After School || Weeekly

Chapter 1

September is usually a very important month. It's the month wherein most things change or most things start. September is the very first month of fall as a new season starts while nature and the weather usually start changing somewhere along then too with the leaves starting to change colors from the lively, vivid green to faded shades of orange while the sky starts to get filled with more clouds and rain soon follows alongside the first light breeze and cold in the atmosphere. Some fruits and vegetables start to stop growing while some other seasonal ones start growing faster as well during this season. Around this time of the year some jobs start too, while school is set up to usually start around that time too.

Usually for Hyewon nothing changes much around that time. Summer ends, her summer vacations with her family and friends too alongside her endless free time and multiple hangouts with her friends while school starts and she's back on her usual spot, at that one desk in the front row by the window, busy taking notes and studying hard. Sure, it's hard to get used to not sleep way too much or hang out way too often with her friends as well as it's hard trying to focus back to class and study hard but Zoa is good at getting back into a routine. After all, her whole life has always been planned out perfectly so she easily gets used to a specific way of living and gets back on track quite fast.

This year however, somewhere in the middle of September, Zoa finds herself feeling completely lost as it's the very first time she's not going back to school. Every year in the very first week of September she would already be back in her usual desk busy studying, having already formed out her new study plan. This year however, she's not attending school anymore as she's graduated back in June. She's already accepted in the college she's applied to, the college she so wanted and the majors she so wanted and has picked back in July when she was making up her mind and applied to all the needed forms.

College however is a whole new different deal and Zoa isn't sure if she's fully ready to face all the new things awaiting for her. One of them all being the fact that colleges apparently start in October and not in September like schools do —except if you have to retake some exams from previous courses that you've failed passing during the end of those semesters that is.

Another thing about college is the fact that it's four hours away from Zoa's actual home and hometown overall so the poor girl has already applied to the dorms in which fortunately for her she got accepted too. That's one of the many things she's stressing out though. What is her dorm room going to look like? Will it be small? Will it have everything necessary to make her living there quite easier or will she have to buy extra things? And what about her roommate? What if it's going to be some messy loud girl that brings lots of people over?

At least for that one problem she's got her questions all answered a week before she moved there when one morning Soojin —one of her older friends— has texted her informing her that they were going to be roommates and as the college's president that she was she's kind of made sure they would be roommates (definitely not rigging up the list of the roommates in the dorms just to make things accidentally and randomly convenient for her and her friends, Soojin's words). So that problem has been solved and Zoa has been at peace ever since —if not excited to be living with her friend.

Then again, there have been other matters twirling all over her mind and stressing her out such as how was she going to live alone and so further away from her family? And for such a long time? What is college going to be like? Is it a huge building? What do the classes look like? The professors? What if they talk too fast and Zoa can't keep up with them and doesn't understand half of the things they say? And what about the notes? How will she know what to write down and what not? What about the exams at the end of the semester? How are they going to be? They'll surely be hard and Zoa isn't even sure from where to start of to study. What about her classmates? They'll surely know each other just like in school? Or are there going to be lots of students not knowing each other? Are there going to be lost students just like her? Will she be able to make friends? What if she doesn't like some classes? And what if she fails some classes? How is she going to tell her parents about it and how is she going to pass them during the examination season?