HALCYON

SHOJIKI

I first realized how much I loved compliments in John's first period class.
Tuesday. March 28, 2019.

It was 8:00 A.M, when John announced that he was going to be passing out our test results, from the test we took the day before, the 27th. He graded all of our work fast, because it "prevented procrastination,"and he always passed back our results in alphabetical order.

Bao's knee stopped bouncing beside me, then he suddenly spun around in his chair, which caused his knee to clash into mine. He looked up, and even though I was sure why he had been in that state-I still wondered what had made him so fidgety.

"Are you alright?" I voiced my concern.

His eyes zoned in on mine, he seemed to be debating if he should lie or not, I could only tell because he looked exactly how I felt when I was deciding whether to lie or not.
He chose the latter.

"I'm...worried? I don't think I did well on my test. I am not good at English."
He sighed out.

Bao had been homeschooled up until that year, our junior year. He never talked about his parents with me, but I assumed that they were the reason he stayed homeschooled that long-not that I had the guts to ever ask him.
Anyway, he was a foreigner and spoke Vietnamese at home a lot, so he barely used his English then.

When he was finally enrolled in Redwood, to get him used to speaking more English, that apparently would "help better his interactions with others,"(even though there were other people who spoke Vietnamese here-even teachers, and he was completely fluent in both languages)-he was required to take English twice.

Even though he did not want a career in literature like me, or was he particularly 'good' at the subject. He had an accent, but his pronunciation was good.
I thought that should've been good enough to only take English once but, the school required it anyway.

I thought this was unfortunate for him,

but I was so glad that he was in both of my

classes with me.

His leg had stopped bouncing but his face showed what he had felt, his eyes were the most frantic I'd seen them at the time.
After a couple of months of being friends with Bao, I felt I knew everything and nothing at the same time. He told me much more than I told him, but I still did not know much. I knew things that made him stressed, like his studies and such,

but I wanted to know what calmed him.

I wanted to know how I could give him consolation.

So, I offered what I knew.

"Bao, to get stressed like this-is to block out the chance that you might've gotten a good score. You aren't good at anything you say you're not good at," I paused, sighed, and continued,

"You studied, and you studied well. If you didn't do well, than you'll just have to study better next time. You're not bad at English Bao."

I rambled, I know I did,

but I wanted him to be more optimistic about it,