Living in the lower rink of Ba Sing Se is never easy, or fun, or...well...intelligent. Don't get me wrong, there's exceptions. Take my friend Taichi for example. He's always fooling around and getting us (well, mostly me) in trouble.

"I don't want you to be 'hanging' around with that trouble kid." my father always told me.

"He has a name you know, and were just kids. We're supposed to mess around." I know, I know, I was being rude and should respect my elders blah blah. But people should still have a say for things. One thing my father never really got.

"I dont care, I don't want the...you know who…to be on us because of you and your shenanigans."

"Dear," my mother broke in with the conversation. "just let kids be kids" her warm smile broke the tension. "San be home before dark."

that was one of the last times I ever played with Taichi.

About a month later I found out that he and his family left the city for good. He said he was simply visiting his aunt in Omashu, but we both knew that wasn't true.

Their flat was almost completely untouched besides pictures and small things.

I never exactly knew what happened, no one dares questions it, but we all know that it wasn't for a good thing.

But I like to think that he really did go to Omashu and he's happier there.

Because it's easier that way.

When I was ten I asked my father the one questioned he was seemingly to avoid.

My father dragged me with him to work at the fruit stand because my brother Chow said he was on break and hasn't come back in a good hour. It was mid afternoon so there wasn't much business (even though, according to my father, we had the 'best fruit on the block'). I think he was saying something about the lychee berries and this one customer who gave him a gold piece five years ago, I didn't really catch it.

"Dad can I go to school" oh spirits I was a dead man. He looked at me, not out of anger for asking an almost impossible question, but out of sheer shock. No one else had asked him this, no one in this family has even been out of the lower rink. How the hell was school in any range of questions.

He sounded surprisingly calm, "You know San, school is expensive. Even if we did find a way to pay for it, it wouldn't be for very long. Maybe a year at most. What can you learn in a year?"

Now, that annoyed me

"I just want to read. It's no fun just hearing stories." I bit my tongue, I wanted to say "more than you could ever teach me" but then I'd end up disowned for all I know.

My father went silent, which is almost never a good thing.

"Since when were you so keen about this.." he mumbled. "only if you help out around here, we've got a lot of mouths to feed especially now that your uncle and his family is moving in and-" I was so happy I could've hugged him right there.

Of course, my father was never much of a touchy feely kind of guy, he was more like a rock. Cold and emotionless. Without rambling about how much of a hardass my father was, and how once, when I was eight and my brother five, stuck us in front of a boulder telling us

"Don't come home until you move it." I remember waiting for my brother until sunset because he would've cried if I just left him there.

"I'm sorry" He mumbled through tears. Oh spirits…

"What's there to be sorry for, some people can and some can't" Ah, the famous big brother comforting before the waterworks started to flood.

"b-b-but I made you wait, why didn't you just leave?"

"you would've gotten lost again Chow." no joke, until he was eight he wouldn't go anywhere by himself.

"...no I wouldn't" he would always protest.

"Let's just get home okay?"