At the flat, Aina unlocked the door. The smell of sambal hit her immediately. Her mother was in the kitchen, already home from her shift at the clinic. Her father would be home by seven.
Aina was in the Robotics Club. It was the only place she felt truly awake. When she coded the little Arduino robot to navigate a maze, the world fell away – no SPM, no parents' expectations, no endless kerja kursus (coursework) binders that had to be bound in clear plastic with a green cover page exactly 2cm from the top margin.
"See you. Don't forget – Add Maths tuition."
Li Qin snorted, muffling the sound behind her hand. "You try having a fringe this short. It keeps escaping." Budak Sekolah Tunjuk Burit
And for now, that was enough.
This, Aina thought, was the real syllabus. Not the textbooks, not the endless past-year SBP papers. It was learning to share a bench with someone who prayed differently, ate differently, spoke differently at home. It was learning that the boy who struggled in Bahasa Malaysia was a genius at badminton. It was learning that the girl who never spoke in English class could write poetry that made you cry.
"What isn't?" Li Qin was now scrolling through her hidden phone, checking TikTok. At the flat, Aina unlocked the door
"It's not fair," Aina murmured.
"It was okay, Ma," she said. "It was a good day."
Aina walked home with Li Qin. The rain had stopped. The sun was fierce now, drying the pavement in patches. They passed the mosque, the Chinese temple, the little Hindu shrine tucked between two shoplots. A familiar sound drifted from an open window – someone practicing the piano. Chopin. Aina recognized it from her own piano lessons, which she had quit three years ago because there was no time. Her father would be home by seven
Aina dropped her bag on the floor. She thought about the robot she wanted to build. The SPM next year. Li Qin's croissants. The boy reading under the rain tree.
"Everything. The SPM is next year. My father keeps saying, 'You want to be an engineer or a doctor?' He doesn't even ask anymore. He just assumes."
In Chemistry, Puan Shida wrote the formula for electrolysis on the whiteboard. "This will be in your SPM," she said, tapping the marker against the board. The class groaned. "I don't make the rules," she added, almost apologetically.
The rain came down in grey sheets over Kuala Lumpur, plastering the bougainvillea petals to the pavement outside SMK Taman Megah. Inside, the air smelled of floor wax, old books, and the faint sweetness of curry puffs from the canteen.