How long has Nikolai been attending this school? How long has he been bullied for his accent? How many times has he wished to go back to Russia so he could see all of his friends again, and see his papa and cat? But no, he was stuck here at this richy, private school that he only got into because of his grades, and the fact that he was from a different country. Maybe he shouldn't have taken that test.

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So, now he was here, getting called a Commie by a good chunk of his classmates. Which didn't even make sense, no one he knew was a communist at all! Neither was his dedushka, and that was saying something! No matter how many times he shot back with the truth, his classmates would laugh at him (and his accent) until their teacher told them to shut up. One of the worst things ever was his known nickname. Out of everything that his classmates could call him, they stuck with commie. 

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When he talked to his papa about it, he just laughed in his face (well, it was actually over the phone) and told him to stop being a cabbage. That didn't help at all.

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So honestly? Nikolai really wanted to go home and sleep all day, but he couldn't. Being at Anagraphe was a privilege, and Nikolai wanted to show everyone who doubted him at home that he could actually live in America. The children were mean to him, but he still somehow toughed through it, ignoring the mean and snide comments, and crying when he was alone in his room.

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Yeah, he knew that crying probably wasn't the best way to explain his feelings. But it wasn't like his papa was going to try and help him, nor console him at all. He didn't really have friends at the moment, he somewhat knew the kid next door, but that wasn't anything too noteworthy. 

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Now he was walking down the hallways of this famous, small high school, his uniform stained with... something that he couldn't quite tell. It was orange, and it smelled weird, it didn't exactly smell like oranges, so he could cross that out. Every step that he took closer to his English class, the bigger it seemed to get. It wasn't like he could hide the stain either, his blazer couldn't hide it. Yay...

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So now he was in the worst class of the day. English. It's not like he didn't like the subject itself, he liked reading the books that the teacher gave out to the class, but, whenever he had to read in front of everyone, he hated it. Sitting in the middle of four people who continuously ask if you had guns was annoying, it was the same thing over and over again, and he would always give the same answer.

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"Hey!" Oh no, here they come again. Nikolai stared at the group of boys sitting in a diamond-like shape, with his desk right in the middle of it all. Nikolai could just turn around and walk out of the classroom, but their teacher is right there, he can't. No matter how much he wants to. Nikolai sub-consciously pulled on the flaps of his hat's ears, mumbling a Russian curse as he walked to his desk, sitting down once he got there.

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The guy in front of him turned to face him, Nikolai didn't say a word as he pulled that they were reading in class. Finally, after the guy flicked his forehead, Nikolai glanced up, his eyes narrowed. "I've been studying some Russian in my free time," he's going to make a mean joke, isn't he? And probably bad too, Nikolai knew that Russian was a hard language, but English was even harder. "Tvoya mat' shlyukha,"

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Nikolai blinked, somehow he knew that the guy was going to say this. "My mother is dead," that was true, his mother is dead, she's been dead for a while now. Nikolai flipped his book open to the page that he was on last night, he did some light reading last night simply because of how bored he was. Normally, he would've just played some games, but it was late, and all of his Russian friends are at school at that time.

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"Your mother must've died from all of that fu-" the guy got cut off as soon as Nikolai started to reach for his bag. Nikolai stared at him, he wasn't looking in a mirror at the time, but he could tell that his eyes were swimming in despair. "W-Woah dude! I was only joking! No need to get mad at me!" Ah... the guy was panicking now, he must've thought that Nikolai had a gun in his bag or something along those lines. He doesn't understand why, Nikolai has stated multiple times that he hates guns and everything like that.

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Some time passed after that, they were reading a few excerpts from it, which wouldn't have been so bad if the person who was reading before him told Nikolai to continue reading on. It's not like he didn't know how to read English or anything like that, but it's because the passage that he was reading had a whole bunch of 'Importance' which is a word that Nikolai cannot pronounce no matter how hard he tries.

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So, he stood up, hands shaking for a moment as he cleared his throat. "Terresa was crying when she saw that Ethan had woken up, whispering to him softly: "You were my utmost im...importance-" he mispronounced it, there were a few snickers in the crowd, but he continued to read on. "For the entire time that you were in this coma." Terresa moved some of Ethan's hair back. Importance-" his mispronounced it again. 

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"Nikolai," The teacher spoke, looking up from her own book at her desk. "Just sit down, Zeke, continue reading where he left off," Nikolai stopped where he was, his eyes darting around the room as Zeke stood up from his own desk to start reading. Sitting back down, he hid his face with his book. There was one major bad thing with Nikolai in his own opinion, and that was how pale his face was. Whenever he blushes, you could obviously see it from a good ways away. It was... how could he put this? Embarrassing.

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Nikolai's eyes burned holes into his book, not daring to look up from it. The chances that someone could be staring at him were high still. He'll have to keep his head down for the rest of the- "A letter for the commie!" The kid next to him said, slapping a letter down on his desk with a loud thud. The teacher yelled at him for disrupting the class, but Nikolai didn't bother to listen to her yell for five minutes. Instead, he read the letter.

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He knew this handwriting; Leporidae Gray, one of the few people that actually has nice handwriting in this class. It was neat, and curved a lot, loops in almost everything. Yet, no matter how fancy his writing could get, it was still so legible. Nikolai was jealous about it too, his handwriting was almost the exact opposite. Messy and the words bunched up a lot, a lot of his essays would get points docked for how hard it was to read. He wouldn't call it chicken scratch, but it was getting there.

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At the end of the letter, there was something that really surprised him. His phone number, and a little note that said: "Maybe we can be friends! I can introduce you to my other friends!" with a little doodle of himself (so Leporidae was good at writing AND a good artist? He has to be bad at something... right?) giving him a thumbs up. Nikolai would have to put his number into his phone when he got back to his room.

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Hey... Who knew it? Even now, Nikolai can't believe that a bullying situation for his race gave him the group of friends he had now. It was then, too, that Nikolai smiled for the first time in his freshman year.