Predetermination.

According to sophomore Joshua Citajaya, “predetermination” is the concept of everything happening in a certain way due to specific circumstances

“It’s the concept of everything happening due to the result of [one‘s] upbringing,
personality, or  their genetics,” sophomore Ishaan Desai said.

So, was it predetermination that led to this group sitting on this secluded area of the school ground?

One of the factors that may have brought them together was their curious intuition for adventure. There was a time when Citajaya and his friends encountered cardboard boxes scattered in the student center. Any other group of people probably would have left the cardboard boxes alone.

Instead, they built cardboard fortresses.

“Sometimes we go to other places in school, and the conversations can get sometimes monotonous,” Citajaya said. “But here, nothing gets repetitive.”

According to sophomore Ishaan Desai, their group always is always starting new adventures. Desai, explains one of these adventures— “Gang wars” with Octagon members.

“Just to clarify, the gang wars are actually Octagon meetings,“ Desai said. “[One day], there was a line of officers.  A small group of of us lined up [in a separate line]. and a divide between the officers and us formed. Darien comes along 5 minutes later and says.’ So is there’s a gang war going on or what?’ Basically, it was [Theverapperuma] being stupid.”

Although the group hangs out in the sparsely populated regions, Desai doesn’t consider himself anti-social. Rather, he finds little in common with other students, who, in his opinion,  have too many academic driven conversations.

So what makes them different?

One thing surely separates them from the rest– their group name. The Bouquet Club. That’s what they like to call themselves.

“It’s this top secret club where we do stuff with flowers. All jokes aside, it’s a [computer clone] of Super Smash Brothers Brawl and Melee,” Desai said. “Basically, we just sit in the student center and play every Thursday during tutorial — that’s what the Bouquet Club is.”

The club began when Citajaya started practicing with the hip-hop club Urban Soul Movement in the student center. Soon, he and his friends just started hanging out in there. But when the student center soon became locked during breaks, it forced the group to sit outside instead.

The only drawback, according to Desai, is when it rains and there’s limited space to sit.

There is a specific chain of events that led this group of nine people to meet in an isolated area behind the wall of the gym, a corner of the school other that people only go to reach the student parking lot. Without these circumstances, the group may have never been able to share their love of dark humour, philosophy or Japanese video games.

So was it predetermination? They’re not sure, but it doesn’t matter.