Sports Festival, Bang Bang
On the second day of the Sports Festival, Yeoncheong arrived at school as usual and changed quickly at her desk. She had worn her class t-shirt under her uniform, so all she needed to swap out were her slacks.
"Hey, Yeoncheong. Hi."
"..."
Yeoncheong glared at Hasol in silence. She still held a grudge against the three of them for abandoning her to Seoyun the day before.
Yesterday, her ankles had been bound together, her freedom stolen, and she'd been utterly helpless against it. Not a single word had passed her lips since.
Hasol turned to the others with a troubled look for backup. Perhaps sensing they'd gone too far this time, Suyeon crept over with Nayun in tow.
"You're still... mad. Yeah, of course you are."
Yeoncheong kept her mouth firmly shut. But she didn't avert her gaze, either. Go ahead and say what you have to say.
Suyeon bent her knees to match Yeoncheong's eye level and apologized.
"I'm sorry. I'll be more careful from now on."
Refusing to accept it to the very end risked her turning brazenly shameless again, just like she had after the midterm afterparty. Head tilted slightly, Yeoncheong remembered that episode — and finally opened her mouth.
"Aren't you supposed to say you won't do it again?"
"Honestly? I don't have the confidence not to."
Yeoncheong's reactions had long since become one of the great pleasures of school life. It amounted to telling her that something similar was bound to happen again.
It was too honest. Left her with nothing to say.
A sigh escaped the lips of the girl who had been glaring at the three of them.
"Seriously, if you weren't my friends..."
These were the friends who had approached her first, back when she was quietly isolated from everyone.
With a stern warning to be careful, Yeoncheong forgave the three of them.
At a sentence far lighter than expected, Suyeon's joy radiated from every inch of her. Yeoncheong barely managed to fend off the friend who lunged at her for a hug.
"That's enough. Stop. I'm going to rest."
"Okay."
Only then did Yeoncheong slump over her desk to make up for lost sleep.
Basketball game two, and the three-legged race. With an activity load well beyond the usual, Yeoncheong needed every minute of sleep she could get.
Second-year Class 1 still had the basketball final and the kickball semifinal in the morning, with the obstacle race and the relay left for the afternoon.
The basketball final and the kickball semifinal were scheduled at the same time, so the class split up to cheer for whichever game they preferred.
With the stakes so different, more than half of Class 1 headed to the gymnasium to watch the basketball final. Of course, some came harboring entirely different motives.
"Guys. If you lose, you die."
"Lose to those lanky freaks and you're not one of us anymore."
Suyeon and Hasol, still smarting from their dodgeball thrashing, sent over some downright murderous cheering(?).
Their opponents were the class with the volleyball club student who had been growling at Nayun. Predictable enough.
There's a saying that basketball is played with the heart, not height — but when the gap topped ten centimeters, that stopped being a platitude that held.
Someone nearly 180 tall only had to raise a hand for it to reach a height no ordinary girl could ever touch.
The referee called both teams' players, who had been warming up with the ball, to center court.
Standing side by side for the handshake, the height difference became all the more stark. Across from her, the way her opponent looked down at Yeoncheong with such casual ease was deeply unpleasant.
For Yeoncheong, who occasionally found herself reminiscing about the air at that altitude she could no longer reach, Nayun sidled up.
"You know the deal? You and I each take one of those beanpoles."
Yeoncheong muttered as she eyed the opponent whose arms and legs went on forever.
"This is gonna be exhausting."
Her class was uniformly average or slightly below average in height. The only way to make up for the difference was to shut down the two opponents who played the best — Yeoncheong and Nayun.
The opposing players donned their fluorescent vests and took their positions on the court, and Yeoncheong shifted to the spot directly across from the girl she was assigned to guard.
A moment later, with the referee's whistle after surveying both sides, the second-year basketball final began.
One side had rode Nayun and Yeoncheong's outstanding skill; the other had coasted to the final on the raw physicality of two towering players.
Technique versus physique.
Two classes standing at opposite poles fought through a ferocious game.
Slipping past midcourt on a probing advance, Yeoncheong locked eyes with Nayun. Moving with feline stealth, Nayun planted a screen in front of Yeoncheong's defender.
Yeoncheong exploded into speed in an instant, carving off the screen Nayun had set and cutting inside. One of the other volleyball club members scrambled to plug the hole that had opened.
Whoa. She really is big.
When someone a full head taller raised her hand skyward, the intimidation factor was enormous.
But still.
Yeoncheong slammed on the brakes while threading the ball between her legs. The defender, backpedaling, couldn't beat her own momentum and staggered backward.
She had never planned to attack the paint against a volleyball player in the first place.
Straightening her naturally coiled knees, she lofted the ball she'd gathered in both hands, and it floated up in a soft arc. With all the space she'd created, her shot traced a clean parabola before being sucked in through the rim.
Cheers erupted from Suyeon and the rest of her friends — but Yeoncheong and Nayun had no time to celebrate, already sprinting back on defense.
At some point the opponent had camped out near the basket. What had looked like a wild heave of a pass turned out to be plucked cleanly out of the air as the girl stretched her arm to its full length.
Hah, damn. She really is obscenely tall.
It was a feeling that hit home with desperate clarity now that she'd shrunk.
The opponent hoisted the ball high overhead. Nayun leapt with everything she had, but it grazed just beyond her fingertips. Like a catapult launching, the girl gripped the ball in both hands and hurled it from above her head.
The ball's low arc smacked off the rim and bounced toward Yeoncheong. She timed her jump — and in that instant—
You've got to be kidding...
The other volleyball player trailing behind snatched the ball away from above her. Knocking it clean over her head. A blow to one's pride if ever there was one.
The second attempt rattled around the rim before dropping in.
This time, the cheering came from the other side.
Unlike the razor-thin score, the game itself had tilted heavily in one direction.
Yeoncheong's class built their points on intricate combination play; their opponents simply fed the ball to their two tall volleyball players and muscled it in by sheer force.
The difference in difficulty of manufacturing a single point was brutal.
As the game wore on and the physical battle grew ever more intense, the referee's whistle signaled the end of the first half.
Her classmates taking their break sank to the floor one by one. Yeoncheong was no exception.
"Ugh... I'm dead."
"Here, drink."
Yeoncheong took the sports drink her homeroom teacher, Jisu, had bought for them and downed nearly half in one gulp.
While Yeoncheong and her friends were dying of exhaustion, the other team still looked like they had energy to spare.
Nayun sat down beside her and scowled at their opponents.
"Damn it. If only I were five centimeters taller."
"Five? That's awfully modest. I'd want a good seventeen at least."
"Why is your number so weirdly specific?"
"Well... there's a reason."
Trailing off, Yeoncheong stretched her legs out and leaned her back against the wall.
Together with their friends, Nayun and Yeoncheong talked strategy for the second half.
The referee called the players back. Rest periods always felt far too short.
The second half unfolded like a scale that had been balanced on a knife's edge finally beginning to tip.
The opponents leaned on their physical advantage to grind out the body battles and slowly drain their stamina, and they were gradually adapting to Yeoncheong and Nayun's combination play, too.
And then the opponents ran.
Yeoncheong and Nayun managed to keep pace on raw individual skill, but they lacked the one decisive blow needed to reverse a flow that had started sliding.
Once again, the opponent knocked the ball away from above Yeoncheong's head. It wasn't pretty, but they shoved their way inside somehow and put it in.
Five-point lead.
The referee shouted, "One minute!" announcing the time that remained.
As defeat loomed, Class 1's cheering lost its strength. The opponents, certain of victory now, were in full festival mode.
"Nayun. Run."
After dishing off the ball and retreating to the far baseline, Yeoncheong took off at a dead sprint straight into enemy territory. Nayun matched her, charging up the court.
Neither their own teammates could keep up, nor had the opponents recovered their positions — in that fleeting moment, the first to arrive, Yeoncheong, cleared a path for Nayun.
Without slowing her stride, Nayun laid in a lightning-fast layup.
Three-point gap.
The gymnasium stirred.
They could have taken their time, but they fumbled instead. The opponents hurled the ball with all their might toward a volleyball teammate far down the sideline — and came up just short.
It landed in the hands of a Class 1 girl who'd been catching up late.
The ball fed straight to Nayun. No single volleyball player could guard Nayun and Yeoncheong at once.
With the sound of the net splitting — a one-point game.
The second wave of commotion. This time, Suyeon and the others rose to their feet one by one.
As if on cue, Nayun and Yeoncheong sprinted back on defense simultaneously.
Scarcely twenty seconds remained. All they had to do was pass the ball around and run out the clock, but—
"Hey! Throw it here!"
Swept up in the moment? Or was it wounded pride? The rattled opponent made a mistake.
The instant the ball, arcing high, reached the opponent camped near the basket, Nayun and Yeoncheong cut off her lane.
Pressing their bodies tight against her, the two made any comfortable pass impossible.
From the far side came shouts telling her to just burn clock, but they were drowned out by Hasol and the others screaming their hearts out as the momentum flipped.
The panicked shot clanged off the rim and bounced out; a tangle of hands sent it flying up again. Nayun, watching her moment, snatched it away.
Ten seconds bled away in the chaos. Then Nayun handed the ball off to Yeoncheong, who had pushed up ahead.
Only the ball had crossed over, so four defenders were packed in tight inside the three-point line.
Yeoncheong dribbled slowly, eyes fixed on the rim. The referee began counting down from ten.
As her gaze darted between the packed defense and the rim, the shrinking numbers echoed in her ears. A rim that seemed, impossibly, to widen — and time running out.
Pure instinct took over.
Beyond the three-point line. Yeoncheong planted her foot, stopped dead, and let the ball fly. Her torso, leaning slightly forward, added that much more force to the shot.
The basketball traced a parabola so high that even her friends cheering from the second floor had to tilt their heads up to follow it.
After the referee's whistle signaled the end of the game—
It swished through the net without so much as grazing the rim.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The basketball bounced again and again before rolling across the floor. A hush fell over the gymnasium.
Suyeon, who had been leaning halfway out over the railing in breathless anticipation, spoke.
"We won, right? That means we won, doesn't it?"
A beat late, the referee came to his senses and declared Class 1 the victors.
The opponents hung their heads. Suyeon and Hasol clutched each other and cheered. Nayun thrust both hands up toward Yeoncheong.
"What the — are you insane?! You missed every single one, and NOW it goes in?!"
"Nayun!"
Forget the fatigue, Yeoncheong sprinted over and threw her arms around Nayun — hard enough that their chests pressed together.
"Whoa — Yeon — Yeoncheong, hold on—"
"You said you needed me, didn't you?!"
This was a side of the perpetually embarrassed Yeoncheong no one ever saw. Nayun, who had been bracing for at most a high-five, flushed red and panicked instead.
"Did you believe in me?"
For the first time — and in the middle of a game, no less — Yeoncheong had sunk a full-court buzzer beater, and she was absolutely flying, clinging to Nayun.
Nayun, who had done nothing more than shove the ball forward with seconds left, stammered.
"W-well... yeah. I guess I did."
Unable to contain the dopamine flooding out of her, Yeoncheong bounced up and down. At that brilliantly bright, innocent smile, the contagion spread to Nayun too.
With embarrassment shoved into a corner, the joy of beating an opponent who had grated on her at every turn filled the empty space.
Before long, the two of them were wrapped around each other, laughing their heads off.
Yeoncheong's defenses weakened by exhaustion. The thrill of a buzzer beater finally landing for the first time.
A whole tangle of factors made possible the kind of aggressive affection she never normally showed.
Their kickball game behind Seoha had ended in a heartbreaking loss — but the great comeback staged in the gymnasium handed Class 1 a joy that more than outweighed the disappointment.
Word was spreading among the other grades too, so in a way it was only natural.
With the basketball title vaulting them into the top of the standings, Class 1's mood was nothing short of euphoric. Suyeon, returning from checking the scoreboard, reported in.
"Seoha, Yeoncheong and Nayun were honestly unreal."
"That good, huh?"
"Yeah. Even someone like me who knows nothing about basketball — my heart was pounding the whole time."
At Suyeon's words, Seoha looked wistful.
"I wish we could've won too..."
"You've still got the third-fourth place match left in kickball. Just do well there. You're already doing plenty well."
At Suyeon's comfort, Seoha gave a slow nod. Then she glanced around and asked,
"By the way... where'd Yeoncheong go?"
"She said she was tired and snuck back to the classroom to rest."
"Ah... yeah. Got it."
Seoha fiddled idly with the sports drink tucked in her arms. It was brand-new — not a single sip taken yet.