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CHAPTER ~ 2
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          "Supply and Demand"

           Yohan wrote the title on a sticker and pasted it on the file that contained the questions that fell under that topic.

     The file was huge.

    Well, it must be!

  
   Because it contained questions Yohan collected from past papers, provincial papers, zonal papers and term test papers from the most leading schools in Sri Lanka.

     His finals were in six months and he was one of the few students that were lucky enough to have finished learning the entire syllabus way earlier than expected.

That is because the schools were closed as a part of the island-wide lockdown due to Covid 19.

    Many students were facing difficulties in attending online classes due to various reasons and Yohan thanked his lucky stars as he went school every day before the pandemic, without hoping to catch up his missing lessons on a tuition class.

             It was one benefit of being a student in a  leading school in Sri Lanka where the teachers work day and night to bring the best out of the students. As a popular school in the country, they wanted their students to give outstanding performances in all kinds of exams.

Even though Yohan cursed under his breath, every time he had to have a cold shower at four in the morning because he had to be there at school on or before five o'clock, now he was thenkful for it.

             If not for those extra classes they had in the early morning they would not able to cover two years worth of syllabus in one single year.

       Sacrificing his play hours to stay after school for classes, so that the teachers would be able to finish the two years worth of syllabus in one year was indeed not fun.

             But now he could not thank them enough because when many students found themselves stuck with no way to learn even the basics, the only thing Yohan had to do was to revise what he had already learnt.

Also having a brother who made it to a top university in Commerce stream just made his life easier. 

And as someone who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he did not have to waste his time going for tuition classes as his parents brought in teachers to homeschool him.

And before you think that I am exaggerating, let me clear things out to you.

What you just read is an everyday reality for many middle-class Sri Lankan children whose parents are ready to spend as much money as they want to provide good education to their children.

So you must not be surprised to when I say that  Yohan still worked hard and forced himself to work even harder!

Yohan yawned as he placed the file "Supply and Demand" on the shelf labelled "Econ" that remained sandwiched between the other two shelves "Accounting" and "Business Studies".

He looked at the clock and realised it was four in the morning.

He was bleary-eyed due to lack of sleep for two days straight.

Making a note in his mind to take a rest for the rest of the day he decided to go to the bathroom and then straight to the bed for a good sleep.

As he was about to leave the room he took his phone with him as he could check it on his way towards the bathroom.

He made his way down the staircase and was met with his elder brother whose room was right below his.

No wonder why the lights were on in the living room.

"Oh, Yohan! I have got something to tell you. Amma asked me to stop tutoring you and your friends at home. Nethwan's mother called yesterday and said his uncle has Covid 19 and now they are under quarantine."

Jihan's words were all news to Yohan.

He had not used any kind of social media for the last two days because they were his study days.

Nethwan was one of his closest buddies that he always hung out with.

He felt so sorry for him.

" I'll send the message then. Are you going to continue it on Zoom or something?. Or are you gonna stop it completely " Yohan said to his big brother. 

"Yap maybe I will stop as you all have finished learning the syllabus. I'm yet to decide. We have that WhatsApp group anyways. I can still send you guys papers and answers. "

"That WhatsApp group" was not your ordinary WhatsApp group where you would gossip and waste your time.

It was made by Jihan and his other university friends and was sharable so that anyone can join in if they are interested in leaning Econ.

        At first, it was supposed to be this one group where the university students helped the Advanced Level students with difficult questions.

But the concept soon became so popular and Jihan and his friends created separate  WhatsApp groups of their own so that many people can join and benefit. That was because of WhatsApp groups having a maximum number of people for a single group.

The participants were expected to share lessons and notes and help one another and things were going pretty well.

Yohan turned on his mobile data and lowered the volume.

One second passed.
And then another.

After that, his phone was buzzing and flickering, blinking and notification after notification began to appear and reappear on his phone screen.

          The notifications of two days from all of his social media accounts began to come in all at once and it was crazy. 

From his previous experiences, he knew that this was going to take a while to settle.

So he went to the kitchen and grabbed a banana to eat in the meanwhile.

From the kitchen, he could see the living room

The tall glass windows on one wall were giving Yohan a mesmerizing view of the night sky that he could not complain about.

His phone had gone through all the "notification calamities" and there were several groups that still had ongoing chats."

Yohan watched the 2014th message being added to the group  "Econ A1 " by  Naveen. It was a laughing emoji with a gun pointed towards it, followed by a fire emoji.

{😂🔫🔥}

Yohan searched "Machan" on WhatsApp's search bar fishing for the group that they used to chat since their "Ordinary Level "  days.  It was not used much since they reached the "Advanced Level" classes.

           After informing them about the situation and sending Nethwan a message to comfort him, Yohan threw the banana peel to the garbage bin.

And it was then he received a message from  Aryan,

"Hey man! Come to the Econ group now, like right now 😂😂😂. You ain't gonna regret that man. We have a new " bite" to make fun of!."

                Wondering what the heck is going on Yohan went to the group that was buzzing with notifications.

And as soon as he opened the group chat he was greeted with a post that had a girl of their age in it with a caption that said something.

Yohan stood there frozen and stared it to those brown bead-like eyes that were staring into his unblinking ones.

The girl in the photo looked so familiar.

  But why?
Why was that?
And who is she?

{Authors note ~ the word "bite" or "bait" is used(just as they are presented here)  by people from my generation to indicate a victim of bitter humour. Like when you are almost bullying a person the one who is being bullied become the "Bite /bait".  It creates the same sense as the word victim.}

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This is my entry for the ONC this year. My first time taking part in it anyways. So can you guys give me a helping hand by pointing out any mistakes?