The Group Negotiation Over the Wish Tickets
"Absolutely not! I'm not doing the wish ticket! Denied! Denied! Kyaaaa—!!!"
That was just how much she hated it.
Yeoncheong rejected the use of the wish ticket with her entire body, drawing a giant X with both arms and shaking her head so violently that her blue hair whipped against her face.
Because she shrieked exactly the way Seoha had imagined she would, an involuntary snort of laughter escaped her.
"Wh-what? Why are you laughing! This isn't a joke, I mean it!"
Yeoncheong had only said it because she was confident she could talk her way out of it. Watching her friend jump to completely the wrong conclusion, Seoha's smile only deepened.
"Ah...! You keep laughing!"
That's not what I meant, she wanted to say, waving her hands, but Seoha pursed her lips and finally reeled in the smile hanging at the corner of her mouth.
"But it's a wish ticket."
"Ugh..."
Forget all her vehement refusal—one remark right at the heart of the matter made Yeoncheong flinch.
"So you're talking out of both sides of your mouth now?"
"Urk..."
Clean hit, again.
Every word out of Seoha's mouth felt like a needle prick, and Yeoncheong flinched and staggered back.
She knew it herself, after all.
Unlike the Favor Passes she'd handed out to Hasol and Nayun, this was a genuine wish ticket—a promise to grant anything.
She'd blurted out a refusal out of sheer shame, but once the others kept pressing her with sound logic, she couldn't bring herself to say no again.
Shrinking in on herself, Yeoncheong recovered her senses and asked in a crawling voice.
"Are you really... really going to use it on something like that? It's a wish ticket. The ticket that's supposed to grant anything I ask for?"
Her brain was spinning fast in the crisis, and her strategy shifted in an instant.
For now, she tried to buy time, coaxing Seoha with an offer to just let this one slide.
But persuading a friend who had already finished preparing the costume, without her knowing, was an impossible task.
"Mm-hm. While we're at the villa, I'd like you to work as a maid. You should get a taste of what it feels like to be a rich family's daughter. You played puppy at the Hwaryeong Festival, so this should be easier than that."
It was absurd to hear those words from a friend who already was a rich family's daughter.
Still, the friends who had been quietly listening to the whole conversation pricked up their ears as their interest was piqued.
Compared to putting on aegyo and imitating a puppy for a senior whose name she didn't even know, wearing a maid outfit in front of close friends was a hundred times, a thousand times better.
Yeoncheong knew that too, which was why her voice grew smaller and smaller as she replied.
"Obviously, if you're only judging by difficulty, the maid is easier..."
"Then what's the problem? I'm exercising a wish ticket I received legitimately. It's not like it's physically impossible."
There was already certainty in Seoha's voice. Knowing how Yeoncheong would end up accepting, given how she'd wasted time on pointless pride up until now.
But then her crisis-sharpened brain pointed out one very important detail.
"Just one day. Then I'll do it."
"Hmm? You're attaching conditions to a wish ticket?"
Seoha's wish was, clearly, to serve as a maid for the duration of the villa stay. But Yeoncheong and her friends hadn't yet decided how long they'd be staying.
In other words, one careless slip of the tongue here and she could end up playing maid for days on end.
"I know exactly what you're thinking. That much should obviously be decided first."
"Tch... and why did you suddenly get so smart."
Because if she could get them to misspeak, she stood to gain the maximum advantage. She'd phrased it that way on purpose, and yet—
Her friend's suddenly sharp instincts killed the brilliantly improvised plan before it could bear fruit. It was a little disappointing, but Yeoncheong didn't seem willing to budge any further either, and just as she was about to wrap things up there—
"Then. One wish ticket equals one day?"
Suyeon, who had been listening in silence, asked the question, and the situation lurched into motion once more.
***
The matter was winding its way to a reasonable conclusion, so why was she suddenly asking that?
When Yeoncheong looked at her, Suyeon kept fluttering her lips.
"There's travel time to factor in, and we'll be staying at the villa at least two days. So I was thinking, maybe I'd use my wish ticket too."
"That's your reason?"
It felt strange to say it about herself, but the wish ticket had been given with every intention of being honored—short of asking her to pluck a star from the sky.
Seoha, and now Suyeon too.
She couldn't fathom the act of burning a wish ticket on a mere maid outfit.
"It sounds fun, doesn't it? I'm also curious what it'd feel like to have a maid around."
Yeoncheong was struck speechless by her friend's breezy answer and a careless shrug of her shoulders.
An unexpected ally had appeared. Seoha shoved aside the girl standing between them and quickly leaned in to whisper to Suyeon.
She'd completely covered every gap where sound could leak with her hand, so Yeoncheong had no choice but to guess the topic of conversation from her friend's expression—
Eyes going wide as if about to pop out of her head, glancing Yeoncheong up and down, face flushing crimson in a rush, and finally averting her gaze.
What on earth could they be talking about to make her react like that? A chill ran down Yeoncheong's spine.
"I'm using my wish ticket too. So that makes it two days, right?"
Before Yeoncheong could even sigh at Suyeon, fully swayed as she was, a chain reaction erupted from across the table, where someone had caught the scent of fun.
BANG!
Nayun modified a famous line that circulated the internet as a meme.
"Two days is way too short-o! Let's make it three days!"
"And why are you butting in!?"
They hadn't even decided how many days they'd be staying at Seoha's villa yet. Watching them gang up like this was enough to drive anyone mad.
Yeoncheong clutched her aching head and raised her voice.
"You don't even have a wish ticket to begin with!"
"Don't I? I won the bet, so I've got one."
"...Ah!"
The word bet jogged her memory.
A recollection flickered through her mind—if she confessed to two people at once, she'd be given one wish ticket.
She'd said it back then assuming she'd obviously have to pick just one of them... She cursed her past self.
"AAAAH!"
"So you remembered. It's Seoha's villa anyway, so lodging's free—might as well stay a full three days and enjoy ourselves, right?"
Three whole days of playing maid?
No. Absolutely not.
This called for proper negotiation.
***
Yeoncheong sat on one side, Seoha, Suyeon, and Nayun lined up neatly on the other, and Hasol, worried the fight might escalate, took the seat between them and appointed herself moderator.
"You want her to wear nothing but a maid outfit for three days straight? We're supposed to be going on a trip—isn't that too much?"
"It's not like it'd stop her from having fun."
"Exactly. It's not like we're demanding round-the-clock attendance."
"If you can't use a wish ticket however you want, what kind of wish ticket is it?"
Every time Yeoncheong said one thing, three opponents came back at her with three.
She trotted out reasonably rational arguments, appealed to their affections, and even shamelessly begged them to cut her some slack just this once—
But persuading three people who had already banded together with the sole purpose of dressing her in a maid outfit proved difficult.
The negotiations lapsed into a brief lull.
By now she was certain: if things went on like this, she'd be stuck as a maid, no two ways about it. To turn the tables, Yeoncheong would have to swallow a considerable loss herself.
But then again...
Was a maid outfit for three days really worth gambling that much on? If she just endured a few days, she could wipe out all three wish tickets in one go?
Thinking it over again, that actually seemed like a bargain.
Just as she was about to reluctantly allow the use of the wish tickets, oh well, nothing to be done—
"Oh, right. Yeoncheong, you won't need to bring a single change of clothes. We'll have everything prepared for you, sleepwear included."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Why so surprised? An employer can prepare things like sleepwear and whatnot for her maid, you know."
And whatnot, she said, the corner of Seoha's mouth twitching upward ever so slightly.
This would not do.
Absolutely could not do.
Seeing that meaningful smile, Yeoncheong immediately decided she had to gamble.
"Hold on! Let's make a bet."
"Why would we do that?"
A perfectly normal reaction.
They'd been pressing her all along with the most fundamental argument—would she really refuse a wish ticket?
That was why Yeoncheong laid out a wager with a very steep price on her side.
"...If you win, I'll do whatever you want—no wish ticket needed."
Silence fell, but the reaction was unmistakable.
The three, who had been so full of confidence, huddled together and started whispering among themselves.
"And if we lose?"
"Obviously the wish tickets stay unused and saved. I'll just wear my own clothes and go on the trip like normal."
Whether she won or lost, she didn't stand to gain much, but her opponents were so overwhelmingly favored that she'd had to make the offer this attractive.
The three conferred in hushed whispers again, and then Suyeon fluttered her lips as their representative.
"What's the bet?"
By the time they were asking for the terms, she had already cleared the biggest hurdle.
Yeoncheong quietly clenched her fist under the table and parted her lips.
"All of you, combined—perfect scores on every single final exam subject. Deal?"
***
The moment Yeoncheong laid out the terms, the responses came back all cut from the same cloth.
"Isn't this bet way too unfavorable to us?"
"You really think we'd accept terms like that?"
"If it's perfect scores, I'm dead weight. That's not fair."
Predictable reactions.
Hwaryeong High School sent plenty of students to top universities, which meant the difficulty of its exams went without saying.
"You have almost nothing to lose, and the payoff is enormous. You should at least do this much."
"Hmm..."
Just as Yeoncheong said, losing wouldn't cost them their wish tickets. Since it wasn't an unreasonable point, Suyeon offered no reply and instead looked to Seoha.
For all her honest grumbling, it wasn't an absurd condition. They had the top-ranked student in the whole school on their side, and Suyeon herself was a pretty good student.
"I'm fine with it. I'll just work even harder than usual."
True to form, Seoha nodded along, signaling her acceptance.
The problem, however, was that the sheer number of subjects made Nayun the biggest wildcard.
She seemed aware of it herself, turning to her two friends with the question.
"If I ace just one or two subjects, is that still a shot?"
"A shot? If you manage even one, it's a hundred percent."
Certainty rang in Seoha's answer.
At that, Nayun leaned back against her chair and let out a sigh.
"Hah... fine. Let's give it a shot, like Seoha says. It's studying we have to do anyway."
"Okay! So that's a yes to the bet?"
It felt a little like giving everything away, but by this point it was a negotiation both sides could walk away from satisfied.
Wishing them well, Yeoncheong stood and extended her hand, but Seoha, who had started this whole thing, only flashed a sly grin and left it hanging.
Instead, she raised her hand, pointed at the door, and said—
"Yeoncheong. You need to study, so out."
A clear declaration that, from this moment on, they were enemies.
"Huh? Right now?"
Naturally, a club member being told to leave her own club room could only be flabbergasted.
***
Protesting that it was her own club and asking where exactly she was supposed to go got her nowhere. With only three members, they'd simply outvoted her and shoved her out.
She couldn't count on Hasol or Nayun either, since they were outsiders borrowing the club room themselves.
And where else was there for an evicted Yeoncheong to go?
She headed for the library.
"What's this? You two haven't made up yet?"
Siyeon, seated across from Seobin and studying for exams just the same, tilted her head.
Yeoncheong slid naturally into the seat beside her and filled her in on the freshly-brewed bet, conveniently omitting every embarrassing detail about maid outfits and the like.
"Hmm... perfect scores across the board for three people? Isn't that a bit much?"
"See? Even you think so. I really did set the terms well, if I do say so myself."
Seobin's comment lifted her mood and a smile crept onto her face of its own accord. But Siyeon huffed, clearly unimpressed.
"They kicked you out, so you went? Are you an idiot? You should've stayed and clung to them with everything you had."
"Why?"
Unable to contain her exasperation, Siyeon set down her pen and faced Yeoncheong, lips parting.
"You go over there and pester them, sabotage them, whatever it takes. Aren't you taking Suyeon way too lightly?"
Worry about Suyeon instead of Seoha?
I have no idea what you're talking about, thought Yeoncheong, her head tilting to one side.