Our group is soon reduced to four people instead of the standard five—something that we had already somewhat expected, from his frequent absences from school. Nichkhun really missed his hometown and his previous school. He didn’t adapt very well to the system here. He just wasn’t really comfortable, wasn’t really happy, wasn’t really at ease. He just didn’t feed off the challenging homework and the crazy classmates. We tried to make him a part of the group, after all, he was a nice person, but it didn’t work all the time. Apparently, he wasn’t very keen on coming in the first place, but decided that he could try it out for a while, and if it didn’t suit him, he could go back to where he came from.

After what I believe were multiple rounds of being called to the counsellor’s office, I guess, in attempts to convince him to stay, the school authorities permitted him to pull out of the programme. One man’s meat is another man’s poison, I guess. I don’t think I could ever empathise. Not with the mild autism, and not with being this far away from home.

So he left, and hopefully went back to a place where he was happier, and more at home. Nichkhun represented the second attrition from the gifted programme. I was sad to see him go.

---

“Did you do the homework? The one that requires you to find synonyms and antonyms?” Seulong asks as he hurriedly settles into his seat, in contrast to his usual laidback style.

“Oh my… Forgot that that we had to do that piece of homework.”

Nicole shrugs, “Got stuck with Math yesterday, so I didn’t bother.”
“Yeah, I conveniently forgot.”

“We’re so going to get killed!” Nicole makes a complete turnaround.

“What to do? I’m just going to take that single black mark, for not doing homework. It’s not worth all the effort to avoid the singular black mark.”

“True that,” Seulong eases in his chair somewhat.

The risk of not doing this particular homework, I did calculate. That was what I was thinking when I decided to watch my favourite serial instead of doing my homework. I have to admit that coming here has been rather detrimental to my discipline when it comes to doing homework. It is so much more challenging compared to what I’m used to that you feel sometimes entitled no to do certain pieces of detestable homework. Checking the dictionary or the thesaurus happens to be one of them.

Taecyeon scrambles back from a visit to the red group, “The two hardworking souls have done their homework.”

The two hardworking souls are Ye Eun and vomit boy.

“That’s not good.”

Seulong scoffs, at my seemingly obvious statement, “What do you expect? They’re called hardworking souls for a very good reason.”

“Fair enough.”

Three of us watch as Nicole saunters over, “Can we borrow?”

Trust this girl to ask the two hardworking souls to lend her their homework.

“They’re copying right now. After they’re done?”

A rejection, in other words, sends Nicole back, disappointed.

Seulong swipes the dictionaries from the back of the cupboard. Dictionaries are classroom resources, ones that are consigned to collect dust most of the time.

“Let’s just attempt to write something down? We can all work together?”

Taecyeon appears sold on the idea, and starts flipping through it desperately. While the idea of a black mark wasn’t that big a deal last night, it’s starting to become a big deal as time passes. That galvanizes me into action, and I join the flurry of flipping activity.

We split the work four-way and dive headlong into work, hoping to finish before the click clacking of Miss Lee’s high heels is heard along the corridor. Then we replicate the answers on our own homework frantically.

Here gives rise to the phenomenon henceforth known as mass production. Shoes can be mass produced, toys can be mass produced, homework can also be mass produced.

Thankfully, we escape the black mark as Miss Lee isn’t too strict about the whole thing—despite being fairly aware that we didn’t do all the homework ourselves.

---

Mid terms are met with all round disappointment. No one failed the paper, but many came close. However, with the new system, you can pass the paper and be thrown into remedial. These same people are accustomed to topping their respective classes and getting close to perfect scores every time.

Now? Remedial. One hour a subject after school. Definitely not something that we were expecting. I guess it just goes to show that there will always be people better than you—better tha