After the kids happily ate, they took the remaining break time to play in the gardens.
They were told not to run too much after eating though, so they only played mild games.
Mimi—the girl with the high EQ and the little ’officer’ tasked by her dad to make the schooling experience better for everyone—tried her best to include all the kids and to stop the formation of exclusive cliques.
One of the ways to do this, according to her father, was to always bond as a group. Even if they couldn’t bring in everyone, at least someone from each group should be spending time with the others.
There were plenty of cultural and knowledge dissonances between Terrans and aborigines, and there were also differences within each race.
For instance, there would be differences between kids from the Eden country and those outside of it. Another, there would be differences between Mauin kids and kids from the other villages.
However—with Mimi and her friends’ leadership (they treated this as a fun mission called ’make everyone friends’)—they had managed to create an atmosphere where one group was not against others.
The kids naturally had their closest group of friends, with whom they liked spending the most time with. However, fortunately, there were no exclusive cliques that were formed.
Of course, this didn’t mean that everyone was playing the same games at all times. It simply meant that the kids could join in from one group to another, without receiving backlash (except maybe if one was escaping an imminent loss).
In one corner, the kids playing were Mimi, Honda, Lily, Fiona, and Lina. Along with them were Maumi, the curly–haired Pongo, and the little baldie Gururu. Maya and Horus, as well as a few others, were playing elsewhere.
Interestingly, Lina seemed to be trying to position herself next to Honda, the handsome little blonde, though he didn’t seem to take much notice of her.
Right now, the children decided to play a game called ’I wanna be a tootoo-bee’ where they just had to make a circle sitting down.
It was a fun alertness game from Fiona’s country where they would clap on their thighs with a beat and call on numbers.
The ones who ’owned’ the numbers had to react fast and then call out another—otherwise, they were out of the game.
Although some didn’t even know what a bee was, that was besides the point. It was a fun game without much movement, but no less thrilling.
Giggles abound the small park as the children played the ’high-stakes’ game, and laughter exploded when—one after the other—the kids would mess up.
Very few were sore losers, and those uncomfortable with losing eventually adjusted and loosened up when they saw their Terran counterparts having fun—even when they were kicked out of the game.
The ’losers’ would even make some funny noises to distract those still within the game.
In a sense, games like these were also a way to teach children it was okay to lose—it was how you handled them that mattered.
The fun couldn’t last forever though, because the bell rang too soon.
"Awwww…." the children’s shoulders slumped, but they all still stood up to go to their respective classes.
"I was just about to win…" Maumi even mumbled in bitterness.
"No, I was about to win," Gururu retorted. "You were starting to mess up."
"That was because Pongo’s being a jerk loser and whispering me the wrong numbers!!"
"Pshh, excuses!"
"Grrr—"
"Grrrr—"
Mimi’s side, on the other hand, was much calmer. Maya and the others converged with them, asking around to determine who they’d be walking with to the next class.
"You’re doing Plant classes, right?" Mimi asked, roughly remembering her friends’ schedules.
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