Chapter 3: Chapter 3
Inside of a car workshop, where Andy's father, Kang Lee, is working.
"Oi, Old Lee. You should take a rest. I'll finish that for you."
This man is my colleague that I have worked with for roughly ten years.
As soon as I was given a chance to rest. I immediately lit up my cigarette.
I wonder how Andy is doing in school?
Judging from the time, he should be returning from school and is hanging out with his friend.
"Hey, Did you know? Recently computer games have been quite trending. Especially for the youngsters."
Computer games. Of course, I know it. Andy has been playing it and nothing good came from playing it. He even dares to ditch school to play computer games.
"I think so…" Lee replied as he puffed out the smoke of the cigarette he's holding.
'Was it the games that caused him to rebel? Normally, Andy wouldn't do that.'
'It's only after what I did to him, he changed. I have no right to scold him, do I?'
"Lee, hear me out. I'm going to tell you something important. Do you want to stop working in this filthy place?"
His friend suddenly asked him a nonsense question.
"Why? You want to quit this job?"
To be honest, the pay is quite nice, the boss is also generous and kind.
I don't think it's a good idea to quit this job.
"I have a friend of mine that can fund money, we can open an internet cafe and leave this filthy place."
Internet cafe, the place to play computer games?
"Can that place really earn us money?"
"Think about it... all we need to invest in is computers, mouses, keyboards, speakers, etc. A friend of mine can supply it within a decent market price since we ordered them in a batch."
"We also need to get an Internet connection. If we have no internet, they can only play offline games."
I didn't understand a single word coming out from his mouth.
Since when did he know so much about technology?
"Um, what's a keyboard? What is the internet? What is offline?"
"Nevermind if you don't know. There's no need for you to know all this stuff. Either way, after we invest in those gadgets, we can easily charge people 5000 Rupiah for every hour they want to play."
"Isn't that magnificent? It's much better than being a mechanic right?"
5000? It's that much for just an hour? Now I know where Andy spends the money at.
"How much do we need to pay for the weird gadgets?"
"Don't worry about those, I'll handle it for you. I just need you to join me."
It sounds suspicious to be true.
"I'll think about it when I reach home."
It's 6 P.M already and the workshop is closing.
Since, today's business went quite well. The boss gave us extra payment before we went home.
I then rode my old motorcycle home with a confused expression throughout the ride. I was thinking about the suspicious offer.
'Leave the workshop and run a business myself. Can I do that?'
Sigh*
As Lee drives, along the street, he sees red lanterns decorated on people's houses. This reminds him of chinese new year.
'Right, the Chinese new year is coming.'
I guess I'll use this money to buy some groceries at the supermarket.
…
…
After Lee finished shopping for the groceries, he returned home with a lot of things on his old motorcycle.
Eggs, sack of rice, cabbages, and rarely, a whole chicken for chinese new year celebration.
After putting the things I've bought in their places, I then fried myself an egg and started to eat my dinner.
A light drizzle of dark soy sauce on my rice, anchovies on the side and an egg. That is my dinner.
'Hmm? The light in Andy's room is still on.'
Usually, at this time, he would be sleeping already.
With curiosity, Lee slowly walked toward Andy's room, there he found Andy was...
Andy was holding a book!! Is he studying?!
Lee was peeking at Andy through the small crevices of the door with his bulging eyes,
Fortunately, Andy didn't notice it at all as he was immersing himself in the textbook. At the same time, he is writing at an incredible speed in a book.
I wonder what he's writing?
Nevermind, there's no point of me knowing it.
I have never gone to school before, even though I saw it, I won't even understand anything.
I guess it's a good thing if he's studying.
Should I tell him to sleep? He should be sleeping already. It's not healthy for him to stay up late.
-----
[A few hours ago, before Lee returned to the house.]
What the heck...
I know that I sleep in class but this is something that I never imagined.
I didn't know that I didn't write a single thing in my notebook!
They're completely empty!
At first, I thought it's only the history notebook that's empty but when I checked other notebooks, it turned out every notebook was perfectly blank.
Currently, I'm filling my notebooks from the first topic to the current topic I've studied.
I need to fill them up as fast as possible.
At the same time, since I need to read them before I write them in the book. This can count as me studying.
Another reason that I needed to fill my notebooks was because I knew what would happen later on, at the end of the semester.
The school will be implementing a new rule, which is 'End of the year, Notebook Inspection.'
This inspection will affect student marks according to the amount of notes they made.
If the students properly take notes of everything the teacher said then it's good. Otherwise, the worst thing that could happen is that you repeat another year in the same grade.
There were some cases where they did take notes but lost their notebooks. They thought that it's all fine and would happen just a new book and continue to take note of what was left.
In this case,he/she still needs to be punished but not too severely since there are still notes.
Few of them are like Andy, who has a blank notebook. Nothing was noted from the first till the last.
Immediately these types of students stayed to repeat another year without a question.
'Three topics finished, three more to go.'
I didn't feel bored at all when I'm writing all of the theories in the book. I've experienced something worse than this.
During the time where I researched VR-MMORPG. It required me to understand how the brain works, not just the parts but everything.
The research was very tiring and time-consuming, each day I needed to consult a professional doctor to obtain deeper knowledge from them and it's obviously not an easy-task since the brain was the most complex organ of the human body.
In the end, not only I have to study the brain, but the whole human anatomy to fully understand everything.
For VR-MMORPG I was willing to do it.
Yet in the end, before I could finish my research the company went bankrupt.
...
Slap*
Get it together.
Now that you're back again, you can fix your mistakes.
Right now, I should focus on this.
There's no use dwelling on the past.
Before this, Andy only planned to do the thing he's doing right now for only a few hours and then go to bed since he didn't want to be scolded for staying up late.
He lost track of time and didn't even realize outside had become dark.
-----
[Lee's POV]
What is he doing?
For the first time, Lee saw Andy making such a weird expression and then suddenly out of nowhere slapped himself.
What in the world?!
Should I stop him and ask him to rest?
Time passed slowly, I stayed to watch Andy with the bowl of rice on my hand the entire time.
I was too shocked to eat at this point.
...
...
Mervin finally returned from his work and the first thing he saw when he returned home was that his father creepily peeked into his bedroom. (Andy and Mervin share their bedroom.)
"Dad, what are you doing?"
Lee signaled Mervin to be quiet and then lightly waved his hand, asking Mervin to come over.
"Shhh..."
'What did Andy do this time?'
When he finally got closer to Lee to get a good view of Andy, Mervin was just as shocked as when Lee saw his little brother studying.
But unlike Lee, Mervin isn't the type that hides in the corner.
"What the f*ck are you doing?"
Seeing how agitated Mervin was, Lee quickly pretended he didn't see anything. He ran to the living room, and resumed eating normally.
As for Mervin, he still was dumbfounded to see Andy was actually holding a pen in his hand and is using the desk to actually study.
"Ah, Big Brother. You're back!"
'Wait a minute... Mervin is back? What time is it!'
"It's ten P.M already?!?"
Andy turned his head over to see the clock and was surprised to see the current time.
Seeing that Andy was just as shocked as him, Mervin can't muster any of his anger.
"It's late already, go to sleep, you have school tomorrow."
Following Mervin's order, Andy quickly tidies up his books and gets ready to sleep.
While Andy was doing all that Mervin has long left the room.
Mervin didn't make a fuss of it and directly went to eat but he still remained curious as the scene wasn't something you see everyday.
"How long did he study?"
"Since I returned from working. So, at least two hours."
Lee answered expressionlessly but was very happy inside.
On the other hand, Mervin was counting something in his hand.
'This means there's a possibility that the moment he came home he was studying too. his school finished at 1 P.M, he should be arriving home at 2 P.M at most. So, he could be studying for...'
'One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight!'
Eight hours!
Nope, there's no way he would study the moment he arrived home. What could possibly happen to him to make him study?
I would be grateful if he stopped ditching his school and stopped playing games.
...
Tomorrow, I'll leave work early and check him out.
We'll see if he is just pretending to study.
After eating his dinner, he then immediately went to bed, sleeping together with Andy.
At the same time, Lee was sleeping on the sofa outside, in the living room.
Both of them were smiling happily in their sleep.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
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