2002 was supposed to have been a great year for Nyoko Goshima. After all, it was a palindrome year, and those only tended to come around every once in a while. It was also the year when she was supposed to start gaining her independence and start feeling like a teenager. It was supposed to be the year for her, but despite a promising start, it didn't quite work out that way.

It all started on May 29th, the last Wednesday of the month and the last day of school. Nyoko could hardly sleep the night before, as she'd been looking forward to leaving West Jefferson Middle School all month. Her triplet sisters Momoko and Miyako begged to differ, however. They just wanted to get the whole thing over with.

Just like her sisters, Momoko had pale skin, dark brown eyes, and dark hair. However, unlike her sisters, Momoko had copious freckles on her cheeks. She also had her short dark hair done up into a simple ponytail. As for Miyako, she had her dark hair styled in a short, curly bob with flat bangs. For their last day of middle school, Momoko and Miyako decided to at least leave it on a fashionable note with light azure blue Baby Phat logo print T-shirts, matching sweatpants, and snow-white platform shoes.

Nyoko, on the other hand, had dark chin-length hair with long bangs and fringe that covered her entire forehead, which occasionally looked messier and rounded. She wasn't feeling as fashionable as Momoko or Miyako today (nor did she ever), so for the last day of middle school, she decided to just wear a magenta Baby Phat logo pullover hoodie with Bermuda shorts and DC shoes.

Just as the Goshima triplets were heading out for the bus, their parents decided to send them off with some hugs and kisses and some declarations that they hoped the girls had a wonderful last day of school. Soon enough, the Goshima sisters all headed out onto the West Jefferson Middle School bus and decided to endure the ride over. They all took an empty seat somewhere between the front of the bus and the back. Unfortunately for Nyoko, she drew the short end of the stick and had to sit all the way at the end of the seat, leaving her open to harassment from Eric Cartman.

"Oh man, I can't wait until school's out for the summer," Momoko said giddily.

"Me neither," Miyako rejoined in the same manner. "I just wanna go to that Organization XII concert already!"

Nyoko proceeded to tune out her sisters' conversation about their plans for the summer while listening to her iPod. She really didn't like having to listen to her sisters yap on about that concert their parents promised to take them to next month. She already knew about it. She didn't need to hear them blab on about it a million times. Not helped was when Eric started hurling insults her way.

"Hey, don't sit so close to me, pig slut!" Eric yelled out to her.

But Nyoko paid him no mind. He'd been tormenting her like this ever since they were in sixth grade. Surely, two years of this would be downright awful, but it didn't seem to affect Nyoko all that much... at least on the surface. Deep down, Eric's bigoted comments actually stung. They stung to the point where she constantly worried about developing an eating disorder, so the best she could do was plug her earphones into her iPod and tune him out before she could seriously hurt herself.

"You hear what I said, you bitch?!" Eric yelled at her again. "I said don't sit so close to me!"

It wasn't long before Kyle Broflovski, a thirteen-year-old boy with tightly curled red hair, whirled his head around at the overweight brown-haired boy.

"Shut up, you fatass!" the red-haired boy yelled at Eric.

"I wasn't talking to you, Kyle, you fucking Jew!" Eric yelled back.

"Just leave her alone, okay?!"

"Make me!"

Kyle got up from his seat at the back of the bus and then started throwing punches at Eric, instigating a full-scale school bus fight that lasted all the way until they stopped at the school.

"Hey, both of you!" the bus driver yelled at the boys. "Knock it off! We're here."

The two boys instantly stopped fighting and zipped right out of the school bus, with the other kids not far behind.


Nyoko's first class of the day was English class, as taught by a woman called Mrs. Nguyen. Nyoko had always liked English class. It was one of the driving forces for her to start writing poetry and stories, most notably poetry regarding her own feelings of the world around her. It helped that Mrs. Nguyen was one of her favorite English teachers of all time. Mrs. Nguyen was someone Nyoko could confide in over their experiences as Asian women (half-Asian, in Nyoko's case), how those experiences shaped them as people. In fact, Mrs. Nguyen would outright encourage the thirteen-year-old student to try writing from the heart, as poets and writers were wont to do.

"Alright, students," Mrs. Nguyen began to speak. "Since today is the last day of school, I thought that maybe instead of having you do an assignment, we would get to do a fun activity."

"What kind of activity?" Nyoko asked curiously while leaning in.

"What I would like for you all to do is to pick ten words that you think describe what you want your future to be. You can use the dictionary if you want, but it's more interesting to see what you can come up with on your own."

"Cool!"

"Alright, you guys have about ten minutes." Mrs. Nguyen pulled out a timer and cranked the handle so that it started at ten minutes. "Your time starts now."

All of the students, including Nyoko, got to work thinking up words they thought described what they wanted their future to be. Nyoko especially was quick on her feet and had thought up exactly ten words that seemed to honestly describe her future aspirations on paper. Soon, the timer went off to indicate that the ten minutes were up.

"Okay, class," Mrs. Nguyen began to speak again. "Time's up. It's time to reveal what words you wrote down. Uh... Nyoko, since you're the best student in the class, why don't you go first?"

"Sure thing, Mrs. Nguyen." Nyoko got up to the front of the class and started reading out her required ten words. "Author. Poet. Activist. Philocalist. Raconteur. Traveler. Strikhedonia. Livsnjutare. Novaturient. Eviternity."

Half of the class started politely clapping for Nyoko, as they couldn't help but be moved by her choice of ten words.

"Very nice, Nyoko," Mrs. Nguyen said. "It seems you're light-years ahead of the other students in terms of vocabulary."

"Thanks," Nyoko replied. "I've been reading up on words on the Internet, though I've had to deal with problems with the dial-up whenever someone uses the phone."

Mrs. Nguyen chuckled. "Believe me, I'm right there with you. Alright, you can go back to your seat."

Nyoko did just that. From that point on, she just watched as other students brought up their required ten words and got some feedback from the teacher. Man, was she going to miss being in Mrs. Nguyen's class. She couldn't be sure what high school would actually be like, but what she could be sure was that it wouldn't be as fun if there weren't going to be English teachers like Mrs. Nguyen who were open and supportive of her writing.


At lunchtime, Nyoko met up with her sisters and some other kids at a cafeteria table, catching up on all the things they'd gotten up to on the last day of school. Nyoko was so happy that they would be getting out for summer break and how this was opening up opportunities to write as much poetry as she wanted, and she was even saying as much, but Momoko and Miyako were having none of it.

"O-M-G, Nyoko!" Miyako burbled. "Can you just shut up for one second? I'm so sick of your crap!"

"Yeah, Nyoko," Momoko rejoined, albeit somewhat reluctantly. "Why don't you shut up? No one cares about your stupid poetry."

Momoko's acquaintance Stan Marsh, a boy with dark hair, just sat there and listened to her belittle and insult her triplet sister. As much as he wanted to stand up for Nyoko and tell her sisters to fuck right off, he was afraid to piss her off. Not to mention, he was dealing with some heavy stuff as is, so he didn't have much of the drive to do it anyway.

"Well, what about that Organization XII concert?" Nyoko asked, attempting to diffuse the bullying even if just a little bit.

"Well, if memory serves me right, they're supposed to play at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre sometime in June," Kyle replied. "Fingerbang is supposed to open for them."

Fingerbang was the name of the band Stan and Kyle had started with Eric and Kenny McCormick after Eric had had a dream about making $10 million, which he also interpreted as being a sign from God.

"Wow, how did you manage that, Kyle?" Momoko asked curiously.

"Well, we filmed a music video on videotape with these stupid little costumes," Kyle replied. "We didn't find out that we'd filmed over Eric's mom's sex tape until we got a call from Goldie Diamond over at Diamond Bright Records that she liked the sex tape we sent her and she let us open for Organization XII."

"Too bad Nyoko will never be good enough to get a sex tape of her own," Miyako said snidely.

"Yeah, no kidding," Momoko chimed in.

Momoko and Miyako then started laughing their asses off.

"Hey, can you just knock it off?" Kyle asked, a little pissed off by what Momoko and Miyako were doing to their triplet sister. "Nyoko doesn't deserve this crap."

"Nobody asked, you fucking Jew," Miyako replied, again snidely.

Kyle decided to get up from the lunch table at that point. "Not cool, girls." Kyle slung a backpack strap over his shoulder. "Feel free to call me whenever you melt from being frigid bitches." With that, he stormed off.

Stan looked back at Kyle and then back at the girls. "Hey, if it's alright with you guys... um, do you maybe want to be... backup dancers for Fingerbang?"

Momoko pointed at herself. "Us? Backup dancers for Fingerbang? We'd love to!"

"Cool. I'll just tell Kyle that you're sorry that you called him a Jew and that you wanted to be backup dancers for us."

"Wow, thanks, Stan! You're so awesome."

Stan smiled despite himself. "No problem. It was the least I could do for you guys."

Once everyone was finished with their lunches, they all went off to their fourth period classes. The Goshima sisters had a good feeling about this.