Sin ||KookV||

39

The parent-teacher meeting required parents to be seated by 2.30 pm. At about 2 pm, my form teacher came over to ask for two students to go act as ushers at the school entrance. I naturally raised my hand.

My form teacher laughed as she patted my shoulders, saying I was so happy just because I had scored well once. But of course.

The old woman pointed at me and Chaewon to go and welcome the parents when they came. She said we were the faces of the class; once we were put at the entrance, our class would look like we shined more than other classes.

In the beginning, I had thought the same too. However, ten minutes later, someone who shone even brighter appeared. A red Ferrari came in a whirlwind, obediently slowing down in front of the sign that indicated that there was a school ahead. Lastly, it accurately stopped right in front of me.

The car door opened. My hyung stepped out, dressed in casual attire. I immediately pulled Chaewon's hat off her head and covered my face with it. What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't get irritated by.

My hyung came up to me under the gazes of everyone like he was walking on a red carpet, draping an arm over my shoulder. He took off his aviator sunglasses and moved close to my ear, asking, "Is this showing passable?"

"Passable my ass, holy fuck, do you know how striking this car is? The engine roars and this colour is like that of the national flag; you were like a flag rising all the way here. Why didn't you just drive a whole team of wedding cars here?"

"Oh, then I'll go and contact a wedding organising company right now, they should be able to make it in time."

"Fuck off."

We entered the classroom. There were still a few parents who weren't seated yet. My hyung sat in my seat and sat in the position he was used to when listening in class -- his head was propped up by his right hand, his left hand spun a pen and his eyes were on the big Chinese scholar tree outside the window. I finally knew where my habit of not listening in the class had come from, feeling a bit touched as though I had found my soulmate.

I bent down and elbowed him lightly, "Hey, when you were in school, is this how you listened in class?"

My hyung spun his pen as he said, "Fuck, this is called distracting myself, otherwise I won't be able to hold back from picking out the teacher's mistakes and everyone will ."

Tsk.

Soon, all the parents were seated. My form teacher passed down fifty folders, one for each table. Inside were the students' answer cards for the end-of-semester exam and each subject teacher's comments.

My hyung first flipped through the mathematics and general science paper, quietly muttering to me, "Didn't I teach you a question similar to this before? You don't even know how to apply concepts in different scenarios."

"You can shut up." In my eyes, applying concepts in different scenarios meant the teacher had taught me one plus one and I hence knew how to calculate two plus two. In my hyung's eyes, it meant the teacher had taught him one plus one, then he immediately mastered calculus.

On the multimedia screen, everyone's score and extent of improvement were reflected. I was first. This time, I was in 362nd place in the cohort and had entered the top 600. Actually, this time, a big part of why I had been able to score well was luck. Other than a couple more correct guesses for a few multiple-choice questions, that essay had been lucky too. If it had landed in the hands of a more rigid marker, it would have immediately been judged to have gone out of point.

My form teacher enthusiastically invited my hyung to speak, asking him to talk about why my improvement had been so great. Jungkook was an arrogant person. A lazy smile played on his lips as he replied, "He just got extremely lucky; it's all thanks to the teachers for teaching him well."