Melting Ice

Chapter 1

“Pstt, there she is again…” “I know right, I don’t even understand why she is the top student here.” “Well, you never know what happens behind the scene…” and the group of people, both females and males, started snickering at the last comment. Their eyes were staring and following every step of a lone girl that had just entered the hallway.

 

Only, the girl walking does not seem to be affected by all the comments that were obviously directed to her by almost everyone she had passed by. She was used to it anyway, the way how everyone in the institute seems to judge people by their outer appearances, and how it just all stops there. The most popular student was the one that dressed the best or had the ‘best’ attitude that sorta led the school population, but nevertheless, the best title was still the best student, the one adored by every teacher in the institute.

 

And that best title goes to her, Jesslia Marin. The student body was unhappy of course, but who else will get the title when she is the only student in the entire arts faculty of the institute to excel in every module or class she had taken. They were only unhappy, because Jesslia was not the type to dress fashionably, not the type to act ‘cool’ like everyone tries so hardly to follow, and not the type to let outer appearance judge her. In fact, it was precisely why she dressed like that, in simple t-shirts and jeans everyday, the type of outfit that the people in the Arts faculty despised.

 

More whispers trailed towards her, commenting and scrutinising every single thing about her, from top to toe, from hair to her shoes. A faint amusement flashed in her soft brown eyes under the thick and ugly spectacles frame she wore, enclosing herself into her world again, far far away from everyone else.

 

~~

 

“Yo dude!” He felt an arm clamp over his shoulders and a face that cannot be any more familiar to him appeared. “Lets say, aren’t you excited for the upcoming school dance? Cause you don’t seem to be.”

 

“Well I am, why do you say so?” He raised an eyebrow at his friend, trying to shrug his friend off him. But his friend kept a strong grip on him, “You haven’t asked anyone out yet, plus you don’t even seemed hyped. Everyone, yes including the Arts faculty, is talking about when and who you’ll ask to the dance.”

 

He shrugged, every part of him expressing his concern about why everyone was so caught up with him anyway. Only to be slapped on the shoulder by his chuckling friend again, and the pair continued walking past the hallway. Everyone they passed stopped whatever they were doing and stared at the duo.

 

The two were what everyone wanted to be, the ones with the best sports achievements most of them could only dreamed of, the ones with the best academic results and the ones that had the entire Sports faculty admiring after him.

 

Lucion Creas, a soccer player of the institute, the one with the best results, the one with the best social skills, the one who had gotten the school more prestige than before, and the one with the thickest facade. A facade that no one could ever see through and thought that it was the real him he was showing to all of them. He could get an award really, after all these years of baricading himself away from the world and only showing them what every single one of them really wants from him.

But he was used to it, all the whispers and comments he’d gotten from everyone around him, expecting him to be this and that. His eyes stared at the world around him blankly and at lost, so full of desire to do what he wants, only to wear his mask once again, the way everyone wants him to act.