Escape From It All
From Create Your Own Story
You remove your hand from the door, having second thoughts about continuing this pointless routine. You turn around, but your heart beats faster as you do so. "What are you doing?" you question yourself. "You'll get detention - or worse, suspended!" In spite of the voice's convincing reasoning, you choose to block it out, partly because a deeper and stronger motivation of breaking free from this endless cycle calls out to you... and partly because you just feel lazy today. Escaping from your troubles is what you do best, after all, and you are in big trouble.
You look at your watch, a cheap Casio brand that says 10:30. This is the first and only time you are late, or absent even. For anyone else, they would merely be given another berating out of the many, but you are in class Alpha, meaning that there would not only be a parent-teacher conference for this mere tardiness, but that scholarship you've worked so hard on would be immediately stripped from you. Your "bright" future in that renowned university that would surely get you into one of the many 9 to 5 desk job processing countless documents for god knows whom is now dimming. Your perfect attendance is now a relic squashed under your own boot.
You are already dead in the eyes of society, no better than a delinquent wasting his life away playing stupid video games that rot away your precious mind while watching those perverted anime as you compensate your loneliness with pitiful masturbation. So you might as well escape, you tell yourself. You have nothing left to lose.
The outside feels different for the first time. You breathe deeply. The air feels fresh, and the world seems colorful. You feel like iron shackles have been removed from you after centuries of imprisonment. Despite the melodrama running through your head, what you truly feel is relief. Your responsibility as an honor student is over. You are now a unique somebody free to do anything you want.
And the first thing you want to do as a symbol of said freedom might be to jump into that mysterious open manhole placed conveniently just a feet away from where you are standing, as if it has been waiting for you since the first day you were admitted into this school. You peer into the darkness, but you could not see the bottom of it. There's a ladder reaching out, however, welcoming you into its embrace...
...or you could just hit the local arcade. You've been wanting to play one of those Street Fighter games the kids from other class were talking about. Sounds like a great way to stick it to the man by performing this vile act of taboo your parents, peers, teachers, and just about everybody warned you not to.
What shall you do?
