Guanzu People’s School's classes normally start at 7:30 AM, 5 days a week, but officially, the school opens at 7 in the morning. Before classes, the school ceremony must take place, where the children have to affirm their pledge of allegiance to the fatherland and the great leader himself. They will do a few calisthenics dances, presumably to circulate blood and awaken the sleepy children. Then finally, they will sing the national anthem.

While the kids do so automatically, most don’t really care much for it since they’ve been doing this since they were little. This is a standard practice in most North Korean schools as early as the kindergarten years.

So many of the kids in that early morning are either amused or irritated by the young 8th-grade middle schooler at the back of the line, who sings the national anthem with all his heart and the loudest voice on the ceremony grounds.

“Devote your body and mind to this Josee- oon!” Jung sang with gusto, complete with his hand on his chest and his eyes closed as he felt the song deep inside of him. “Looong Liv-“

His voice abruptly stops when a freaking blue screen rudely interrupted him.

Congratulations!

You have upgraded the general skill “Singing” to level 4.

You are now able to balance the tone, the depth and the pitch of your voice in a much smoother way to make the output of your singing much delectable in the ear of any audiences. 20% chance to make any audience of your singing performance much more amenable to like you.

*

Requirements: Wisdom 1, Endurance 1 (Requirements met)

Current level: 4

Needed skill points to upgrade to the next level: 1

Remaining Skill Points: 4

Congratulations!

You leveled up!

Current level: 13

You received: 5 Skill Points (SP)

Current XP: 112,729

Total XP needed for the next level up: 140,906

Jung stared at the message, then shrugged. He then dismissed the message and continued to sing once more. Again, people stared at him but he didn't care, even when Kwang nudged him from behind.

Soon, too quickly for Jung’s liking, the song finally ended and they were dismissed. The line of students started walking into their classrooms in an orderly manner and awaited their first-period subject.

Jung’s classroom is on the second floor of the second oldest building in the school, and the moment they are away from the stern eyes of teachers and other school administrators, the disciplined line of students begins to disintegrate into clamps of friends instead.

Jung and his friends suffered through Korean language, mathematics, ethics, and social studies before they got to eat their lunch. Jung, however, went to the nurse station and had other plans.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

***

Jung frowned as he stared at the sample in the microscope. The plant cell is somewhat rectangular in shape and displays a double membrane which is more rigid than that of an animal cell and has a cell wall. The cell appears to have a bit more green in color, indicating more chlorophyll pigment within the chloroplasts. Other organelles may also be seen, depending on the type of plant. This is the second time he needs to research a particular plant, and it is getting somewhat easier, but still many questions remain.

Jung is finally able to pollinate his second mysterious plant and create a fertilized seed to be planted. A week after being planted, new flowerlings are already blooming in Jung's garden. This gave him the confidence to get some samples from the mature plant and after charming the nurse in the clinic, he is able to again borrow the only compound microscope to study his precious sample.

Jung learned a lot from the sample, but the damn characteristics of the new plant created more questions than they answered. By reading all the biology books in the library, at least those that he could get his hands on, he realized that the chemical compositions of the plant is rather different. One of the most obvious things he can understand just by looking at the cell membranes is that the plants produce 200x more chlorophyll than the average plant. That means it generates more food and nutrients in its petals than the plant consumes. Why is that and where are the wasted nutrients going? What sort of evolution did the plant go through to create such a unique mutated ability that it didn't need?

After committing what he saw to memory, he pocketed his sample and left the school clinic. He gave his thanks to the old motherly nurse and cleaned the clinic as best he could as a way of thanking her. He'd been helping out in the clinic for a while now, per his plan to use the microscope, and he received the "First aid" skill several months ago for his trouble.

Jung was nearing the end of his lunch break, and he needed to hurry back to class. When he was near his room, he noticed that a sizable portion of his classmates were looking outside the balcony. They are on the second floor of the main building, overlooking the main quadrangle and the main school gate beyond.

Curious, Jung walked closer to Kwang and a few of his friends. "What's up?" Jung asked.

Kwang turned to him. "The school delinquents are back!"

Jung raised an eyebrow. "The what now?"

Kwang grabbed Jung and with his bulk, forced a space for him right next to the edge of the balcony. Together, they watch a group of kids who barely wore a semblance of the school uniform saunter into the main gate.

Juwong Ajhussi, the long-time guard at the gate, is known for his power-tripping ways and for harassing the students by noticing minor details about them that could be considered a school violation and confronting them about it, especially the girls. Eun Mei is a favorite target of the lecherous adult, and Jung didn't like the guard for that.

When the four boys who had entered the gate stared back at him, it was the guard who broke eye contact and ignored them, even though they had violated multiple school rules due to their improper uniform.

When Jung recognized the boy in the lead, his eyes lit up. Lee Bon Won was his gymmate, and this was the first time he saw the boy in school.

Unlike his normal appearance in the gym, the dude was now wearing earrings, and his slick, greasy hair was shining in the light of the sun. His white school jacket is simply draped over his black tanktop as he sauntered inside the school.

"Hey, its Bon Won! Bon Won! Its me, Jung hee!!!" Jung waved from the second floor all of a sudden.

All the people around Jung suddenly vanished in front of him, including Kwang, when he started waving.

Lee Bon Won turned in his direction and blanched when he recognized Jung. Without a word, he continued looking forward and ignored the boisterous young boy as he continued to wave enthusiastically at him like a dork.

"The fuck is that idiot doing?" snarled the tall guy next to Bon Won. "Hey Hyun Sik, grab that idiot and bring him here so I can teach him proper manners."

"Leave him be; I don't want to create waves this early," Bon Won said immediately and a bit awkwardly.

"But Hyung, that twerp is disrespecting us!"

"I said leave him be, Chun Ho" Bon Won said with finality, and the rest of his gang muttered grumpily behind him as they continued walking to the school building.

" Bon Won! Yoo hoo!! It's me, your Jung Hee!"

"What the hell are you doing, you idiot?!" Kwang hissed at him as he hid his entire girt away from the balcony and the lunatic friend who was still waving at the delinquents.

Jung made a sad face when his friend ignored him and entered the school building opposite his own. "I didn't know he'd be this shy," Jung said to himself. "But I'm happy he has his own friends. I always picture him as a loner."

For the next several days, Jung's friends continued to explain to him that Bon Won was bad news, and they kept telling him about all the myths surrounding the delinquent.

"There is a rumor that he beat up a gang leader who came at him with a knife and the two knife wounds he received in the neck and heart did not even slow him down."

"That is the most absurd thing I ever heard!" Jung said, annoyed. "Whoever heard of surviving a stabbing in the neck AND heart? You are making all that up!"

"No, he's right," Jung's other friend, Sang-ki, said. He is a wheelchair-bound boy because of his polio, and his two feet are a bit crooked. But his bright personality mostly gets him through the day. "I heard he got hit by a truck, but he stood up and chased the driver for miles just outside of Pyongyang."

“He didn’t get isekaied?” Kwang asked with a smirk.

Everyone ignored the idiot. "I heard he was harassing one of the younger female teachers and when the vice principal intervened, he backhanded him and demanded, 'What are you going to do about it?'"

"I heard that too!"

Jung didn't bother hiding his eye roll. "You got him all wrong!" he insisted. "That dude is a nice guy!"

The other 3 boys at the table gave an exasperated sigh. Jung is the smartest person they ever met, but in some areas, he is as innocent as a baby. Most of them believe that Jung met the delinquent somewhere in town, and since the delinquent didn't bite his head off, he thought the guy was now a friend. How naive! All the warning stories they told him were like raindrops sliding off the back of a turtle’s shell.

“One day, I will introduce him to all of you guys, and you will see how stupid all your speculations really are!”

“Don’t you dare force me near that dude!” Kwang said, alarmed.

They argued back and forth until the bell rang and their next class forced them back to their room.