Proving It Passionately
Jealousy was a rare thing to see on Yeoncheong.
The fact that it was over *her* left Seoha with no doubt at all that Yeoncheong liked her — and with a peculiar sense of satisfaction settling in her chest, she had gone and tied her hair back into twin tails again, entirely on purpose.
Of course, it also helped that she still hadn't heard the words she wanted to hear.
With lunchtime over, all that remained were the finals of each event, the obstacle race, and the class relay.
Class 2 — Suyeon and Seoha's class — had narrowly lost the tug-of-war final, but was now closing in on victory in the volleyball final. Class 1, which had never stood a chance at the overall championship to begin with, let Yeoncheong, Hasol, and Nayun wander from game to game, spectating whatever looked entertaining.
And that naturally included the volleyball final, where their two friends were playing.
No cheering, no heckling. Just Yeoncheong, watching with a scowl plastered across her face, made Nayun lean in and whisper.
"What's with her? Is she really that against watching Class 2 take the championship?"
"Hmm... maybe a little of that, but I think it's mostly because she went through all the trouble of stealing her hair tie and Seoha's *still* walking around like that. And also..."
Hasol nudged her chin toward a spot off to the side.
There, a cluster of what looked like first-years had gathered — Class 1 students, and within it, a group cheering for Seoha with almost feverish devotion. Chaerin was among them, of course, as if it went without saying.
When Seoha landed a successful spike and gave that direction a light little wave, Yeoncheong's expression soured even further.
"Ah. Yeah, that tracks."
Only now did Nayun grasp the reason for the sulking.
The untouchable number one in the whole school. The former student council president. The model student the teachers never tired of holding up as an example. And that very senior was putting on a dazzling display at the sports festival — in a cuter look than anyone had ever seen her wear. No wonder she was acquiring something like a fan club.
What soured Yeoncheong's mood was the sight itself: Seoha with her twin tails, the ones she'd only managed because she'd borrowed that hair tie — being adored by the whole field.
And those prickling glares were inevitably landing on the person who'd *lent* the tie, too...?
"Hold on. Is she glaring at me because of the hair tie?"
"You're only just figuring that out?"
Nayun had been watching the whole thing carefully, and muttered under her breath.
"I thought she was still mad about getting sprayed with water at the sink this morning."
"...You really are something else."
"Hehe."
Hasol flicked her friend on the forehead as the girl scratched her head, sheepish.
"That was not a compliment."
Anyway.
Judging by the way Yeoncheong was stewing, something big was clearly about to blow.
Sabotage Class 2's championship. Get revenge on Seoha. Sabotage Class 2's championship. Get revenge on Seoha. Sabotage Class 2's championship. Get revenge on Seoha.
After all, those were the two goals she was chanting on a loop inside her head.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Class 2 cruised through the afternoon without a single scare, racking up one-sided win after one-sided win and pulling ahead in the championship race.
And as the group-event finals for the first and second years wrapped up one by one, the time arrived for the signature event of the Hwaryeong High sports festival — the obstacle race.
Yeoncheong waited at the final leg of the course, the scavenger hunt, watching the race unfold from her spot.
Apparently last year's chaos — her chaos — had made enough of a mess that this year they'd added a strict no-sabotage rule and, in exchange, beefed up the course itself. Just as the announcements had promised.
"Kyaaah!"
"Who's in front of me?! You're not seriously blocking the path, are you?!"
"How am I supposed to get past this?! WHO BUILT THIS?!"
Every single obstacle radiated a very human malice, a promise that no one would be getting through easily.
Deciding this was going to take a while, Yeoncheong settled in for a quiet spectating session.
"Honestly, Seoha was cute, wasn't she?"
Quiet spectating...
"Hellooo? Anybody home? I'm talking to you~?"
Quiet spectating—
"Yeoncheong?"
—at least until Suyeon shoved her face right up in front of her own and started pestering.
The approaching face hovered close enough to nearly touch, and ignoring it was no longer an option.
"Focus on your race. We're not even in the same class."
"Aww, c'mon, my turn's ages away. figured I'd just hang out and chat with a friend while I watch," Suyeon pressed with her trademark social confidence, and Yeoncheong had no way to hold the line against it.
Naturally, Suyeon plopped down right beside her and picked up where she'd left off.
"Seriously though, Seoha was adorable, right? I'm jealous that all those other kids get to see her like that. One little 'you're cute' from you and she'd let her hair down on the spot, you know."
"It's a forfeit."
Suyeon had hit the nail squarely on the head, but Yeoncheong shook her head anyway. The moment she called Seoha cute, the whole point of the forfeit she'd fought so hard to win would dissolve into nothing.
"*That's* your reason? Unbelievable."
Was it because she used to be a boy? The environment she'd grown up in?
She couldn't speak to anything else, but when it came to competitive drive, Yeoncheong was undeniably fiercer than any of the girls around her. And someone like that, who lost nearly every bet she ever made, must have been counting down the days to this rematch.
And yet, even understanding all of that, Suyeon's lips pressed into a thin line that said: this is not okay.
"Why not?"
It was annoying, having a friend refuse to back her own side while claiming to like Seoha, but the voice was serious enough that Yeoncheong didn't snap back.
"Whenever things go badly for you, you whip out the 'I used to be a boy' excuse. If you're going to be a boy, you should at least know how to lose gracefully to a girl."
Yeoncheong's lips jutted into a pout, and Suyeon waved her hands quickly — joking, joking.
"Do you have any idea how long it took Seoha to do that hair?"
"No idea. Isn't it like a two-minute job?"
She'd never once tied her own hair; how was she supposed to know? A minute per side, two minutes total. Honestly she'd been thinking thirty seconds each — one minute — but she'd generously rounded up to thirty seconds a side.
At the instant, zero-deliberation answer, Suyeon poked her in the forehead as if to say, *at least pretend to think about it.*
"Thirty minutes. It took her over thirty minutes."
She went on explaining to Yeoncheong, whose eyes had gone perfectly round with shock.
"You have to get both sides even. You have to smooth everything down, including the back you can't even see. Doing it by yourself, trying to make it pretty and neat — that's genuinely hard."
"Still, it shouldn't take thirty whole minutes."
All that effort had gone into hair that Yeoncheong had undone with a single lazy tug of her hand?
Wait. Was this some scheme to pile on the guilt and wring an apology out of her?
Given the joke earlier, she wasn't ready to let her guard down completely. Suyeon pressed a hand to her own forehead and shook her head, then shot Yeoncheong a narrow-eyed glare.
"Right. There's no reason it would take over thirty minutes. Unless someone was trying *really* hard to look good for a certain someone."
"..."
When no answer came back, she repeated herself with only the slightest change in wording.
"Unless there was something she wanted to hear from a certain someone."
"F-fine! I'll go easy on her, okay?!"
At this point, missing the hint would mean you weren't just dense — you had a social impairment.
Yeoncheong shoved the pushy friend back and, at long last, admitted she hadn't been honest.
But Suyeon acted as if that one sentence hadn't been the point of this whole conversation at all. She extracted promise after promise — say it soon! say it for sure! say it yourself! — until Yeoncheong couldn't help but wonder.
"Why are you going this far?"
There was nothing in it for her, after all.
As runners began clearing the obstacles and charging toward the finish, Suyeon rose to her feet.
"Because you know way too little about the effort girls put in. And..."
Bouncing lightly on her toes, shaking herself loose, Suyeon curled the corners of her mouth up in a grin.
"If I make sure you *really* learn it this time, maybe you'll actually be honest when you tell me I'm cute and pretty, too."
Apparently that was all she had to say.
She clapped her hands together in place of a baton as her classmate's runner came charging in, then dashed off toward the draw box.
Was that a joke? No... was she serious?
The usual mischief-filled smile — and yet, faintly flushed cheeks.
Caught between two evenly split readings of it, Yeoncheong tilted her head.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Just as Yeoncheong was still reeling from the feelings Suyeon had dumped on her all at once—
"Hey! Snap out of it! Grab that thing, now!"
Siyeon, who had cleared the obstacles a beat behind her, hauled her bodily to her feet.
There was an edge to the twin's voice that could have shaved ice, her eyes flashing as she shoved Yeoncheong's back.
"Baek Suyeon. If you lose to her, you DIE!"
The savage cheering made Yeoncheong flinch. Were all twins like this?
Her life was precious, so Yeoncheong, too, sprinted for the emcee's table where the draw box sat.
She reached into the hole, fished out a slip of paper, and the instant she read it—
"Are you KIDDING me?!"
—the voice in her heart escaped out loud.
Other students who'd drawn their slips before her were milling around in equal disarray, so apparently the only thing that had gotten harder wasn't the physical part of the course.
"Yeoncheong! What do you need?!"
"I'll help you look!"
Her classmates yelled from the stands, offering their assistance — but Yeoncheong wrapped her face in her hands and shook her head.
Because this was not the kind of thing anyone could help her find.
Ignoring the cries of *what on earth could it possibly be?*, she took a long, deep breath and steeled herself.
This was, if anything, an opportunity.
A chance to throw a fistful of chili powder into Class 2's championship race, to deliver her honest impression to Seoha, and to escape the threat on her life — all at once, if she played it right.
Yeoncheong whirled toward the neighboring stands and bellowed at the friend sitting there, impassive.
"Yeon Seoha! Get out here!"
For a moment Seoha just blinked, bewildered at being summoned as the "item" in a scavenger hunt.
"I said, hurry up!"
Protests rose — *she's from another class, what do you mean she's just walking out?* — but the sheer force of the shout carried the day, and Seoha rose and walked onto the track of her own accord.
"What does the paper say?"
"This... this is me going easy on you. Got it?"
Leaving that near-nonsense answer to Seoha's bewildered question, Yeoncheong crossed the finish line in first place.
Her Class 1 friends cheered at the win; Class 2 let out a collective groan. But the obstacle race wasn't over yet.
The emcee, waiting nearby, stepped forward with the microphone.
"Alright! Crossing the finish line isn't the end, folks! The rankings are only locked in once you bring back the item — or person — in question!"
One by one, runners crossed the line hauling their items, or people, behind them, while the emcee made his way over to Yeoncheong, the first-place finisher, and started the interview.
"First up — our senior here, who brought back a *person* with absolutely bone-crushing force. We saw it. What was written on your slip?"
"...A person."
He held the mic close, but her voice stayed tiny.
"Senior, you heard everything everyone shouted earlier, right? Say it one more time with THAT voice."
The emcee, a practiced hand, adjusted the volume and thrust the microphone forward.
"Someone I'd want to... date..."
"Sorry? A little louder, please."
"...Someone I'd want to date."
A scandalously spicy answer — the crowd of students began to murmur.
The emcee had long since guessed what the slip said, but he asked again, deliberately.
"If I remember correctly, there was a little something written in front of that..."
Ah. He's going to keep asking until I say the whole thing myself.
Sensing it instantly, Yeoncheong squeezed her eyes shut and forced her voice up.
"The person I would want to date if I were a boy!"
"KYAAAAAH!!!"
The entire playground erupted, and even Seoha, standing right beside her, flinched.
What girl — no, what *human being* — wouldn't love this kind of drama?
The emcee waited for the excitement rippling through the school to settle, then licked his lips.
"Wow~ congratulations! Senpai, you drew the hardest topic of the day! How did you feel when you pulled it?"
Maybe it was the relief of finally getting it off her chest — whatever the reason, Yeoncheong's voice came out far more level now.
"Didn't you hear me? I said, 'Are you KIDDING me.'"
"BAHAHAHA!"
Her quick wit sent the emcee into hysterics, and he had to wait all over again for the crowd to quiet down.
"If I keep this interview going, we won't finish the sports festival before midnight!" he quipped, milking one last laugh before pulling out the question he'd been saving.
"So! The item — sorry, the *person* — you brought back really is what was written on the paper! And how do you intend to prove THAT?"
Her mouth wouldn't move properly, trying to say into a microphone words she could barely say at all under normal circumstances.
Yeoncheong stammered, pointing at Seoha beside her.
"Can't you just tell by looking? She's obviously adorable."
Seoha, caught off guard, grabbed the ends of her twin tails and turned crimson — but the mischievous underclassman emcee had no intention of letting things end that easily.
"Aww, come on~ that's not gonna cut it. Am I right, everybody?"
Like some dating show in full swing, his smooth leading question whipped the stands into a dizzying chorus of shouts.
"Yeahhh!"
"Hear hear!"
Shoulders shrugging at the roaring crowd, the emcee grinned.
"You heard them, senpai. Actions over words! We want to see you prove it with an *action*."
There it is. Amid cheers loud enough to split ears, Yeoncheong stole a glance at Seoha.
Fingers fidgeting, cheeks tinged faintly pink. Clearly even her friend, so used to standing in front of crowds, found this particular situation unfamiliar.
At least she wasn't the only one embarrassed. Small mercies.
"......I'm not doing it twice."
Dragging it out would only get her swept along by the moment anyway.
Drawing in a deep breath and steeling herself, Yeoncheong whipped her head around in one swift motion—
Mwah.
She left her mark before Seoha had any chance to react.
A soft, warm sensation lingering on her cheek. Seoha raised a hand to touch it, her red eyes swimming with pure flusterment, as if she couldn't decide whether this was real.
"Y-Yeoncheong?"
"Once is too ambiguous, right?"
And immediately, a second one.
She even tilted Seoha's chin slightly to land it on the other cheek.
And because the interview had the microphone held right up close, every sound — cheek kisses included — went rolling through the speakers and across the entire playground.
"KYAAAAAAA!!!"
She had just single-handedly created the greatest moment of this year's sports festival.
And so, Yeoncheong held on to first place in the obstacle race.
She'd untangled Seoha's feelings, secured a reprieve from Siyeon's death threat — two goals down. Keeping her promise to Suyeon to call Seoha cute was a bonus.
But... falling behind in the final relay, and failing to stop Class 2 — steady and unshakable all day — from taking the overall championship, was the one and only regret of the day.