literature

The Youth

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heart-terrors's avatar
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Literature Text

The path to success is an obsession for his family. So, he goes to boarding school because everyone expects it of him and it is natural to follow after his spectacular sister's footsteps.

His uneducated parents tell him this day after day as he grows up and changes from a tiny, scrawny boy who played in the mud and the bushes in the mountain forest to a preteen destined for an educated, successful life. He puts on the school uniform everyday that tells everyone in the crowd that, "yes, I am an intelligent child that gives my parents pride."

He lives in a small town with his father who drives trucks across country and a mother who owns a grocery shop, the town's resource and news center. Everyone knows his mother and everyone knows him, his older sister and his younger brother. Therefore, everyone expects great things from all of them. It's only fitting after his parents saved every cent for their education, put all their lives into bettering the years of their children's lives.

"I can't believe you're her brother."

But not everything is perfect.


Weekly duties are perhaps worse than sitting in class all day, especially in the heat, humidity, sun blaring through the windows. He exhales deeply to dispel the frustration, the exasperation (he's a child, not a slave).

The trash bags are swollen, overweight, and he wonders how his instructors can go through so much waste in a week. In his small hands he bunches as much plastic as he can, hunches over to accompany the exertion. He walks quickly and the bags bang against his legs as he escorts the odorous bunches out the door (though it's hardly worth the hassle).

It's just one of those days when he needs to get home, avoid the judgment, the condescension, the stress. His sister should be let alone to deal with it, not him.

"Aiya..." he mutters to himself, sees in his mind his sister staying up late hours to study, to please her instructors, hears the praise she receives and the reprimands forced upon him. His parents are worrying but he's still not studying for these horrible teachers who oppress him and throw too much trash away.

The irritation of the day builds. He just wants to go home to parents who don't stress too much over him, go to the mountain with his little brother and forget boarding school and growing up, but he can't because this trash is terribly full, there's a stench, a terrible odor leaking from the plastic, and there's something gruesome leaking from the bottom, dripping onto his shoes, onto the floor laboriously kept clean.

And his sister is getting straight A's and his parents are proud of her, disappointed in him and this trash smells and is making everything a mess. These teachers are adults, they're supposed to keep things clean and orderly and set a "perfect" example--

With trembling hands he grabs the chalk, chooses a spot on the wiped down blackboard, stabs quickly the first words that come to his heated mind (in the handwriting they've tried so hard to make perfect): "Please keep your trashcan clean."

He blinks back the burn of anger, slams the chalk down so hard it breaks in two, uses incredible effort to carry the leaking trash bag out without throwing it to the ground, dumping the contents on the instructor's desk, flinging it down the hall.

He hates this place.


His mother answers the phone, unsuspecting. Apprehension settles deep in his stomach and his chest turns to ice (every call has made him jumpy, he's guilty, almost regretful).

From the other room he hears his mother's calm tone, then her words accelerate, the volume escalate and he shuts his eyes. All too quickly it dies down in submission, in resignation because this type of phone call is not a surprise.

He clutches his chest, rolls over on his bed, is tired of that tone in his mother's voice that tells him that it's becoming more and more difficult for her to accept him as her son.


The next morning he walks into the classroom and all eyes are on him, inquisitive, judging. They all know (word spreads so damn fast in this school) and he's angry at all of them because they're obsessed with their school uniform and faulty expectations.

He scans the faces, mildly wondering who ratted him out. He shoots accusatory stares as he makes his way to the back of the classroom (ashamed enough that his seat was towards the back because of his mediocre grades). Before he takes his seat, however, his name is called. He turns his slim body around and exits the room, unsurprised.

The walk down the hallway is long, the dissonance he feels on a daily basis growing with each step. He wonders why things have to be like this, always like this, when all he wants is a trashcan that is not impossible to clean.

As he enters her office, her stare is death, alive and infuriated under sagging eyelids, her jaw clenched tight under drooping skin. Still, he stands straight, intimidated by her authority but determined to have his voice heard.

"How dare you."

He shifts his weight from foot to foot, hands behind his back, wobbly preteen knees clenched together.

"Who do you think you are?" Her unwavering glare, deeply set under liver-spotted skin burns into his skull. "You're just a student."

His teeth are hard pressed as he prays his sister does not come up in conversation.

When he opens his mouth to speak her eyes widen, her appall evident. "But, I didn't write it for you..." her stare, so cold. "I just think it'd make it easier for us."

"You all are students," she interjects, leans back in her chair, crosses her arms. "Don't expect anything more."

He has shamed her and angered her and she dismisses him from the office, seeming pleased to never see him again. He grits his teeth as he exits, suffocated, misunderstood.


A few days later, the youngest instructor approaches him (surprises him, really, he sets his guard up immediately because he can't seem to escape any sort of ridicule lately).

She only shares a few words, for very little are necessary. "Hao-Hsiang Liao, I understand."

It takes a few seconds for the words to register, and still he is speechless. A small smile and she leaves him there, stunned. When his feet can work again he rushes to the restroom.

He locks himself in a stall, grips his chest and cries hard.


That evening, breathless, he lays on the dirt ground of the mountain, is enveloped by the lush greenness and freshness of the season. The water in the creek trickles slowly, the breeze through the leaves whispers gently, and the tadpoles and the insects skitter and buzz. The forest is an entirely different world than the one that hurts him everyday, makes him cry for the strain of discordance.

While on his back he holds up his hands, watches a caterpillar inch its way across his index finger, its body shrinking and stretching as it leads its simple life. The wind pushes through his hair, knocks the little caterpillar body off his finger and he scampers to catch it in his small palms.

In the distance he hears a train horn and he sits up. Under the crimson and purple sunset the train tracks weave and meander, the great mechanical bodies moving along paths to places in the great distance.

Overwhelmed with emotion he falls back onto the ground, switches the caterpillar to another finger and whispers to it a question: "Where do you think the trains go?"

With no response he's left to his imagination, to disappointed parents and a grim future.


Years later he finds himself in the same situation in a different city, a different time and an older state of mind. His parents always seem to be there in his conscience, with their low level of education and their perseverance to raise his, beside his model sister and his younger brother left behind.

That's why he stays with his friends in the arcade; avoids responsibility because it reminds him of what his sister loves and what his brother has had to do without and what his parents regret pushing upon him.

Street Fighters is a much better waste of time than boarding school, anyway.

He and his friends walk quickly into the arcade, straight backs and serious expressions to conceal the whispers of adolescence in their faces and lanky bodies.

"Today was such a drag!" his friend exclaims, throwing his arms into the air, exhaling as if to dispel the stress.

He agrees with silence, runs his fingers across the multi-colored flashing arcade machines they pass. His mind is elsewhere that day, on home, on the same lecture he's going to receive when he comes home late, on how much he detests the reprimands.

Without a word he positions himself in front of his favorite game of the week, reaches into his pocket for some change, focuses himself on the bright light pixels and the mashing of buttons.

The high score was in his range that day, and his determination is strong (stronger than anything he puts forth from the back of the class). He doesn't notice the police officers, the uniforms, the impending reality coming towards him in shoe stomps and a heavy reprimand.

Quickly he moves the joystick, pushes the buttons, eyes fixated on the screen. He fights back a yawn (stays up too late every night doing nothing and gets up too early to catch the train), presses harder on the buttons when the argument of the night before comes to mind.

"Why can't you just be like your sister and study?"

He doesn't have much time for this vivd regret to manifest, for a strong hand yanks him by the collar away from the arcade game. He struggles, coughs, is frightened of the strength and the sudden consequences of his procrastination.

He finds himself outside of the building confronted by the angry stares of policemen. His friends argue with authority helplessly, caught in the trap between youth and apathy and the yearning to grow up and be authority themselves.

"You're not old enough to be in there," the policeman states, attempts to keep his voice low so as not to attract attention.

He does not feel the strength to argue. He looks down, exhausted by authority always hammering him down, pulling him back from the things he enjoys. If only they could just play a few games, they're not hurting anyone--

"You're going to face an exam soon. How can you waste time on things like this?"

He's caught off guard. Blinking a few times, he finds himself paralyzed by the weight of the question. Sure he's a second year student now, but the test is over a year away. Sure it cost his family great money to send him this far away into the city for school, sure it is great stress and continuous worry in the back of everyone's mind when he takes the train there and back everyday with nothing to show for it. Sure he faces disappointment and regret every time he goes home, sure it pains him to see the emptiness in his parents' eyes, to hear the helpless frustration in their voices, to see students pass him in intelligence and reputation and everything--

God, how could he waste time like this with such things on his mind? How could he be stuck in an arcade for hours on end, stuck in the stuffiness of loud noise, bright lights and procrastination when he has his whole life, whole life ahead of him to do...

To do what? He's never really thought about it before. He's just a teenager now, what about when he's old enough to graduate college, to raise a family, to be his parents' age and look back upon his life?

Would he be proud?

He remembers a childish afternoon, a sunset, and a caterpillar crawling its way across his fingertips. Inspiration strikes.

"Where do you think the trains go?"
Comments6
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All-My-Darkness's avatar
Gaming is a terrible thing that society has yet to recognise the danger of

The swift elavations of stature and strength within those false worlds

build addictive habits that drain and dull the thought process.

Im glad he did not succumb to them and continues to what freedoms

his tiresomely restrictive collective google strangling nations allows.

His freedoms will soon be more than most.

He will surely make his parents proud.

Perhaps for those freedoms he will gain

Perhaps for theirs in return for all their loving hard saving.

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A well told tightly paced and enjoyable chronicle.