Gears of Harmony

Episode 10 - Broken Dreams and Emptiness

The next morning, as I waited for the teacher to come, I opened the folder Gale gave me. The students were joking and chatting in the background, but my ears didn't quite catch them when my attention was set on the papers inside the folder's sleeves. I flipped through the pages, stopping at the frontmost page. It was a chemistry test dating just a week ago. There was a red ink etching the number "100" on the paper's top right, just below the name "Gale Vermillion".

Wow... 100... when can I get one... I thought.

"Guys, Miss Leony said that she's not coming today since she had to take the school team for a competition in the next town," announced Verity, "so she left us with some tasks,"

I could hear some cheerings in the background, mostly saying "Yeah, no teachers!" and "let's play!". I myself ignored the task Verity was writing in the whiteboard as well as the noise in the back. I flipped through the pages to get to the tenth grade section.

Let's see... table of elements... I thought.

As I took out the papers, I noticed some old test papers dating two years ago. When I saw the results, you can say I was very, very shocked. 08. 32. 46. 65. 80. 58.

08?! That's even worse than mine! I thought, I would never have guessed that... especially after seeing how he got three 100s in a row in the second semester of his second year...

Then his words back then came to mind.

"You can't judge that with one failed test."

"A lot of people start off with a bad score. You can just fix it later so it averages out,"

I was left stunned as I looked at the papers.

Well, aren't I'm pathetic? I thought and shook my head, huh?

Suddenly, I noticed that in the very first test that I could find, he had a different last name then. Gale et Carinno.

Does he have a different name to go by or something? I thought.

"Hey, Wina," someone suddenly called out for me.

"Yeah?" I replied and turned to where the voice came from.

Then suddenly, next to me, I spotted a young man with straight black hair and a pair of glasses standing next to me.

"You're cute," he suddenly said.

And just like that, he walked away and then a crowd of boys cheered as he returned to them.

What the hell...? I thought and raised an eyebrow at them.

"Sorry, it was just a dare!" the same boy told me from the distance.

"Just go tell her that you like her," someone else implied.

"That's too embarrassing!" he hissed and told off the other guy.

I just kept quiet and looked at them in disbelief.

...just don't deal with them, just don't deal with them... I thought and sighed inwardly.

"Hey, Wina," a familiar voice called out for me, "do you know how to do this one?"

I turned to my right and spotted Amy shoving her book towards me.

"Which one is that?" I asked. However, as soon as I started scanning the book, I realised that it was not a chemistry book, rather, a math textbook.

"This one," she said, "did you do the homework? I managed to do some during recess but I can't get the answers for these,"

"Wait, we have homework?!" I asked.