A Peaceful? Gym Class
Everything from Ha Yeoncheong's aggressively practical belongings—a clock, a calendar, even a seat cushion—to Suyeon's animal plushies, armed with nothing but fluffy cuteness, to Seoha's lamp and Bluetooth speaker, which had shocked both friends with their price tags even as they conceded that design and performance came together in one flawless package.
Gathered all in one place, they actually formed a surprisingly balanced little collection, and the hideout—the club room—had finally taken on the unmistakable feel of a place where people actually lived.
As Yeoncheong, who had decorated it herself, launched into an explanation,
Nayun, who had come all the way over to her desk while changing into her gym uniform, pursed her lips.
"I'm sure you did a great job, but hearing about it isn't the same as seeing it. I can't picture it at all. You should've taken at least one photo."
"Haha... well, we weren't exactly in picture-taking mode yesterday."
The logic had been: anything that couldn't stay in the club room would just be a gift, so take one home each.
Yeoncheong had spent ages reeling from Seoha's installment plan offer.
Insisting she couldn't simply accept such expensive things, she'd pushed instead for some kind of gift exchange later, and between sweating over that negotiation, there'd been no energy left for photos.
Meanwhile Hasol, who had changed into her gym uniform at her own desk in record time, asked about something else entirely.
"Do you think there'd be room for some succulents or something? Maybe two small pots."
There was no way either of her friends would object to lush green plants.
The old bookshelf had been divided into "Antarctica" and "Savanna" zones and was now fully occupied by animal plushies, but there was plenty of space by the window.
"Plants? Hmm... sure, that works. Bring as many as you want."
Leaving Hasol happily celebrating behind her,
Yeoncheong raised her voice at Nayun, who had slipped off her skirt and set it down casually right on Yeoncheong's desk.
"Hey! Whatever you take off goes on YOUR desk. I'll get it mixed up with my clothes."
"Walking back and forth is a pain. It's not like a little mixing is going to cause a problem. We put them in different places anyway."
Nayun had a point.
Yeoncheong usually hung her uniform on her chair, while Nayun left hers on the desk.
Still...
Blue eyes, opened to thin slits as if in thought, swept deliberately over her friend's upper body.
"Even if we are about the same height, some places are dramatically different... a problem might come up, actually."
"You little—!"
It avoided naming anything outright, but it was as good as a bald-faced tease, and Nayun bristled.
Her noticeably modest chest was an unmistakable weak spot, and while Yeoncheong served as her favorite well-padded punching bag, even she liked to poke at it every now and then when she felt she was taking too many hits herself.
Watching her friend spout jokes right on the borderline of sexual harassment just like any other girl their age, Nayun clicked her tongue.
"You've definitely changed. You used to be so embarrassed you couldn't even change into your gym uniform, and now you tease people like it's nothing."
"Oh please, 'changed'? Give me the better word—'adapted.'"
Yeoncheong puffed out her chest with pride, hands planted on her hips.
The generous heart her friend could never have naturally pushed itself forward, announcing its presence—and a hand displeased by that fact moved with startling speed.
"'Adapted,' huh... So this kind of thing is fine with you now?"
The moment Nayun began casually kneading her own chest as if it were the most natural gesture in the world, Yeoncheong jerked backward.
"...Are you insane?"
"What? Girls can touch each other's chests as a joke, you know. Right, Hasol?"
At the sight of Nayun approaching with a lecherous grin and wiggling fingers,
"I-I'm heading to the field first!"
As always, the ending was a retreat.
Nayun lifted one corner of her mouth in a triumphant smirk.
"That's right. Don't start games you can't win."
But there was one small problem.
"Nayun, gym class today. Remember, it's in the gymnasium?"
"Oh."
She must have been rattled indeed, to forget what the class president had said not a minute ago.
Nayun recalled that they were definitely supposed to head to the field and pressed a hand to her forehead.
Hasol rested both hands on her friend's shoulders with a sweet smile.
"You're the one who told her to run off. Bringing her back is your job, isn't it?"
"Me? She's obviously going to bolt!"
After a moment of looking back and forth between her merciless friend and the door,
Nayun rushed out of the classroom, shouting Yeoncheong's name.
"Hey! Ha Yeoncheong! We're in the gymnasium today! HEY!"
***
After a lengthy chase, the two arrived together.
Just then, the bell signaling the end of break rang out from the school building, and the PE teacher began his explanation.
Frankly, there was no real need to hear what they'd be doing.
Holding class in the gymnasium on a rainless day meant indoor sports, plain and simple.
After all, the teacher had a volleyball tucked under his arm.
"Alright—serve, receive, set, spike. Those are the four we're covering. Got it?"
He folded and unfurled four fingers, stressing that they'd better not forget,
then demonstrated each technique in meticulous detail before the students and pursed his lips.
"The assessment runs for three weeks... what's the date today?"
Hearing a student's answer, the teacher gave his thanks and continued.
"Right. We'll be grading through the end of this month. You've got plenty of time, so don't think about passing on luck—practice properly. It's for your own good. I mean it?"
He always said this, but today he was pushing practice harder than usual.
The students grumbled as they grabbed balls and dispersed.
There was no way there'd be one ball per person, so Yeoncheong naturally started practicing with Hasol and Nayun.
They tossed balls back and forth to drill receiving and setting, and chased down balls flying over the net from serves and spikes on the far side.
Since this was gym class, the assessment didn't demand an especially high standard, but...
"The net's higher than I thought."
The net, towering well above their heads, was a formidable obstacle—
all the more so for girls who didn't usually exercise at all.
Everyone seemed to manage receiving and setting just fine, but the serve and the spike turned out to be unexpectedly brutal.
"Yeoncheong, I'm going for it?"
"Okay."
Hasol finished a deep breath, hurled the ball overhead, and smashed it with all her might—but a sigh escaped her almost immediately.
"Hah... it seriously won't go over."
Proving the teacher's claim that merely getting it over would be enough, a serve struck with a typical girl's strength had its first hurdle simply clearing to the opposite court.
And when you focused only on hitting hard enough to make it across—
"Aagh! Again! It hit the net AGAIN!"
like Nayun, who challenged it next, the angle dropped too low and the ball clipped the net or sailed wildly out of bounds, over and over.
Too soft didn't work, too hard didn't work. Finding that elusive middle ground—the sweet spot that would clear the net—was pure misery.
Thump. Thump.
"Geez~ I'll give Hasol a pass, but you should be nailing this, Nayun."
Yeoncheong, meanwhile, lightly bouncing the ball back to the two of them, was the exception.
Had she truly sacrificed every foot-based sport as tribute? True to her own claim that she was good at most anything involving her hands, she picked up the feel almost instantly.
Nayun, who had her pride when it came to athletics, did not appreciate the provocation.
"Hey! How do you even DO it?!"
"I'm telling you, you just tap it—light and easy."
Worse, Yeoncheong kept teasing her, crowing that she was racking up reps.
"Hmm... she's asking for another round."
Just as Hasol predicted, stepping slightly aside—
Nayun shortened the distance with a running approach, floated the ball into the air, and launched herself off the ground.
A perfect spike form.
Perhaps thanks to basketball, the height of the net—barely more than a wall to the other students—posed no problem at all.
Right down to the clean impact of her striking the ball at the very peak of its arc, just as it began to fall.
The powerful spike, launched from textbook-perfect form, came screaming in a straight line toward Yeoncheong.
"Uh, uh...?"
Yeoncheong knew exactly how vast the difficulty gap was between simply hitting a ball and hitting it with aim. She'd never dreamed it would come flying at her, so her reaction lagged.
Dodge? Take it? While she dithered, the ball slammed square into her upper body.
By cruel chance it struck her chest dead-on, then—like a billiard ball bouncing off a cushion—ricocheted up into her face for a second collision.
"Kuhk!"
Having absorbed every ounce of the ball's forward momentum, Yeoncheong's body toppled backward, landing hard on her rear.
Her soft chest had indeed cushioned most of the blow, but the strength of Nayun—a basketball club member, and one swinging with pure spite—was simply too much.
Drip. Drip...
Two small puddles dotted the smooth wooden floor, and blood that had spattered across her pristine white gym uniform began to spread.
The ball, robbed of anyone to stop it, rolled lazily across the court until it came to rest against the foot of a girl practicing nearby.
Seobin, staring at where it had rolled from, and Siyeon, turning her head to follow her friend's gaze, raised their voices in unison—no contest over who went first.
"KYAAH! Yeoncheong, you're—you're bleeding!"
"Ha Yeoncheong! Your nose—your nose!"
***
After a double dose of scolding from the school nurse and the PE teacher alike, gym class came to an end.
Because Nayun's clothes were still sitting on Yeoncheong's desk, she sidled over, fidgeting with her fingers.
"You're... you're really okay, right?"
"Agh~ I'm perfectly fine!"
And yet. Perhaps she felt that drawing actual blood, even in jest, crossed a line, because her friend couldn't quite shake the apologetic look on her face.
Yes, there'd been a bloody accident—but there was no friend in the world as warm and ready to roughhouse on command as Nayun.
The last thing Yeoncheong wanted was for her favorite sparring partner to be walking on eggshells over this.
"See? No more nosebleed. It happens sometimes—you see me mess around like that every day."
Yeoncheong pulled a tissue from the box and showed off her stopped nose, then rested a hand casually on her chest as she kept talking.
"And don't worry. Unlike some people, I've got nice plush cushions, so I barely got hurt."
Since she was mid-change into her school uniform, the full volume on display above her undershirt drew the eyes of the friends gathered around, all drifting helplessly in that direction.
She turned beet red every other moment of the day, yet in moments like these she was completely oblivious...
It was such a quintessentially Daengcheongi display that Nayun finally couldn't bring herself to feel guilty anymore, and let out a wry laugh.
"Ha... fine, you win. Big chest, big luck. Lucky brat."
Despite the rough words, her expression had softened, signaling the whole affair was over.
"...You know, hearing you say that so much... I kind of want to touch them for real now."
"Hm? What was that?"
Perhaps because the chest talk had been going on since before gym class—
Hasol, quiet throughout the uniform change, was now staring straight at Yeoncheong.
***
As if she'd chosen this very moment to storm a sanctuary no one had ever been granted access to.
With the usually demure Hasol taking the lead, Nayun chimed in from the side, cheerfully adding her support.
Yeoncheong figured it would blow over quickly and met the whole thing with total noncooperation, but the standoff dragged on all the way to lunch.
"Me too! I want to touch them too!"
And the words reached the ears of the one person who should never have heard them.
"Why are YOU joining in?!"
If you're going to pick a side, pick your girlfriend's side!
But no—there she was, glued firmly to Hasol and Nayun's camp. What had started as two against one swelled into three against one, the situation stretched taffy-thin all the while.
Yeoncheong could only gape at her friends, swarming her like they'd been placed under some kind of spell.
"Seriously...! Did I slather honey on my chest or something?!"
"It's not like touching them wears them out. Come on, we're friends—that's just mean!"
"Hear, hear! So mean!"
The friends talked about her chest without a shred of self-consciousness, safe from prying eyes inside the club room.
She never should have said anything in the first place, just to lighten the mood...
"Ha... I'm seriously losing my mind."
Meant to stay strictly inside her head, the words slipped out along with a deep, heartfelt sigh.