esther kim || district three || cb || fin

For seventeen years, it was as if the hands of fate had laid down the red carpet directly at your feet personally. Your life was one that could have no wrong impede it, your person one full of honor and brilliance all at once. The top of your class ever since you first stepped foot in kindergarten, the girl who all had thought would change the world.

But behind the scenes lay jealousy. A number of boys, nearly as brilliant but lacking the magic touch that propelled you to the top, unable to believe that a girl could be more talented than them. No matter how hard they tried, you always remained one, two, even three steps ahead of them at every academic turn. And it became clear that there would be no way to unseat you from the throne already being prepared for you through conventional means.

So they turned to sabotage instead. A harmless prank, they later said, meant to scare you and distract you but not cripple you for life. But even with the evidence clearly at hand, even with the irreparable damage that acid on your face, over your eyes, would cause, your headmaster chose quantity over quality, believed the boys in their proclaimed innocence so he would lose one bright mind instead of four. And just like that, you had gone from heir presumptive to crippled, useless outcast.

But though you might no longer have your sight, you still have possession of your wit. And contrary to what others might think, you have not forgotten.

And nor have you forgiven, either.