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There was once a girl who loved Chinese dancing and took part in the Chinese dance society in her school as an extra-activity. She liked to dance in her second hand dancing shoes. She liked to dance with feathery fans and red silken napkins. Most of all, she liked to dance with her pink silken ribbon that was tied to a stick that she would wave around and make pretty patterns like how they do it on tv when the Olympic gymnastics was on.

One day during the Olympic season, the gym teacher was feeling inspired and wanted to recruit more people onto the gymnastics team. The teacher saw the girl practising for her ribbon dance, and recognised the potential in her. Behind her back, the teacher went to arrange with the teacher in charge of dancing to have the girl put under the gym programme instead. Recognising that the nation placed a stronger emphasis and higher recognition on schools' achievements in sports than in the arts, the teachers quickly agreed to have the girl transferred without asking for her volition.

The girl did not like gym as much as she liked dancing. She only liked the little bit with the ribbon twirling, but she hated the other parts of rolling around and swinging herself about the uneven bars. They made her nervous. She hated the balance beam the most because she felt like she would fall down. She hated how they were practised without music, and that she would always practise alone. In Chinese dancing, there were always other girls on stage. But she had no say in the matter.

When she was given another ribbon for the gymnastic routine, she resigned to her new past time, and she twirled up the one she used for the dancing and wrapped it up with the napkin and put them away with her dancing shoes and feathery fan. She put them into a nice box that she kept underneath her bed. She would sleep and dream and unconsciously, her love for dancing and her resentment for gymnastics grew. These emotions seeped through the pillow and bed and dripped onto her dancing things and brought them to life.

After some discussion, the dancing accessories decided that the ribbon should take up the responsibility to set things right, since it had always been the girl's favourite. In the middle of the night, the ribbon danced its way into the bag of girl, and the next day, went back to school with the girl. When nobody was looking, it hid itself in a corner of the school gym.

When everybody went home that day, and the gym teacher was locking up the gym, the dancing ribbon came alive. In a dash, it slashed at the teacher's face until the fake eyelashes fell off with some real eyelashes. The dancing ribbon then smashed the teacher's eyelashes into a fine ash. It did not want to smash other parts of the face or body into bits because it was a dancing ribbon after all, and it was important to be rhythmic and beautiful and not cruel. The ribbon then flew past the teacher, out of the doorway, and into the night sky and made its way home, using all the might of its magic powers to fly.

Traumatised, the gym teacher quit her job, and after she served out her one-month's notice, the gym team was disbanded. The girl went back to the Chinese dance society and was happy to dance with her dancing things on a fairly regular basis.