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She knew her grades were horrible. She shouldn't of slacked off last semester.

She knew getting a job was going to be her downfall in school.

But what else was I supposed to do?

Her mom didn't have a lot of money, and the household they lived in was beginning to cripple in debt, alongside other issues that had been going on for years.

If it wasn't for her acquaintance, Isogai, who had helped her get a job at the restaurant he worked at as kitchen staff, her mom and herself would be living in a homeless shelter, running themselves into the hole further that her father had dug for them, rather than keeping their small home... on the poor side of town.

She had heard Isogai had fallen to E Class, he had gotten caught having a job by one of the school's administrators. She didn't want that to become her fate, she studied so hard, but she was just too tired from working, dish-washing, the only thing that they employ her as... legally.

Odd jobs she worked on the weekends however?

Seeing the owner of the restaurant had other businesses, and on the weekends was willing to pay under-the-table for hired help, she reaped all the extra cash she could.

But, through the week, at the end of each night as the dishwasher, (she worked night shift, it was all she could do with her school schedule through the week), it left her dirty, exhausted, and dropping down in the class ranks like a butterfly with a hole in it's wing.

She'd first went from B to C.

That had been a wake up call.

She then tried to force herself awake, to study harder and harder after her job/jobs, even taking energy drinks to stay awake.

She'd just crash and realize she'd fallen asleep on the top of her desk.

Now lo and behold, she had fallen just like Isogai... to the dreaded E Class in less than four pitiful months.

Isogai made it out to be 'not that bad', as he had put it, but the school mascot and everyone else said otherwise. She never wanted to judge a book by it's cover, aka the populace's opinion, but... this was different, this was her fate, a fiction novel.

She knew it was bound to happen. Even though, it was because of her own stress, anxiety, and just life in general, unlike Isogai who had simply been 'just caught'.

When she had secretly watched her mom cry silently in the night, her mouth covered to hide her wails, holding teared-up bills in her hands, droplets soaked in all over them, she knew. Her mom's job hadn't given her the promotion at the garment factory, were she sewed clothes on an assembly line.

It was that moment, after the divorce she paid for, that Zumi decided what was right, and more important. It was to take matters into her own hands, to uphold a sense of strength, and make a choice. What was more important? Her mom's life as a whole, or her grades?

Weren't grades apart of her life?

If they couldn't afford to pay for her school though, then what?