afterglow ‣ s.jy

005

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JAKE

"You translated that sentence wrong." Jake corrects Siyeon once he saw her answers.

He didn't glance at her answers to copy, aside from the fact that he doesn't need to copy since he was already fluent in English, he was genuinely curious if she too was fluent given that she seemed to be born in a relatively similar background as him.

She immediately glanced at him. "It's the same with the sample sentence earlier." She said, pointing at the sample sentences that remained written on the whiteboard in front of them.

"Doesn't mean the teacher didn't make a mistake. It's you apostrophe re not your." He says, pointing at the clear mistake on her notebook.

"Stupid English," Siyeon muttered under her breath but just coherent enough for Jake to understand. He pressed his lips together tightly as they rolled inward to stop himself from showing the uncontrollable joy he felt at besting Siyeon on something. "I can see you stifling a smile." She said, erasing her mistake with the eraser from the end of her pencil.

"Guilty as charged." He places his elbow on the table, allowing his hand to carry the weight of his head.

She looked in his direction finally but instead of gazing at his face, her eyes dropped to the paper laying flat on his table. Since English was a rather easy subject for him, after quickly finishing the assessment given to them, he proceeded to answer the physics activity assigned. From how her pupils moved, he could easily tell she was examining it, looking for a mistake that she could point out.

Not a minute passed, and judging by how the side of her lips threatened to raise, she found something that she could hold against him. "You made two major mistakes, Sim."

Immediately looking at his paper, he tried to search for the mistake she pertained to but after reading all his solutions twice, he couldn't spot it. "I don't see anything." He uttered.

"Here." She points out the two problems that he had the hardest time with. "You used the wrong formula and for the other, your answer for 5 times 2 is 25, hence messing up the whole solution."

"Wait, what do you mean the wrong formula? But it's talking about the trajectory of--" He paused upon realizing now what his mistake was. "Oh, I messed everything up."

"Told you." She shrugs, leaning on her chair as she watched him crumple the paper and restart everything. By then, she had already passed the English assessment to the front desk of the teacher, leaving her with nothing to do but mess with her seatmate.

Jake could feel how close she was to him, carefully examining his paper as he answered the questions once more. He tried to control his breathing, just enough so she wouldn't make unnecessary comments about the volume of his respiration. But he, later on, stopped after finding his attempt pointless.

Why must he try to please Siyeon? Let her complain if she wants to.

"Now is it correct?" He pushed the paper to her table to give her a better view of his answers.

She blinked twice with both her eyes wide open. "You want me to check your answers? This is very unlikely. Isn't criticizing you and your mistake my only job as your rival?"

He rolled his eyes even though he understood clearly what she meant. As much as Jake hated admitting it, Siyeon was by far the smartest person in his class or at least academically; he didn't know her very well to say she's smart even outside of school. Originally, she's from class a, a section wherein all of the most outstanding students are usually located. According to what he heard, Siyeon was transferred to class b when she had dropped from 10th place to the 50th.