The Finals That Mattered in So Many Ways
Once again, the thing that woke her this morning wasn't the summer sun rising before dawn, but the patter of rain drumming against her window.
July had arrived, and the rainy season — which had come early this year — was now past its midpoint.
With the rain lightly tapping the asphalt and the parked cars as her background music, Yeoncheong had gotten to school early in the morning, wanting to give her studies a light once-over.
She'd taken this exam more times than she could count, and her only goal was simple: dodge remedial classes at all costs. And yet, she looked more nervous than she had for anything in recent memory.
The reason, of course, was the bet she'd made with her three friends.
It wasn't as if the outcome rested solely on her shoulders, but something like three whole days of her future hung in the balance. (The schedule hadn't been arranged yet, but the odds were good that it would be.)
Just not a perfect hundred. As long as it's not a perfect hundred!
Just as she was clasping her hands together and praying with all her might, Nayun — who'd arrived at school later than her — came strolling over with the corners of her mouth curled up.
"Yo!"
She leaned in, smacking Yeoncheong's shoulder hard.
Thud.
Yeoncheong jolted hard enough to rattle her desk, but once she confirmed who it was, relief washed over her.
"Jeez... you nearly stopped my heart."
Relief was quickly followed by irritation. She swung a fist at her friend, demanding to know what she thought she was doing this early in the morning.
But a punch thrown from a seated position had neither power nor speed behind it, and Nayun dodged it easily, perching herself on the edge of the desk with a smirk.
"What's a girl who only needs to dodge remedials praying so hard for, huh?"
"What do you think? I'm praying you guys score around a ninety-seven. Nothing more."
Too high a target to be a curse, yet far too self-interested to be pure-hearted — at this utterly baffling prayer, Nayun burst out laughing.
"Hey, if I scored that high, I'd have nothing to complain about."
"I even prayed for you, so do your best. Just don't do any better than that."
She'd walked over seemingly just to pick a fight, but thanks to the silly back-and-forth, Yeoncheong's needless tension had melted away completely.
Yeoncheong smacked her friend on the rear, saying she had her own studying to do now — and when Nayun leapt off the desk like she'd been struck by a bolt from heaven, it was the hitter who ended up more startled.
"Wh-what was that?"
"......Nothing."
As if trying to read the intent behind the action from her friend's expression, Nayun stared at her for a long moment — Yeoncheong blinking blankly all the while — before finally turning away.
Tap, tap. A touch light enough to pass for an accidental brush. But had Yeoncheong ever been the one to initiate contact on somewhere like her chest or her backside?
For her part, at least, it was a first.
In a voice too quiet for anyone to hear, Nayun muttered her bewilderment at the sudden skinship.
"That startled me... never dreamed she'd grab my ass like that..."
But the classroom, where only the rain softly tapped at the windows, couldn't quite hide that voice — not in the quiet hush of a classroom on the eve of finals, and not all the way in the corner seat by the window.
Because Yeoncheong, who had just opened her book, lifted her head and called out to Nayun's retreating back.
"What did you say?"
Caught off guard at being overheard, Nayun scrambled to recover.
"I said don't beat me on the exam. Just score high enough to pass remedials."
"Sure~ You do well too. Just don't get a hundred."
Utterly oblivious, Yeoncheong tossed a word of advice(?) back at her friend as the girl retreated to her own seat.
And so she studied alone, doing her final checks, for quite a while.
"This is really it. This is really almost the last one, so everyone's got to buckle down and do well~"
Who knew how long she'd been standing there. With her homeroom teacher's encouragement ringing out as she left the classroom, what was, in a sense, the final final exam of high school had begun.
***
Well begun is half done, as they say.
And so the first day of the all-important finals came to an end.
Since learning even an estimated score felt like it would massively affect her performance on the remaining exams, Yeoncheong had planned to study at the library with Siyeon and Seobin for the duration of finals week.
Even so, human curiosity was apparently impossible to suppress.
Pretending she'd be studying alongside them — while really just angling for a sneak peek at their reactions — she accompanied her friends all the way to the club room.
"Yaaawn~ Ah... I'm exhausted. I'm gonna nap a little when we get back."
Every time Suyeon yawned, Yeoncheong broke into a cold sweat trying to force down the corners of her mouth as they crept upward.
Apparently the pressure of needing a perfect score had kept her up all night. Someone that exhausted could not possibly have done well on her exams.
But then, rubbing her eyes groggily, her friend caught sight of her stifling a laugh and grinned.
"Don't worry, I'm fine. Today's exams happened to be my strongest subjects. All that sacrificing sleep to study paid off."
Suyeon said it deliberately loud, making sure everyone could hear.
Losing cost her almost nothing, but winning meant double the Wish Coupons.
The prize was simply too great. She'd studied seriously for the first time in ages — you only had to look at Siyeon, her twin, burning bright with competitive fire, to know how hard she'd worked.
She hadn't yet cross-checked her answers against Seoha's, but inwardly she was already swearing up and down that she'd aced it.
"Which means today's all perfect hundreds for me."
"Ooh~"
The confidence ringing in her voice drew gasps of admiration from the group — and Yeoncheong, whose smile had been growing by the second, deflated instantly.
"Ah... now that you mention it, I'm supposed to study with Siyeon at the library... I-I should get going!"
Phone in hand as though a text had just arrived demanding to know where she was, Yeoncheong performed her best acting yet and slipped away.
She's running.
Yeah, she's totally bailing.
All three of them saw right through it.
***
The next day, after receiving some much-needed emotional support from Siyeon and Seobin at the library.
After Yeoncheong had gone home, Suyeon had cross-checked her answers with Seoha's as a rough estimate — and it really did seem like she'd gotten everything right. Nayun kindly relayed this fact, which nobody wanted to know, until Yeoncheong shoved her away.
It wasn't as if the official answer key had been released yet. It was only a self-graded estimate, and it could change a dozen different ways — but a corner of her heart couldn't help growing anxious.
Truthfully, anxious didn't even cover it. She was seriously freaking out.
Still, Yeoncheong gave her own cheek a light slap and pulled herself together.
She had a personal goal to escape remedials in every single subject. She was in no position to be worrying about a bet while taking her exams.
You said math would be hard. So study.
Time passed, and just as Teacher Jisu had warned — it's difficult, so study hard — Yeoncheong found herself smack in the middle of an ordeal during the math exam.
The one mercy was that however she'd managed it, the difficulty had been calibrated for everyone. It was hard across the board.
The classroom that should have been filled with the scratch-scratch of equations being written down instead echoed only with low groans and the sound of pens jabbing pointlessly at problem sheets.
Amid that uncomfortable silence, far from cursing her homeroom teacher — the one who'd written the exam — Yeoncheong sat there grinning, deeply, sincerely grateful.
"Yeoncheong? You're not feeling unwell because the exam was too hard, are you?"
She did receive a look of deep concern from the teacher, who'd come over to check on her precisely because of that — but Yeoncheong was able to nod her head with genuine joy.
"...You're really okay?"
Naturally, the teacher kept tilting her head, fretting over her student's condition until the very end.
With friends like Hasol and Seobin dropping by afterward to check on her too, she must have looked rather unwell indeed.
Anyway. Once the math exam was over.
Among the students grumbling about how brutal it had been, Yeoncheong prepared for her next subject with a smile on her face — lighter in heart than she'd been in ages.
It might have been premature, but she was fairly certain she'd won this bet.
***
Before she knew it, the final day of finals had arrived.
Perhaps because this exam mattered in so many different ways, the time had felt like it was flying by — literally like a bullet.
Standing on the verge of catching two rabbits with one stone — a bet victory and escaping remedials in every subject — Yeoncheong hummed a little tune as she opened her book.
"Wow... you looked half-dead yesterday morning, and now you're fully resurrected."
"Hm? Oh, it's you, Nayun?"
Unlike yesterday, when she'd shoved everyone away claiming she didn't want to hear a word, her friend greeted her with a beaming face, and Nayun let out a hollow laugh.
"Hah! I know exactly why, and knowing just makes me annoyed."
"Aw c'mon~ The exams end today, that's all. That's why I'm in a good mood. What other reason could there be?"
Everyone who knew about the bet knew exactly what that reason was, and the sly grin made Nayun want to deck her.
But even a physical hit probably wouldn't wipe that grin off, and she judged that no words would land right now either. Turning away, she gave her lips a wet smacking.
"Well, the results only come out with the grades. Enjoy it while it lasts — today's your last day."
"Sure~ You do great on the rest of your exams too, Nayun. I'll be rooting for you to get a hundred today."
This from the girl who'd once prayed for nothing more than a ninety-seven. With Yeoncheong now radiating benevolence like a Buddha incarnate, Nayun cooled her rising temper and returned to her seat.
Actions speak louder than words.
The best revenge would be actually scoring that perfect hundred.
***
The instant the bell rang to signal the end of exams—
"Waaaaah~!"
Groans and cheers erupted from every classroom at once.
Perhaps the sky itself was celebrating the end of exam season: the rain had stopped, and blue sky peeked out between the clouds.
Mixed regret over what could have been done better mingled with the joy of being finally, finally done with endless test prep — and for the third-years, for whom this would be the last round of school exams before those headed to certain universities, those emotions ran deeper still.
Even though the answer sheets hadn't been collected yet, the proctor had to keep rapping the lectern with her attendance book to quiet the rowdy students.
This isn't the end for you kids — it's just the beginning, and so on.
She had every teacher's slightly-different variation of the lecture memorized perfectly, and just as the torrent of nagging was about to be unleashed—
"Oh — were you still here?"
Teacher Jisu wandered into the classroom naturally, as if she'd assumed the kids had gotten too loud and the proctor had already left, and flashed an embarrassed smile.
Having missed her timing, the proctor figured the homeroom teacher would handle it her own way, gave a slight nod, and slipped out of the classroom.
Jisu held her index finger pressed to her lips for a good long while, and only after confirming the proctor was truly gone did her mouth curl into a grin.
"Honestly~ you rascals. You can't even wait those few seconds for the proctor to leave?"
"You can't blame us for being happy!"
At one student's bold retort, the classroom dissolved into laughter, and even Teacher Jisu couldn't hold back a chuckle.
"I'll wrap this up quick, okay? Everyone here?"
"Yes!!!"
Despite the unified response, she made a slow circuit of the room, double-checked, and then spoke.
"I say this every time, but I'm not telling you to sit at a desk and study, study, study. A few years ago, I was doing exactly what you all are doing now. You've got to rest when you rest. But — what did I tell you to do instead?"
"Come back to school with our heads on straight starting next week~!"
"No — starting tomorrow... ah, wait, tomorrow's Saturday?"
She corrected herself a beat too late. Too late, that is.
The students burst out laughing at the teacher's slip of the tongue, and the flustered teacher, spinning around to face the blackboard, waved her hands in a vigorous go on, get out without so much as looking at them.
Taking that as the official end of the closing assembly, the students rose from their seats one by one with their farewells.
"See you tomorrow!"
Yeoncheong, too, grabbed the exhausted Nayun and Hasol — whose birthday was tomorrow — and made a swift escape from the classroom.
A short while later, students came flooding out of the neighboring class, which had wrapped up around the same time. Having waited for the hallway to clear, Yeoncheong dragged Suyeon and Seoha — both half-dead with fatigue — out with her.
"Guys! We've got to go celebrate!"
It was the exact opposite of her usual behavior, moping around the moment finals were over.
"We've got to celebrate Hasol's birthday! You can't be running on empty like this!"
Maybe it was because she'd been so satisfied with her finals, but it was an energy that couldn't quite be explained by that alone.