“Hey, Tiffany! Wait, where are you going?” An elderly woman called after the figure that had just rushed out the door.

Clothes and hair flying behind her, the girl looked back and said, “School.”

The woman chuckled while shaking her head and walked off towards a bigger house, muttering “Those two,” under her breath.

More of the townspeople got distracted from their own business by a dainty girl with dark hair who was clutching a piece of paper and running along the streets at full speed.

Some not bothered and some curious, they asked her why was she running at a time like this with the afternoon sun shining brightly over their heads. The main clock was about to strike twelve.

And she simply answered, “School.” Unbeknownst to her, the townspeople had a look of surprise etched on their faces.

Tiffany took a sharp turn to the left into an alley as a shortcut. Ignoring the loud echoes of her footsteps and animals scurrying around, she smiled when a medium sized building came into view.

Just in time.

And the hand of the clock striked the number 12.

***

The bell rang one minute late.

There was an explosion of noise as the students pushed their chairs back, packed their belongings, talked about upcoming plans and some pushing in their chairs under the table.

Soon, the corridor was filled with humans of different shapes, sizes and age pushing against each other to exit.

Since I had no mood to be sandwiched like a tuna, I stayed behind in class like always. Slowly, I packed my books and stationeries and yawned. I had a late night yesterday, as I helped my mom to prepare food for the ceremony which I may or may not be part of it.

But, I’m crossing my fingers every day.

I wondered if today was the day that I will get my answer. Not too soon when I was outside of the school, ready to head home, I could hear someone calling my name.

“Seohyun, I’m so happy for you!” Tiffany’s eyes were sparkling with happiness. She whizzed forward and caught me in a bear hug.

My breath got knocked out and I choked before I asked her why she was here. She let go of me and waved a wrinkled piece of paper in my face.

I grabbed the paper from her and read the content. An emblem picturing an abstract design of fire and a lion shone where the sunlight hit it. It was the symbol of Fotia, my country.

My eyes ran across the various paragraphs and eventually spotted what I was looking for. My eyes grew wide.

There was a green pattern stamped on the bottom right hand corner, which meant…

I had passed.

At that moment, I was so happy I didn’t know what to do. I looked over at Tiffany’s beaming face and broke into a huge smile. We both screamed.

“You did it, I knew you could! The letter just came today and your mom showed it to me. She was pretty ecstatic and proud of you too. This is such great news!” Tiffany explained.

“This is just great! I never thought that old geezer would choose me since he is always talking about how men are the best at everything,” I checked the paper again to make sure there wasn’t any mistake.

“Mr. Shin isn’t that bad. Its just his underlings like Jang Hyuk who I can’t stand,” she frowned at the thought of him but it faded quickly.

“You’re right. But, how did my mom show this to you? Unless, you skipped school again?” I narrowed my eyes at her.

Her smile was wiped off her face in an instant and looked at me nervously. “Er… well I-I had something else to do,” she looked away and knew she was giving me a lame excuse.

Tiffany had been missing school lots of times till she got kicked out because she flunked all her tests. Even though she found another school, she was still absent pretty much.

I sighed. Normally I wouldn’t let it go, but today was different and I wasn’t going to let anything ruin it.

Seeing the beads of sweat on her forehead, I asked “Did you run all the way here? You didn’t need to really, I was going to come back already anyway.”

“This is something too important to wait even a minute! You’ve achieved part of your goal today.”

“Well, this is only the beginning. I still have a long way to go really but nothing will stop me from doing my best to become the next Soul Leader, it's what I’ve been living for,” I vowed.

“And you will. Hey, we’ve been standing here for a while. I’m feeling parched, mind if we go home now?”

I laughed, “Who told you to run all the way here when you could have waited for 10 minutes. Come on, I’ll buy you a drink on the way. My treat.”

Today was a good day.

HELLO! i know this is pretty short and doesn't explain much. Sorry! But then this is the third time i rephrased this chapter XD I hope this okay... i'll post again tomorrow to make up for how short this was! :D