by Matthew Cheong (P5 2021)

              It was an eerie night and the lizard’s incessant clicks echoed through the housing estate. It was past midnight and I was still up, watching a horror movie alone. It was a rare opportunity as I usually slept very early. As I gripped onto a pillow when the horror movie started being more suspenseful, my father went out of the house to take out the trash. Before he went to the nearby trash bin, he fished out his brown wallet from his pocket and placed it on the coffee table as he did not want to lose it. As I looked at his new wallet that I had never seen before, I remembered about the same brown wallet that I had found last week at school. The memories of that day played vividly in my mind as I had to make a difficult decision over the wallet.

 

              “Ring,” the bell rang shrilly.

 

              The students immediately slung their bags over their shoulders and dashed out of the classroom like eager prisoners experiencing freedom for the first time. I jostled my way past the crows heading towards the school gate as I was excited to go home. Unfortunately, there were too many people and I decided to take a detour to another school gate. Down the hallway, I saw an innocuous brown object on the ground. At first, I felt shocked and wanted to walk to yet another way to the school gate to exit the school. However, curiosity got the better of me, so, I walked towards the brown object cautiously with no one around me.

 

              As I got closer to it, I found out it was a wallet and picked it up gingerly. As I opened the wallet, I found a hefty sum of cash and a few credit cards! I looked at the name card and discovered that it belonged to my arch enemy, Bob. Instinctively, I felt angry and wanted to take the wallet for myself to punish Bob for playing a trick on me that morning. He had tripped me in class and I was utterly humiliated in front of my classmates!

 

              I could also use the money from the wallet to buy a iPhone 12 so I could fit in with the new trend. Yet, as I looked at my prefect tie, I felt a great sense of doubt. I knew that if I had taken the wallet and someone found out, I would be deprived from my prefect position as a prefect should be honest. Knowing that I had to stand up to my prefect title, I closed the wallet and brought it to the General Office.

 

              When I reached the General Office, I found Bob anxiously sitting at one of the chairs. He was there to report about his missing wallet.

 

              “He must be worried,” I thought. At once, I walked over to him and returned the wallet to its rightful owner. I explained to him what had happened and he nodded in understanding, took the wallet and left the General Office. Unbeknownst to me, my form teacher had seen me and Bob at the General Office.

 

              The next day in school, my teacher thanked me in front of the class as she had witnessed my kind deed. She commended me for doing the right thing by returning Bob’s wallet to him. The class clapped and I beamed with delight.

 

              “Ah Boy, go to sleep! It is 10pm!” my father’s voice jolted me to the present day.

 

              He had just came back from dumping the trash and took his wallet back. I switched off the television and followed him upstairs. As I reminisced the fateful day when I made that difficult decision, I knew it would always be etched in my mind.

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