The Club

XXIV: The Anti-Fraud Club

"You never said," said Daisy, mindlessly eating a granola bar and crumpling the wrapper. Skip looked up.

"Hm?"

"How did your English exam go?" he clarified.

Skip finished typing a few more words of his email and turned to Daisy. "Fine, I guess," he said, shrugging. "I felt like I understood things, but the listening parts were hard.. I feel like that's the most difficult part of English, learning what it sounds like."

"You'll probably get full marks then," said Daisy brightly.

"I wouldn't say—" started Skip, but Jjim cut him off.

"I would," Jjim snorted. "The fact that you even took that test—"

"Well, even if I do okay on the test, I'm still going to have to figure out how to practice English," he said with a sigh. "It's hard to have conversations still—"

"I'll help," said Pideulgi, from where he was sitting on the floor with his iPad. He switched to English. "Hello, how are you, fine thanks, and you?"

"I'm supposed to answer 'fine thanks, and you'," laughed Skip.

"If you say both at once then you help the other person to save time by not having to answer," said Deulgi seriously.

Sunny looked up from his massive textbook. "What kind of strategy is that, what if the other person isn't fine?"

"'I'm fine' is just a formality," said Skip, explaining.

"Weird," muttered Sunny darkly, apparently not approving of greetings that did not have semantic value.

The door opened and Won Do came in, looking preoccupied with something until he noticed Deulgi sprawled on the floor, Sunny sitting at his side of the table, Daisy and Skip reading over the email, and Jjim eating a bag of shrimp chips.

"Everyone came? Man, you guys have no life—" he joked, setting down his backpack. "We basically live together at this point, I saw all you guys yesterday—"

"Not everyone, you know Hyeonmi is at practice," Deulgi reminded him.

"If the other six of us are here, then he's summoned in our hearts and minds," said Daisy, making a wistful expression.

Deulgi grinned over his iPad, where he was studiously drawing something for one of his classes. "That's a good idea."

Skip had decided to check if their room was empty on a whim that Thursday morning, since he needed some quiet space to write a few emails regarding their "color festival" event. He said he wanted some input, so he had sent out a message that anyone who was available Thursday afternoon was welcome to show up.

"We have a life," said Sunny abrasively, flipping a page in his book before staring accusingly at Won Do.

"Uh huh," replied Won Do, going over to Sunny to try and give him a high five. He was rejected.

"I didn't say I was enjoying it, though," Sunny added, shooting Won Do a cold glance.

"Hey," complained Won Do, "We know you're here because you wanted to come and see us. You're just trying to preserve your identity as a sullen umbrella—"

"Sullen umb—" started Sunny indignantly, while Jjim tried not to choke on his shrimp chips out of laughter. For some reason, Sunny was wearing a jet black quarter-zip windbreaker that truthfully was reminiscent of rain gear.

"Since you all are here, can I read this out loud?" asked Skip, pushing his laptop back from the edge of the table and rubbing his eyes.

"Let's get it," replied Sunny, putting an entire piece of paper in his book and sandwiching the whole thing together to mark his spot.