a Message (Intro)

Ring! Ring! Ring!

As the sound of the bell reverberated around the campus, the sound of paper being moved echoed around the stiff classroom.

The prayers of my silent cries also intensified.

'Be easy please!!!'

Quickly overturning the paper in front of me, my heart palpitated in fear.

'Will it be easy? Will it be hard?'

[Identification. Write down what is being asked.]

[1. What is the...]

As soon as I saw the contents of the paper, I felt something within me rise.

'As expected!'

I didn't understand a single fucking thing.

My heart started to palpitate faster and faster.

Swish!

With my hopes still up, I flipped to the second page.

[30. What is the..]

'Motherfucker?'

The identification segment of the test are two pages?

Demons!

How frikin cruel!

Turning to the remaining pages, I almost passed the paper right then and there.

'How can they do this?'

I prevented my eyes from watering and accepted fate.

'Failure is a part of success' they say.

'Whatever I get, I'll still be human. Nothing will change.'

Yup, yup. Nothing will change.

I wrote down what I knew and pretty much just prayed that I didn't fail.

The main drawback of relying on 'stock knowledge' as a last resort is finding out that it is already out of stock.

..

Minutes passed by and at that point, I wasn't praying for a passing grade, but a grade higher than zero.

...

Ring! Ring! Ring!

The bell that everyone feared finally rang.

Almost all of my classmates, including me, did some last minute checks.

Of course it wasn't to double check my answers but to go with the flow.

I acted all panicky like everyone else when in reality, I already finished answering the test paper a while ago.

We passed our papers systematically with the back row passing their paper on the row in front of them and the flow continued until it reached the very front to our teacher.

And as soon as their papers were out of their grasps, my classmates started to chatter with their seat-mates.

Comparing their answers with each other and asking if their answer were correct.

The nerds/know-it-alls were pushing up their glasses in confidence amidst sharing their answers with the crowd while those who didn't study had visible worry written on their expressions.

"Children."

On the other hand, my seat-mate heaved a heavy sigh.

"You always say that. You know you're technically still a child as well, right?" I said.

Her name was Pearl and she had a unique personality.

I was more on the introverted side but she- I honestly can't label her as either 'introvert' or 'extrovert'.

She stays quiet most of the time, but when she opens her mouth, her words are like daggers that cuts through the very fabric of human emotion itself.

Or as I like to call it, Emotional Damage!

Her mouth was sharp as hell!

I, of course am speaking from experience.

She remains indifferent to everything happening around her, which I am impressed about.

But that mouth is hurtful enough to make someone traumatized for a lifetime.

"I'd put myself on the mature side." She said after a while of observing our classmates busy regretting their answers.

"But that doesn't mean you're not a child." I argued.

"I can waste my time thinking of a retort and say it but I have more useful matters to do." She said, sighing.

The heck?

Seriously, I can't even exchange a few words with her without being hit with the 'you're annoying' look.

"You know that your attitude is the reason why you only have a few friends, right?" I blurted out without thinking.

"Still more than yours." She replied decisively.

Motherfu-

Did she have to say it like that?

"Tsk."

Losing the battle of words, I averted my gaze from the horrifying monster.

To be real though, she was right.

I only had one friend I could say that I was close to in the entire campus.

His name was Francis.

But due to the seating arrangement, we couldn't communicate much within the classroom under the supervision of our teacher.

But unlike me, he had many friends.

He's charismatic and very friendly.

He was an extrovert.

A lively guy that you could click with within a minutes of getting to know each other.

He's really useful in terms of connecting people with each other because he can read the atmosphere and build the foundation for a better first impression.

I glanced towards his direction and saw him laughing with a bunch of our classmates around him.

"Sigh.." Sighing in lamentation, I closed my eyes and refreshed what I studied yesterday.

Which to be honest was not that much.

I studied, at most- the surface of each subject.

I never really took studying seriously.

I just thought of it as a way to torture children so they can endure more things in the future. Like a preparation stage.

At most, I would study for each subject for about an hour and immediately lose interest.

I was contented with the grades I was getting though.

They were hovering to abo