Project: Socialize (Chapters 1-197)

68. School Festival

The day of the School Festival finally arrived, bringing with it a greater degree of enthusiasm and vigor to the youthful Nocsinis Imperial High School campus. The students had gathered at the school early in the morning to make their final preparations for the Saturday, and everyone seemed awfully excited with wide smiles on their faces as they prepared themselves to enjoy the Festival. To them, the preparations and working at the Festival with their friends and classmates were the fun to be had. In addition, once their shift is over, they could then walk around and enjoy the Festival themselves with friends or significant other. Therefore, what's there to complain?

There is nothing to complain about for the ordinary student. For me, there's plenty. Since I was a class representative, I was excused from participating in the preparation process for the class and working at the cafe that my class had decided to do for the Festival. In addition, since Loyd and Zaksus both had to work their shifts and Muria and Irina had to rehearse for the play that will be playing later on in the day, 5 PM to be more exact, I was left to roam the school campus alone.

Starting from the front entrance of the school, the gates were wide open and decorated to be extremely inviting. Numerous balloons were tied to a sign that stood by the opened entrance, drawing attention to the place and then there was the colorful banners and ribbons the students had tied onto the bars of the gate, making it so that the usually plain entrance became one that was particularly eye-catching. The entrance had served its purpose, drawing in numerous guests which included couples, families, and students from other schools.

The large crowd of people streamed onto the campus and I followed them. Immediately, I was greeted with the delicious aroma of food of different varieties. On either side of the main road that led to the lecture building were numerous stalls set up by the various clubs, the majority of which sold food. Walking up and down the road were also students, wearing their school uniforms due to the school rules that required all students to do so, carrying signs and calling out to attract customers to their classrooms.

All around me, people were walking in groups or in pairs at least. I seemed to be the only person walking alone. With a sigh, I continued my walk down the main road that led directly from the school gates to the entrance of the lecture building with both hands in my pockets. In my mind, I cursed the couples that came today, holding hands and feeding each other food. In addition to that, I felt somewhat irritated that everybody had someone accompanying them since it made the loner in me extremely awkward.

I looked from side to side, taking in the busy scenery of the Festival. People were lined up in tented stalls, purchasing food items. I looked past the front desk where the customers paid and accepted their order and into the kitchen area at the back of the tent of the basketball club. There, I saw Zaksus busy cooking up a food item that was made by laying a thin layer of batter onto a heat griddle and adding different toppings before wrapping it up in the cooked batter. It was something that we call tieg wrap and was extremely delicious to be honest. Especially how Zaksus was preparing it, which made me quite hungry myself. Therefore, I decided to get in line and buy myself one.

The wait was long and agonizing. Every single second, I was taunted by the delicious aroma of the tieg wrap that was being made not too far in front of me. In addition to that, I had to watch as the people in front of me leave the line while holding their tieg wrap and taking a large bite out of it. I always found my eyes being fixed on the tieg wrap that the other customers had bought with my mouth watering, and it took a tremendous amount of will power to force myself to look away.

"Alevian!" Zaksus exclaimed as he saw me when he had approached the front desk to deliver the finished product.

"Hey," I greeted him in an apathetic voice. We weren't particularly close, and in fact, this was the first time I spoke to him when it was only the two of us.