VALENFIELDS, ANGLOVA - SEPTEMBER 1994

KEISHIRO

The first Monday of September. Marked as the beginning of a new school year in Anglovan academic calendars, this particular day of the year always reminded you that those seemingly endless beautiful summer days were really over. No more waking up so late in the day feeling so triumphantly free, because it’s time to go back to that dreadful five-times-a-week routine called school. How I wished I could skip through the months like flipping the pages of a calendar, but reality told me that I could do nothing but counting the days slowly until December arrived.

However, this particular first Monday of September would be different, because today was my first time to attend school in my home country. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure what I should be looking forward to, since I didn’t even wanna be here in the first place.

I moved to Japan shortly before I started elementary school, and have been living in Yokohama with my uncle Masato and his family ever since. Every morning, I’d go to school with my cousins, Hitomi and Kazuhiko. Our house is located in Yamate, a hilly residential area in Yokohama. It took about twenty minutes from home to walk to the bus stop, and then we’d jump on a bus that would take us to school within eight minutes. More than often, we’d also meet with our friends along the way, and talk about all kinds of random things as we commuted all the way to school.

To walk and commute among people in public places and interact with them was one of the many things I enjoyed living in Japan; it makes me feel like I was a part of the normal society, giving me the gist of freedom within the constrained life that I actually have.

But now that I’m not in Yokohama anymore, going to school on a public transportation is definitely out of the question, not to mention unavailable - so here I am, heading to my new school while sitting in an overstretched car chauffeured by my valet, with nothing to do but to look out the window while watching the pretty postcard autumn scenery of hills and trees going over and over like one of those moving background used in old movie sets. Unlike Yokohama where the view is always lively, there's not much to see in the quiet and peaceful Valenfields - just endless view of hills, trees, wide open nature fields...and it’s putting me back to sleep. That, or it’s because I stayed up until two a.m watching Astro Boy on VHS last night because I was jet lagged.

I was never a morning person to begin with, and this biological clock issue only made it even worse. The plush leather seat of this car beckoned me to lie down for a bit, but I'm pretty sure that I’d be dead to the world until midday if I did - God knows what my father would do if I dared to skip school on my first day.

And so, I started to dig around, see if there's anything that could kill off my boredom. Damn it, I should've brought some mixtapes to play on the car radio, or maybe a manga to read. But those are still somewhere in the boxes that I hastily packed, probably still on its way to Anglova at this very moment.

I just came back to this country three days ago, and spent the days in my bed recovering from jet lag and exhaustion. With everything happening so fast, I almost forgot that I was still on vacation in Dusseldorf ten days ago-

Damn, I almost forgot that the trip was a vacation to begin with! Pity how good memories were too easy to be forgotten, and the irritating ones stood out in everyone's mind like half-hammered nails on a piece of wood.

After spending a few minutes digging into every hatches and seat pockets, the only thing I could find was a book. The cover was made of fine black leather, giving sort of snobbish, heavy, and important business-y impression that people would nicely define as ‘elegant and luxurious’. On the front cover top, block letters that read STERLING INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL were embossed with gold thread, and right below it was a crest that consists of a lion, an open book and a shield – exactly like the ones stitched on the breast of all of my school-issued tops, including the blazer and the pocket of the dress shirt I’m currently wearing.

So…this is where they’re sending me, huh? I thought.

Sterling International School of Valenfields, Anglova - anyone must’ve heard about that school before. Society out there knows it as the most expensive school in the world, and they weren’t joking - the annual tuition costs about six figures in Anglovan Crowns, which would’ve been more than enough to fund children in one entire poor village in a third-world country with food and education for an entire year. I never had any idea why a school could be so expensive until I put on my uniform this morning and noticed that each piece of clothing were marked with labels from top notch fashion brands – even the bottoms of the school-issued shoes got a designer’s name on them. “Holy crap” was the only word that came into my mind before I put everything on.

…Well, I have nothing to do anyways, so I opened the book - see if there’s anything interesting. I skipped through the long introductions and the some other pages with very long and formal texts that nobody would ever wanna read, and abruptly stopped on a page that showed some photos of the school interior.

For a while, I have completely forgotten that I was looking at a school guidebook. Every part of Sterling is luxurious – even the bathroom looked like the ones that belonged in five-star hotels. And just when I thought having a spa in school is over-the-top, the next section of the book showed that the school have a private airport located about twenty miles outside Valenfields for the ones who commute to Anglova with private jets and helicopters, and they also provide free limousine shuttle to school. Whew, thank god Valenfields is a no-fly zone! Can’t imagine all the noises going over my roof every single goddamn day had they built an airport on the school grounds...

I could already imagine what kind of classmates that I’ll have; future kings and queens, prince and princesses, mega-company heirs and heiresses, and celebrity kids. Filthy rich spoiled brats, as jealous commoners would say.

Hey, speaking of potential classmates - how could I forget about her?