06-19-2024, 09:28 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-21-2024, 04:13 AM by Aneeqs. Edited 1 time in total.)
The Book of Zen
Chapter 47: Junior
The death of Linguine didn’t hit Zenzeroni the same as some of the previous deaths he had witnessed. Part of that may have been the way he found out about it and the aftermath of it all but it was more so that his thoughts were in another place at the time. They never found the culprit and had come to the conclusion that he had fallen in by accident. Whatever the men in black told Big Jello must have given Zenzeroni an alibi but Zenzeroni didn’t know what it could have been (not that he cared). Linguine was his close (and only) friend at Spaghetti School but Zenzeroni didn’t grieve the death of his friend or maybe he did but in a different way.
Still a member of the football team Zenzeroni decided against leaving the Culinary School. To remember his friend he was going to graduate and become a professional chef whether his head chefs wanted him to or not.
However, before the school year even started, Zenzeroni was in for quite the surprise.
“Yo, yo, yo, yo it’s ya bro Fro Yo here with my new roommate Zenzo! What up dawg?!” Fro Yo barges into Zenzeroni’s room with a cart full of his stuff.
Zenzeroni daps up Fro Yo awkwardly as he looks around the room that he had just set up as he had thought he would have the entire room to himself “Heeeeyy Fro Yo was it? Um yeah, just give me a second to move my stuff for you.” Zenzeroni begins grabbing things and throwing it to one side of the room.
“No problem home slice this room is looking fresher than a hot pocket! Yo!”
“Oh and it is Zenzeroni Xystarch II but you can call me Zen for short if you’d like,” Zenzeroni says not wanting “Zenzo” to stick.
“Wait big dawg you are a junior?” Fro Yo puts his gold rimmed sunglasses down a touch to look over them.
“Well I’m the second of my name so it is actually “the second” versus “junior” you know?”
“Same difference Junior. Aye yo! That’s got a ring to it. So how many parties you have up here? We talkin everyday two a day? All day?”
“Uh we don’t really do parties up here” Zenzeroni says still trying to get things to one side of the room.
“No, no, no, that isn’t going to cut it. If you are a Junior you need to start acting like a junior.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Zenzeroni says confused.
“I don’t either but all I’m sayin is–” An administrator comes by the door and stops Fro Yo before he can continue “Sorry to interrupt but Fro Yo it looks like you have the wrong room sorry about the confusion you are actually down the hall.”
“Ah my b yo” Fro Yo disappears down the hall and Zenzeroni hears his footsteps stop before he repeats his spiel “Yo, yo, yo, yo it’s ya bro Fro Yo here with my new roommate—”
Zenzeroni exhausted by the 5 minute talk with Fro Yo sighs and falls back onto his bed. Zenzeroni was a junior in two senses of the word. A junior in that he was the second of his name but also a junior in college and he planned on, unlike last year, succeeding in the culinary arts beyond the football field.
Throughout his junior year, he would succeed in accomplishing this goal. Zenzeroni’s passion for the culinary arts blossomed once more as he found different tricks and tactics to make cooking as normal as possible given his situation. His grades which had always been perfect because of his role on the football team were now perfect because he was actually becoming a decent chef.
Meanwhile, on the field, the team was still terrible and would go on to not win a single game in his junior season. While Cutthroat Dave was a solid coach he was no match for the ineptitude of Spaghetti School’s students. They tried their best but football turned more into social hour than anything else for Spaghetti School. It turns out Spaghetti School did have a football team prior to Zenzeorni’s arrival but it had turned into what it was during his junior year and was discontinued as a result. However, there was no discontinuing the team anymore, and the team was forced to play blowout after blowout. This helped Zenzeorni’s punting tremendously as he learned the perfect timing of kicking the ball as it flew through the air at him so that he didn’t have to try and grab it with his noodle arms. Despite their early differences Zeus and Zenzeroni had formed an unlikely bond as two of the standout players for the team and began to form a friendship by the end of the season.
“Another year of this huh?” Zeus says to Zenzeroni as they walk off the field after their final game of the season.
“Hopefully the last one,” Zenzeroni says.
“Eh, I’ll be here a while longer.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m 35 Zen. I’ve been going to this school for the past 15 years.”
“What?! You look the same age as me!”
“That is the one thing I’ve got going for me.” Zeus says as he jogs away to meet up with his gang of “the cool kids”.
Such was the way of life for Zenzeroni in his junior year. Standing alone in a room full of people longing to be part of a group and yet not wanting to be part of a group at the same time. The tragedies for Zenzeroni seemed to continue to pile up and he was worried about who he would impact next. His blackouts had seized and the mysterious run in’s with Big Jello had stopped as well. It was almost like he had been forgotten which made him think back to his interaction with Fro Yo at the beginning of the school year. No one remembers second place. They are the first losers after all. And that was exactly what Zenzeroni was. He was the second of his name. The first loser. He was a mere junior in a crowd full of seniors. He was the guy people could joke about because no matter how good he did, it was never good enough. But did Zenzeroni care anymore? He wasn’t doing it for them anymore. He wasn’t even doing it for himself anymore. He was doing it for Linguine. He was doing it for One Eyed Larry. He was doing it for Drumstick and for the first time in 20 some years, he felt free.
Howdy! I am responsible for quite possibly the greatest kicker to ever grace the ISFL and am the most accomplished media writer the ISFL has ever seen (no need to ask anyone else regarding either of those claims)
Important Media You Must Read If You Want To Be Cool Like Me
The Villainous Jreed12: The Case Against the WEAKly Mirror|Jreed is a multi|Coming soon
The Truth About Baron1898: The Self Proclaimed Queen|The Evil Queen|The Curse of Venus|The Truth
The Year of the Joker: Year of the Joker|Doubling Down|Bye to Losers|Win or Not?|Last Dance
Read the full 56 Chapter Book of Zen Catalog here: The Book of Zen
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