The ringing of the 3.45 pm school bell signalled my impending doom. The exasperated teacher stepped out of the classroom oblivious to my damned fate. I had done my job but the class bully thought otherwise. I looked to my left and saw him stirring on the creaky wooden backbenches from the corner of my eye. I was not going to sit and wait. Not this time.

I bolted from my bench and sprinted for the door. This shocked Molo and his crew but by the time I was at the door, I heard their shuffling feet. I hastily negotiated the uneven paved path in leaps and bounds. Each hop, step and jump counted down the seconds to my capture. Luckily, the dusty edge of the playground was just one other class away. I could not head to the closed school gate since the security guard never opened it until 4.30pm when evening prep was over. My aim was just to run and buy time until the ten-minute break was over.

The pounding feet of Molo’s band of brothers haunted me as I reached the other side of the stadium sized playground where the pre-unit class toddlers had already happily rushed home. I was isolated. This was turning out to be a bad idea. I panted down to a slow run hoping to plead with them to spare me. I was only doing my job as the class prefect when I wrote Molo’s name down for noisemaking.

The grinning short one with the physique of a garden gnome pushed me back. My legs were already drained from the running and I hit the ground hard. They started kicking me but instead of curling up into a ball and absorbing the kicks, my eyes were pinned on their buffed up leader, Molo. Only two years back, I recalled an ex-army man named Kizito training a bunch of my friends and I self-defence through Karate. It all came back to me in one explosive moment.

“Yah!” the adrenaline shot through my body and I sprung to my feet.

Molo’s bewildered crew stepped back. They had not expected this and frankly, I was also naively treading shark-infested waters. I threw a punch and it landed squarely on Molo’s imposing mallet face but he had more grit than I assumed. He countered quickly, connected with my nose and started moving around. He was measuring me up with his furrowed marble-sized eyes. I did not care.

I bellowed another desperate war cry, “Yaaaa-ah!” and threw a kick that hit his shoulder. We were now suddenly on the same level. We were two class five kids brawling but before things got worse, the 3.55pm bell rang. We knew that there was no chance we would survive stiff canes to our buttocks if the teacher on duty caught us fighting outside class past 4pm during prep.

The whole class that had now encircled us, walked both of us back to the classroom. They chattered about the fight as if it could dislodge the hype behind the rumoured Mayweather vs McGregor fight.

One of Molo’s crew came and put his hand around me like we were best friends. “Your nose is bleeding.” It was then that I knew that I had lost the fight by default. Whoever drew first blood in my book was always the winner but then he added something else, “No one ever stands up to Molo like you did. Man, you got balls!” He might not have said it in those exact words but on that day, I suddenly earned the respect of Molo and his crew.

*An edited version of this story that I titled “The Great Defeat” earned a Special Mention at the All About Writing Courses website 2017 March/April Writing Challenge.