*chapter ten;

The worst days for all students were always the ones on which they received their exam grades. If you failed, you’d be screwed. That’s how it was and there was nothing to change about the results.

In the mid of May, Soah and her friends took their first mid-term exams. Weeks before this, they were studying day for day and only got around 5 hours of sleep each night. They left school at 4pm to continue their studies at home or cram school, some also stayed in school just to continue learning with some assistant teachers. Luhan and Soah were barely seeing each other at that time except in school. All of them were stressed and had other things in their mind than their free time. Exams were hard and so were the expectations of their parents.

It was the finally the day on which they would get their scores and everyone could feel the tension lingering in the air when they entered the classroom in the morning. The students barely spoke and some already whined over their expected low scores. It was their senior year and the marks were really important since they were all going to take their SAT’s at the mid of the second term.

A white paper lay on Soah’s desk. She had always told herself she wouldn’t cry over her scores. She might be smart, but there was this subject which had been bothering her for a while now and she had known from the beginning that she wouldn’t do well in that certain subject. Although her other scores might be high... she had to have top marks in every subject to get into the University Of Seoul. It had always been her dream university.

But now, she was so close to losing everything that she'd been working so hard on.

A few people started to cry in class, some didn’t say anything at all and others started to babble about their marks or hugged each other in happiness. But Soah was just sitting there, staring at the white paper before she folded it and put it in her backpack as fast as she could.

“Soah.”

Luhan stood beside her desk, holding his scores in his hands as he grinned at her. “Show me!”

That didn’t make it better. Soah might be smart, but not as smart as Luhan. Out of all 11 subjects, he constantly reached the highest scores in at least 5 of them. The other scores might have been an A as well, but he was just too lazy or invested more time into soccer playing. He was not that good at science, because he just didn’t get it, but that didn’t affect his grades that much.

As Soah didn’t say anything, he just put a hand on her shoulder and lowered his voice, sounding concerned now. “Hey... it can’t be that bad, right?”

He just did not say that.

It wasn’t fair. Not for Soah.

She was working so hard on her grades, on her dreams, but seeing those red signs on her paper just made her feel miserable and Luhan wasn’t helpful at all. Yes, it was that bad. He didn’t know. And she didn’t want to talk about it.

Soah stood up, walked around her desk and went out of the classroom, but Luhan followed her right after, and when she didn’t intend to stop, he just grabbed her wrist and made her stop.

“Why won’t you talk to me?”

She pressed her lips against each other and shrugged. It wasn’t fair at all. She also deserved to be happy like her friends. Why always her?

“Don’t you trust me?” Luhan asked and looked so sad that she almost regretted her behavior, but what was she supposed to do? Of course she was mad and depressed because of her grades. She hadn't intended to be, but it couldn’t be helped