INK Short Read

Snow Day                                                                                                                       by Junmo Ahn '19

“No School Monday, January 14, 2019,” the school sent out the email to every student ten days in row. The dorm students have already lost electricity for five days and the food supply was discontinued three days ago. Every dorm student was starving, and only a few of them had food in storage. The students with food did not share it with the other students. Instead, they started to rule the dorm.

The students with food created a union and chose to “sell” food with extremely high prices. One package of noodles was $150 and an additional $50 per day if they pass the due day. At first, other students united and argued with the student union; however, since some students bought food at that price, most of the students gave up and just bought food from them. They signed the contract that to buy the noodles from them at the price of $150 and they needed to pay as soon as possible after snowmelt. If those students don’t pay them back, they would have to pay an extra $50 per day.

“No School Tuesday, January 15, 2019,” the school sent out an email. The dorm is now being ruled by only a few students. The students who were not able to afford the food chose to become “personal-workers” for them to get some food. Some students are now ruling other students like slaves. They were almost forced to do everything for the Union members. Jerry was one of the students who were under control of the Union students. He had some food at first and didn’t even join the union. However, as time goes by, he had to buy food from the union students. Gary is one of the students who was part of the “union”. He was a really kind and good student before, but ten snow days have changed him. Gary asked Jerry to get food from storage to sell to other students. Jerry immediately went down to storage to get food. However, he found out that the light bulb was still turned on. It was weird because electricity was disconnected six days ago. Jerry turned on his phone with the charger and looked up the news. “Ice age,” that was the headline. Jerry quickly read the article and figured out that the government would rescue them around tomorrow. Jerry tried to announce this to everyone in the dorm, however, he stopped midway opening the door. Instead, he opened the contract saving box and burnt the box with a lighter.
That night, the sound of the snow truck was coming closer from outside of the dorm. Finally, the headlamp light reflected through the window of the dorm. Two minutes later, all the dorm students were able to see the truck with relief. Everyone was happy, but soon they remembered that they needed to pay back the money to Union students.
At first, the students start arguing that the price of the products was so overpriced.
They all protested by walking around every Union student’s room and making noise. Soon, the Union students were looking for the contract to use them as evidence. However, they could not find any paper. They were all asking themselves, “Where did we put the contract?” Gary said, “It’s supposed to be here.” Eason, one of the other Union students said, “Those contracts are not protected by law, so if they lose them, we are done.” Gary reminisces for second to think of anyone who came into this storage then shouted, “JERRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”