63 Meeting People 2 (1/2)
The School Fest had been very lively. Aside from the sport matches and stalls, there were concerts being held every night and many bands and idols in the country had been invited to perform. Due to this, from morning to late evening, the school was really alive.
On the evening of the fifth day, the concert time allotted to the invited singers and dancers had been cut in half because a school pageant was scheduled to be held. The huge gymnasium was the venue and the place was fully packed, even the grassy lawn surrounding the open gymnasium turned into a sea of stalls and people. The audience tonight was way more numerous than the previous nights due to the fact that people were more eager to see their own campus beauties and hunks.
As one of the acclaimed campus beauties, Sofony decided to not participate in that pageant. Actually, none of the five people in the Goddesses List came to join the beauty contest. They could choose not to because people had already acknowledged them.
Not sure when it started to become like this, but the pageant turned into a battlefield for those beauties in the reserve list. Felicity Dimatrionez and Gilla Broe were examples of these people. Once they win, they would be acknowledged as a new campus goddess. This was exactly what happened last year to Clarissa Guzman, the known Violent Goddess. Mostly, this was how people from the Goddesses and Gods List got listed. People like Sofony Mendez who got included in the list due to public voting are rare. Probably only two or three out of the whole bunch.
Anyway, in this event, Sofony was still forced to wear a glamorous silver dress due to being one of the judges. She was now sitting below the stage in front of a long table covered with a satiny blue cloth embroidered with intricate patterns. A score sheet laid before her, a pen grasped by her hand. She used it to rhythmically tapped on the surface of the table while watching the ongoing walk. Sometimes her eyes would light up upon the nice faces and figures of the girls and boys modeling on the stage. But more often, she was feeling bored and would pass the time humming or singing along to the loud tune being blasted out by the huge floor-standing speakers.
By all means, she would have preferred to just stay at home than spend half of the night here. Sofony sighed. In the past few days, after all the class activities or whatever programs she had to attend ended, she'd immediately go home and spend the night in a hot embrace. She didn't attend any of the previous night out concerts because she was just not into occasions like this.
If only the school admin didn't make it obligatory for them...
She shook her head and sighed. Her mind went back to the current beauty and hunk contest. Nothing special had happened so far though. Maybe it's due to her increased intelligence, or her increased perception of beauty, but not many contestants succeeded to amaze her. The drop-dead gorgeous ladies seating beside her and giving her advises of all sorts only helped to raise her standards more. It was in this way that her interest gradually lessened.
Probably she only became much more active in her comments and gestures when she saw her sister Steffy appearing as her class' female representative. But that's it. Only when QA time arrived was when she was forced to concentrate on the contest.
She watched as Wendy grilled the unlucky boy who had picked her as his question giver. Sofony's lips curled up because she saw her friend's eyes glistening with mischief. The guy was a familiar face to her. It was the man Felicity thought to be having a relationship with her best friend before she 'died'.
Wendy had asked Chris Meyer how he viewed regret. Apparently, this innocent boy who suddenly turned into a very gloomy, icy person was forced by his classmates to participate in the contest, and he said that was how he viewed regret. He regretted going to school on that day he got voted to participate. He regretted not having enough time to sleep early this night due to this. He regretted having to make himself a clown walking half-naked under the indecent eyes of many men and women.
Naturally, the response elicited many awkward smiles from his class. Wendy's face also darkened but she still gave him a high score due to his response being uncommon. Yeah, when compared to most candidates raining peace and love in their speeches, his answer was quite different from the rest. He magically turned a moment of the contest awkward.
Sofony's turn came when a cute girl from Steffy's grade came out and picked her name from the box. Since she was not really a difficult person like Wendy, she only asked some random but easy questions and scored justifiably. In this contest, she could easily be said to be the most just in scoring since the bored system took the initiative to calculate the points she should give to those fortunate contestants that picked her.
When Steffy came out as the next contestant for the QA, she unluckily picked up Clarissa Guzman's name. Sofony immediately turned to the girl sitting two seats from her left, and worriedly glanced at her sister on stage. She would never forget that particular incident that happened between Steffy and Clarissa's underling. She couldn't help feeling a bit worried.
Sofony knew Clarissa since she's become popular earlier than her. As last year's female winner, Clarissa was really a goddess. Last year, when she was sitting at the audience seats, she quietly did a comparison between Clarissa and Wendy and admitted to herself that the former was actually way charismatic than the other. The beauty level was the same, but Clarissa Guzman, despite having a violent tendency, was a natural stunner. If the girl did nothing but stand next to Wendy, or even Clea, she'd appear a bit more beautiful due to her endless charm, which the two fell short a bit. There was also a bit of aura on her that makes her like someone from the high society.
However, no matter how beautiful Clarissa Guzman was, she would still be forever a Violent Goddess in everyone's mind.