder and wishes me good luck before I reluctantly head out of the house.
When I'm close enough to the building I can see that there's no one outside. Damn, I must be really late. It took forever to find the building because I've never been there before. Opening the door, I hear the sounds of people talking, laughing, and some shouts in the distance. The shouts sound a bit familiar. Strange. I step into the hallway. For some reason, people move out of my way as I walk towards the direction of the yelling.
I reach the source of the noise and discover that two people are having a fistfight in the middle of the hallway. A teacher is trying to calm the situation down, but everyone is ignoring her and watching the two people brawl with anticipation. Wait—Is that Matthias? Yeah, it is. Matthias is winning the fight by far. His opponent—Michael, apparently, as everyone is cheering his name, rooting for him even though Matthias is clearly better. He looks so natural like that. Kind of how I feel when I hold a rifle. Matthias sees me watching and smiles. "Get this guy off of me, won't you, Alexei?" He shouts. I step in and pull Michael away from Matthias. "You good?" I ask him. He nods. "That was some great fighting. I didn't know you can do that," Matthias smiles. "Thanks. I want to be a boxer one day," He tells me. "I can see that future working out for you, haha," I say. "I'm pretty decent with fighting myself. Not my fists, though." "Nice! Vance showed me his skills with knives. It's scary, but really awesome," Matthias pauses for a second. "Hey, maybe we should do something together sometime! When Vance comes back in a few days, I mean." I smile. "Sounds great,"
After school, Matthias, Jiara, and I are go get ice cream at a shop in town. Jiara and I talk a bit. Turns out we have more in common that I thought, like how we both like sneaking out onto the roof at night to gaze at the stars or just fall asleep there. "I just need an escape sometimes," She tells me, "and I don't know where else to go." I nod with understanding. Mr. Sergei's generally a pretty chill person, but sometimes it's my own thoughts and fears I need a break from. It's safe to say that I'm starting to realize something: Everyone has their own problem, big or small. In reality, they affect us the same way and make us feel the same things.