This story is a continuation of “Campfire under the Starry Sky.”
“There is a bug in your eye!”
My teacher’s concerned eyes meet mine. I have just come out of the breakfast room and greeted my teacher and a group of friends walking with her.
“Yes, she’s right!” One of my friends exclaims in surprise. “There is a bug in your eye!”
The news does not quite hit me because I cannot picture a bug crawling in my eye. That is beyond my imagination.
“But how did it end up in her eye?” Somebody verbalizes my question.
“We don’t know,” replies my teacher without taking her eyes off my eyes. “It could have been last night when we were at the campfire. In any case, we must notify our headteacher.”
The thing quickly becomes a big news. I am taken to our headteacher, then to the headmaster, who has been travelling with us. Soon, an arrangement is made that the headmaster will drive me to the closest hospital.
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to miss today’s activity for now.”
“How much?” I cannot hide my concern. My concern not for my eye but for having have to miss today’s activity.
“Hopefully not much. But we must take you to the hospital before the bug can go further into your eye. This is the top priority.”
With that, the headmaster and I leave the rest of us behind and hop onto his tiny black car. We drive down the mountain heading to the nearby town. All the while, I sit quietly on the passenger seat, feeling sad to be separated from my friends.
The headmaster is a very kind person, and he tries to cheer me up by talking though without much success. Since I have never personally interacted with him before, I am cautious, choosing to focus my attention on the huge round street lights outside than to engage in the conversation.
Once at the hospital, while waiting for my turn, my kind headmaster offers to buy me a cold drink from the vending machine. But I firmly refuse, following the teaching I have learned somewhere which said not to allow a stranger to treat you.
When my turn comes, the doctor has a quick look at my eyes.
“Oh, that’s the one.”
That is all I hear before he picks up a pair of tweezers and plunges them to the edge of my eye. Before I can feel any fear or panic, the tweezers leave my eye.
“There you go. It’s gone!”
It is good that you came here right away, the doctor says. The bug hasn’t really gone into your eye, that’s why it was easy to remove it.
Relieved that there is no more bug in my eye, the headmaster and I hop back onto his black car. The only sad part is that I have had to miss the whole morning activity. When the headmaster called the rest of the group, he was told that they had just finished their final activity and were now on the way back to kindergarten.
“Where did they go?” Even though I have missed it, I cannot help asking about the place.
“They went to a place called the House of Birds. You can see many different birds there.”
I feel so jealous of others that I almost make a grumpy face, which I somehow manage to hold back. The headmaster has been so kind to help me. It would be awfully impolite to show my disappointment in front of him.
On the way back, the headmaster and I start chatting. My stranger syndrome has dissolved during the hospital adventure, and there is now a friendly air between us. We talk about the passing sceneries and my adventure from yesterday, and before long, we find the yellow kindergarten bus carrying my friends and teachers, and it is time for me to rejoin the others.