PE Class

In a blink of an eye, it was Monday and the gaming grind was over. The normal routine where Shawn slept on the bus came back. Emilie did not disturb him anymore in the morning and the teenager got his beauty sleep that he wanted. Though he had gotten what he wanted, there was a lingering feeling of reminiscence, like he had parted away from something. It was whatever to him though. He couldn't care too much about it.

Finishing up form class, Julian woke up Shawn, reminding him that it was Physical Education (PE) class now, "Let's go change."

The school has a regulation where students had to change out of their school uniform and into their PE attire, before changing back into their school attire for normal class. It was a complete hassle to do that and Shawn usually took the easy route whenever they had morning PE class.

Slowly, the boy unbuttoned his school uniform and pants and low and behold, there was a PE attire waiting underneath. Shawn looked at Julian who was diligently changing away. He advised, "You should just learn from me and wear it underneath."

"Nah, its not cool to wear like that."

"You're talking about looking cool when your hair is this messy?" Shawn was left speechless. Julian's long hair was unkempt all the time as if he would wake up from bed and head to school straight away. "Why not you just cut it short?"

"I like it long."

"Have you ever tried short hair?" For three years, he had never seen Julian style or cut his hair even relatively short.

"No."

"Then how would you know whether you will like it or not?"

"Because I look at your face and I think twice about it. Hahaha!"

"…" Why was he friends such a dumbass, thought Shawn.

In PE class, 9A would be playing badminton in a doubles match. Pairing up, the game would be played in rotation, where the pairs would move to the next court down when finished. Shawn decided to pair up with Julian. Neither of them was very good at the game, but Shawn did have some good impressions of the sport. He used to play it in Singapore during his primary school days.

"Hey Julian, Shawn, could you accommodate one more person? Nevel over here doesn't have a pair. Could y'all just rotate playing the game amongst the three of you?" The PE teacher, Mr Grims had his hand on the shoulder of a skinny scrawny teen wearing rectangular glasses. The teenager was Nevel Wang and in the year level, he was infamous for being known as the boy that no one liked.

Julian was reluctant to agree to the request of the teacher, but for Shawn, he didn't care. "Sure."

Nevel scuttled along and went to the badminton court station for their team. The badminton rackets were placed for the students to use. Picking it up, Shawn could tell that these rackets were off very low quality. His home's badminton rackets were definitely of finer quality.

"So, who goes first?" Julian initiated. Looking at Shawn, he asked, "Do you want to play the first round with Nevel?"

"Sure," Pulling on the racket strings for fun, Shawn looked at his opponents. It was 9A's sporty boy duo, ET and Max. In every PE lesson, the two boys, without fail, would try their best and carry their team to victory in matches. It was thanks to them that Shawn never needed to play in games and could just rest while standing still.

"This is going to be fun, lol." ET licked his lips in excitement, thinking in his head how hard he should crush Shawn and Nevel.

Standing in their positions, Shawn played in the back, while Nevel stood in front. From the back, Shawn noticed that Nevel had lowered his centre of gravity, in preparation for ET's serve.

With a flick, the shuttlecock flew over to Nevel's position. With quick precision, the boy flicks his racket as the shuttlecock flew back to their opponent's back court.

"Mine," Coordinated, Max called out his position and was long ready to receive the high ball. As it came down, at the highest point where the badminton racket could reach, Max smash downwards, aiming to get the shuttlecock just over the net.

"Piak!" The sound was loud and Shawn was unable to follow the movement of the shuttlecock. However, for the boy in front, this was a simple matter. With light footsteps, Nevel slid himself to the left as he intercepted the smash with him racket. The shuttlecock once again went high up in the air towards Max.

"Again!" Max refuses to lose, smashing the shuttlecock once again. This time, the ball was also received easily by Nevel. And instead of the shuttlecock going high up, Nevel had skilfully dispersed the force of the smash by lower his racket. As a result, the ball just barely went over the net.

Shawn's eyes widened, watching the scrawny classmate that was on his team. That was true skill. Saying in a genuine tone to Nevel, "Well played."

Nevel turned around with a smile on his face and replied, "Thank you."

The Max and ET duo continued to play the match, refusing to lose to Shawn and Nevel. Other than the loss shuttlecocks that went to their backcourt, Shawn didn't need to participate in the game. When the match was over the score was 10 to 2, where the winner was Shawn and Nevel.

"Hey, I'm sorry you did not get to play much." Nevel apologised to Shawn, seeing that it was him that had received most of the shuttlecocks. The way he spoke felt very apprehensive and Shawn quickly clarified to his classmate.

"It's fine. I did not want to play anyways," Shawn waved his hand, signalling to him that it was okay.