Primary school ended with applause.

  Secondary school began with noise.

  Five more years.

  I could almost see the timeline stretched out in front of me like a long corridor. Six years of primary completed. Five years of secondary ahead. Four years of university after that. Then eight years in finance and accountancy, sitting in an office under fluorescent lights before I finally quit.

  And not long after that, regression.

  Knowing the entire roadmap is not comforting.

  It is exhausting.

  Every stage ahead contains something I will have to fix. Something I mishandled before. Relationships, pride, ego, choices. The older we grow, the more complex the consequences become.

  Still, I told myself it would be worth it.

  Secondary Year 1.

  Almost halfway done with studies already, if I measure it from Primary 1 to university graduation. That thought alone made the heavy school bag feel lighter.

  Another thought comforted me too.

  Soon, Facebook would appear.

  No more desperately memorizing landline numbers. No more losing touch simply because someone moved house. The future had tools. I just needed to reach it.

  Jason and Mr. Golden entered the same secondary school as me, unchanged in this timeline.

  Golden remained Golden.

  Even though the entire student body was male, his popularity did not diminish. If anything, it concentrated. Nearly all the teachers were female, a strange natural balance to the sea of boys in white uniforms.

  Golden carried himself the same way he always had. Calm. Polished. Orbiting attention without asking for it.

  Jason, on the other hand, upgraded.

  In primary school he was the canteen police. While the rest of us wore white uniforms, he wore green. That alone signaled hierarchy. He went for recess earlier, finished lunch earlier, then stood at the checkpoint like a customs officer.

  The checkpoint was the only path back to the classrooms.

  Every student had to pass him.

  He would inspect pockets for hidden food. Hygiene enforcement, they called it.

  I called it unpaid labor with a badge.

  In secondary school, he aimed higher. Prefect.

  Blue uniform.

  While the rest of us blended in white, he stood out again.

  Authority over discipline. The right to record names. The privilege to speak sternly.

  I never liked special positions.

  In my previous life, I avoided them because I was lazy.

  As an adult, I realized something else. Schools need discipline enforced. Hiring adults costs money. Why not let students enforce it for free under the banner of leadership development and co curricular points?

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Perhaps that was cynical.

  Perhaps it was true.

  Either way, I had no interest in it.

  I entered Secondary Year 1 already placed in the so called smart class due to my Primary 6 results.

  Smart class.

  It did not feel smart.

  The first sign was the election of class representative.

  No interviews. No evaluation. Just whoever had the loudest confidence.

  Lawrence won.

  He had presence. Not the academic kind. The street kind.

  Foul language rolled off his tongue naturally. He laughed like rules were suggestions. He carried himself like a gang leader instead of a class rep.

  This was the elite stream?

  I watched quietly.

  Then there was Terrance.

  The shortest boy in class.

  Naturally, that makes you a target.

  But Terrance did not shrink.

  He was aggressive in defense. The kind who would snap back twice as hard the moment someone tried something. After a few encounters, most boys thought twice before picking on him.

  In my memory, he stayed short for years.

  Then university came.

  When I met him again, I almost did not recognize him.

  Tall. Slim. Sharp features. Like a Korean male idol walking out of a music video.

  Time is strange.

  Dan was another familiar storm waiting to happen.

  He went for prefect too.

  But his behavior leaned feminine. The way he spoke. The way he moved. The way he reacted emotionally.

  In a classroom full of teenage boys, that was enough to make him a target.

  In my previous life, I was the one who made fun of him the most.

  We fought more than once.

  But Dan did not fight fairly.

  He shaved his head bald.

  When we clashed, he would grab my hair, pull it down, and hold me hostage. I could not do the same because there was nothing to grab.

  It was a fight engineered for me to lose.

  Fight him again?

  Not worth it.

  Despite all these personalities, secondary school was not as violent as comics and dramas made it seem.

  No life or death.

  No prolonged oppression.

  The bullying was chaotic, stupid, sometimes humiliating, but rarely malicious.

  A group of boys might chase someone during recess. Catch him. Each one grab a limb. Carry him to a random pillar.

  Then comes the ritual.

  They rub the target’s lower body area lightly against the pillar.

  Not painful.

  Just embarrassing.

  Playful cruelty.

  I was targeted sometimes.

  I also participated sometimes.

  It was ridiculous.

  And honestly, it was part of the ecosystem.

  During boring periods before assembly, someone would flatten a bottle cap and kick it around like a soccer ball. The drains became goals. The goalkeeper’s job was to prevent the cap from falling into the drain.

  I played often.

  It was stupid.

  It was fun.

  Then there were the two bears.

  The first bear sat beside me.

  Round body. Constant fantasy.

  His obsession was Elaine.

  He would lean toward me during class and whisper, “What should I do? How to talk to her? Should I act cool? Should I ignore her?”

  He treated me like some relationship strategist.

  The irony was thick.

  I did not have a girlfriend in secondary school.

  Yet he believed I had the blueprint.

  Maybe confidence is enough to fool people.

  The second bear was different.

  Bigger frame. Physically imposing.

  Academically terrifying.

  He scored near perfect marks in every exam.

  Technically, the smartest in class.

  But mentally, he lived in a different reality.

  He has mental issues, no joke.

  Bear was his god.

  Not metaphorically.

  Literally.

  He worshipped bears.

  No one was allowed to insult bears.

  If someone joked about bears being clumsy or stupid, he would explode with genuine anger.

  He would go on long explanations about how bears symbolize strength, wisdom, superiority.

  He spoke like a prophet of an imaginary religion.

  And yet, in mathematics and science, he crushed everyone.

  We lost to someone who rejected reality but mastered equations.

  The irony was almost poetic.

  As I sat there in the so called smart class, listening to Lawrence shout across the room, watching Jason in blue uniform patrol corridors, observing Golden glide through conversations effortlessly, hearing Bear preach about divine fur creatures, I felt something strange.

  Primary school was simple.

  Secondary school felt like a preview of adult society.

  Hierarchy.

  Ego.

  Power roles.

  Insecurity masked as aggression.

  Fantasy coexisting with intelligence.

  And I was only in Year 1.

  Four more years in Secondary.

  Then university.

  Then work.

  Then the life that broke me.

  Knowing all of this should make me superior.

  Instead, it made me tired.

  But I also knew something else.

  This time, I am not walking blind.

  I know who becomes what.

  I know who grows taller.

  I know who peaks early.

  I know who regrets later.

  And maybe that knowledge is not for domination.

  Maybe it is for navigation.

  As the bell rang for assembly and the class began moving out in messy lines, Lawrence shouting for order while failing to embody it, I stood up slowly.

  Secondary school had begun.

  The real game was not grades.

  It was positioning.

  And this time, I intended to play it differently.