KUCI

It is impossible for me to forget a boy named Kuci. Tall, slander, good looking kind of guy if you kind enough to put your standard bar a little bit lower than your usual standard. I remember Kuci had a big black mole stamped on his cheek. It was like the size of Perlis or Malacca, me and my friends made a joke out of it. Come to think again, it was a funny joke if only people can see what we saw. Those were the days when jokes are all the matters.

I remember that Kuci came from a poor family background. In fact, he was so poor, often during our recess time, Kuci can only watched us eating our meals while he, himself did not even touch a slice of bread if given by the Makcik Kantin who I believe the only person that sympathized him. He always managed to escape ‘those donations’ by refusing it with a polite smile on his face. The thing about watching him is, I really don’t understand why Kuci always preferred to watch us from the top of his “canteen’s chair”. Yes, Kuci had his canteen’s chair for himself. It was black, tall but seemed to be made from a good quality kind of wood like mahogany or ‘Cengal’. My friends told me that Kuci made the chair himself and that was the reason why people were not allowed to sit with him on his chair. I don’t mind though since I like the chair that the school provided us with. Small, creaking like a mad banshee and always seem to be at the edge of self-collapsing. I guess the condition and the sound made by it were the reason why I like to sit on my school given chair.

The thing about Kuci and his chair is that while people usually sit on their chair, Kuci had a very unusual habit to stand on his majestic chair like someone who got punished for doing something stupid in classroom and watch us while we were eating. Most of the boys and the girls in our school think that the thing Kuci did was a little bit creepy. I used to think that he was mental or retarded for that but everybody knew that Kuci was the top student at our school since he started to come when we were in form two. Nobody knows where did he come from or where did he go to school before he turned up into ours. It seemed that nobody cared enough to find out.

Kuci was just probably as much as normal boy like us. I mean, put aside the creepy and weird habit of him with his beloved chair, I believed he could be a real candidate for the most popular hunk in our school (we don’t have too many good looking guys in our school). Once I found out that a couple of girls had sent him an invitation letter for the upcoming Valentine’s Day. One of them was of course Leela, to whom I was so madly in love with. Leela was the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen in my entire life. He had a set of eyes that could melt you down before you could blink your eyes and her smile can make your life crumbles and make you wish you were never born. Well, it was true because after I knew Leela had sent an invitation letter to Kuci, my life crumbled. I remember, for three days in a row I cried like a little girl who lost her most treasured possession. I was heart broken and at that time, for the first time in my life, I learned the reality of love.

But Leela never had a chance to go out with Kuci. Kuci rejected her and the few others by simply told them that he was not interested. I became his great admirer after that because I knew Leela had to accept the rejection in the hardest possible kind of way since Kuci made the official rejection on his majestic chair during the recess. Leela screamed so hard and ran to the toilet and I was not really sure about my reaction when I saw the incident but I do remember the smile that was carved on my lips. It was the most beautiful smile I could ever conjure in a million years.

Kuci had a very special way to make the teachers annoyed. Often Kuci will address the things that he thinks should be corrected like the arrangement of chairs, the availability of teachers during off hours and the making and amendment of laws that the school should seriously think of like the abolishment of sex segregation law during assembly and the introduction of smoking areas at school compound. Usually Kuci will pick his time to deliver these ideas during the recess time. Once he got up to his self-made chair, he will raise his hands to let us know that we should listen to him. I really don’t know how but we all listened to him. I must admit that Kuci made a very good speech each time he was on his chair. It was odd though because no matter how annoyed the teachers were, they never seemed to care to stop him. Perhaps maybe the level of democracy was very high back then or they simply think that Kuci was just to entertain his school mates and should never be bothered. Once Kuci even managed to organize a hunger strike campaign because he thought the school had deliberately oppressing the poor by raising the PIBG’s fee from Rm 400 to Rm 890 per year. It lasted for one week where Kuci and a dozen of his followers tied their hands together with each other until our headmaster and a representative from the PIBG dared to face them. Consequently, the hunger strike group managed to lower down the fee to RM 300 for the poor. Rumors had it that Kuci paid the amount that the rich paid because he thought that he was not poor enough to pay the new standard price for the poor even though everyone knew Kuci was the poorest student in our school. If you asked me how poor Kuci was, I would say that he was twice as poor as the second poorest guy in our school. Nonetheless, the hunger campaign was a success even though Kuci lost two of his great companions. They were both suffered a major gastric complication and had to be sent to the hospital. Kuci personally paid his tribute by lowering down the school’s flag for two straight weeks.

Since Kuci was the very top student in our school, he usually gets the chance to represent the school in many academic competitions across the state. He was the star of our school like Zainal Abidin Hassan to Selangor’s team once. I used to represent my school in the Kuiz Keselamatan Jalan Raya once and of course Kuci was there also. He was the first seed of the competition where I was the 34th seed out of 55 seeds. In that competition we were instructed to drive our 'car' for 65 kilometres. The least amount of law we break during the journey will be the champ. The cars were equally provided by the organizer but candidate can bring any kind of technology that they think can assist them during the journey. While most of us were fully equipped with gadgets and state of the art navigation systems, I saw Kuci only equipped himself with a map, a compass and a bunch of bananas. Most of our challengers laughed at him. I was of course angry at them and tried to share my GPS with Kuci so we can both defeat the rest of them but to my surprise, Kuci rejected my assistance by telling me that it was no use to share the gadget with me since he knows nothing about how to use it. He, however still thanked me for my kindness and wished me luck. The competition was held in one of the all girls’ school in our district and obviously, Kuci instantly became the crowd favorite of the tournament. Amazingly, Kuci led the competition from the first second of the game and even managed to take a break for the rest of us to catch up with him. Nobody knows how did he became so good with the route but I did not really care to investigate much since I knew at that instant, those who were laughing at him must be eating their own hats right now. I ended up the race twenty minutes after Kuci ended his but lucky me, I begged the bronze medal after all.

Though he was so popular outside, he was practically alienated by the students and teachers of his own school. Nobody befriended him and since he once used to humiliate the girls who wanted to go out with him, all the girls in our school seemed to joint in hands to not ever come close to him. As for the teachers, even though Kuci never failed to bring us medals from outside competitions and never handed us his top student award, the teachers seemed to deserted him either. If any official or unofficial matter that they wanted to talk to him, they usually sent letters. To be honest, I really liked Kuci as a person but when I saw the whole school united in alienating him, I joint them. I hated myself back then for being such an ass to him. There were thousand of times when we stumbled to each other during recess, down the filthy black corridor of our school building and inside the toilet and my heart so desperately wanted to say hi or anything but each time of that happened, I could just showed him my smudged face and acted like I was one of his haters.

I remember that it was the saddest dawn I have ever felt in my life. Yes, it was on the 13th September of the following year. I woke up with a feeling of uneasiness in my stomach. My body refused to function as well as I have anticipated each morning and my brain kept on forcing me to continue my sleep. I spent almost one hour on my comfortable Swiss-made bed before I heard my mother yelling out her voice 'persuading' me to get my preparation done.

When I arrived at my school compound, people were already gone to their own classes. I went straight ahead to my science class with a butterfly still lingering in my belly. My brain was too quick in processing a reason and when I told Miss Kamala that the right tire of my dad’s car punctured on our way to school, she nicely let me off. On my way to my sitting place, I saw Kuci was not in the class and it was truly a shock since as far as I can remember, Kuci never missed classes. But just when I was about to sit down, Kuci entered the class.

He was wearing a black army pants with a green singlet. He matches it with his long black and shining army boot and a back pack. I thought he was being silly again when he stopped in front of the class and started to sing a weird song in a weird language. I can hear Miss Kamala scolding him like a mad person but Kuci just kept on singing. I only realized that Kuci was singing a song of a German language after I saw him giving the infamous Nazi’s salute to the class. Everyone was laughing at him accept me for I knew something weird was going on at that particular time. Kuci watched his classmate around and stopped at me. Our eyes truly met for the first time but not a single word was uttered. It was like our mind was trying to tell each other some symbolic messages but the only thing was, I can’t understand any. Everything was so vague at that time. everyone was laughing and Miss Kamala was screaming, I couldn’t hear a single sound and every movement was like a slow motion to me. I tried so hard to understand the looked that Kuci gave me. It was like a gut instinct and though I was not sure, I followed it and looked at each one of my classmate. They were all laughing and for the first time I saw how ugly they were. There was no respect, consideration and love in them. Their face looked so monstrous and I realized how horrible they were all the time because I knew, those were the same faces and behavior that I saw every day and it hit me hard suddenly that perhaps, my face looked exactly like them. I quickly turned my head towards Kuci and there he was…

The universe stopped suddenly and the only thing I could hear was my own beating heart pounding my nerve systems like jet engine. He was holding a shot gun in his left hand and a revolver in his right hand and before I could muster a single idea about the situation that I got into, a loud bang of Kuci’s shot gun erupted towards us. The laughing sound that was faded just then was once again exploded but it was not the same brutish, bestial laugh anymore. The horrible sound gun explosions were waltzing around with the scream of agony. I saw blood splattered everywhere and lifeless bodies swimming in the pool of blood created by Kuci’s wrath.

I stood there in front of Kuci. I was not quite sure why I hadn’t moved to take cover or anything. All I knew was, in the midst of that confusion, I somehow knew that I will not die on that day. Not a single bullet came near me and I was not even touched by a single drop of blood. My eyes set upon Kuci’s eyes but I could still hear the sound of gun roaring here and there.

Kuci finally stopped. Eyes still locked with mine, Kuci, then, gave me the strangest smile I have ever seen in my life before he placed his pistol on his head and pull the trigger himself. One bullet rushed into his fragile head and at once his brain celebrated their freedom by walking out from his head. With smile still on his lips, Kuci was gone…