Huff Huff
Soft, strained breaths filled the square room, thick with suffocating tension. A crowd of students sat in silence, their eyes locked onto the glowing rectangular screens atop their desks, each one presenting a challenge waiting to be solved.
Tick... Tock... Tick... Tock...
The sound of the clock echoed through the room, steady and relentless—
like the beating of a heart on the verge of collapse.
Everyone focused solely on their own screen, blocking out the world around them, pouring every ounce of concentration into the problems before them.
They all knew:
when the ticking stopped, someone would be taken away.
This was the nature of this place.
This was the nature of this country.
Education here defined your class—
and determined your life.
This was a place where every student's future dangled by a thread.
For as long as I could remember, I had lived in constant competition.
Since childhood, I had been told:
"Study hard. Get good grades. If you want a peaceful life, you have no choice."
But no matter how hard I tried, I was never one of the gifted ones.
I scraped by every exam with barely passing marks, always clinging to the edge.
It had been that way ever since kindergarten.
Back when I was still in junior high, someone once said:
"Children without talent will be abandoned."
I hadn't truly understood those words back then.
Not until now.
This is my first term at Elite Institute—
or, as it's more formally known,
the Center for Intellectual Selection of Enseria,
the grandest state-run academy in this entire nation of Enseria.
Here, every aspect of education falls under the strict control of the government.
And as the teachers and officials constantly remind us:
Every term, two students are expelled.
Those who were taken away were always the ones at the bottom—
the students whose total scores lagged far behind the rest.
The adults often told us they were being "transferred" to the Institution for Academic Enhancement and Development,
a special facility designed to improve their abilities and prepare them for a return.
But even so...
we never saw them again.
This school was the second stage of the nation's education system.
The first stage—spanning kindergarten through elementary school—still lacked the harsh culling known as "enhancement transfers,"
the term adults used to soften the brutal truth.
It was only from now on—
from middle school through university—
that this system would begin in earnest.
Clatter...
A pencil from the desk beside me slipped and struck the floor with a sharp sound.
The girl beside me flinched, her face a twisted mask of fear and panic.
She hastily bent down to retrieve it, then snapped upright, trembling and slick with sweat.
The ticking clock gave its final chime,
signaling the end of the exam.
Every student immediately placed their tools down and sat still, waiting for the voice from the speaker in the corner of the room.
"Attention. All students, please return to your quarters."
One by one, we rose from our seats and filed out, each heading toward our designated dormitories.
Here, the dormitories were part of the school grounds, and no student was permitted to leave the school's perimeter.
In fact, none of us had set foot beyond these walls even once.
Every parent had already signed the necessary documents.
---
The parents had signed away their rights—
they had willingly relinquished custody of their children to the government,
without conditions, without recourse.
I couldn't even remember how, or why, I had ended up here.
By the time I was aware of it,
I was already sitting in this room, alongside 49 others.
The education system here was a comprehensive one,
binding together every subject into an unrelenting curriculum.
We studied from Monday through Friday,
and every weekend—Saturday and Sunday—
we were burdened with homework in every field.
Since arriving, I hadn't had a single day of true rest.
Every student here was assigned an identification number.
The system ran on a three-term schedule,
with two major exams—midterms and finals—each term.
The highest-scoring student of each term would earn a special privilege:
they could request anything they wished—
with three unbreakable exceptions:
they could not ask for permission to leave the school grounds,
they could not request communication with the outside world,
and they could not seek to meet with students who had been "removed."
Those were the iron laws of this place.
---
Now, everyone was back in their assigned quarters,
pretending to rest,
waiting for their scores to be announced.
But in truth, the same suffocating fear filled every room—
the terror of being expelled.
No one really knew what happened to those who were taken away.
The students who vanished the previous year were never mentioned again.
No information ever leaked from the adults.
All we heard were vague whispers—
that some parents, desperate after losing their children,
had staged protests outside the school.
But after a day or two, the protests stopped—
and so did any trace of the parents themselves.
It was as if neither they, nor their children,
had ever existed.
---
The room I stayed in was a small, square space for just one person.
There were hardly any furnishings—only a desk, a chair, and some essential items like a lamp, stationery, and notebooks.
Next to me was a bookshelf, packed so tightly with books that I figured it would take a whole year to finish reading them.
Across from me, there was a simple bed for one person, nothing special.
The room had no windows, and the door was a solid iron one, tightly shut and only allowed to be opened at specific times.
In the top right corner of the room, a small camera was fixed, and a tiny speaker, probably to monitor my actions and announce various messages.
The lights in the room were so bright that they almost hurt my eyes, and the walls were so thick that I could never hear anything from the outside world.
I sat down on the bed, not doing anything, just waiting for the score announcement.
--Twenty minutes later--
((Announcement from the administration room))
: {The results have been finalized. Room Y-9,
50 students, ranked as follows:}
1. ID A1-005-BX, Total Score: 89
2. ID A1-047-GX, Total Score: 87
...
...
...
I scanned the rankings up and down as the announcement continued. A hologram appeared on the wall, displaying the score chart and rankings:
1,
2...
3.....
45....
47!!
I... My score was only two points away from the last three positions. I had scored 65 points. Compared to the others, it was quite low, but at least it wasn't the bottom.
((Announcement))
: {All students are to gather in the dining hall at this time.}
As the announcement ended, the thick iron door swung open. A figure in a black cloak and a mask covering their face, armed to the teeth, stood waiting for me to leave. I walked alongside them, heading toward the dining hall. The atmosphere here was as tense as ever. Many doors along the hallway slowly opened, and all the students were guided to the same place.
When we arrived, we were seated at the dining table in order, and the food had already been placed on the table. There was one bowl that contained something called "Advanced Synthetic Nutrient." What was in front of me looked like "brown rice protein extract with mineral soup." This was the meal we received every day.
Ingredients Summary:
Brown rice: It has a dull, grayish-brown color and is cut in moderate amounts. It is a source of complex carbohydrates that digest slowly, high in fiber, and contains essential vitamins like (Thiamine), (Niacin), (Pantothenic acid).
Soy protein extract: Contains a high amount of protein with a full range of essential amino acids, such as leucine, isoleucine, and valine, and also contains good fats.
Mineral soup: Contains calcium, potassium, magnesium, and phosphorus.
Vitamin supplement pills: (Pyridoxine), (Cobalamin), etc.
---
The smell of this synthetic meal was hardly appetizing. It was bland and lukewarm, made solely for survival rather than for enjoyment or nourishment of the spirit.
I slowly scooped the dull-colored brown rice into my mouth. It had a gritty texture, lacking any trace of vitality. The extracted soybean protein was chewy and slightly bitter. The mineral broth slid down my throat thickly and tastelessly. Next to the bowl sat the vitamin supplement tablets—small, white, resembling pills more suited for patients than anything you could call a meal.
All around me, the children ate in silence, heads bowed low. There was no conversation, no laughter, only the repetitive clinking of spoons against metal bowls. It made me feel as though we were nothing more than machines—fed just enough fuel to keep moving forward within this rigid system, unable to resist.
I couldn't help but think, "This place... it's raising humans for something," and whatever that was, it certainly wasn't the kind of life we had ever dreamed of.
Everyone began to finish the contents of their bowls, and once every bowl was empty, an announcement followed:
((Announcement))
:
A1-019-BX (STATUS: FAILED)
A1-042-GX (STATUS: FAILED)
The enforcers entered the dining hall and took the two lowest-ranked students out of the room.
Everything remained deathly silent. No one knew what would happen to them next.
Before long, we were all escorted back to our respective rooms. I, like everyone else, was taken back to my tiny, familiar cell-like room.
The enforcer shoved me inside with the usual mechanical coldness that the adults here spoke with.
"Behave yourself, 'A1-011-GX.' Tomorrow, there will be a replacement of the books on your shelf. Make sure you finish the ones you're behind on by the end of today."
"...Yes, I understand," I replied in a faint voice.
The door slammed shut behind me.
---
I came across a book once. It was a fairy tale called 'Nyra and the Revolution of Dystopia'. It became one of my favorites.
So, I'm hoping that with this bookshelf rotation, they'll bring me the second volume.
"I can count on you, right... little luck?"
Honestly, I felt a little sad about losing this book during the exchange.
I really, really wanted to keep it.
But... there was a problem—
There was a camera in this room, always watching me.
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