"Alright, students, the swimming festival will be happening tomorrow; information has been sent out regarding transport and the activities of the day. Those who participate will represent their house groups, and at the end of the day, the ranking of houses will be announced."

The swimming festival was a day I quite enjoyed. It was something different to the relatively uninteresting classes that I usually attend. It is something more challenging and thus more exhilarating because whilst I likely get the best grades out of everyone, my athletic ability was not yet at a point great enough to swamp the opposition. My favourite part is the rankings, the fact that you can come first, or second, or third. It is something that allows me to quantify my importance in the world in this narrative of mine.After the announcement early in the morning, most students in my year level have a 'free period' where we are allowed to basically do anything we want, whilst technically they encourage you to study during that time. I didn't need to do anything like that, so I made my way towards the pool at our school. Our school was relatively prestigious in the region. Subsequently, it had many facilities such as a private gym and also quite a large private pool centre. I had already prepared myself for today, and I took my sports bag with my bathers and towel inside and entered the reception area of the pool centre.

The workers at the pool were separate from the teachers at the school, so they often didn't care much about what you did. They often looked like they hadn't slept for days, or they were bored out of their minds. I scanned my student card on a little gate near the entrance, and it opened, letting me inside. There were a few other people inside as well, a lifeguard and a teacher who was also swimming. It seemed that the students were likely too busy studying for exams to come to the pool for practice.

In the Side Rooms, I never got to properly swim, and most of my physical exercise was more running and strength-based training, although I never really liked the muscular look on myself, so I haven't been continuing my old training as much. I quickly got changed in the changing rooms, which were pretty well-cleaned. The janitors would clean the bathrooms every night, so except for the ground being a little moist, it was pretty comfortable overall. I jumped into one of the lap lanes in the pool while having been separated by lane ropes and swam a few warm-up laps, just slowly moving, focussing on my arm and leg movements. I made sure to take orderly breaths, sticking my head out of the lightly splashing water and gulping a big breath of air.

The diving boards were all covered with 'not in use' signs; it was likely because there was a safety issue or something to do with them, so they were out of action most of the time unless there was an official swim class or competition. The gentle currents of the water gliding along my body felt comforting; it gave me a good sense of the speed I was swimming at. The water was a little bit cold, but nothing I wasn't used to.

Eventually, after a few light laps, I held onto the edge of the pool and braced myself to go at full speed. Looking up at the seconds clock, I waited till the red hand hit zero and launched myself off the edge of the pool. I pushed myself, kicking as hard as I could and watching the technique of my arms. Before long I reached the other end of the pool, only having a little bit of fatigue hitting my arms at the end. 38 seconds, it wasn't the best I'd ever done, but it was a decent pace. I did a few more laps, practising the different strokes, breaststroke, butterfly and backstroke alongside freestyle. Finally, it was nearly time for the beginning of the next period, so I got out of the pool, had a quick shower and changed back into my normal uniform. Second period was chemistry.

It was the usual slow-paced, boring class that I sat through. There were many students who seemed to be struggling with many of the concepts like electron subshell configuration and molar mass, whilst I thought that the teacher had accidentally taught the entire class at half-speed. We spent way too much of our time during work which might as well have been considered hard labour, which I thought might've been the reason for so many of the students struggling. The teacher seemed to not have been using a very effective method of organisation, it was like she was skimming the hard parts and focusing on the easy parts.

It didn't matter to me, however, for I already had most of the knowledge and any knowledge I didn't know I could usually figure out using a mixture of common sense and previous knowledge or I would just search up and learn in a few minutes. The idea of a teacher was completely unnecessary to me, but it wasn't like I had anything else to do at the time, so I kept at it, mindlessly listening in on the practically useless classes.

A decent amount of time later, it was break time. I would usually either sit by myself watching meaningless cat videos on the internet or go into the gym to do some light running, but since it was the swimming carnival tomorrow, I didn't want to use up too much of my energy today. I decided to just sit by the side of the oval, eating an orange and watching as some of the boys played soccer.

I used to play with them a few years ago, but in recent years, I feel as if I'm no longer welcome, especially since I've always been the only girl. I still watched from time to time, but I never joined in anymore. For some reason, it seemed the boys would always try harder when I was watching, but maybe that was just a coincidence.

This orange is a bit more sour than usual.

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