Once Becomes Twice, and Twice Becomes Three Times
Once would have been the end of it—she'd given it her absolute best on that assumption, only to find out that the other seniors wanted to order the Special Menu too...
Unable to make sense of how things had spiraled, Yeoncheong asked again.
"Why on earth?"
"You seriously don't know?"
Suyeon wore the exasperated look of someone staring at a genuine lost cause.
"It's because you play along so *perfectly*. They saw that, and now they all want to order the Special Menu."
"Did I really?"
Honestly, she'd been so absorbed in fulfilling Seoyun-sunbae's requests that she couldn't recall a single one of the stares directed her way.
With no comeback available once told how it had looked from the outside, Yeoncheong changed the subject instead.
"Even paying a Voting Sticker each?"
When Suyeon nodded, Yeoncheong pulled her knees up and shrank even deeper into the corner.
"Ah... I can't do any more. Just tell them Seoyun-sunbae and I are close, that's all it was."
Once becomes twice, and twice becomes three times.
If she let this slide now, the odds were high she'd be tormented until the festival ended.
"...Okay, fine."
"Good. Since you get it, hurry and go return the sticker and—huh?"
Yeoncheong, who had fully expected Suyeon to refuse—knowing her taste for mischief—was left dumbfounded.
She wondered what had gotten into her friend, acting so unlike her usual self.
The truth was, watching Seoyun-sunbae and her friends goof around with Yeoncheong, Suyeon had decided enough was enough.
Suyeon aimed a pointed remark at those wide, round blue eyes.
"What? Now that you've thought it over, you don't want to?"
"No! Of course not!"
Before Suyeon's mind could change, Yeoncheong shook her head furiously.
The sincerity radiating from her wildly swaying hair left no room for doubt. Suyeon had genuinely been ready to return the stickers and strike the Special Menu from the board for good.
But then—
"No way! Ab-so-lute-ly not!"
The other girls objected.
They blocked the way, arms thrown up in giant X's, with a ferocity that was anything but ordinary.
"Customers are coming to *us*, the Voting Stickers are piling up all on their own—and you want us to throw that away?"
"Exactly! If we keep this up, our class could actually take first place!"
The cafe was the festival booth so classic it was the first thing anyone pictured—in other words, so common it had grown stale.
Yeoncheong's class, 2nd Year Class 1, had a unique hook in the Jersey Maid concept, but at the end of the day, they were still a maid cafe.
Because of that, the girls had spent the whole time repeating that they weren't hung up on the rankings this year. Their homeroom teacher, Jisu, had merely urged everyone to stay safe and uninjured.
Then the situation changed the moment Yeoncheong delivered the Special Menu with one hundred percent—no, one hundred *twenty* percent—customer satisfaction.
The seniors holding two Voting Stickers apiece judged it more than worth the investment.
Thanks to that, Special Menu orders kept climbing, and the classmates started eyeing first place with naked ambition.
"Hasol's already got orders coming in because of what you did!"
"At this pace, we've seriously got a shot at first place with the cafe alone!"
"You did it once, so a second time can't be that hard. Just hang in there for today!"
Suyeon tried to talk them down on Yeoncheong's behalf—this was a lot to put on her—but the girls' eyes had already glazed over at the rapidly growing stack of Voting Stickers.
With Hasol already suffering out there and people calling for her from every direction, Yeoncheong found it hard to refuse.
"F-fine, okay..."
In the end, she nodded. Mission accomplished, the girls showered Yeoncheong with praise and hype.
"Yeoncheong, just do exactly what you were doing before."
"You were *so* cute. Just keep it up."
"Right! You were literally like a puppy!"
"Uh, eh?"
Face burning at the embarrassing compliments, she buried her head, and Suyeon shooed the girls back to work, telling them to quit goofing off.
With the surroundings much quieter, Suyeon turned to her friend, who had nodded along in a daze, and asked again.
"Are you really okay with this? Even now, if you say the word, I'll tell the girls."
"...It's fine."
Her short break over, Yeoncheong dusted off her skirt and stood up.
"They're all so happy, look. It's the festival—I should do what I can while it lasts."
Yeoncheong's blue eyes turned toward the partition, and right on cue, a tearful wail drifted in—Hasol, struggling valiantly to end every sentence with a nya.
"NyaaAAaang!"
"There's even a friend updating her cringe archive in real time because of me."
Determined to ease her friend's suffering, Yeoncheong hurried out past the partition.
Watching her reenact the scene with the latest Special Menu customer, Suyeon stuck out her lip in a pout.
"...This is so annoying."
Nayun had been on break the instant the festival kicked off.
She'd stopped by the first-year mini-game zone Seoha had mentioned, tried her hand at the gaming competition set up in a borrowed computer lab—the break had flown by, she'd been that busy.
Haah... that was fun...
Heading back to her classroom for her shift, Nayun couldn't help but tilt her head.
What is this?
A line stretched long down the hallway. Which class could possibly be this popular? Puzzled, she drew closer—and was startled all over again.
Because the booth all these people were lined up for was the cafe run by her own class.
Counting as she glanced back, there were two other cafes besides hers, not counting 2nd Year Class 1. So why this one alone was swarming with people was beyond her.
What was more—nearly every single person clutching a Voting Sticker in their hand... was a third-year senior.
Reaching the front of the classroom, Nayun couldn't hold back and asked one of the waiting seniors.
"Excuse me, sunbae. Why is the line this long?"
The senior at the very front looked Nayun's outfit up and down before answering with a question of her own.
"Hm? You're not from this class?"
"I'm on shift rotation, so I just got back."
"Ah. Well, Seoyun's been advertising the place—said you won't regret coming here. Plus there's a rumor going around that the girl doing the puppy act during the holiday weekend was that girl everyone's talking about, so people came to see for themselves."
Seoyun would mean Seoyun-sunbae, and the puppy act would mean Yeoncheong... What on earth had she done this time to become a rumor among the seniors? It was one mystery after another.
Just then—
"Next party, please come in~"
"Finally, our turn."
The seniors she'd been chatting with filed into the classroom, following the voice from inside. Figuring she'd understand once she saw it herself, Nayun stepped in after them.
"Woof!"
And Nayun's eyes met Yeoncheong's—beaming as she welcomed the seniors in.
With a paw-pad glove pressed to her cheek, wiggling it back and forth—while the seniors who'd come in with Nayun snapped photos and squealed about how adorable she was.
The moment Yeoncheong's gaze locked with Nayun's, her face flushed red in record time.
"Where should we sit?"
Fortunately, Yeoncheong escaped the moment by escorting the seniors who asked for seats.
The girls bustled about serving tea and drinks, and busier still were Hasol and Yeoncheong weaving between the tables. Nayun went looking inside the partition for the friend who could explain this whole situation.
"Suyeon, what in the world is going on here?"
"Oh, Nayun, you're back. So, about that..."
Once she'd heard the whole story, Nayun raised her voice.
"So she's seriously just *doing that* right now?"
"Have you ever seen Yeoncheong turn down a direct request? She hates scary stuff, sure, but she's the one who went along with every single club activity she got dragged into."
Just when it seemed like Nayun would object furiously, she remembered how Yeoncheong almost always gave in.
"Now that you mention it... yeah, that tracks."
Hearing Suyeon's side of it, Nayun found herself flabbergasted but, annoyingly, convinced.
In fact, the scoreboard posted inside the classroom held its own against every other booth she'd checked while making her rounds.
Glancing out past the partition, Nayun kept talking.
"Still, there are limits. The fact that she's doing that with a straight face is what gets me."
Knowing her own temperament, even being *paid* wouldn't move Nayun until she'd inspected the amount first. This was exactly the kind of thing she couldn't stomach.
But Suyeon's answer went beyond anything she'd imagined.
"She's not in her right mind right now. A minute ago she said 'woof' to *us*."
"Ah..."
If even sweet-natured Hasol was struggling that much, Yeoncheong had to be in a state beyond description.
At that thought, Nayun suddenly remembered locking eyes with her friend at the door earlier.
She seemed to come back to her senses for a second there... now I feel kind of bad.
Bowing her head slightly, Nayun quietly apologized in her heart.
The 2nd Year Class 1 girls trickled back for their shift changes, got one shock at the sight of the packed classroom, a second shock at the Voting Stickers plastered across the wall, and finally—
a third shock at the sight of Hasol and Yeoncheong burning themselves alive for the cause.
With customers streaming in the moment they caught their breath, the two were starting to genuinely lose track of whether they were human, a dog, or a cat.
The Jersey Maid outfits built from their gym tracksuits were hardly unpopular either, but the sheer power of the two girls in full performance mode overwhelmed everything.
"If I'd known it'd come to this, I should've signed up for a turn or two..."
"Hey, could *you* do what they're doing? They're only managing it because they got stuck with it as a penalty."
"...Fair point."
The girls whose shifts gave them a moment's respite secretly watched Hasol-nyang and Daengcheongi, capturing the moment in photos.
"Nya, nyaang."
Whether she'd grown tired of human speech, or whether the woofing going on beside her just seemed more comfortable, Hasol had at some point entirely lost her language ability.
"Woof. Woof woof."
And then there was the one who had given up on human speech from the start, halfway abandoning her sanity altogether. The fugitive from reality known as Yeoncheong was now barely distinguishable from an actual pet.
Hold out your hand, and a fluffy paw in a pad glove would automatically extend itself. Say you wanted to pet her head, and she'd quietly offer up her blue hair.
It had reached the point where she seemed to have given up on understanding herself—a surrender, pure and simple.
"Oh my god. I want a dog like this at home."
"Same. If it listened this well, my parents would actually let me keep it."
The seniors were, of course, over the moon at how obediently their adorable junior caught their every word.
One of them toyed with Yeoncheong's paw glove, a sly smile creeping across her face.
"Your name's... Yeoncheong, right? Yeoncheong, sweetie. How about you just come be my dog, as-is?"
"Woof."
Yeoncheong had spared no sanity for answering the senior's teasing question. Even the way she shook her head no was apparently adorable enough that the senior giggled, lips twitching.
"Well then, we're about to head out, so one last pose for us? Please?"
"Mnyang?"
Yeoncheong, who'd been stringing along the excuse that you get used to anything if you do it enough, gestured go on, let's hear it.
"The pose of a dog sprawled out on its back. Do that one for us."
The same senior from the earlier teasing had one last wicked request up her sleeve.
The senior raised her smartphone to capture her junior shaking her head no yet again—but an unforeseen situation erupted.
Once becoming twice, twice becoming three times, the boundaries had blurred, and Yeoncheong had reached the point of moving mechanically at the seniors' requests. That was the problem.
There was no time for the friends watching covertly to step out and stop her. Yeoncheong lay sprawled on the floor and lifted both arms and both legs into the air.
Not just the senior who'd asked—all the customers in the classroom whipped their eyes toward her in an instant.
"Hey, HEY! You can't actually do that, what are we supposed to do!"
Utterly flustered, the seniors bolted, leaving the sprawled-out Yeoncheong behind.
They flung the door wide open on their way out. And from the hallway came familiar voices.
"Sunbae, this is the last booth on our tour, right?"
"Yep, our class is the final stop."
Seoha and Chaerin—having finished inspecting the first-year booths and working their way backward through the second-year floor—found Yeoncheong.
An instant of stillness that felt eternal.
Just like when she'd locked eyes with Nayun earlier—the moment her gaze met a friend's, the firearm Yeoncheong had laid down briefly returned to her blue eyes.
Breaking the awkward silence, Chaerin waved a hand at the sprawled-out Yeoncheong.
"Um, Yeoncheong-sunbae? That... it really suits you. No wait, that's not what I mean—you look really cute..."
The moment the words left her mouth, Chaerin seemed to realize her mistake and clapped a hand over her lips.
Yeoncheong's face had begun turning so red it looked liable to burst.
The first to collect herself was Seoha, an involuntary smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
She gave the inside of the classroom a light once-over, then said,
"No problems here. Let's go."
Inspection complete, she shut the door in a hurry.
Slam.
The gaze that had swept past through the doorway vanished along with it, but—
"U... uuaa..."
Snapped back to her senses by the sight of Seoha, Yeoncheong let out a scream.
"UAAAAAH!"
She scrambled for cover behind the partition.
Scrambling away on all fours in her panic, she was a dog through and through—but not a single soul said it out loud.