Foreshadowing.
The Cut.O N E.
SM High school ; second day of midterms
2:00 PM.
“Hey, Stal! Wait up!” Jiyeon shot up from her seat as the first bell rang, Beethoven’s symphony ringing throughout the corridors.
She ran to the opening of the door and linked arms with her bestfriend, Krystal. “How’d you do on the test?” Krystal smirked a little, tucking her freehand into the pocket of her courduroy blazer.
“, I did better than I thought I would. Atleast, I think. I got a good vibe.” Jiyeon and Krystal turned the corner to make their way to the dorm wings. In response, Krystal giggled into a tuft of her dark hair.
“That’s what you always say but you’re ranked in the top 5.”
Jiyeon waved her hand dismissively but noticed there was something a little... odd about Krystal’s voice. It sounded a little cutthroat. Blunt. Just a tiny bit terse. Then again, it wasn’t anything new. Krystal was always competitive. Krystal was sixth, just two slot away from Jiyeon’s standing in fourth.
Except, Jiyeon didn’t study. She was a bit of a prodigy, needless to say. Details flit through her head like one, two, three, not to mention, the two were always being compared.
They were both popular, tall, modelesque. Smart, pretty, the list went on and on. But that’s where the similarities stopped. Where Krystal was an ice princess, who everyone admired from afar, Jiyeon was a playful, mischevious, flirtasious girl who could’ve fit right in to any social stratosphere. But the two girls stuck together like cottoncandy and gum.
“We could be the inde-ing-structable dynamic duo or something,” Jiyeon would used to say.
“But damn. Damn, how do people like Kim Myungsoo keep their streak going? He’s been ranked number one in the entire school for three consecutive years, and we’re already sophmores.”
“That, and he’s cute,” Krystal chided, freeing her arm to twirl a lock of hair around her pointer-finger. And it was true. Kim Myungsoo, with his dark hair, stellar dimples, and shapely jawline was cute. He was tall, smart, cold, and utterly gorgeous. Not to mention, his love for photography and his brooding stare only added to his popularity.
“He’s y, but I heard he’s even more ier than you are, Stal.” Jiyeon stuck her tongue out playfully, earning a just as equally playful shove from Krystal.
“I don’t know, girls in our homeroom seem to like it. He’s mysterious.”
Jiyeon flicked her brows up. “In a way.” Then, she stopped and grabbed both Krystal’s shoulders. “Ohmygod, you and Myungsoo would make the cutest couple!”
Krystal slapped Jiyeon’s arm. “Shut up,” she retorted, walking ahead of her.
“Oh, come on, Krystal! You know it’s true!” They broke into laughs.
It was such a bright, warm Spring day. With the asphalt melting from the heat, signaling the upcoming summer. Sure, midterms were such a drag. School itself in entirity was a drag. But no one could quite deny that the first week of April was pleasant. Pleasant to the point no one was really complaining about everything.
No one could deny that the pleasant, first week of April was why no one saw the sinister game coming for them. The sinister game that would-cliche as it sounds- change their lives. For good.
Or, for worse.
~
Luhan was the last to leave the classroom after the bell sounded. Girls passed by his desk, giving him more than a few suggestive glances in hopes of getting a response from the school’s proclaimed angelic flower boy.
Like everyday, more or less.
When he stepped out of class, he saw Jiyeon and Krystal down the hallway, their footsteps light. He smiled as Krystal tried to stifle her laughs with her palm, her eyes turning into perfect cresecents.
They’ve exchanged a few conversations, being that they were the only ones who studied in China. Apart from that, Luhan was just drawn to her naturally- a girl like Krystal was just alluring.
“Lulu!” A figure knocked him to the side a little.
“Hey, you.” Luhan saw Krystal turn the corner to the next hall, out of his viewpoint.
“The tests are so ing tiring, I swear it’s like-” Kai stopped talking to wave his hand infront of Luhan’s face. “Hello? Earth to Lulu? You spaced out again, man.”
Luhan started walking. “I’m fine.”
“Atleast tomorrow’s the last day, yeah?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Where’s D.O and Chen? Did the guys agree to meet up at the canteen?” Kai craned his neck and wrapped an arm around Luhan’s shoulder, tossing his hair. A group of girls squealed as they passed by the two boys, whispering. Kai flashed a smile but Luhan fought the urge to roll his eyes. Typical.
“Did you hear about the advanced study class?”
Kai nodded. “Heard. But only the top 20 in the school gets in. You’re going, right? Since you’re second behind L.”
“Yeah,” Luhan mumbled.
“Pretty impressive for a foreign exchange student, you know.”
“It should be pretty self-explanatory, though. Why do you think I was put in the foreign exchange student program?” Luhan chuckled and pried Kai’s arm off his frame.
“Because you speak Mandarin?”
“Screw you.”
~
“Guys! The rankings are up!” Sandeul ran from class to class, causing everyone to file out into the hallways, gunning for the bulletin board.
Myungsoo was infront of the board, smirking. He had placed first. He hadn’t even slipped a rank.
The list read:
ADVANCED STUDY GROUP (CUT) :
- KIM MYUNGSOO
- LU HAN
- KIM SUNGKYU
- PARK JIYEON
- SON NAEUN
- JUNG SOOJUNG
- JUNG JINYOUNG
- KIM JONGDAE
- CHA HAKYEON
- LEE JAEHWAN
- KIM HYUNA
- PARK CHORONG
- KIM YU-JIN
- LEE SUNGYEOL
- NAM WOOHYUN
- KANG SOYOU
- GONG CHANSIK
- IM JINAH
- LEE BYUNGHUN
- KIM DASOM
RANKINGS TWENTY BELOW:
Myungsoo didn’t bother reading the numbers after that. The hallway was filled with chatter, some to their dismay. Some were celebrating, others frowning while what they percieved as failure started to kick in.
“, I hate the rankings.”
“Lizzy, it’s okay. I barely made the cut. Seriously.”
“Come on, Nana. Atleast you’re in the study group. My mom’s going to castrate me once she finds out about this.”
“Yeah, well.” Nana, who was standing at 5’ 10’’ or taller with her new Prada snakeskin stilettos, pretended to pick off lint from her cropped cardigan. Even though she was ranked twenty on the list, it felt right that she was a standing representative of SM high’s first advanced study group.
Wails. Chatter. Laughter.
“I don’t get why they’re always using my real name. I right ‘N’ on the top of my answer sheets, shouldn’t ‘N’ be written on the lists?”
“Tell me about it,” Krystal muttered under her breath. She eyed the list and realized there were more than a couple of students with what the grade called ‘stage names’. Like Ken, N, L, and Chen, L.joe, Nana, and so on, Krystal's birthname had been printed on the list. Soojung. The class was elite, no doubt about it. The most popular guys and girls, all on the list. She assumed all of them came from a wealthy family as well.
“Excuse me,” Naeun said, pushing her way to the front to get a better look at the list. Her eyes widened. Yes! A feeling of phephiral joy bubbled up in her stomach. Unlike the other kids in the advanced class, she wasn’t born with the knowledge everyone else had. Common sense? Please. Son Naeun was a natural blockhead- pretty, but short of a dunce. She had worked for her spot in fifth. She had worked to top none other than Krystal Jung.
“What’s your secret?” Sungjong creased his forehead in frustration, standing by Myungsoo.
“What are you saying?” Myungsoo glanced sideways for a split second at Naeun, who was immersed in a conversation through her phone. There was a smile lit up on her face, her eyes bright. He wondered what it was like to be geniunely excited about something. He always placed first, but the fuel, the ambition of staying on top just died out. But he never fell a rank.
“You’re always first. It’s no fair.” Sungjong faux-pouted, crossing his arms and jutting his hip out to the left.
Myungsoo let out a raspy laugh and towed Sungjong away from the front, pushing past the crowd. Girls from the lower grades gave him congratulatory catcalls but he chose to ignore his fangirls. Just for today.
“You should be happy you’re not in the study group.”
“Why’s that?”
“Think about it. Tomorrow, after exams are over, everyone’s going home except us. We’re staying overnight studying.” Truthfully, Myungsoo wasn’t bothered by this but Sungjong seemed to buy it.
“You have a point. Anyways, I’m starving, let’s go to lunch!”
Meanwhile, Jiyeon stood at the back of the crowd, leaning on the back of her heels. Advanced study group? It sounded like a concoction of discrimination and bull to her. But if it meant better high school specs, she’d take up the offer. Then, she felt a pair of arms snake around her waist.
“Ohmy, Jinyoung.” Jiyeon jumped to the side, startled.
Jinyoung laughed, putting his headphones around his neck. His fiery red hair was even more disheveled than usual and his fox-like eyes glimmered with breaking news. “Number 4, huh? Pretty impressive.”
“I guess.” Jiyeon narrowed her eyes at him. “Still don’t get how you’re in the study group, though.”
Jinyoung rolled his eyes and put a hand over the strap of his guitar case. “Ask me if I give a .” He was a music major, the school’s DJ. He could play almost any piece by ear. That, and he added to the school’s standing group of handsome guys. They had started talking and bickering with eachother the day they found out they had shared a liking for mischeif.
They weren’t friends, but they were too close to be called aqcuaintances either. Sometimes he flirted, sometimes she flirted back.
“You wanna sneak out and head over to the club?”
“Sounds tempting... but I have to stay and study at the dorms.” Jiyeon gave her long curls a toss.
“Come on, tomorrow’s the start of study group you should cut yourself some slack.”
“But you’re also forgetting tomorrow’s the last round of midterms.” She smiled condescendingly and her heels. Jinyoung left as well, joining Baro, Gongchan, and Sandeul.
The third bell rang.
Groaning, students dispersed, and filed into their classes.
At the end of the day, the kids stopped by the town’s Royal’s Scoop by the outskirts of the school in celebration of nearly completing the midterms. They were relieved, happy. The third day, and what they considered the most trivial, hard, grueling test would be over. After all, to everyone else, exam periods were living hell.
Little did they know that in the end, it was just the start. The start of another test that was the physical, concrete definition of living hell. 20 students. 20 questions. 20 stories. 20 secrets. All of those linked to the final answer.
The final answer they’d need to win back their life.
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