My Bothersome Life

New Assignment

I opened my eyes, groaning from the cool wind I felt on my skin with no blanket on my bed. Luke threw the blanket onto the floor as he pulled me up into a sitting position. My uniform was placed beside me as part of our familiar daily routine, all ironed and free from any wrinkles while someone was already brushing my unruly hair.

"Luke?" I rubbed my eyes.

"We have to go to the classroom early today. Our homeroom teacher will be making an announcement about how many points we'll get based on our results in the third district." Luke immediately replied as if he already knew what I was going to ask.

The screen lit up to project our results. I was thankful that I didn't overspend when I was rich with points. I did kind of expect this, but it was worse than I thought when the dean had clearly stated we wouldn't be getting any punishments from what happened in the third district.

The projection glowed to show:

[Ellen and Allan: 50,000 points]

[Shelly and Alex: 60,000 points]

[Rika and Luke: 0 points].

I knew that next time someone asked me to help find their family heirloom, I would decline under all circumstances. I dropped my head onto my desk, depressed that we had failed to gain any points from such an easy mission.

"Rika, you know it wasn't your fault..." Shelly rubbed my back.

"We heard what happened from the rumours that came from the dean's office," Ellen added.

Maybe even Alex felt bad for me as he mentioned, "It's a pretty rare event that something like this happens."

Well at least I knew we would have to spend the remaining 100,000 points very wisely. This was how I came to study in the library with Luke non-stop for over twelve hours. Unfortunately, since this month was not over yet, I could not use the dimensional library.

Whatever suspicions Luke had about how I was able to gain a lot of points last time, he didn't ask. All he did was to drag me into the library as soon as class was over to make up for the points that we did not get from the practical assignment.

I didn't dare to complain to Luke since it was mostly my fault with going along with the prank which got us in this mess in the first place. Whatever that girl's true identity was from the fake one in the third district was deemed to be scary.

She reminded me of a term called 'Yandere' in my past life with her destructive nature, even though I didn't exactly remember what that term meant. As the years went on in this reincarnation, I felt I was losing more and more memories of my past life.

At first, my memories from my past life freshly came back to me like it was yesterday. But as the years went by, only tiny pieces of the whole puzzle of memories flashed back to me whenever I encountered something familiar from my past life.

I was almost disappointed with myself when I almost forgot that vending machines even existed until I came to the third district. However, I always remembered something like my light novels and junk food because I was always with them.

Maybe I was always nervous about fancy food and stuff in my past life that I had always innately disliked it in my current life. It must be because I was getting tired from cramming all this useless information lately.

I flipped another page in the book before detecting that Luke noticed I was blanking out again as he stopped reading his own notes. Unfortunately, this routine continued for the next eight months. Thanks to the constant torture of the never-ending studying, Luke and I earned a stable amount of 30,000 points each month

At this point, there was nothing different from elementary school except that the content of the class had risen in difficulty as you would expect from elsewhere. I sat in the café with Ellen and Shelly as we were taking a break from all that studying.

"I wish we could go outside the school again," Ellen muttered.

"Yea, it was nice in the third district," Shelly stopped when noticing I was here with them.

"No, it's ok. It was somewhat better in the third district if not for the incident," I told them.

Ellen and Shelly looked somewhat relieved before continuing to talk about other topics while enjoying their tea.

"My older brother had told me that middle school students have practical exams twice a year," Shelly told us.

"The third district only?" I asked in curiosity.

"The first three districts for middle schoolers," Shelly explained to me.

"If you think about it, it's about time for our practical exam since they only have it twice a year," Ellen hinted.

Ellen's prediction came true on a Friday evening where class got extended.

"You will be having another practical exam this year before we let you go for summer vacation," Daniel announced.

Summer vacation? The summer vacation that I thought didn't exist in the first district!?! I wondered how long it would be and blanked out until Luke lightly pinched my arm to get me to pay attention to the teacher again.

"You will be staying inside the first district and this time each pair will be working in a shop for one week. The amount of points you receive will depend on the results from your performance of your employer." Daniel switched into a serious tone.

When we left the classroom, Ellen whispered in my ear, "I guess we're not going to other districts this time."

I sighed when I knew what she meant. Ever since the last incident, the school was afraid of more unexpected situations that may occur in the other districts. This was probably why they had our practical assignment in the first district this round.

This was like a part-time job. I was pretty confident that I could do well on this assignment because I was accustomed to receiving customer service in the third district (which seemed pretty easy to reciprocate).

When Luke and I arrived at our dorm, there was a special message that popped up from the marble which projected news about our assignment.

New Message:

[Rika and Luke is to report to the ABC International Corp. of the First District by 1PM].

ABC International Corp. of the First District? That was a pretty long name for a company. I had never heard of that company before within my stay in the first district.

Since I didn't know what it meant, I asked Luke, "Have you ever heard of the ABC International Corp. of the First District?"

Luke sighed before answering, "It's one of the companies that the Monete family owns that does business in high end accessories and clothing."

Wait. The Monete family? Why did that name sound very familiar?

"What do you mean by the Monete family? Who is the Monete family?" I tried to confirm my suspicions.

Luke started to frown as he stared at me like I was a hopeless person.

"Did you forget the name of your classmate that you see almost every day? It's Alex. Alex of the Monete family." Luke seemed disappointed in me.

Ahhh. No wonder that name seemed really familiar. This brought back memories when we were partnered together. Alex did bring up his family name many times on the first day while trying to drag me into studying.

If this company was owned by Alex's family, I could not imagine the many strict protocols that would follow, knowing Alex's personality.

I hoped this field assignment would not be as unfortunate as last time while I anticipated it would resemble something like a part-time job in my past life.