Broken Smile

x • prologue

It was Monday.

Is it normal for someone to be excited rather than be nervous about moving to another school? Because I am!

My name's Hatanaka Eiko, and my mom, sister and I just moved to my grandma's house. Because she got sick, we had to move here and I had to transfer to another school. Well, that, and a really bad case of bullying.

I was always a target at my old school, and I still don't know why. Girls bullied me probably because they didn't like me, and boys... Well, I still have no idea why.

That aside, I'M MOVING TO A NEW SCHOOL! It's so exciting! I can't wait to meet new people...

 
 

•~•~•~•

My mom sends me to my new elementary school. Nervousness aside, I really wanted to make friends, since when I tried to at my old school, I just get "Hi's and Hello's". I probably had, like, two or three friends for five years.

Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating.

But I WAS too young to realize I was already being stabbed in the back by the female friends I kept making in my class back then, so... I was friends with boys most of the time.

I enter my classroom, and wow! A lot of people! I sit next to a girl who was shorter than me, and she shoots me a friendly smile. I smile back, and ask for her name.

"It's nice to meet you!"

"Nice to meet you, too. You're new here?" She asked me, tilting her head. I nodded. I was about to say something when our adviser entered the room and asked the new students to come up front and introduce themselves.

......

Sike, I was the only new student. Bwahahaha.

"M-my name is Hatanaka Eiko. It's nice to meet you!" I greet enthusiastically, even waving at my new classmates.

I got some smiles and waves back, this might be even better than my old school!

•~•~•~•

One week later.

I don't want to go school today.

I take back everything I said.

I wasn't expecting to be bullied like this... To be myself, and they call me "autistic"?

Okay, is there something wrong with me? What did I do to deserve this? It hasn't even been a month and I'm already being treated like this...

Every time a classmate of mine sees me, they call me autistic, and not by my name.

Heck, no! An entire grade level! They knew my face and knew what my classmates called me. It was hell for me.

The only person who stood up for me was my best friend, Mai.

I...

I never understood why... Why being myself led me to getting this kind of treatment.

Why every time I get called for recitation during classes, someone fakes a cough and teases me. O-or the entire class laughs at me when I make a mistake. ESPECIALLY when I'm passionate about something... They tell me, "That's what crazy people do! Ha, you really are autistic!".

I didn't fight back. It's not that I didn't want to, but it was because I can't.

I thought... That my old school wasn't as bad as the school I'm in.

Turns out, public schools were just as bad as private schools.

I was SO wrong in so many ways... That the people in these two kinds of schools would be different... But no.

Society is cruel. I hate it.
.
.
.
.
.

That's... What I thought.

•~•~•~•

Based on a true story.
-ej