The Zarul classroom was a small room cramped with many rows of desks. The walls were painted white, to better reflect light, their lower parts decorated with black smoke-like drawings, a symbol of Ru.

Even though officially the Underground culture focused on scientific progress and looked down on anything to do with painting, music, and poetry, the specializations of their enemy, it was very difficult to live completely without them; religious-themed decorations were accepted. People not gifted with the intellect needed to appreciate the natural sciences or not working to support the Free Economy needed to occupy themselves with something, after all. And the right art was also a way to spread the appropriate beliefs.

It wasn’t as if the Tunnel dwellers were conscious of the absence of art in their lives. Those who were employed in average jobs came back after working long hours to their small and very similar apartments, tuned in to the news on their radios, did their house chores, and went to bed. They couldn’t care any less about some blockhead’s scribbling on paper that was supposed to look like a flower.

Others, mainly people working in the science and military fields, had more free time; they were satisfied with the beauty found in the laws of nature, with learning about various wonders of engineering, or with coming up with stunning proofs of some mathematical theorems. Proofs can be as inspiring as art.

There were, of course, people who felt differently, but who cares about them? After all, they were a minority, and had no deep desire to gather and protest. Society had always been like this.

A small fly buzzed through the air, and sat on one of the corners of a plastic desk. After a few seconds of sitting and twitching its legs, it was lazily batted away.

The classroom was full of students, and let us be frank, their diverse smells. The class of future mathematicians contained only around five girls, and this made the boys less inclined to wash themselves; they had no one to impress. Add to this the fact that this was the first lesson, and many students had run to school to arrive early for the Zarul exam…

‘You have ten more minutes to submit your work. I will not waste an instant of my break for your sake. so do not think that I will accept anything after the bell’, the language teacher said slowly in a bored voice, flipping through a student’s homework and scribbling something there in red ink.

The Zarul language teacher, or Zarulichka, as the students nicknamed her, was an interesting being. Her skin, like most Tunnel dwellers, was an almost unnatural shade of pale white. This color gave her an almost sickly appearance, which she partially covered up by carefully applying a thin layer of rouge on her cheeks.

Her dress flowed around her like falling water taken from the river of Seth, cloaking her in a layer of darkness. Her dyed hair, pinned into a neat bun, matched with the dress; although its roots were silvery, betraying her age. Generally, she dressed carefully, like expected from any person choosing to dedicate their life to humanities studies.

The gender ratio in humanities was massively skewed toward females, so their graduates focused much more on appearances and self-presentation than others. A natural desire to attract males made these women compete among themselves. Or was it something else? Maybe it was just rooted in their culture?

The phrase uttered slowly and carelessly by this woman caused a ripple in the classroom. Many of the students were visibly startled and started furiously scratching at their papers, and the atmosphere beyond the teacher’s desk filled with a wild energy.

Each movement of the minute hand of the clock over the teacher’s desk now became a terrible and horrifying symbol of the approaching end. God forbid if a pen suddenly ran out of ink! Many student’s hands started shaking, and the room plunged into a terrifying and nervous abyss.

The only color other than shades of black and white in the teacher’s appearance were her piercing, evilly glinting frosty eyes. She sometimes used them to make chattering classes submit and, when she was in the mood, to control the incessant cheating happening at every possible opportunity.

Of course, as all students are always told, cheating is a terrible crime. Instead of learning during the time in life when your brain is most receptive to new information and works the quickest, you take the easy way out, procrastinating and then just stupidly copying off of someone. How can you even think of any achievement in life when you can’t even force yourself to study unpleasant things? How can you face Ru’s judgment before entering the afterlife? Sinning before even becoming an adult?

Why go to the class at all and waste precious minutes of your productive years just to get some little grade or mark of attendance written on a piece of paper?

Grades in school didn’t play any role in university admissions, the only thing that could happen was being kicked out for not passing a class.

Even that was pretty hard to achieve, only one or at most two out of around thirty classmates were forced to leave each year, and almost never because of failing Zarul class. Zarul was of course considered less important that Algebra or Geometry, so the Lyceum made the exams much easier. Nothing to fear.

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

Nevertheless, there wasn’t a single person in the mathematics-focused class who didn’t cheat regularly. The reason was simple. That failure rate was a trick. It was almost impossible to survive without cheating! The amount of homework you received in any class, just didn’t add up to what a normal sane person could complete, even if he did nothing but eat, sleep and study. Yes, if you were highly motivated, it was possible, but not even close to everyone was like this.

That’s why most classes, except, of course, Algebra, Geometry, and partially Physics, were a mainly a group effort. There would always be one or two people in class who were big fans of, say, Chemistry.

They would do the homework very diligently, write it down in a neat and legible way, and then pass it around to their friends during break time. These friends usually also had friends, so in the end most, if not all, of the class would have the chance to see the correct answers and write them down. But in some classes, of course it was very hard to survive only on cheating, because the in-class exams were strictly observed. Thankfully, Zarul was not one of these brutal classes.

Karl was one of many students who survived in Zarul class only thanks to cheating. He was proudly in the middle of the class rankings, with a solid reputation with the Zarulichka for being a hardworking, although not very gifted, boy. Having a good reputation always helps in the face of a crisis; when you are caught, for example.

Karl had faithfully worked on the written parts of the exam – copying those off was risky, because even an idiot can understand that something is wrong when he is handed two identical works, and now only the multiple choice questions were left. He knew his weaknesses, and grammar, which the questions he had skipped focused on, was one of them.

Knowing that there was no other choice, the boy started adjusting his posture and, after a moment, quickly glanced at the teacher. She was immersed in adding interesting commentary to the piece of paper in front of her. Karl smiled to himself. He had chosen this spot exactly for what he was about to do.

He reached out and quickly tapped the girl sitting in front of him. He knew that she had finished her exam, it was obvious that she was just checking her answers.

The girl in front of him, Fernande, was someone he sometimes joked around with, and she had been a perfectly diligent student since fifth grade, when they had met in the math circle that the Lyceum hosted for its’ students. He was fresh out of the orphanage then, and didn’t know what hell awaited him in the school he had so wanted to get in…

Fernande glanced back, saw Karl’s desperate eyes, and, shaking her head in disapproval, tilted slightly to the right, showing her worksheet.

‘Which ones?’, she whispered, her voice barely audible.

‘Multiple choice,’ Karl whispered back, glancing nervously at the teacher. She was still flipping through someone’s homework, humming slightly under her breath.

The perfectly diligent student slowly flipped through her worksheet where all the answers were marked with neat and confident circles, showing them to the black-haired student.

Karl’s heart, which had been beating wildly due to the fear of getting a bad grade quickly calmed down, and he started efficiently copying off his good friend, his manner quick and practiced. Friends were amazing!

After around a minute or two, the boy had finished, and, after sweetly smiling to the respected and useful girl, he made a deeply concentrated expression appear on his face, just in case, and started flipping through the answer sheet, as if he were checking his answers.

The bell rung. It was time for break.

Walking out into the corridor with his helpful friend, and discussing the solutions to the mathematics homework, he stopped, letting her copy off one annoying problem full of calculations, which she hadn’t managed to get right after a few hours of work, and then went to lunch, where, as always, Max was probably waiting for him.

Max, whom he had known since his years at the elite orphanage for gifted children, had also tested into the X Lyceum many years ago. Unfortunately, they had tested into different classes. They still met up at least once a day.

——————————————————

The cafeteria was a badly repaired circular room with rough walls, the cut stones in the wall letting some earth peek through. Karl adjusted his sweater, rubbing his hands. The pipes with hot water running along the cafeteria’s perimeter did close to nothing to stop the cold from seeping in. The whole place was unusually chilly. One might think that such a well-known Lyceum as Karl’s would have the money to repair it… Was is corruption?

No, the cold must be there as a lesson on the adversities of life. If external conditions are always pleasant, what will teach you to overcome hardship? The cold was even refreshing, Karl realized, and it helped him think faster. Yes, the cold was intentional.

Standing in line to get his portion of beetroot soup with mashed potatoes as a side dish (this was the free food all students from poorer backgrounds were given, others bought or brought their own food), and thinking idly about his depressing situation, his eyes wandered around the room, pausing for a few seconds at the huge portrait of their Leader over the entrance.

His eyes drifted to the Free Union’s national anthem carved in large letters right next to Grandfather Ved’s smiling and benevolent face. ‘Rise up…’

Karl’s gloomy and tired face lightened up, he smiled, his heart filling with pride for the beautifully put together words. He would soon have the chance to serve his motherland! Just a few years until he graduated from university!

Anyways, who cares that much about how chilly it is? The pursuit of knowledge is much more important and fulfilling.

He took his tray and went to the table where he and Max usually met up. He slowly started eating his soup, staring at the small groups forming and transforming around him. A group of younger boys were sitting on the adjacent table, laughing and talking about something trivial. Karl felt his heart pinch slightly, his stomach sinking, and his briefly improved mood plunged back to where it was.

Even if they were younger, stupider, you can say, they all had many friends whom they could spend their lunch breaks with. Karl wasn’t as sociable. He didn’t remember the last time he ate with anyone but his childhood friend and the people Max brought. Was there something wrong with him? Was he just not good enough at mathematics to be respected and popular? Karl sighed, chewing a potato. Yes, there must be something wrong with him. He was too lazy, he should have at least won the V competition in math.

Lost in his thoughts, Karl didn’t notice his friend, along with the acquaintance he brought, approach the table.

‘Greetings, the least useful of all my acquaintances!’, Max smiled, his smile nasty and mocking. The only thing that slightly ruined it were his somewhat crooked teeth. Max liked complaining about how his bad genes gave him these teeth, and how he was stuck with them for life.

‘Salutations, meaningless scrap of society!’, Karl smiled, his smile just as nasty. Those hours of reading dictionaries payed well, allowing him to add flowery words in carefully calculated situations. He quickly glanced at the person Max had brought along this time, offering him a slightly less toxic greeting.

Shepk was a boy Karl knew well. Tall and thin, with a calm and fixed gaze, he was generally pretty quiet. He gave off a very withdrawn aura, not showing a lot of emotions, and rarely commented on anything. When he did, however, it would be something so witty that the entire audience would try to understand what he had said for a few seconds, then, after finally understanding, explode into laughter. They met often in the after school club, playing chess, a game they both deeply enjoyed.

They ate in relative calmness, mostly sharing the stories of what had happened in their respective classes and complaining as much as possible about everything.