Dragon and Hardcover
I still wasn't entirely sure what Do Ji-yeon had been thinking when she decided to show me Ha-yan in a swimsuit.
Anyway. It had been nice, so I decided to let it slide.
...Honestly, it had been ridiculously nice. Seeing Ha-yan deliberately bare that much of herself? First time in my life.
We'd been together for a while after that, but a sudden wave of embarrassment made me bolt away from her like I was running for my life. In the end, though, just like she'd said, I took her hand again right in front of the house and we went up together.
All this chaos of preparation was for the school trip starting next Monday.
The next day, when I ran into Do Ji-yeon again, I locked her in a headlock and spoke to her with a bright smile.
"Hmm? Our dear childhood friend of the female persuasion? How did it feel heading home after making two people lose their minds at the same time yesterday?"
"Cough, cough, cough!! Hey! Why are you being so mean?! You enjoyed it too! I saw your whole face go red because you liked it so much!"
Do Ji-yeon wasn't completely without a comeback; she fired off excuses that weren't really excuses while thrashing to escape my headlock. Fat chance.
But once I had her pinned so she couldn't move, it was Ha-yan's turn.
Approaching the thoroughly captured Do Ji-yeon with that same smiling face, Lee Ha-yan flashed a grin and said,
"Our Ji-yeon? The same Ji-yeon who's known perfectly well since elementary school that Siu and I are dating?"
"Ha-yan! You said you liked it too! I might've given you a little push from behind, but... you liked it, right? You did!"
Do Ji-yeon rushed the words out, but after talking everything over with me last night and realizing exactly what kind of magnificent stunt she'd pulled, Lee Ha-yan was already firmly on my side.
"Ji-yeon. I didn't need to go that far, did I? Are Siu and I just casually flirting right now?"
"Flirting... no, not really?"
"So we're just 'ordinary' childhood friends, then?"
"Ordinary... friends don't hold hands and hug and stare at each other with hearts in their eyes, right?"
"Then was there any reason I needed to put on a swimsuit and show that to Siu?"
"Damn it!! Fine! I wanted to see it! Not you two being all lovey-dovey—I wanted to see you both flustered—"
"Siu."
"Yeah."
"Squeeze her."
"Okay."
And I started cranking up the pressure of the headlock until it was almost painful.
Ah. Don't worry about the "headlock" part.
I called it a headlock, but really I was just mercilessly grinding my knuckles into Do Ji-yeon's temples while she couldn't move. Exactly like that one gag from Crayon Shin-chan.
"Ugh... uwaaaaaaah!! Ugyagyagyagyagya!! Ah, I get it!! I'm sorry!! I'm so sorryyyyy!!!"
"And. One week of malatang confiscation."
"Uwaaaaah!!! A-anything but that!!!"
Do Ji-yeon seemed to find Ha-yan's declaration of a one-week malatang ban far more agonizing than the pain I was currently applying to her temples.
"Guhhh... m-my whole week's worth of malatang..."
"Geez. If you like it that much, why not just make it at home? They sell kits everywhere these days."
"Ji-yeon's mom hates her eating malatang and tanghulu so much she practically wants to ban them from the house."
"Ahh. That explains it. Yeah, fair enough."
Finally free of my grip, Do Ji-yeon flopped onto all fours on the floor with a face of pure despair, muttering to herself.
And right then Choi Hoon wandered over and poked her.
Poke, poke.
"So yeah. You should've just watched from the sidelines. Why go stirring up a couple that's already dating perfectly f—"
"You little shit!!! Pouring oil on a burning house, you rotten bastard!!"
"Ack! Ugh! Hey hey hey!! Vital spots! The solar plexus!! You hit my solar plexus!!!"
"Shut up!!!"
Having poked the bear and gotten his weak points hammered for it, Choi Hoon fled the classroom to escape Do Ji-yeon's wrath. Naturally she tore after him, and both of them vanished.
I watched the two of them disappear down the hallway in record time, let out a long sigh, then pulled Ha-yan into my arms.
"Nice work. You have to come down hard on her every once in a while or she keeps pulling crap like that."
"Honestly, when Ji-yeon first told me the plan I was kind of into it... but after everything was over and I heard the full story from you, I realized how overboard it was. We're not just 'some couple,' right?"
As she spoke, Ha-yan promptly nuzzled her face into my chest.
Some of our classmates might have found this kind of display in the classroom a little sickening, but we'd already been walking around openly broadcasting "We're a couple~" for years. We'd been dating for over a decade. What exactly were they going to do about it?
And it wasn't like we'd had any huge crises along the way. Couples as wholesome and steady as us were rare.
How long does teenage romance usually last, anyway? On top of that, we were the officially recognized couple of the entire teaching staff.
"Hey, hey, hey. Don't you see the lifelong singles around you crying tears of blood? Are you two going to keep canoodling right up until class starts?"
"Not tears of blood from the teacher's eyes, I hope?"
"Looking down on me for being an old bachelor, are you? Top of the school?"
"Ahaha. Never, our dear homeroom teacher."
"Tch. Only call me 'teacher' when it suits you. Sit down already. I'm going over the school trip details for next week."
Last period had ended; it was right before dismissal.
Ah. For the record, we didn't have self-study sessions or anything. Even if we did, I had zero intention of attending.
The second classes wrapped up somewhere between four and five, Ha-yan and I were free.
Our homeroom teacher walked in—having sniped only at me and not said a word to the Ha-yan currently nestled in my arms—and the students scattered all over the room scrambled back to their seats.
Ha-yan took the desk right beside mine. Choi Hoon, whose eyes had somehow swollen into black orbs, and Do Ji-yeon, still seething, had also returned and found their places.
Once he'd confirmed every student was present, the teacher had the class president hand out a rather thick packet to everyone.
"Alright. You all turned in the consent forms last time. This is the detailed itinerary plus assorted information. Pretty thick, right? Consider yourselves blessed. How a high-school trip ends up this luxurious is beyond me. In over ten years of teaching, I've never seen anything like it."
"Whoa. Insane."
"This is full-on luxury package tour level, isn't it?"
"So we just pick whatever we want by group? Private drivers and cars included?"
"My mom was jealous, calling me the luckiest kid alive. This is actually crazy."
"Hmm...? They organized it pretty well."
When my own copy arrived, I checked the thickness—about the size of a single manga volume.
Given how thick it was, they hadn't just stapled loose pages like usual; they'd actually had it bound into a proper book.
Beside me, Ha-yan's eyes sparkled as she flipped open the book-like pamphlet and immediately locked in with total focus.
I kept one ear on the teacher's explanation while opening the first page of the Second-Year High School Jeju Island Field Trip Information Book.
"As you can all see, the only thing the school is forcing is the lodging. Everything else is up to each group to decide day by day. The drivers assigned to each group will be announced that morning. Background checks and driving skills are all guaranteed, so no need to worry."
Listening to the teacher's rundown, I slowly turned the pages and checked the locations we'd be visiting.
They seemed to have picked out the most representative spots we were likely to hit and stuffed them in here, but our group's itinerary was already fully loaded in my head.
"Ah. And regarding rooms—every group in our class is two guys and two girls, so each group gets one boys' room and one girls' room. The hotel is a five-star, as you all know, and every facility inside is free to use. Rooms must be vacated between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. for cleaning."
I'd already had Rhea carefully select the hotel after cross-checking fire safety systems, staff competence and friendliness, and actual guest reviews, so I wasn't worried there either.
"Even I've never taken a trip this extravagant on Jeju Island. Some anonymous, incredibly generous businessman apparently dropped a fortune for all of you, so go have fun. And absolutely, under no circumstances, get caught doing anything stupid or you'll come back ready to die. Understood?"
"Yes!!!"
Between the thrill of imminent dismissal and the luxury school trip only days away, the entire class answered the teacher at full volume.
"Alright, alright. If only you yelled like that during regular class. Dismissed!"
Having realized that saying anything more was pointless, the teacher opted to clear the kids out as fast as possible.
And since this round of group assignments had almost every team made up of close friends, people clustered in little knots, chatting about what they wanted to do on Jeju Island as they filed out of the classroom.
I ignored the rest of the class streaming out, pulled the empty desks in front and beside me into place, casually settled Ha-yan next to me, and addressed the other two idiots.
"Sit down already. I'm going to lay out our plan."
"Oh! As expected of our school valedictorian! You've always got every plan locked and loaded!"
"Ugh. I was gonna go home and grind ranked..."
The moment Choi Hoon's grumbling reached my ears, I fixed him with a glare.
"Want to spend the entire week stuck in the hotel alone living your best hotel-cation life and then just go home?"
"Whoa whoa. No, sir. Absolutely not."
Grasping the situation instantly, Choi Hoon bowed at the waist and dropped into the seat next to Do Ji-yeon.
I shoved the school's official booklet aside on my desk, pulled four hardcover volumes out of my bag, and handed one to each of them.
"We. Move. Exactly. According to this plan. Okay?"
The three of them spent the next ten minutes silently flipping through the thesis-like books. Their reactions:
"Whoa. You even handled personal (company) business and still made all this? When? This is insane!!"
Ha-yan stared at me with wide, astonished eyes.
"I was ready to throw some shade if anything felt off, but when you pull something like this out I can't even complain."
Do Ji-yeon muttered to herself again, apparently still somehow dissatisfied with my perfection.
"...Oh god."
And that bastard Choi Hoon suddenly started praying to the heavens.
Ah. Right—Choi Hoon was a J.