Reaching for the Stars

Chapter 10: Final Term Examination

(Revised 04/08/2022)

Tom thew himself into the closest seat available, finally allowing himself to breathe. His tongue lolled out, tired after running as fast as he could from the canteen. Next to him, Martin did the same. "Ah, loup, thanks for waiting for me. I owe you lots for this."

"Piss off. Because of you we're almost past the deadline to submit the essay."

Martin gasped a little as he drank from his bottle. "At least we did that before the deadline." he gestured to the rest of the classroom.

Tom looked around. Some students were panicking because they hadn't submitted the essay on time. The prof said before she left that she gave them two more hours to submit it but at the cost of a reduced score. No way did Tom want a reduced score, so he ran as quickly as he could after printing his essay with Martin to the classroom, and good lord they were fifteen seconds to the deadline.

If only Mart did his part of the essay on time.

"On the bright side," Tom turned to look at him as the fox continued with a gasping smile. "we're fucking done for this semester!"

The corners of the wolf's mouth rose up. "Yeah." He chuckled and looked at the ceilings. "We're done for this semester."

Behind him, James snorted. "Great for you." He walked to their tables, flash drive in hand. "I told the prof to just wait a few more minutes 'cause we're almost done here but she just left."

Max continued, a tired frown on his face. "She's got no chill. Now we got a reduced score just because we submit the essay five fucking minutes past the deadline. I mean, she only gave us three goddamn days to write the essay. That's fucked up, like, does she think her class is the only one we're taking?"

Tom straightened up in his chair. "I guess she'll reduce your score accordingly, I mean no way Mrs Rebecca's just going to slash thirty per cent of your score when you submit it just five mins later."

"I hope she is." The tiger let out a sigh in annoyance and picked up his coat and Max's thick jacket from the table. "Here."

Max took the jacket and put it on, then he turned around. "Oi, Theodore, Lucy, we're gonna print our essay. You said you want to come along?"

"Bentar!" Lucy replied, too busy typing on her laptop.

Tom looked behind him and chirped. "Sekalian aja gih."

"Bangsat, iya bentar, kampret." She didn't even look at them. "Theo, ulangi, eh, I mean, repeat that again."

They all chuckled. The cat could be scary sometimes when she was panicking.

"What did she say?" Max asked Tom.

"'Wait up!' Then I replied, 'come on, just print it together', then she said, 'you son of a, wait up, just a little bit more'."

They laughed.

"Loup, you're lucky, you know. You have another Indo to talk with. Me, no one." Martin nudged the wolf's shoulder. Max and James sat next to them to wait for Lucy and Theodore.

Tom smiled and packed his stuff. "Aw, you have me, you know. On peut parler n'importe quand. Tu veux parler de quoi ?"

"Oh ouias, je l'ai oublié." The fox laughed.

"Or, you know, you can always talk to Nguyen over there. He speaks French too."

"Dude no. He's creepy as merde."

"Okay, we're done." Lucy closed her laptop and pulled out her flash drive. "Fuck Mrs Rebecca. Come on, cuy, let's print it before Her Royal Highness giveth unto us her unlimited wisdom again about 'reading on a paper is better than reading on a screen' and all that."