In my exam room, the test-takers came from different schools. The atmosphere was solemn.
I unzipped the inner pocket of my school jacket and calmly pulled out the black ballpoint pen I'd prepared long in advance.
I began my fight.
Halfway through, I glanced up without thinking.
Just ahead of me and to the left, a girl from our class had finished bubbling in the multiple-choice section and was now scrawling furiously across the essay sheet with a pink pen.
She was our class's arts representative, and her face was lit with absolute confidence.
A proctor passed by her desk, brow furrowed, clearly on the verge of saying something. But seeing how absorbed she was, he shook his head and moved on.
I knew that at this very moment, scattered across other testing rooms in our school, even at other testing sites across the city, my classmates were like seeds flung to the wind, sowing that absurd shade of pink across the answer sheets that would decide their futures.
In my previous life, I had fought tooth and nail to swap those pens back to black. I saved every one of their scores. And at the celebration dinner afterward, they laughed as they shoved me off the rooftop.