☼ A Lesson Learned ☼

 Dungeons and Dragons? Or Do not Disturb

A Narrative on Overcoming Failure

I take a deep inhale as I rattle the twenty-sided dice in between my hands. The plastic edges bounced between my palms and fingers. With one final exhale, I release the dice onto the laminated playing mat. My face falls in disappointment as my eyes focus on the gold-painted “4” on the top side of the dice. 

“I don’t think I rolled high enough.” I cursed under my breath. Ayden, who served as our friend group's dungeon master, nodded, confirming that my low-scoring roll resulted in my attack missing the boss entirely.

 “This is gonna take forever!” My friend Hunter groans from the bed. We all nodded in agreement but continued our turns nonetheless. 

As I stare at our miniature character figures, which were just drawings of our characters glued onto thin cardboard, my mind slowly drifts to the day I had first seen these make-shift figures. My first day ever playing Dungeons and Dragons, and the day I experienced the biggest rejection of my life.

“It’s just down this street, it’s the house on the right with the bushes.” my friend Neo called from behind me. I continue my fast pace, eager to get inside after walking several miles through the chilly breezes of early March. My friends, Teo and Hunter, playfully banter amongst themselves over some TikTok they had seen the night before. I walk ahead of the group, sort of leading them towards the house. My eyes dart from one object to another as we walk through the quaint suburban neighborhood, from the surrounding houses to the parked cars on the street, to the occasional stray peacocks that roamed the area. 

“It’s this one,” Neo calls out again.

I nod before approaching the front door to the single-story house. I take a step aside as Neo shuffles over and rummages through his backpack for the house keys. As I enter the house, my eye immediately scans the room. It looks antique, not too homey, but not too elegant either. I take off my shoes, and the scent of burning incense from the Buddhist shrine wafts in the air. 

We all huddle around the wooden coffee table, crisscrossed as we take out our organized character sheets. I look down at my character sheet. “Kelmaris” is written on the top of the page, with a little sketch of a woman with luscious white locks, and light purple skin. I had spent weeks designing and planning every little detail of the character, and though she needed a lot of work, I took pride in being able to develop an original character to this extent. As I scan the description of my character and briskly read through her backstory, I feel a sense of satisfaction, excited that all my hard work will bear fruit in this upcoming session. 

Ayden takes a moment to evaluate all of our characters one by one before we begin our DND session. My eyes wander down to the table, to the dinky cardboard figures made to represent each of our characters. A sense of giddiness resides in me, excited to see how this session would turn out. 

A soft yawn escapes me as I stretch in place. We had been playing for roughly an hour, and in that time, our characters had all found themselves in a local pub. A soft smile adorns my face followed by a snort as Teo and Neo dramatically roleplay a skit of their characters meeting. I can’t help but roll my eyes at their cheesiness. 

Suddenly, I catch a flash of light from the corner of my eyes as my phone lights up. I try to focus on the game, but my curiosity gets the best of me, and before I know it, I’ve already raised my phone and swiped up to enter the passcode. My eyes widen, and I freeze when I realize it wasn’t just any normal notification, it was an email regarding my admission to the UC schools I had applied to.

I purse my lips in hesitation before opening the email with shaky fingers. My eyes darted from left to right as I read the email, and it all ended in the spotlighted sentence, “...we are unable to grant you admission this semester.” Suddenly, the clattering of the 20-sided dice on the coffee table felt like a blaring ringing in my ears. I quickly go back to my email inbox before checking the next email. 

The same message.

 I checked every email, and they all followed the same format, “we are unable to grant you admission.” I’m pulled out of my thoughts by everyone’s laughter. It was a bittersweet feeling like they were mocking me for something they didn’t even know about.

 I felt defeated. 

Like all my twelve years of school were in vain. All those countless hours studying and staying up past 1 am for projects seemed pointless. All my collected efforts towards volunteering and running clubs amounted to nothing. 

I put on a fake smile and give a pathetic laugh before looking down at the cardboard figures again. At that moment, I wished the ground could have opened up beneath me and swallowed me whole. I wanted to leave‒ to be left alone instead of being stuck there playing Dungeons and Dragons. 

“Kimberly?..” A voice calls me, shaking me out of my thoughts. My head turns towards the owner of the voice, my friend Teo. She looked at me with concerned eyes. 

“Oh! My bad, I was spaced out..” I mutter sheepishly before picking up the dice again for my turn. I breathe in a deep inhale, trying to descramble my thoughts before shaking the dice between my hands. The corners of the dice occasionally hit against my palm as I made sure to thoroughly shake the dice. 

With one quick breath, I let the dice roll out of my palm. We all leaned in towards the playmat expectantly, eager to see the results. I let out an eager grin as all our eyes fell upon the little, plastic purple die with a precisely painted “20” on the top. 

“Finally!” Neo shouts in glee, and we all enjoy the victory as our dungeon master, Ayden, announces that my dice roll had finally defeated the evil rat king we had been fighting. A small smile paints my face as I watch everyone celebrate the conclusion of the DND session. 

I look down at the cardboard figures one last time. This time, however, I look at it with thankfulness. Thankfulness for my friends, and thankfulness for the opportunity of a second chance. And although I didn’t get into the schools I wanted, I’d already come to terms with it. 

As I look and my friends goofy smiles, I realize that it wasn’t the end of the world, in fact, nothing had changed at all.