Silence. Then, from the front row, a boy named Raj, who always sat alone, turned around. He gave Wei Jie a small, almost invisible nod.
The fluorescent lights of the Singaporean secondary school hummed a low, monotonous tune, a soundtrack to the collective dread hanging over Class 3A. It was the first day of Term 3, and that meant one thing: the return of the dreaded "Huo Dong Ben" – the Activity Book for Social Studies.
Instead, his mouth opened. "Ms. Priya, I… I didn't write a model answer." Huo Dong Ben Answers Sec 3
"Number one," Ms. Priya called out. "Jun Hao?"
A collective, quiet groan. For most, the Huo Dong Ben was a swamp of blank lines, confusing infographics, and questions that felt like they had been written in a different language. But for one student, Wei Jie, it was a battlefield. Silence
Wei Jie felt a bead of sweat roll down his neck. He uncapped his pen and began to furiously erase his own answer, the rubber shavings falling like snow on his worn sneakers.
Wei Jie froze. He looked down at his Huo Dong Ben. For this one, he hadn't written a joke. He had written the truth. The fluorescent lights of the Singaporean secondary school
He quickly slammed his notebook shut.
"Wei Jie," Ms. Priya said. "How about you answer number 12?"
Wei Jie had tried on Section 3. He really had. He'd written about racial harmony, about the importance of National Day, about not judging someone by their favourite hawker food. But his answers were scribbled, desperate guesses. He stared at his first answer: "List two benefits of a diverse society." He had written: 1. More types of food. 2. Can learn new swear words in Tamil and Malay.