I never really understood why we need school in the first place. You basically sit around in classrooms and hallways for seven hours and listen to people scream the reasons you're not good enough to achieve anything at you.

Those thoughts are really coming back now, as I'm standing in front of the weird-looking high school my mom dumped me in front of and expected me to be okay going to… Mushroom High. At least, I think that's what the sign says, the letters are so dilapidated and worn out I can only really make out a couple of the letters. Right afterwards some asshole shoves me aside and tells me to move. I narrow my eyes at them. Being a yoshi, everyone feels the need to treat me like shit. Either that or it's because I'm not one of those ridiculously buff jock guys that everyone seems to like for no reason. Whatever the reason is, it's dumb.

I finally walk inside, trying to find where my locker is in this hellhole. Already people are getting into their groups of friends, and I'm alone.

I finally find the accursed metal lump of crap and dump my stuff inside haphazardly. I really don't have a reason to care whether it's clean or not. In middle school I held the record for the most shittily-organized locker in school. I don't plan to screw up that streak in high school.

It's not like anyone else cares what I'm doing, anyway. Not very many people seem to acknowledge my existence. It used to bother me when I was a little kid, when my life was still all sunshine and rainbows, and crap like that. But now? I honestly don't give two shits about it. I quite like being the little fish in the big pond, actually. At least there's less trouble that comes when only about five people know your name.

Speaking of trouble, one of my only friends, Toad, runs past me at breakneck speed. He's a toad, and, like me, was also named the most common name of his race, because both of our parents are idiots. So, being a toad, he's short and kind of chubby, and he's kind of got baby-face syndrome. When he runs past, a bunch of notebooks and pencils fly out of his unzipped backpack, and he's screaming something. I can't figure out who or what he's frantically screeching about in his raspy voice until I see Bowser himself at the end of the hallway.

Once an asshole, always an asshole, apparently.

Bowser was the one kid in elementary and middle school who would go out of his way to hurt people, be it physically or mentally. I've never liked him, since I was an honorary victim a lot of times, and also the fact that people like him make me want to puke. I can already taste my own vomit rising in my throat. Not out of fear, but disgust. It tastes horrible. I swallow the bile back down, not wanting to throw up in front of everyone on the first day of school. That would just be embarrassing.

Bowser almost walks past me, then spots me out of the corner of his eye and turns to face me. Oh my lord, he's somehow gotten even uglier than the last time I saw him. I almost cringe, but catch myself. I'd rather not get flattened by someone who's two or three times my size and ten times my weight.

He gets closer to me, forcing me to back up against my own locker. His breath reeks of rotting milk and assorted other garbage he pumped into his fat self this morning, making my urge to throw up even worse due to my sensitive sense of smell.

"Move, you piece of shit," he growls. "You're standing in front of my locker."

I look over to where his gaze is going. It's locked on the locker next to mine. Of course. I have to share a space with the biggest asshole I ever met every morning for nine months. I frown a bit, then move to the side as told. He grins. "A coward like always," he remarks. I say nothing. It's not like I care anyway. I sling my backpack over my shoulder.

"What's the matter, you little bitch? Cat got your long-ass tongue?" Bowser continued, trying to make me react. I still say nothing, walking away. I've been around this asshole long enough to know that he just likes to make people feel like shit. So I choose to not let his remarks bother me.

"Hey!" He growls, following me as I walk down the hallway. "Answer me, you bastard!"

I grit my teeth and walk faster. Bowser quickens his pace, too, stomping after me. "You think you're all edgy now because you're dad's dead, Yoshi?" he snarls at me. He seems pissed off that I'm not answering him. "Not at all," I reply instead of punching him. "I'm just sick of smelling your moldy milk breath that you're too dense to notice you have."

Bowser reels back, not expecting me to insult him. He was probably expecting me to start crying, the sadistic bastard. I've grown numb to him insulting me. If anyone else mentioned my father in an insult, I probably would have punched them. But Bowser? He's old news. He stopped getting to me in seventh grade. I smirk a bit as his face when I get far enough away from him. Toad peeps out from a wall. "He's gone, right?" he asks meekly. He's one of Bowser's main targets, so of course he's scared. I nod, then add, "For now. Anyway, we should probably get moving. He's probably going to try to find me and knock my teeth out for that. And I don't even know what you tried to do."

Toad blinks at me in a confused manner, then says, "I just said that he should watch his language," he says. I facepalm, shake my head, and blindly try to search for my first class.

After getting there I sit down and shut up, not wanting to draw any attention to myself. I sit awkwardly through the rest of my classes up until lunch, snarf down my food, and prepare to leave…

At least until Bowser suddenly steps in front of me. "You know that little stunt you pulled earlier?" he growls. I remain silent.

That is, until he punches me in the side of the face, hard.

My head snaps to the side from the force of the blow and I fall awkwardly onto the floor with a small grunt. "Stop being such a smartass. I know you're a weak little bitch like your dumb friends, Yoshi… stop hiding it. You're only fooling yourself. You're just a dumb yoshi."

I'm still on the floor. My head hurts, the whole world is spinning and I feel like I'm going to throw up. He might have given me a concussion just from that one blow.

And the other kids? They're either staring at me or completely minding their own business. Except for one girl who comes to help me.

She kneels to my height so I can see her. In front of me crouches an angel. The girl in question has long, platinum blonde hair with the bangs swept over one eye, she's wearing a light blue turtleneck and a denim skirt with leggings and some kind of shoes I'm too poor to know the brand of. "Hey… are you alright…?" she asks.

Damnit. Even her voice is amazing.

I try to shake off the cobwebs in my head. "U-uh… yeah…" I say, touching a hand to my now bruised cheek. I taste blood. MY blood. That overgrown turtle punched me in the face so hard my own teeth cut the inside of my mouth.

She helps me up. "He hit you pretty hard…" she says, trying to start up a conversation to make it less awkward. Now that we're standing, somehow it's even MORE awkward because she's probably two heads taller than me.

I rub my cheek. My face burns from the pain of the wound I received, and also embarrassment. "Yeah…" I reply. "He does this a lot… to a lot of other people."

The girl sighs. "I know. I've seen it. I really wish people wouldn't hurt each other like that…"

She continues talking to me. WHY is she bothering with talking to me? ME?! Because, last time I checked, yoshies like me aren't really considered sexy. Probably more on the lines of what-the-hell-is-that-oh-lord-kill-it kind of responses. Meanwhile, this girl is probably the most attractive person I've ever met. I try to smile and keep up with the conversation, but smiling is a bit hard when you've got a bruise the size of a small melon swelling up. She notices how bad it is after a while.

"You should… probably go to the nurse for that…" she says after a while of completely unbroken, awkward silence.

I nod. "Uh… by the way… I never got your name… I'm Yoshi," I say. Then I faceplam myself in my head. The hell are you DOING?! She's never going to even want to be associated with you, AT ALL. Especially since she saw you get your ass handed to you by a fat turtle!

The girl smiles. "Oh… my name…? I'm Rosalina," she says. Of course that's her name. I wouldn't expect anything less from a girl like her. Her parents are naming experts, unlike any yoshi in existence. My dad's name was literally "Yoshiro", basically the dumbest name on the planet.

Rosalina smiles at me. For some reason, it makes me feel warm inside. It feels… nice. Great. Literally the first day of school and I'm already freaking out over a girl that is most definitely WAY out of my league. I want to be mad at myself, but I can't. Instead, I continue to stand there like an idiot as she asks me if I know where the nurse's office is from where we are. I shake my head like a complete dork.

"You go down that hall there, take a left, go up the stairs, and it's right next to the principal's office," she says in the calmest voice I've ever heard.

"Ok… thanks a lot. For helping me and stuff…" I say like the awkward, sorry bastard I am. She smiles again. "No problem. I'll see you later, Yoshi," she says, then walks down the hall away from me. I keep staring like a lovesick dog until she's out of sight, then make my way to the nurse's office.

Literally all the nurse does is give me a bag of ice to stop the swelling, then send me back to class. I'm guessing she's the type of lady who'd try to fix a bullet to the head with a band aid.

I slouch in my chair with the ice pack pressed to my face. I have to admit, it feels pretty good, until later when I nearly freeze the skin on my cheek off. I eat the rest of the unmelted ice chunks while everyone in class stares at me.

After more boring classes, the final bell rings and everyone goes nuts trying to get outside to the bus, basically meaning more people shoving me into the walls.

Once I get off of the bus, I walk into my house. It's a tiny little place, meant for only one or two people. Which is good, considering that it's just me and my mom living alone. Yep. I'm an only child.

I open the door, chuck my backpack onto the floor and collapse onto the couch like the tired, lovestruck, in-pain sad sack I am. I remain there for several hours until my mom gets back from work.

"Yoshi, I'm home!" She calls, probably expecting me to be upstairs in my room, but gets startled when I raise my head tiredly off of the couch. She of course freaks out over the bruise on my face.

"What happened…?" she murmurs quietly, examining my face closely as if it were a crime scene. Which, in a sense, it kind of is. I run my tongue across the cut on the inside of my cheek. It still tastes like blood.

"Bowser punched me in the face because I told him he had rotten milk breath," I tell her, she frowns at the sound of his name. "Of course it's Bowser…" she says. She seems to have had about enough of his shit.

Same, mom. Same.

"Also… come on, Yoshi… rotten milk breath? I know you can do better than that. You're MY son," my mom says, giving my shoulders a squeeze. I snicker a bit. My mom's the greatest. She's been able to put up with my crap all of these years without chucking me out of a five story window. Of course I can't help but love her.

"It's true though!" I say, defending myself. "It's like he went over to a garbage disposal full of moldy cheese and chugged the contents!"

My mom laughs, then her face gets solemn. "...if this is really what happened on your first day of school… I'm a little worried about you."

"I'll be alright," I say. Of course I think about Rosalina when I say that. Because of course I do. I'm obsessing over her, and I don't even know her last name or anything.

Later that night, I'm still thinking over everything that happened. I bet Bowser was satisfied because he punched me. So that's a plus, at least he'll leave me alone. I toss and turn for a while. But now what? Of course, I'll have to actually, you know, get to know the girl I met. Eventually, when I'm so tired I can barely keep my eyes open, I fall asleep.