Bitter Past

It was 8am and the festival had started, leaving excitement to each and every students that had attended. However, Brian's stall that morning had fortunately received a lot of positive treatment by many of the teachers and students.

It was Evelyn, Rebecca, Charlie and Brian's turn to work on the stall by selling their menus while the rest of their team would work in the evening.

They were busy serving their customers their orders that they didn't recognized a specific person walking towards their stall. They thought it was just another customer but turned out it was Mr. Dickson checking on his students work.

"Wow, It's very lively here!" Complimented the proud man, amazed by the numbers of people lining up in front of the stall.

"Maybe it's because they haven't had breakfast yet. Our waffles are definitely suitable for breakfasts," Evelyn kindly replied to Mr. Dickson with a smile, her body never stops working on serving her customers.

"Hey, hey, it's Mr. Dickson. Sir, why not treat us some waffles!" A group of younger students who had just arrived joked, smiling sheepishly to Mr. Dickson who just looked at them with a soft smile. Secretly, they hoped that he would agree and buy some waffles for them.

"Fine, which one do you guys want?" Asked the man, also feeling happy to help his class students' business for the day. It seems that the group of students' trick had worked on him.

"Yay, thanks Mr. Dickson! We want the chocolate one!" They said in a cheerful manner, giddy to get their own waffles. They all had agreed on getting the same type of waffles.

"Alright, I would like 6 chocolate waffles," said Mr. Dickson while Evelyn took his order. He then got dragged by the young students to a different stall. He seems pretty popular amongst the younger students, probably due to his liking on childrens.

Evelyn wrote all of the orders from her customers on different paper bags so that they can easily distinguish their customer's orders and not mix them up. She then handed it over to Charlie. Rebecca and Evelyn continued to work on taking orders while Charlie and Brian swiftly made the waffles.

As Charlie was waiting for the waffles to cook, a sudden memory of him in his previous school popped up in his mind. It seemed that back in his old school, they would also organize the same type of festival and Charlie would always be the person chosen to work from the beginning of the festival, all the way 'til it ended.

-FLASHBACK-

The stall that his team opened was just a small ordinary cafe. At that time, Charlie was put to take orders from the customer. His task had only made an opening for his bully to pick on him while he's on his work.

"Okay, is that it?" Charlie politely asked his customer. While he was peacefully doing his work, his bully had took the opportunity to walk over to his station and pulled him aggresively so that he would take his order. Charlie could only stood there silently as he took the bully's order just like how he would take it from his other customers. And as soon as the bully's order was ready, he immediately served it to him.

"Your food is ready," Charlie quietly said as he carefully placed the pancake in front of the bully. The bully took a good look at the pancake Charlie had served him and smirked. He grabbed it and slapped it onto Charlie's face, giving no absolute mercy to Charlie. Charlie was did so wrong by the bully.

The people that surrounded them was not even brave enough to help him. In fact, they all acted as if nothing had happened in front of them as they continued on doing their thing.

"It's okay, Charlie. Don't cry," Charlie told himself, trying to hold in his tears. He was awfully sad by how he was treated from these people. The bully then smiled in satisfaction, wanting to continue on his little devil work. He grabbed onto Charlie's hair and pulled them as hard as he could in hope that Charlie would feel nothing but pain.

"Nerd like you deserves to be treated this way!" He managed to say as he kept on tugging on Charlie's hair. He took some money from his own pocket and threw it to Charlie's face. He then proudly walked away from the scene. At that time, he had no one that would ask him about his well being.

Just after the bully had left, Charlie immediately picked up the pancake that was scattered all over the floor. He cleaned them all up and went to get permission so that he could rest for a bit from his class president. After receiving a 'yes', he rushed to the rooftop and cried his sadness out as hard as he could.

"I'm tired and I'm sick of facing the same thing everyday," he choked out, letting all of his bottled up feelings out from his cries.

-END OF FLASHBACK-

"DING!" It appeared that the waffles Charlie had waited for was finally done.

"Maybe my luck would change this year," whispered his heart as he walked over to the waffles to get them ready for his customers.