Better Keep Yourself in Check
After school.
With midterms drawing closer by the day, more and more students were skipping club activities to make a final push before the exams.
Yeoncheong, having cleared one major hurdle by submitting the Class 2-1 festival proposal, was deep in exam prep like everyone else.
She stretched for a moment and lifted her head, taking a look around the club room.
A scene that felt awkward, yet somehow familiar by now, greeted her.
Suyeon sat beside her in her usual spot, while Nayun and Hasol were lined up right in front.
Clustered together in the wide classroom, each of them was absorbed in her own studies.
Back last semester, Yeoncheong had asked why they bothered coming here to study at all — but this was already the third time. She had simply decided to accept it.
She was poking at her book with her pen when Nayun, who'd been studying in front of her, looked up.
"What are you doing instead of studying?"
"...Nothing."
At her deflated answer, a hollow laugh slipped out of Nayun's mouth.
"If it were Hasol or Suyeon, fine, but you of all people shouldn't be sitting around like that, shouldn't you?"
Both of the girls whose names had been mentioned looked up as well, and Yeoncheong, hit with a question that wasn't really a question, tossed her pen down onto the book.
"Aaagh! I just can't get into studying!"
Yeoncheong leaned back in her chair and half-slumped into it.
"Phew, got it..."
Hasol caught the pen that had been rolling down the slope of the book, nearly dropping off the edge of the desk.
Setting the pen in the middle of the book to keep it from falling, she went on.
"Is the festival prep still on your mind, by any chance?"
Hasol remembered how her friend had been darting in and out of the student council room and calling class meetings every spare second.
Yeoncheong spun the pen Hasol had retrieved for her between her fingers and let out a light sigh.
"No, it's actually the opposite."
"The opposite?"
When Nayun asked again, Yeoncheong nodded her head up and down.
"When I was juggling it with festival prep, studying went fine. But now that I'm actually trying to focus on exam prep, I just can't bring myself to do it."
Back when festival prep alone ate up her days, the pressure of having to squeeze in study time had kept her on her toes. But now that the hours she could spend studying had suddenly ballooned, she supposed you could call it too much breathing room.
The thought that she could always do it later had left Yeoncheong unable to get any studying done at all.
"Ah~ I know exactly that feeling."
While Nayun nodded along in deep sympathy, Hasol stared at Yeoncheong with a face that said, what on earth is that supposed to mean?
"If you have more time, you can study more. Isn't that a good thing?"
"And that, right there, is the difference between you and us."
Nayun said it with a slightly smug look on her face.
Hasol shook her head as if to say that was nothing to brag about, but...
Hasol, the model student who studied steadily every day, and Nayun, whose relationship with academics had never been good, simply could not understand each other.
Yeoncheong, who had been quietly listening to the two of them talk, cut in.
"Hey, Nayun. Could you not lump me in with you?"
"...What?"
Yeoncheong straightened up from her half-slouched position and licked her lips.
"I've got the higher top score."
"Ha!"
A short, exasperated burst of laughter — half sigh, half scoff — exploded out of Nayun.
She smacked Yeoncheong's desk and shot down her claim on the spot.
"Hey, my overall average is higher, okay? I've taken fewer remedial classes than you to begin with."
"You only dodge remedials by the skin of your teeth. Unlike you, the subjects I don't take remedials for, I'm totally comfortable in."
Barely five minutes had passed since Nayun had agreed with Yeoncheong, and now the two of them were already growling at each other.
"If anything, you should thank me for even grading you in the same league as me."
"That's ridiculous. Seoha, Hasol, Suyeon maybe — but you're the same level as me, and you know it."
Yeoncheong, apparently unwilling to back down either, smacked the desk once and leaned her face in close.
"If you're so confident, then bet on this midterm."
"...That's a bit..."
At the sudden proposal, Yeoncheong's voice shrank back.
There was still festival prep to deal with, and right now she was far behind Nayun in total study hours.
She wasn't stupid enough to accept a bet stacked against her.
Just when it seemed their bickering was about to fizzle out...
Nayun needled her.
"What, you're chickening out the second it's a real bet?"
Tick.
"Okay! Bring it on!"
Unwilling to let that one slide, Yeoncheong accepted the challenge.
"Whoever takes fewer remedial classes wins?"
"Deal."
After a brief silence, Yeoncheong accepted the proposal, and the terms of victory were set.
She then brought up what the loser would have to do.
"So what's the loser on the hook for?"
"..."
Both friends fell silent at the mention of a penalty.
They were both acting cocky, but their grades were barely a contest of the tallest acorn. A penalty too heavy would be a gamble they weren't sure they could afford.
'They're exactly the same, both of them...'
Hasol, watching the not-quite-a-fight with a look of utter disbelief, finally stepped in to mediate.
"How about this? The loser has to fill in for the other one if she gets stuck with the festival penalty costume."
"So if I lose, I wear it when Nayun gets picked."
"And if I lose, I wear it when Yeoncheong gets picked?"
"Exactly!" Hasol said, giving a small round of applause.
Nayun and Yeoncheong stared deep into each other's eyes, then...
"...Sounds pretty good, actually."
"...Yeah. That feels about right."
A penalty that was neither too heavy nor too light.
Having reached their silent agreement, the two accepted Hasol's proposed penalty.
"That was a nice long break. Time to study."
"Ah, I'm actually feeling motivated now. Let's get back to it."
As if it had all been scripted, Yeoncheong and Nayun resumed studying at the exact same moment.
Hasol chuckled and turned to Suyeon.
"Suyeon, who do you think's going to win?"
"Dunno."
Suyeon, who hadn't said a single word this whole time, was watching Yeoncheong with a chilly gaze.
She hadn't been keeping her mouth shut for nothing.
Only then did Hasol realize why her friend was being so quiet, and she muttered to herself in Yeoncheong's direction.
'Yeoncheong... what on earth did you do this time...?'
Utterly oblivious to her friend's inner thoughts, Yeoncheong was hard at work, nose buried in her book.
***
It took a little while before Yeoncheong caught on to Suyeon's mood.
She had been deep in her studies, asking Nayun questions while Nayun in turn asked the Hasol beside her about things she didn't know.
Yeoncheong turned to Suyeon about a part she didn't understand, but...
"Don't know."
"Huh?"
At first she assumed it was only natural for Suyeon to have a few blind spots, and let it go.
"Don't know."
The next one, too.
"Not sure about that one."
"This one either?"
Even a simple question she'd asked just in case.
Unlike her twin Siyeon, Suyeon wasn't great at explaining things — but there was no way she genuinely didn't know how to solve problems this easy.
In other words...
'Ha... damn. What did I do to set her off?'
Something was clearly bothering her, and she was sulking about it.
If she blurted out some unknowable sin like last time, it might only fan the flames. So Yeoncheong approached with caution.
She probed with small jokes and offhand remarks, testing the waters, but got no reaction at all.
And so, after countless rounds of tentative poking...
As if she'd decided to hand over the answer key, Suyeon let out a sigh,
dragged her chair back, and tapped her own knee.
A scene that struck a deep chord of déjà vu.
As her blue eyes wavered violently, Suyeon met Yeoncheong's gaze and tapped her knee once more.
"Seoha gets to, but I don't?"
"H-how do you know about that?"
Suyeon pouted her lips at Yeoncheong.
"Because I heard it straight from Seoha."
Yeoncheong pictured Seoha — sitting right there, not ten feet away — grinning smugly at her.
Squeezing her eyes shut to shake off the vision, Yeoncheong muttered inwardly.
'Unbelievable. I should have kept that on a tighter leash.'
For her part, Seoha had only been bragging about her little accomplishment to her rival Suyeon — but there was no way Yeoncheong could have known that.
"The one single time I ask you to sit on my lap, you'd sooner die than do it..."
From Suyeon's perspective — having spent ages patiently patting her knee for Yeoncheong — the situation was maddening enough to warrant a grudge.
The atmosphere crackled with anticipation.
Nayun, studying right in front of them, even tried to watch the show, but...
Whap.
"Ow, why'd you hit me?"
"Eyes on your own paper."
"You expect me to pass up a spectacle this good?"
"Just sit there and listen quietly. You might catch some stray sparks."
They thought they were whispering, but in a classroom with only four people in it, silence ruled.
Hearing every single word, Yeoncheong realized she would have to navigate this situation without any help from her friends.
As if sitting on her lap was the only solution there was, Suyeon kept tapping her knee, over and over.
But this wasn't a hurdle that would lower just because she'd done it once before.
Yeoncheong squirmed.
And just as those mismatched eyes of Suyeon's were narrowing bit by bit —
Yeoncheong slid her chair back a little and kept glancing at Suyeon's knee out of the corner of her eye.
"What are you doing right now?"
Apparently unable to make sense of her friend's behavior, Suyeon furrowed her brow.
"Couldn't we just compromise, with you sitting on my lap?"
"...Are you serious?"
Perhaps too embarrassed to say it out loud, Yeoncheong gave a small nod.
"You said yes. That's on you."
Suyeon moved fast, before her friend could change her mind.
Settled onto Yeoncheong's lap, she smiled as if nothing had ever happened and said,
"So, what were you trying to ask? I'll teach you everything."
"Like this?"
Yeoncheong was suggesting she'd better climb down to explain it properly, but —
"Oh, you can't see the book, can you?"
Suyeon twisted her body to the side and looked up at Yeoncheong with a face that asked, better now?
"Yeah... I can see it now."
The option of getting down to explain simply did not exist.
Yeoncheong had resigned herself to finishing her studies where she sat.
And Suyeon, perched on her lap, kicked her legs idly as she walked her through the problem.
'...Maybe I miscalculated.'
Not long ago —
through her experience of sitting on Seoha's lap —
Yeoncheong had learned the danger of offering your back to someone, defenseless, not to mention the intimacy of being held.
Which was why she'd figured this time around it would be better to have someone sit on her lap instead...
'But this has its own kind of... problem.'
Whatever shampoo Suyeon used, a sweet fragrance drifted from her long hair and tickled the tip of Yeoncheong's nose.
And every time Suyeon wiggled around in search of a comfortable spot, their thighs brushed softly against each other.
Perhaps because she was facing the other way this time, unlike with Seoha —
the moment Yeoncheong tilted her head down even slightly to look at the book, her friend's gently swelling chest came into view.
Worse, Suyeon pressed herself fully against her for fear of slipping off, and that soft, yielding sensation washed over Yeoncheong like she was sitting in the front row of a 4D movie.
"Yeoncheong, focus."
Could sitting on someone's lap really be that much fun?
Suyeon gave Yeoncheong's head a few playful taps with her pen and beamed brightly.
Confronted with that innocent smile from far closer than usual, Yeoncheong flushed without meaning to.
Watching her friend's flustered reaction, Suyeon was busy pondering what exactly she should report to Seoha tomorrow —
"Wait, don't tell me this is the situation I think it is?"
"...I think it might be."
Having learned their lesson earlier, the two friends had dropped their voices as low as they could go, whispering to each other.
"Wow. So the day I get to see this with my own two eyes has finally come."
"Right? Honestly, I'm more worried about later than I am about right now."
At Hasol's faint sigh, Nayun tilted her head.
"What's there to worry about?"
"Aren't you worried?"
Nayun nodded — and her next words were the perfect finishing touch.
"Not my problem, is it? Starting tomorrow, I'm carrying popcorn in my bag everywhere I go."