Chapter 21: "She Died"

Just a couple of quirks from school:

In my classes whenever a student is absent, it is customary for his or her classmates to explain her absence as "death."

Teacher: "Where is Harry today?"
Fellow students: "He died."
Teacher: "Oh." *commences with class*

Occasionally they'll explain the cause of death, and usually it's fairly macabre, such as, the student jumped out the window (we're on the 5th floor), or was hit by a car. I don't know what'll happen if it's ever actually true.

Also, not a day goes by that some student tips over backwards in their chair. This happens in American schools also, but for some reason I remember chair-tipping being fairly traumatic. Tears, teacher stress-out, disruption of class.....

Here, none of that. The student falls over, there's a loud crash and some Korean words which won't be repeated here, and the student pops right back up and class continues. Some of the other students don't even look to see who fell over.