What to Do at the Festival
The school festival falls in November.
More precisely, the third week of November.
With the CSAT sitting in the second week, things stay relatively quiet until then, then explode all at once in the third.
Every class has to run its own booth, and today we were supposed to discuss what ours would be.
Leading that discussion, of course, fell to the class president and vice president. Our president—Im Lua—walked up to the chalkboard with absolute confidence and took charge.
“Everyone, the festival is only a month away now. That means we need to settle on a plan. If you have any ideas, please share them freely.”
As expected, ideas did not exactly pour out. How many kids even walk around with festival-booth concepts ready to go?
So far only two had surfaced: a café and a library.
For reference, the café was the ordinary mini-café type using ingredients students could actually get their hands on. The library was a no-genre-barred, full-throttle otaku library stuffed with every kind of nerd material imaginable.
Neither suggestion seemed especially inspired, judging by the look on Lua’s face.
Mine wasn’t much better. Whichever we picked, I could already feel a mountain of chatter coming.
“I have a suggestion.”
Someone else spoke up.
“Yes, go ahead.”
“How about a gambling den?”
“…What?”
“A gambling den. Russian roulette, lottery draws, card draws—that sort of thing?”
“……We’re students. I really think we should steer clear of anything like that.”
Even Lua, who usually green-lit almost anything, shut that one down on the spot.
Honestly, not a single solid idea in the bunch.
In the end I decided to step in myself.
First I passed a note to Kim Jihye beside me, asking what she thought of my idea.
Instead of writing back, she simply flashed me a thumbs-up.
That’s a yes, right? Then I’m doing it.
I raised my hand. The moment I did, Lua’s expression brightened a little.
She nodded and gestured toward me; I lowered my hand and waited for her cue.
“Yes, Jinwoo. Please share your idea.”
Permission granted, I offered the suggestion no one else had floated—one that was actually good and would be easy on all of us.
“How about we run a classic film screening room?”
“A classic film screening room?”
“Yeah. We pick some well-known or solid older movies, turn the classroom into a dark room, and just play them. They said simple sales are fine, so we could sell microwave popcorn and drinks too.”
“That’s a pretty good idea. Do you have any specific classics in mind?”
“A few famous Japanese animated films and some foreign ones.”
I listed the Japanese anime movies and overseas masterpieces I knew that would still be school-appropriate.
I’d watched them years ago while trying to study editing.
The studying itself hadn’t gone well. With zero foundation, I never grasped directing choices or editing intent.
I just took comfort in the fact that my personal film literacy had gone up.
Anyway, after listening, Lua seemed to decide it was solid enough and nodded.
“Alright. Classic film screening room. I’ll write that down.”
That made three proposals on the board.
Café, library, and classic film screening room.
And of those three, the one that won was, of course—
“We’ll go with the classic film screening room.”
The classic film screening room.
—Clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap
Applause filled the classroom. I clapped along, quietly satisfied.
Great. I gave an idea, so now I can coast.
That’s pretty active participation for me, right?
……Or so I thought at the time.
“Jinwoo-ya, could you get the movies for us? The ones you mentioned.”
A few days later, Lua asked me to procure the films.
Apparently screening movies was fine, but the teachers wanted to check what they actually were first.
If we used an OTT service, students might just play whatever they wanted, so the teachers wanted to review the films themselves and have us use only those approved files.
Well, nothing to be done about it. Nothing to be done—except…
If they want us to get them through legal channels, at least throw us some money. Why make a student hunt them down?
As the grumbling started to build, Lua carefully asked,
“…If we have to buy the VODs, I’ll cover the cost.”
I shook my head at once.
“No need. I’ll just grab them all illegally.”
“……Is that really okay?”
“It’s fine. If you want free, legal classic masterpieces, you’d have to go for something like Rashomon.”
“Isn’t that a Japanese novel?”
“Yeah, the film based on it—and it’s seventy years old.”
“Uh…?”
Seeing her flustered by the seventy-year figure, I explained why I’d brought it up.
“Once seventy years pass, copyright protection ends, so they’re easy to find. Search Newtube and it’ll probably pop right up.”
I pulled up Rashomon on Newtube and showed her. Lua looked even more alarmed watching it.
“……You want to play this?”
“Boring, right?”
“Uh… yeah. Honestly not great.”
Can’t be helped. Rashomon is an absolute masterpiece and genuinely entertaining.
But only if you understand Japanese well and don’t mind the ancient video quality.
It simply doesn’t match the modern movie meta.
Still, if we submitted it, the teachers might love it. Film-buff teachers especially would probably lose their minds going, “They’re bringing Rashomon?!”
“…Should we just hand this one over?”
“Ahaha… But our main audience is students. Isn’t this a bit much?”
She said it carefully, more gently than usual—like she was trying to talk me down.
Apparently I held total authority over this project for our class.
I nodded.
“True. I wasn’t planning on bringing it, so don’t worry.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Only then did Lua let out a long breath of relief.
“That’s a relief.”
“Yeah, it is.”
Chuckling, I decided to hunt down some VODs the illegal way.
It wasn’t like we were redistributing them. Just a normal school screening—should be fine, right?
…Technically it is against the law. But if you don’t get caught, it’s legal.
In the end I brought a lineup of classic films that would still land with students while remaining genuine masterpieces.
Lua handed them over to the teachers. After watching, the teachers approved them on the spot.
All clear.
Lua looked at me with a bright, sunny smile.
“Jinwoo-ya, thank you.”
“For what? Getting the movies?”
“Yeah. I thought it would be hard.”
I shook my head.
“Something like that isn’t hard at all.”
“Oh~ Look at you being all confident.”
I shrugged.
“Because it’s true.”
Getting the films really hadn’t been difficult. If anything, it had been easy—I found them without much trouble.
Does the search engine know the answer?
“Right, I’ve been watching the ones you gave me too.”
“Hm? You have time for that?”
“More or less? But this one in particular was really good.”
The film Lua pointed to was my all-time favorite.
The story of a Nazi-affiliated businessman who saves countless Jewish lives.
For the record, this was the very first movie I had selected. A genuine masterpiece. Plus the runtime is long enough to eat the entire morning slot with zero effort.
That was exactly why I picked it first.
The other two were a well-known classic Japanese animated masterpiece and a classic Korean film.
But seeing Lua like this one best put me in a good mood for no real reason.
“It’s my favorite movie.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“I made it my favorite after watching it too. Our favorites match?”
Looking at her smiling like that, my heart started pounding for no good reason.
This face is broken. Pure yet cute, cool yet warm.
Isn’t this a total overpowered character?
Cute, pretty voice. Pretty face. Good figure. Good personality. Good at studying. Good at sports.
What can’t she do, Im Lua?
…Ah. She’s terrible at games. But that’s a charm point too, so it still counts as fine.
Does this person called Im Lua actually have any flaws?
It was one of those moments where I genuinely thought she was amazing.
“Jinwoo-ya, why are you looking at me like that?”
“Just… you seem really amazing.”
“It is absolutely not that much~”
She said that, but the praise clearly made her happy—she kept grinning.
Moments like this, she was ridiculously cute all over again.
“If you smiled like this all the time, you’d be even more popular.”
“I’m pretty popular as it is, you know?”
“Isn’t your actual friend count lower than mine?”
“Hmph.”
She gave me a light smack, but she didn’t look the least bit upset.
As expected—compliments even soften a Lua punch. Good lesson learned.