The last hurdle was a poem about a lonely sail in the mist. He had to memorize it. Maxim paced around his room, reciting lines to his stuffed animals. "Belyat parus odinokiy..." (A white sail shines lonely...)

Next came Russian language. The task: find all the prefixes and suffixes in a paragraph about autumn.

The notification on Maxim’s phone was simple but terrifying: (All 5th Grade Homework). It wasn’t just a message; it was a digital mountain standing between him and his weekend.

He started with Math. The problems were about decimals—tiny dots that felt like landmines. Every time he moved a comma to the left or right, he felt like a codebreaker trying to stop a ticking clock.

: Dividing 45.5 by 5 shouldn't have felt like climbing Everest, but his brain kept insisting the answer was "potato."

The silence that followed was beautiful. No more decimals, no more suffixes, no more lonely sails. Maxim flopped onto his bed, closed his eyes, and realized that being a 5th grader was a full-time job—but today, he was officially retired for the weekend.

"Autumn is a golden time," he wrote, wondering if the author had ever actually tried to do homework while the sun was shining outside. The Final Boss: Literature