“Bae. . .”

A hand shook his shoulder.

“Hey, Bae!”

A harsh whisper made him drift  in and out of sleep.

“Bae, wake up!”

The voice had arisen him, but he wasn’t ready to wake quite yet. A hand lightly shook his shoulder to make another attempt in waking him.

“Jun-Bae, you’re going to fail if you don’t hurry and wake up.”

Hunching his back and furiously rubbing his face into his sleeves that acted as a pillow, the young boy lifted his head to face his friend who held a worried expression on his face.

“Wha~at?” the boy asked.

The boy from before stared at him with a worried look before nodding towards the blackboard filled with notes on today’s lecture. The sleepy boy rubbed the sleep out of his eyes with both hands, and he looked up at the board to see it filled with notes on how to ask for and giving directions written in English with the translation in Korean underneath. Just on cue, the bell rang and students were filing out of the room one-by-one.

“Hey, hey, hey!” a voice stopped the young boy from escaping school.

He turned back around to his friend from earlier who had awoken him.

“Bae, you have to take this more seriously!” his friend scolding him. “Suneung’s coming up!”

Oh yeah. Suneung.

The boy shrugged it off, but his friend had instead opened the back of his drawstring bag and stuffed the notebook inside for him to study later at home.

“Get home safe, alright?” his friend ruffled his hair.

“What d’you think I’ll do?” he stared at the ground while speaking before trudging off.