Bright School: Prologue (Patreon)

It was nearing the end of senior year High School and Sachiko had been holed up in her room studying for the last several weeks. In desperate need of some R&R, she'd asked her friends out on a trip to Little Tokyo where they could all relax and enjoy their time together before each of them chose their desired colleges and moved away to fulfill their lofty dreams.

Between Sachiko's two friends, Kateri was the more ambitious and dire of the two. Being from the local Indian reservation, she had pledged to get herself a business degree and start up a profitable venture that would bring both jobs and steady income into the reservation. With the increased funds, the rez could begin reversing the damage done by greedy corporations and government bills mandating the continued reduction of her people's sacred land and work on rebuilding and re-expanding

Emefa on the other hand was a 3rd generation African young woman with dark skin and more than her fair share of extra weight. Having experienced institutionalized racism for her entire life, she had always dreamed of getting her degree and doing her family proud by becoming a shining example of Black Excellence. A dark skinned feminist and body poistive activist in a well paying and prestigous job would give her a platform to make a difference in the lives of her family and community.

Sachiko herself felt a little insecure about her future. She didn't have some glorious, noble cause to champion or high ambition for herself in college. In reality she felt that she was just boring and had few real aspirations outside of playing League all day or binge watching whatever big new show was trending on netflix at the time. With no boyfriend or love life to speak of, she rarely left the house, choosing instead to read or cuddle up on the bed with an unruly number of irresponsibly purchased squishmallows and play games until it was time to sleep. The only real concern she had was the increasingly alarming amount of junk food she'd been consuming since school ended and she no longer had a regular physical activity. She reasoned that even if she was body positive and would never think of fat shaming anyone, especially a friend, she didn't want to wake up one day and be Emefa's size.

After a lazy afternoon of doomscrolling facebook for anything remotely interesting, she worked up the motivation to apply to as many colleges as were on the list of decent schools Emefa had sent her and Kateri so that they could begin applying without the hunt. Sachiko had figured that because of her grades, she would be a decent candidate for most schools, even though colleges tended to overlook Asians as needing to get into schools due to the smart Chinese kid stereotype. What she didn't expect was to receive an acceptance email from Bright University within mere minutes of submitting her copy/pasted application.

"Dear Sachiko Hasegawa, we are pleased to receive your application and would at this time like to extend an offer of acceptance to our prestigous university with a full-tuition scholarship based on your merit. We would like to meet with you for an orientation interview on Saturday the 15th, at 1300 hours at the BU administrations office. You will receive a passcode at a time of our choosing which will be needed to enter the interview room. Upon arrival, simply speak the passcode to our administrators when prompted and you will be escorted to the meeting.

 Congratulations, and we hope to see you soon."