Who Needs Remedial Classes During Vacation Anyway?
The summer rain that had poured down as if the sky itself had split open, and the long monsoon season that came with it, had finally passed.
The hydrangeas in the school flowerbeds, drinking deep from the rain that had cooled the sweltering summer, were in glorious full bloom.
Yeoncheong had been staring blankly at the lush blossoms—like cotton candy floating in a clear blue sky—when:
"Focus, everyone. A little more and we're done."
She flinched at the Literature Teacher's words, unsure whether they were aimed at Yeoncheong herself or at the students dozing around her.
Half-lidded eyes drifting back to the lecture, Yeoncheong muttered under her breath.
"Ah... I should've actually studied on normal days."
The single highest grades she'd earned since entering high school, and yet here she was in remedial class—the most ordinary regret in the world for a student who still hadn't escaped supplementary lessons.
***
Summer break is short compared to winter break.
Less than a month in total.
Factor out the weekends she would've had off anyway, and the actual days away from school barely amounted to three weeks. Then came the remedial classes, running a minimum of a week on top of that.
She'd have to check with Suyeon, but once she factored in the possibility of club activities on top of everything, Yeoncheong found herself tilting her head—was this even a vacation?
The one consolation:
"Friends really are everything."
Nayun and Seobin, who refused to leave a friend to suffer through this alone.
Despite the vacation thinning out the student body, the library was refreshingly cool, and the librarian was resting in the back room, so Yeoncheong licked her lips without a shred of guilt.
Nayun, who had been groaning over a pop quiz spread out in front of her, lifted her head.
"Wasn't that an incredibly rude thing to say just now?"
"Nope. You two are literally the only ones who'd sit through remedials with me."
An identical pop quiz lay in front of Yeoncheong across the table. Seobin, beside her, was in the same boat.
Seobin scratched her cheek.
"Um... it really did sound pretty rude, though?"
Having found an ally, Nayun raised her voice.
"Right? You think so too, don't you?"
"Y-yeah."
Seobin nodded, leaning back slightly.
Yeoncheong silently cheered her on.
Seobin was shy around strangers and didn't have many friends—though that didn't mean she was simply passive about it, either.
She'd insisted she couldn't tag along with Siyeon forever, and on her own initiative had reached out, saying she wanted to get closer to Nayun, Yeoncheong's friend, while she had the chance.
Two days of sticking together now, and it seemed she still needed a little more time.
Judging by how Nayun treated her, though, Nayun apparently already considered her a friend.
"Enough. Let's just finish these problems and head home."
Nayun buried her head in the pop quiz as if she had no intention of wasting another second.
Yeoncheong grumbled her way through the long passage of reading material.
"Giving us pop quizzes just because it's summer break—that's going too far, isn't it? Can't even skip them when she says they'll be on the remedial exam."
"That part, I'll grant you."
Nayun agreed.
Seobin, reading the room, came to the Literature Teacher's defense.
"B-but she does work hard teaching with us in mind."
Nayun tossed out a single question.
"And do you like taking pop quizzes?"
"...No."
Unable to bring herself to lie, Seobin hung her head.
A quiet silence, and then the truth slipped out. At that, Nayun snickered—there it was.
Yeoncheong finished all the questions attached to the passage and moved on to the next one.
"There's a time to solve problems, and then there's you two giggling over there. Hurry up. We have to check answers, remember."
Comparing answers on the pop quiz.
That was why Yeoncheong and her two friends remained in the school library even after remedial class had ended.
Looking up the answers yourself counts as studying too, or so the Literature Teacher claimed—she never released an answer key.
And of all times, it had to be during vacation.
Hasol, Seoha, Siyeon—or at the very least, Suyeon. Most of the time, there wasn't a single friend at school who could tell her whether she'd gotten her answers right.
Two heads were better than one, and three were better than two.
So the method Yeoncheong and her friends settled on was to solve the problems together and pool their answers.
It had started from the fleeting thought that one of them was bound to get the real answers right—but had the Literature Teacher witnessed it, she probably would have clapped her hands in delight at such diligent study habits.
***
Day three of remedial classes.
As always, Yeoncheong was working through the pop quiz in the library when she raised her head.
The sounds of the tennis club drifted in from the athletic field. Perhaps because it was cooler than yesterday, their voices carried with extra energy.
Naturally, Yeoncheong's gaze slid toward Nayun sitting across from her.
"Hey, Nayun. Come to think of it, doesn't your basketball club ever do anything?"
"Hm? Oh."
Nayun looked up at the sounds drifting through the window too.
"We're not exactly a club that enters competitions."
"But you love basketball, don't you?"
She meant that Nayun could at least enter small tournaments with her friends.
At Yeoncheong's words, Nayun smirked as she gazed out at the distant view.
"Spare me. If you've got time to talk, solve more problems. I'm almost done with mine."
"Already?"
Seobin, sitting beside her, grew flustered at the news instead.
Nayun waved her off, saying that hadn't been directed at her and she was fine—while Yeoncheong stared blankly at Nayun for a moment before returning to her problems.
***
They finished the pop quiz.
On any normal day, this would have been the part where they checked each other's answers and figured out whose were correct—
"Huh."
—but for some reason, Seoyun senior had come to the library, and she was waving at Yeoncheong.
Ignoring Yeoncheong's look of utter distaste, the senior approached and plopped down into the empty seat beside her.
"You quit club halfway through—what are you doing here?"
"Break time."
Yeoncheong's eyes narrowed.
"What does that have to do with coming here?"
Seoyun pointed a finger at the air conditioning unit mounted on the ceiling.
"This is the coolest spot in the whole school, staff room excluded."
Seobin—the actual library club member—had said the exact same thing.
Apparently satisfied that this explained everything, Seoyun's attention shifted to the pop quiz Yeoncheong and her friends were working on.
"Oh. So you're all taking literature remedials? Literature is rough, huh."
The senior's eyes skimmed rapidly over the reading passages.
Then, glancing at their three wildly different answers, she broke into a grin.
"Whoa. On this one, you picked everything except the right answer."
"Sorry—which question?"
Nayun craned her neck forward, asking which one it was. But the senior simply beamed at her three juniors.
"Looks like you're all having a rough time. Want me to help?"
"Do you even study well, senior?"
Suspicion.
Always playing pranks, always playing tennis on the way home from school—that was the entire extent of what Yeoncheong knew about this senior.
It was a perfectly reasonable reaction.
Seoyun brushed aside the look on Yeoncheong's face and pointed directly at the question Nayun had asked about.
"You think the student council president just does it for fun? People take the job because they have the reputation and ability to back it up."
Once she explained why their answers were wrong and how to find the correct ones, Seobin and Nayun nodded with dawning comprehension.
Nayun seized the senior's hand without hesitation.
"Senior, please help us study."
Her amber eyes sparkled.
Three people studying together—but all three were people attending remedial classes.
Because of that, every time they solved problems and checked answers, the hours slipped away before they knew it.
And now, here was a senior who could produce the answer the moment she laid eyes on a question. If Seoyun senior helped, they'd be done in no time—or so the thought flashed through their minds.
Nayun had no intention of letting an opportunity that had walked in the door on its own slip away.
"We'll do anything we can to help you in return."
"Really? Then..."
Seoyun rolled her eyes this way and that, as if pondering, then looked at Yeoncheong.
The corner of her mouth curling up sweetly. Experience had taught Yeoncheong that whatever came next would not be something she'd enjoy.
"Call me Unnie~ just once."
"Ha..."
Not this time, either.
***
She wanted to be called Unnie.
The three of them, having heard Seoyun senior's request, split cleanly into two camps.
Seobin and Nayun, wearing expressions that said That's all it takes?
And then there was:
Yeoncheong, from whom a sigh had escaped purely on reflex.
Seobin shook Yeoncheong by the shoulders, urging her to say it already, while Nayun—only now catching up on the situation—bit her twitching lips and studied her friend's expression.
Torn between the two sides, Yeoncheong asked the senior.
"Help with what, exactly? You said it was your break time. You have to go back, don't you?"
Seoyun shrugged.
"Oh, that. I'm a third-year, remember? I only come out to practice so I can spar with the underclassmen entering tournaments this year."
In other words, she could quit on the spot whenever she pleased.
By this point, the universe itself seemed to be laying its cards on the table, asking—haven't you earned the right to call her Unnie yet?
As if that single word of address was worth anything. Yeoncheong made it plain that she genuinely could not understand.
"You want to hear me call you Unnie that badly?"
"It's one of my goals before I graduate."
Who on earth sets that as a goal? rose all the way to her throat, but she swallowed it under the warning gazes of her two friends, who didn't want her offending anyone.
"Suyeon and Hasol call you senior, too."
"They call me Unnie sometimes, too. And besides."
Seoyun poked Yeoncheong's cheek repeatedly.
"You act so expensive. It makes me stubborn about it."
"...Why would you get stubborn over that."
The truth leaked out in the end.
Seoyun closed the distance, throwing an arm around Yeoncheong's shoulder.
"So you won't do it?"
A tilt of the senior's chin. Nayun and Seobin watched the two of them, waiting.
Perhaps because they'd realized a shortcut had just opened up through this endless remedial studying, Seobin urged Yeoncheong on enthusiastically.
"Yeoncheong, what's so hard about calling someone Unnie? Just do it so we can finish and go home."
And Nayun, the one who knew her secret...
She's just sitting there grinning.
Without the slightest intention of helping, Nayun was simply enjoying the spectacle, struggling to contain the laughter leaking out of her.
Holding the high ground, Seoyun senior rose from her seat.
"If you won't, forget it. Break's over anyway—shall we get moving?"
"Yeoncheong, hurry! It's not like it's your first time—what are you hesitating for?"
Yeoncheong, ready to weep, screamed inside.
'It IS my first time, you—!'
Seoyun senior walking away. Nayun, muttering oh well, flipping through the quiz papers.
And finally...
"...nie."
"Hm? What was that?"
Seoyun senior turned around, cupping a hand to her ear as if to say, speak up a little louder, won't you?
"Please teach us how to do the problems... Unnie."
With those final words, Yeoncheong thunked her head down onto the desk.
The first time she'd worn a skirt. The first time she'd put on women's underwear. Sitting down to relieve herself, and so on.
All efforts at adaptation—but that never meant they were without their casualties.
And today, something else Yeoncheong had been holding onto crumbled away.
In contrast, a radiant smile bloomed across Seoyun senior's face.
"Wow. I finally get to hear you say Unnie. Just wait a sec—I'll go tell the teacher I'm stepping away for a bit."
The expression on the senior's face as she left the library was.
Exactly that of someone who, after months on a waiting list, had finally dined at the finest restaurant in town.
She was mischievous, but she kept her promises.
When she returned, she patiently tutored the three of them until they understood everything completely.
As predicted, it went far faster than the three of them had been able to manage with their heads together.
At this rate, I'm still coming out ahead, Yeoncheong kept telling herself over and over. She very nearly believed it, too.
She would have—if Seoyun senior hadn't spent the entire time beside her, pressing her to call her Unnie again and again.