A Dangerous Junior and Teachers' Day
The May holiday stretch, busy in so many ways, had finally passed.
After a furious stretch of studying, Yeoncheong had passed her makeup exam.
At her teacher's scolding—"If you can do this, why didn't you just study in the first place?"—she could only offer an awkward grin before hurrying off to share the good news with her friends.
Nayun was apparently too busy sprinting around the gymnasium to reply.
To Suyeon's nagging, Yeoncheong fired back with her friend's favorite angry penguin sticker. To Hasol and Seoha's congratulations, she offered her thanks, then quickened her pace.
No replies came back—she must have already slipped her phone into her pocket.
Instead, it was Seoha who explained the reason.
A brief silence.
Apparently explaining by voice was faster than typing, because Seoha, who was in the same room as Suyeon, seemed to be filling her in directly.
But Hasol, receiving everything only through texts, naturally couldn't hear a word of it.
After that relentless wall of single syllables, an answer finally arrived.
Of course, a summary containing only the bare essentials left her completely lost.
And then—
"Chaerin! I'm sorry!"
The student council room was a hive of activity, everyone scrambling to prepare for the upcoming sports festival. When the door burst open and what looked like a third-year upperclassman bowed at a full ninety degrees, the bewildered officers all turned to look at their president, the one whose name had just been called.
It had been a while since they'd seen each other face to face, and now this upperclassman was suddenly slamming her head down in a bow—so of course the flustered one was the junior, Chaerin, just as much.
Things were hectic with the sports festival right around the corner, but word spreading that a junior was being bowed to at ninety degrees by an upperclassman would cause its own problems.
"Ai, senpai~ If you keep greeting me like that every time, you're going to give me a heart attack."
Playing it off as a joke between close upper- and underclassmen, Chaerin smoothly excused herself from her seat, saying she'd step out for a bit.
Heading for the rarely visited rooftop landing, Chaerin began by asking why on earth she'd done it.
Whereupon all that earlier momentum evaporated, and Yeoncheong spoke up in fits and starts.
"Well... the chain letter..."
Only a single clue tumbled out, but it was more than enough to piece the situation together.
For the entire month of April, a chain letter had swept, of all things, through the second year at Hwaryeong High School.
And its patient zero had been the very chain letter Yeoncheong had passed to Chaerin.
After receiving that letter, every imaginable piece of misfortune had befallen the junior—student council work included—so Chaerin, deciding she had nothing to lose, had passed the letter along to her own classmates. And just like that, miraculously, peace returned to her life. Meanwhile, misfortune found her childhood friend Soyul instead...
And so the curse traveled from Chaerin to Soyul.
This chain of events, grounded in just enough "fact" to be credible, had ignited the curiosity of boredom-starved high school girls, and thus the trend was born.
She must have heard it from Seoha.
Back then, the student council had been drowning in complaints over the festival schedule, and Chaerin had grumbled about it to the upperclassman who'd come to help—not that it did any good, and not that it made the frustration any less bitter.
She never imagined it would reach the person herself's ears, much less bring her all the way here to apologize.
So this is the kind of person Seoha likes... Thinking this, Chaerin waved her hands in protest, trying to smooth over the whole situation.
"I just felt so terrible. I thought if I did something—anything—it would put my mind at ease."
But Yeoncheong, who had carved time out of her day to come here, wouldn't back down either.
Nothing was more burdensome than having someone keep apologizing when you'd already told them it was fine.
So, meaning to end it once and for all, Chaerin made a deliberately outrageous request.
"Then... give me some photos of Seoha."
"Huh? Why would you want those?"
She'd expected something like help with student council grunt work, or maybe being treated to a meal.
At a request so far beyond anything she'd imagined, her head tilted on its own.
"The truth is... I'm something of a fan of Seoha's. I admire her."
Seoha, an influencer? No, nothing like that.
Could an ordinary civilian really have fans?
Yeoncheong flinched, seemed to mull it over for a moment, then hesitated, her lips fluttering.
"I can't exactly just hand out someone else's photos..."
"Yeah, I figured as much."
Of course she wouldn't give them. No matter how you sliced it, sharing pictures of another person without permission was rife with problems.
Chaerin was satisfied—she'd traded a sliver of her image for a clean escape from the situation.
But then, as if deeply moved by her junior's courageous request—
"Would it be okay if it was a picture of the two of us together?"
"Yes, that's totally fi—...huh!?"
A clever loophole with a built-in justification.
Chaerin was utterly stunned by this alternative from an upperclassman she'd been certain would retreat.
"I'll send them over."
"Uh, wait—um... uhh...?"
Yeoncheong exchanged contact info right there on the spot and began sending photos, one by one. Chaerin fidgeted, but never offered a firm refusal.
For someone who'd made Seoha her absolute favorite, an opportunity like this would never come twice.
Yeoncheong said she couldn't send everything—that would be too much—so she'd send a reasonable selection, but every single one was so lovely Chaerin half wondered if she shouldn't frame them on her wall.
Even better, most of them were of Yeoncheong alone or nearly so—beautiful things side by side with beautiful things, and the eye-cleansing effect was a bonus.
"What do you think? Is this enough?"
Having cherry-picked what she judged to be reasonably wholesome shots, Yeoncheong waited for a reaction.
"Hehe... heeheeheehee..."
Her gallery filling up with photos of the upperclassman she adored, the junior let out a laugh that was somehow just a little bit dangerous.
When Yeoncheong waved a hand in front of her face, Chaerin belatedly wiped her expression clean, her lips wavering.
"Senpai......"
"Uh, yeah?"
Yeah, this really was a bad idea, wasn't it.
Just as Yeoncheong was worrying she'd need to buy her something tasty later—
"You are now my lifelong benefactor."
"B-benefactor? Um... so, you forgive me, right?"
It wasn't as if she'd saved the girl's life.
If anything, Yeoncheong was the one who should be grateful, since her apology had been so readily accepted.
Chaerin seized both of the bewildered upperclassman's hands and shook her head vigorously.
"Forgive you? Nothing to forgive! From now on, I can bow in your direction every single day!"
"Y-you'd go that far?"
Something in her junior Chaerin's eyes was glinting dangerously.
"L-look at the time... I should get going! Good luck with the festival prep!"
Yeoncheong, thoroughly unnerved, beat a hasty retreat.
Several days after learning of the dangerous side of Chaerin—the current student council president and self-proclaimed admirer of Seoha—one particular day arrived.
In Class 3-1, the students were whispering among themselves, clustered around the class president and vice president.
"Hey! She's coming! Teacher's here—we made eye contact!"
Nayun and a few other students on lookout slammed the door shut and scrambled back to their seats in a flurry of commotion.
A short while later.
"You kids. You saw me carrying a box, and not one of you thought to come out and help? You just let me walk in?"
Teacher Jisu opened the door and dragged a box inside behind her.
For convenience's sake, the class t-shirts had been ordered to her homeroom teacher's address—and with not a single student offering to help, she looked thoroughly put out.
"Whew... just like the other teachers said. Being nice to these kids gets you absolutely nowhere. Well, enjoy it while it lasts..."
Grumbling as she hauled the box into the classroom, the teacher turned around to chide them for not even answering—and at that exact moment—
Pop!
"Kyaaah!"
A party popper went off, and Teacher Jisu jumped out of her skin. The once-silent classroom erupted into thunderous applause.
"Waaaah!!!"
"Wow, I honestly thought the ceiling was coming down. What is this? Whose birthday is it?"
As the teacher craned her neck around, utterly oblivious, the students in the front row pointed at the blackboard.
"Aigoo~ Teacher! You're doing this on purpose, aren't you? You know perfectly well what today is."
What day was it? A day you clock in and work, obviously.
Tossing out that classic working-stiff joke, the teacher followed their pointing fingers with her gaze—and clapped a hand over her mouth.
Happy Teachers' Day. Thank you, Teacher.
She couldn't take her eyes off the riot of colorful messages adorning the blackboard.
The woman who'd been grumbling not thirty seconds ago was gone; in her place stood one teacher with round, wide eyes, staring at her students.
"When did you all prepare this?"
"That's why everyone came to school early."
Only then did she register that the classroom was packed, without a single empty seat.
Yeoncheong, lips twitching mischievously, quipped that there was no need to take attendance since she was here too.
"There's more."
And as if that wasn't the end of it, when the class president stepped forward, Teacher Jisu waved her hands in a flustered panic.
"Ah, um... you kids, you know you shouldn't be accepting things like this these days. I could get in trouble for all of it."
"We looked it all up! It said one flower as a representative gesture is perfectly fine."
As the class president darted forward and pinned a carnation to her, the vice president emerged behind her holding a tightly rolled sheet of paper.
At the teacher's questioning look, the vice president handed it over as if to say, just read it yourself.
As the teacher carefully unrolled the paper, everyone could hear her sharply drawn breath.
"We prepared a rolling paper. That one doesn't cost any money either, so it's okay, right?"
The rainbow of messages on the blackboard, the carnation, and now a rolling paper on top of it all.
The assault had come without pause, and perhaps it was simply too much to bear.
The teacher pressed at the corners of her eyes, muttering about what on earth they were doing to her first thing in the morning.
"If you'd done this at the end of the school day, we'd all be grumbling about how nobody did anything for Teachers' Day~"
"Honestly, the rolling paper wasn't even the plan. But Yeoncheong insisted we absolutely had to do it."
At the vice president's added explanation, the teacher's eyes drifted to the name attached to the longest passage on the sheet.
And her glistening eyes turned toward one spot in the room.
"No! Why would you tell her that!"
Weren't we keeping that a secret!?
Utterly mortified, Yeoncheong shoved her chair back as far as it would go and hid beneath her desk.
But then... hiding under a desk with nothing but open space underneath—just how much of her body could that possibly conceal?
A moment later, unable to endure the torrent of stares, she peeked only her eyes up over the edge, lips fluttering.
"I-I just... thought you'd be happy to get it."
This was the teacher who'd volunteered to take charge of her class and had been their homeroom teacher for two whole years.
Originally, she'd meant to prepare some separate gift of her own...
But handing over a handwritten letter on her own felt too embarrassing.
And there were anti-graft laws to think about. And regulations. And this and that. With absolutely no other way to convey her gratitude, this had been the best option she could find.
"Oh my... if this keeps up from first thing in the morning, I don't know what I'll do—my face will be a wreck..."
Wiping her eyes, the teacher raised her phone and snapped photos of the colorful blackboard and the rolling paper, then cleared her throat.
"I'd better get these organized properly. Since I brought the class t-shirts—class president, vice president, make sure you distribute them well."
"Boooo~ Teacher! Is that all you have to say?"
After all the care they'd put into it.
Under the withering jeers of students demanding to know if that was how it was all going to end, Teacher Jisu shook her head with a smile.
"Fine, fine. Everyone come up here. A gesture this heartfelt deserves a photo."
"Yes, ma'am!"
The students surged to their feet, jostling and shoving each other toward the blackboard, everyone insisting they'd stand on the end.
"Clean up nicely when you're done, you hear? The sports festival is tomorrow, so all the t-shirts need to be handed out today."
"Aish, we knooow."
The students clustered cozily around their teacher, and the classroom that should have been quiet rippled with laughter.
Teachers' Day—the day before the sports festival.
Teacher Jisu spent the whole day with the corners of her mouth hooked up to her ears, drawing envious glances from the other teachers. Her secretly planned Teachers' Day surprise had been a roaring success.
Now, with the class t-shirts having arrived in the nick of time, it was time to slip them on and enjoy the sports festival to come.