Got Picked On

After the class, the guards made sure all of us prisoners got back to our cells peacefully without any fight. I was the last person in line to leave.

Eager for feedback. I can't help myself to asked Hama's gang, the people in front of me.

"Hey," I whispered.

They all turned backed except for Hama, looking at me disgustingly, but I didn't mind it.

"I need some feedback. Did you guys understand what I said well?" I asked.

One of the girls, Sica, Hama's right-hand man, or should I say woman? She responded threateningly, "What do you want? Picking on our leader again?"

I quickly denied it. "No, I just want to hear your ..."

I felt a pain in my left foot. Looking down, I saw that Sica was the culprit.

"Don't you dare talking to us again!" she declared right when I arrived at my cells.

Watching Hama's gang walking away, I could felt that something isn't right with her members' reactions to me.

"I have a week left until the next class. I have to know what's their history is," I thought to myself.

"Hey mister guard," I called. The guard that was with me and Wisaith the other day turned his head to me.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Can you ask the headmaster to provide me pen and paper? I need those to summarize for future classes," I said.

The guard must have thought that was a reasonable request, or he could be afraid of Wisaith's authority. He nodded quietly.

"Thank you," I finished and quickly fell asleep. "You did a great job today," I encouraged myself as I began to dream.

When I woke up the next morning. A stack of paper and a pen were already on the floor. I quickly tear out a small piece of paper and wrote a message on it.

"Hey mister guard," I called him again. "Can you give this to the headmaster?" I handed him the message. He nodded and walked away.

After the first half of the day working, we finally have resting time. Like usual, I hung out with Smasi's gang. They have got used to me talking casually with their boss that they didn't care anymore.

"Smasi, can I ask you something?"

"What?" he lazily replied while laying on the bench and closing his eyes.

"Do you know anything about Hama and her group?"

"Oh? Do you really have interest in her?" he teased me.

"No. It just that I saw them disliking me for some reason," I ignored him.

"That's not unusual. You suddenly are above the prisoners here even though you just came a few months ago."

I told him about the interaction with Hama's group yesterday. "That was an overreaction they gave me yesterday. I feel like there's another reason. You've been here the longest, did you notice anything from them?"

Smasi fell into silence. He was thinking. At last, he said. "They seem to always pick on cheaters." He then opened his eyes slightly. "Did you cheat before?"

"I am here because I got cheated what are you talking about?" I instantly replied.

"Oh yeah. Forgot," he closed his eyes again. I swore he intentionally rub salt on my wound.

"Is that it?"

"..."

"Alright. Thank you," I stood up, about to leave.

"What are you going to do?" still laying on the bench, he asked.

"She's my student whether she likes it or not. I won't let anything stand between my students and their education."

"You figured it out?" Smasi asked as if he was testing.

"From the data I've seen, I am quite confident, but I could be wrong."

"Don't need to worry. You're not wrong," he said casually.