My first match was against a girl from my para class; she has blond, long hair falling down over her shoulders and fights with nunchakus. I picked myself a spear so that I could use its long range; the weapons are all created so that we couldn’t hurt ourselves too badly.

The fight was pretty intense because as it was my first time fighting against someone using this kind of weapon and I needed to adapt myself to her unique fighting style. At the start, I tried to just stab her, but the girl jumped sideways, easily dodging the attack. Then she tried to run close the distance so that she could easily beat me in close combat. But I didn’t let it go her way and jumped backwards to avoid engaging in close combat and prepared another attack. The fight went on for quite a bit like this: one of us would attacked, the other dodged, and so forth. But by the end of the fight, I could clearly see her pattern and understood how nunchakus worked, so I defeated her with a clean attack. We both got 9 points for our performance from the instructors, which made us both quite happy.

After a long wait and many exciting matches, I was preparing to fight against one of my best friends. We both knew each other since we were little babies and were always close friends until today. Nowadays, we often train together in the training Center, so I know his exact strength and movement through all the spars we had. He is actually really strong and has good fighting skills, but until now he only won twice against me from the hundred fights we had.

So the outcome of the show-fight was to be expected—at least from us both. But still, we fought with all we had—I with my dual blades and he with his loved dagger. The fight was thrilling; we clashed hundreds of times and moved faster than the human eye could proceed, but in the end, I won. We both got full points and could then finally calm down until the next fight.

The fight was really enjoyable and refreshing, it was fun having such a hard fight with even one of my best friends. I think he too liked it and was really happy with his good performance.

Time went by fast, and after half an hour, it was my turn again. As I was called upon the stage, I looked around to see if I could see my opponent. Mainly because I had never heard of his name, even though I was pretty sure I knew all the people in my grade level.

Standing on the stage in anticipation, I could finally see a guy making his way towards me. His long, messy hair was going all over his face hiding it underneath, but from his silhouette I knew who he was. He is from my para class and is known to never speak a word to anyone. In class, he always sleeps, whereas in practical class, he just stands in some corner.

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The sparring began shortly after he stood on the stage, and for his weapon, he took a knight-like sword. After the “go” from the referee, he didn’t move an inch and waited for me to attack, which I did. He deflected my first attack, like I anticipated. So I used my second sword to counter him and finish him at once. But, against all my imagination, the guy stepped to the side dodging skillfully, which made me stumble. Seizing the opportunity, he struck me with an uppercut I couldn’t evade, and I lost the match immediately.

“Good fight,” said the guy while giving me a hand to stand up. Baffled I took his hand, and mumbled something coming close to “good game”, only to then be left alone, he just went down from the stage and sat in the corner, where he came from. I got down from the stage right behind him looking in nothingness, still not believing what just happened. In my head I reflected what happened and came to the conclusion, I was still to weak and could have never taken him on. There was never a real chance against him, for him it was just playing around.

All who knew me and my strength were mesmerized, as well as me, but this just showed me that I still had a long way to go and should never underestimate anyone. The referee gave me 4 and him 10 points.

I came back to my class, where I was nicely greeted and encouraged by my friends. But inside, I was disappointed in myself and wanted to dig my own grave because I was too confident in myself.

All the matches were done about 5 minutes after my last one, so now we were allowed to challenge each other and fight as much as we wanted. But I wasn’t in the mood and decided to just sit there, even though I had many guys who challenged me. I didn’t even look at the matches that were going on; instead, I looked at the floor while some of my friends gathered around me, trying to cheer me up. But it didn’t help, and after we were allowed to leave, I went directly to the gym in the training Center and wasn’t seen at home until late in the evening, to my parents great surprise. All the time while training I had always the moment before I lost in my head, and what I could have done to prevent my defeat. I thought and thought and thought and came in the end to one realisation I was still too weak, I needed to get stronger and swifter to be able to doge such fast attacks.

Coming home, I realized that, at the end of the day, I still got 23 points for fighting and 92 points for the exams. And with this, I am one of the best students in the school and shouldn’t cry about a lost fight, and instead be happy with my performance like my parents are. But they weren’t happy about me coming home that late, even though it was such an important day. They would have much more preferred to get the information earlier of me making it in the next class. But it is as it is and they couldn’t do anything against it. I still told them about everything, ate and then went to bed.

And so I and many other of my friends were promoted to second grade; only two sadly couldn’t make the cut. Which was quite sad, but I already said to them that we can still train together, have fun together and I would help them out if they needed it.