One Win, One Loss
The weekend, meant to settle the score with Nayun over the wound she'd inflicted on him—er, her—had only piled fresh frustration on top of the old. Now, the students of Hwaryeong High School were gradually settling back into the rhythm of school life.
Class 2-1 was no exception, changing into their gym uniforms ahead of PE class.
"Oh, Yeoncheong. You're not sneaking off to change anymore?"
Yeoncheong had always either changed in a flash before anyone could look her way, or found some discreet corner to hide in. Now she was pulling on her gym uniform without a care in the world, so Hasol's reaction was only natural.
Having smoothly swapped even her track pants out from under her skirt, Yeoncheong stuck out her chest and planted her hands on her hips with practiced ease.
"Ahem. This is what growth looks like."
It was true that she'd grown more comfortable around her friends, half-stripped as she was in a tank top without a second thought. And growth was growth, no matter how you sliced it.
It was just that the word growth and the chest-thrusting posture that seemed designed to show it off were telling two oddly different stories.
"Tch."
Beside her, Nayun, mid-change, fixed Yeoncheong with a look of pure displeasure.
"Every time you brag, I want to hit you, so could you put those enormous things back where they came from?"
"Enormous things?"
Yeoncheong turned to face her. When Nayun was presented with a display of the very asset she herself lacked, she couldn't hold back—her hand shot out.
"These. These."
She gave them a light smack. Yeoncheong yelped, threw both arms over her chest, and scuttled backward.
"When did I ever brag?"
"Saying that in front of someone who doesn't have them is bragging, isn't it?"
When Nayun appealed to Hasol for backup, all she got in return was an awkward smile and a dodge. Yeoncheong kept up her rebuttal from a safe distance.
"Someone who's actually enormous exists, you know."
"Who?"
"Seobin."
"...Ah."
Nayun let out a short sigh as she recalled Seobin, whom she'd shared those literature remedial classes with over the break.
"She's the exception."
"Why?"
As if summoning some memory, Nayun gazed off at the distant sky and murmured,
"You can't feel rivalry or jealousy toward someone who exists outside the spec sheet entirely. That's just how it works."
"Ah. Yeah, I'll grant you that one."
Yeoncheong, who upon first meeting Seobin had thought nothing but 'big' and absolutely nothing else, agreed with passion.
As the two drifted into a conversation only they could follow, Hasol tilted her head.
"Who's Seobin?"
"The one who hangs around with Siyeon... no wait. The glasses girl who's always in the library..."
"Oh, I know her."
The distinguishing features were so unmistakable that the conversation resolved itself halfway through the description.
And just when it seemed Nayun's fury had been soothed—
"Besides, compared to Seobin, mine's just a little above average."
"What?"
That single remark sharpened Nayun's eyes all over again.
"A little above average?"
Nayun repeated Yeoncheong's words, grinding out each syllable.
"Get over here. Right now."
The sheer aura of if I catch you, you're dead radiating off her sent Yeoncheong fleeing down the hallway.
"Would you come over if someone told you to?!"
"Hey! Ha Yeoncheong! If I catch you, you're DEAD!"
Under that genuinely murderous warning, Yeoncheong ran for her life.
Hasol walked out to the field at a leisurely pace, right on time, with Seoha and Suyeon in tow.
"That one's on Yeoncheong, honestly."
"She usually leaves well enough alone, though. Why poke the bear today?"
Having heard the story of what had passed between the two, Suyeon delivered her guilty verdict on Yeoncheong, while Seoha tilted her head in puzzlement.
Meanwhile, the field was in an uproar. Hasol scanned the grounds, hunting for the cause.
"What's going on?"
The classmates who'd come out first were sitting in the stands, watching a corner of the field. When Suyeon sat down beside her and asked what was happening,
"Ah, hold on... there they come."
her classmate told her to wait a moment, then pointed toward two figures reappearing at the far edge of the field.
"Ah! Would you just STOP already!"
"Would YOU stop if someone told you to?! They're barreling at you like something out of a horror movie!"
A familiar silhouette. A familiar argument. Familiar voices.
It was Nayun and Yeoncheong.
"Wow... she dodges like it's an art form."
The way Yeoncheong would suddenly switch directions the instant capture seemed imminent, slipping this way and that—it approached genuine artistry.
Except for the minor detail that it only stoked Nayun's rage from behind.
"Ha..."
A hollow laugh escaped Suyeon's lips—a tone equal parts disbelief and astonishment.
"They're still at it..."
"Right? And we've got fitness testing today."
At the voice cutting into the conversation from behind, the heads of Hasol and the surrounding Class 2-1 students swiveled in unison. A tall teacher, hair pulled back in a single tie, was watching the chase unfold.
It was Min Hayeong, the PE teacher in charge of Class 1's gym lessons.
"Those two are in your class, right?"
"Yes—Yeoncheong and Nayun."
Hayeong seemed to search her memory for a moment before the faces clicked.
"Ah. Those two."
Scratching her head, the PE teacher gestured at the students in the stands.
"Everyone else, get down here and line up. Those two will wander over on their own once class starts."
As they slowly filed down from the stands, Hayeong looked around for the class president and vice president.
"Class president, vice president—go to the storage room and grab the equipment we used for fitness testing. You know what I mean?"
When nobody moved, she asked again.
"Are the class president and vice president not out here yet?"
"Um, Teacher... I'm the vice president, and the president is... right over there..."
At the vice president's words, the PE teacher's eyes went wide enough to pop out of her skull.
"We have a class president? Between those two?"
She pointed at the pair sprinting around the field like overgrown children. When the students nodded, confirming it was no joke, Hayeong pressed a hand to her forehead.
"Good grief..."
Drawing in an enormous breath, she bellowed:
"HA YEONCHEONG! KIM NAYUN! HOW LONG ARE YOU TWO GOING TO KEEP THIS UP!"
It wasn't usually like her—which was exactly why it landed. The PE teacher's voice was loud.
You could tell just from how the two startled friends came scrambling over in a panic.
And yet, Hayeong waited until Yeoncheong and Nayun had nearly arrived before speaking again.
"You two have already run plenty. I suppose you can skip the warm-up?"
"Huh?"
Yeoncheong, hands on her knees and wheezing, and Nayun, sprawled flat on the ground, looked up at the same time.
"The rest of the class needs to warm up, so go to the storage room and fetch the testing equipment."
She clapped her hands to hurry them along, and the two began moaning about needing just one minute of rest.
"Nope. We need it too, and so do the first-years who share this period with us. Hurry up and go."
Even after that, they apparently couldn't go quietly—Yeoncheong and Nayun grumbled their whole way to the storage room.
"This is all your fault. Why am I suffering for it?"
"That's my line."
Bickering even now, of course.
Yeoncheong and Nayun collected the testing equipment from the front of the storage room and brought it back to their classmates, who had just finished warming up.
What awaited the two, fresh off a chase that had lasted nearly ten minutes, was the shuttle run—back and forth across the gym, over and over.
In other words, a cardio endurance test.
"Teacher, couldn't we do flexibility or grip strength first?"
Nayun stared up at Hayeong with pleading eyes.
"Nope. The first-years are scheduled to do those first. So even if you want to, you can't."
The teacher shrugged. Nayun, surname Kim and all, half-crawled her way out onto the field.
Serves her right.
Watching her friend on the verge of death by exhaustion, Yeoncheong allowed herself a quiet smile. Going by name order, it looked like she'd have plenty of time to catch her breath before her own turn.
Except.
"Yeoncheong, you're up too. Get ready."
"Wait, why me?"
Yeoncheong flinched at the unexpected call-up. The explanation—that since she was class president, she'd go first and then help out—made her tilt her head.
"I'm going last anyway, though?"
"You prepare the next thing in advance, that's how it works. Less talking, get out here."
"Yes, ma'am..."
And so Yeoncheong, much like Nayun before her, half-crawled out onto the field.
Nayun, taking deep breath after deep breath to steady herself, licked her lips.
"If you can't handle it, you can just say no."
"Ha! Who's going to say that?"
Struggling upright, Yeoncheong took her place beside Nayun.
Truthfully speaking.
There was no good reason to schedule Yeoncheong first in the fitness test. As she'd said, she was originally meant to go dead last—she only needed to help the vice president through her measurement, then hand the job over and be done with it.
But Hayeong was, above all else, a teacher who absolutely could not stand seeing students get hurt. Those two had sprinted around the field in the most reckless fashion imaginable right in front of a woman like that—part of it was surely a desire to see them chewed out a little. Besides, as long as they scored somewhere around average on today's test, there'd be no real problem.
However.
Was it a mistake to put those two up against each other?
There were things Hayeong had overlooked. Things she couldn't have known.
Nayun of the basketball club, and Yeoncheong, who had once been a boy, both carried a ferociously stubborn refusal to lose when it came to anything athletic.
And Yeoncheong had been quietly keeping score over last weekend's one-on-one in the Rift.
"Girls, you can stop whenever it gets too much, you know."
That was the teacher, offering them an out. Under normal circumstances she ought to have been praising them for pushing through the gasps without giving up—but looking at two faces that seemed one more lap away from collapsing outright, such words didn't even cross her mind.
She couldn't stop them entirely either, since the other students were still running along quite happily. Only the two already-spent ones had gone all-out from the very first lap.
Hasol, running alongside them, was worried too.
"Yeoncheong, Nayun. That's enough—both of you, rest."
But their fitness test had long since degenerated into a petty contest of pride. Yeoncheong and Nayun ran on in silence, eyes fixed straight ahead. Or more precisely, they no longer had the breath to answer.
How many more laps did they grind out between the cones?
"Aagh! I can't—no more!"
Nayun crumpled to the ground, and Yeoncheong, one single step farther, promptly collapsed beside her in the dirt.
Alarmed, Hayeong and the other students rushed over—but the situation was less dire than it looked.
"I ran longer. Which means I won, right?"
"Ha... haa... Ha Yeoncheong. You absolute menace. Ruthless. Just ruthless..."
Between ragged breaths, Nayun glared at Yeoncheong, sprawled starfish-style on the ground.
"That makes it... one win... one loss..."
There was exactly one recent occasion where a winner had been decided between them.
Nayun, flat on her back, let out a genuine laugh.
"You were still hung up on that?"
"So what if I am? What are you gonna do?"
"Petty."
That one word, hitting dead center.
Come to think of it, why had she pushed herself this hard over a single match? Yeoncheong burst out laughing at her own absurdity.
The two who'd been running themselves ragged traded words only they understood, then suddenly cracked up together. Their classmates, watching the whole spectacle, went wide-eyed, and even Hayeong's mouth twitched in spite of herself.
"Haah... hah! You two, honestly... trying to give your teacher a heart attack!"
Knowing your limits matters, she declared, and subjected them to an enthusiastic lecture on the subject.
"You two are done for today—come help me instead. I'll measure you both separately later."
Their official records postponed, the pair found themselves drafted as the teacher's assistants instead.
