She thought things couldn’t get any worse, like, five minutes ago, before she tried to drift off to sleep with the fairly brain-freezing scent of Chaekyung and Suhyun invading her sense. Until the tent door is swept open by a hand from outside and a shoes step into the groundsheet, kicking along mud and gravels. Nayoung couldn’t move much, but she’s alerted enough to crane her head with every last bit of her strength to at least see who this rude dirtying her tent.

So, when she sees Sejeong, out-of-breath and eyes meeting hers, just as wide and confused… Nayoung swallows back all the curse words and switch them out fast with a startled, “Sejeong!?”

“Um, I can explain,” she sees the way Sejeong’s eyes minimize in size into a narrow, accusing slits, “but I see that you might be too busy to hear my predicament.”

“Too busy getting slowly choked to my death, yeah.”

“Death by s? That’s new. Talk to me about the science behind it. Blaise Pascal would research if he wasn’t long dead already.”

Exhausted from their long overdue cold war, Nayoung lets her head fall back to the makeshift pillow below and forces out a sigh. “The door is open and you can kick yourself out now. Pretty please.”

The whole situation is halfway awkward already, with her being pinned down by two people and Sejeong having her body bent to fit into the height of the tent. Nayoung hears shuffling and the sounds of a weight plopping itself onto the groundsheet.

“Okay. Nayoung, hear me out. I’ll keep my pricked assholishness to the bare minimum from here on out, I promise. I’m sorry. I mean, it’s 1 AM.”

“Yeah. No. It’s okay. I mean… yeah. I understand.”

Nayoung has her eyes trained on the ventilator. She hears more shuffling from Sejeong, who’s likely trying to make herself comfortable with the limited space. Chaekyung brought a lot of stuff. ‘For better survivability’, she said. She brought enough for a private with only months of training years to survive in the Vietnamese War. Which means a lot.

“So, explain?”

“Okay, so,” Sejeong starts, sounding more relaxed, “Nayoung… um, Im, has this homicidal sleeping habit and nobody warned me about those spinning kicks before… or I think Yebin warned me, but I shrugged it off as her being on crystal meth as usual.”

“I don’t know whether I should question the sleeping habit or the crystal meth thing, so go on…”

“Yeah. Both are weird and both are things we shouldn’t dig further about… so, okay. Nayoung couldn’t bring Mochi along because Miss Kahi dropped her third-level warning so she had to leave Mochi at home, and I guess she had a dream about it, or, a nightmare, because I picked up bits like “you can’t sell Mochi” and “human trafficking” and – “

“That thing isn’t even human,”

“Stop calling Mochi a thing. She has a name. Respect.”

Nayoung mentally palms herself. “Stop hanging out with her.”

“At least this Nayoung knows how to not be an , so my respect goes to her and Mochi.”

Nayoung cranes her head in the speed of sound and sharpens her voice, “That Nayoung just kicked your outta the tent!”

“You were about to kick my some fair minutes ago.” Sejeong glares back and holds up a finger to her lips, signaling her a shush. Nayoung lowers her head back, resigning, but not before rolling her eyes. “Anyway, to summarize, spinning kicks were flown. Jieqiong was a goner because she slept beside Nayoung, but Eunwoo and I managed to file out of the tent, though we had to hurry because I saw a teacher patrolling on my side. We crossed over to your class’ side in hope of avoiding the flashlight.”

“We have Miss Jea patrolling here too, though…”

“Yeah… me and Eunwoo parted ways because a tent for four won’t be able to hold two more people. I noticed your tent, and I got in.”

Nayoung notices the part sticking out like a sore thumb. “How did you know it was mine?”

“Um.”

“Uhh…”

“I – I kinda watched you when we had to build the tents. My group had ours set up in ten minutes because Eunwoo knew her way around tents and hiking and those adventurous stuff, since she and her dad used to camp a lot. You looked really funny trying to nail the corner guys and messing it all up and doing it all over again!”

Nayoung flinches at the memory of her being a total embarrassment to the nature.  “And you didn’t offer to help.”

“No, because I had this teeeeeeny-weeny,” Sejeong drawls, Nayoung could picture her brows scrunching, “hate towards you at the time.”

Hate is such a strong word, Nayoung wants to point out. Hate isn’t something shared between them, not when she has been lowkey missing Sejeong. ‘Hate’ is the bond shared between her and Heehyun or her and Suhyun, compacted into a word.

“Nayoung?”

“Oh. I was… thinking, sorry.”

She hears a giggle. “Zoning out on me? Classy. What riddled your head this time?”

“I was thinking about how Heehyun rhymes with Suhyun, which is ‘Satan and Incubus’ Love Child’ in ancient language I just made up.”

“Were you trying to be funny?”

“Did you laugh?”

“I didn’t…?”

“Then I was stating facts.” She sighs, eyeballing the green polythene serving as her sky for the night. “Sejeong?”

“Hmm?”

“Um, I’m sorry for calling you an .”

Sejeong clicks . “You haven’t called me one since our last chat, unless you’re apologizing for that one.”

“No, I called you one in my head.”

Sejeong slaps her calf and Nayoung pulls in her leg at the wincing pain. “I forgive you, but you apologized because you want me to pry Suhyun and Chaekyung off you, didn’t you?”

“No wonder you have pupils under you, you’re practically Newton!”

Sejeong mutters something under her breath, which Nayoung couldn’t catch since she’s clouded with glee. Ecstatic, because finally she’ll be able to move her limbs the first time since two hours ago. Sejeong pries Chaekyung off slowly and gently, then pulls Suhyun away from her the way fishermen haul big catches out of their boat. The difference in treatment is perhaps a symbolism to the deeds they have committed in life.

Nayoung rises to sitting position and her joints crackle, a melody to her ears. Taking care not to wake any of the girls up, she slowly drags her to the spot beside Sejeong, sitting with her legs pulled close to her chest, back propped up by many of Chaekyung’s “emergency provisions”.

“Say, Nayoung, you probably haven’t noticed it because your vision was really limited from your position…”

“Yeah?”

Sejeong’s eyes are straight onto the blue Adidas sling bag, Suhyun’s. Nayoung follows her line of vision and… notices the bag slightly shaking and notices a cylindrical thing bumping the bag from inside, giving it a crude bump on the sides.

She and Sejeong share a look before she crawls to the bag, takes it to her lap, and s it slowly.

A small pack of fluffball launches itself out of the bag to Sejeong’s lap. Nayoung recognizes that ratty sound… “Sasuke!?”

“What?”

“That’s my class’ ham-ham, Sasuke! For the biology class project, you know.” Nayoung gapes because the situation is too surreal for her 1 AM mind.

“Oh… no wonder my class named ours Naruto.” Sejeong giggles as ‘Sasuke’, in contrast to its bestowed name, snuggles cutely into Sejeong’s petting palm. “To keep the rivalry between our classes going, I guess.”

“I’m sorry to hear that your ham-ham’s name is ier than ours. My condolences…”

“Speaking of rivalry,” Nayoung looks up from the groundsheet to Sejeong looking down to the little rodent, “I overheard things about our activities tomorrow and it’s going to get ugly.”

“What?”

“Something about competitions between classes. They’ll pit two classes against each other, I think…”

“Oh.” In response, Nayoung idly thumbs the headband on around her head. “We’re both leaders.”

“We’re sorta back on speaking term the night before they’re going to pop some popcorns into their mouth as they watch our classes kill each other in gladiator-esque death ring setting.” Sejeong laughs, small, hushed, and tired out, but Nayoung follows along just for the sake of the inconvenience that is their situation.

She lets Sejeong rests her head on her shoulder. It’s nice – Sejeong smells good. Like those pretty neighbors the protagonist chases after in 70s romantic comedies. It’s the kind of fragrance lost in urban Seoul. Flowers don’t fare well in a state of high-end industry.

Or maybe, she’s just being slightly sentimental.

“Sejeong?” Nayoung leans a little to the left and feels Sejeong’s hair tickling her left cheek. She hopes that the pink she’s definitely sporting right now is the by-product of the tickles, not… something else. “Are you sleepy?”

“Mm-hmm. We should totally get into a comfortable position, though.”

“No, I mean, are you going to sleep with a hamster on your lap?”

“It’s harmless.”

“Remind me to ask Suhyun why she brought a living, breathing, non-human thing to a camping trip.”

“Later when I’m awake enough to tell the difference between pillows and your shoulder,” she feels Sejeong nuzzling her cheek against shoulder, shifting into a more comfortable position, “it’s comfy… your shoulder, I mean. Date girls, ma’am, they’ll be happy women.”

“I’m dating you right now.”

“Then, I’m a happy woman.”

Nayoung palms Sejeong’s knee, grasping the school-issued training pants and her thumb feels a hole, ripped, on the upper area of her knee. “I’m too sleepy to retort.”

“Sleep, m’dear. Wake me up somewhere around 4, though, since I have to sneak back into the death ring that is my tent.”

“Will do.” She smiles at Sejeong before she rests her head back, leaning against the tent’s inner wall. “Hey, Sejeong?”

“Hmmmm?”

“After this… after this mess of a camping trip, I mean, let’s go to an aquarium. I wanna see fishies with you."

"Sure. It's a date."

"N, no, we're just, um, seeing fishies."

"It's still a date. But mmmm, sleep."

“Okay. G’night. Don’t dream of spinning kicks.”
 

---

She wakes up to three other people in her tent. Sejeong has probably snuck off already – she spots Seohyeung stretching her hands. “Seohyung… what time is it?”

“Ehh. Um, fifteen past four. We’re kinda early.”

According to the schedule, they have to line up at the main barrack at five for a briefing, then have breakfast, then regroup back at the barrack at seven and the “instructors in charge” (AKA, their teachers, since their school is too cheap to afford real, non-homicidal-minded instructors) will announce their activity for the day.

Nayoung prays for the “rumor” to be untrue… she doesn’t really need to go through another slaughterfest. Not when it’s something per-class and she has people like Juna and Chanmi and Heehyun “on her side”. Quote marks included because they’ll voluntarily throw her to a steaming pot of tartar should the opportunity presents itself.

Suhyun and Chaekyung are too sleepy to function accordingly, so she and Seohyeung practically drag the two deadweights to the barrack. Nayoung keeps Sasuke in her pocket, just in case, because losing the little guy would make the whole class redo the biology project all over again and she could stomach having a living being scratching around in her uniform jumper pocket.

At the very least, Sasuke doesn’t look like it’s going to poop anytime soon.

“Suhyun,” Nayoung whispers in the middle of the briefing, eyes set straight to the front as to not look too suspicious.

Suhyun doesn’t turn around, but she leans her head back to better hear, “Whuh?”

“Aren’t you going to explain to me why you abducted our class’ hamster to a frickin’ camping trip?”

“We’ll, uh, be away for days. Who’s going to feed Sasuke?”

“I dunno, the school’s janitor?” She logically answers for her friend, who seems to lack common sense in severity.

Suhyun turns around, not a full 90 degrees but enough for her to sort of glare at Nayoung’s direction. “I took no chance, took no prisoners.”

The thing is, Nayoung has been shielding her jumper pocket by cupping a palm over it, even when they were having breakfast beside the barrack. Any sane person who sees a living, non-human thing popping out from her pocket would loudly point it out for her, and if her classmate catches wind of it, she and Suhyun might be held responsible.

Nayoung harshly whispers back to emphasize the criticalness of the situation. “They’ll be the one “take no prisoners”-ing the heck outta us if they found out,”

“Um, we’ll just have to survive this together. At least you fed Sasuke crumbs so it won’t die.”

Deciding that Suhyun isn’t going to make the situation any better, Nayoung leans back and kills the conversation, deciding to maintain a tense quiet instead. If anyone bothers to ask, she’s kind of pissed right now because she could smell the trouble coming from five miles away. She tunes back into Miss Jea’s briefing.

“This activity – you can consider it a game,” she speaks into the megaphone, eyes droopy signifying the minimal sleep she had the night before, “I guess. If you’re into free-for-all killing battle royale thing like The Hunger Games, but this time, you know, real. Y’all are really violent anyway.”

That’s not a very good morning encouragement! Red! Code red!

“The game’s simple. A team of two will be pitted against one another – we’ll divide the males from females of course – and a team consists of one first year class and one second year class. Team 1 is Class 1-1 and Class 2-1. Team 2, Class 1-2 and Class 2-2, and so on. Team 1 will be against Team 2 and Team 3 against Team 4. The losing team will do community service for a week, starting from Monday. Real exciting, eh?”

The crowd goes wild with murmuring – expected, since they’re an inch into the summer season right now and doing community service work isn’t an ideal Summer Teen Stuff. They need to bag the win from Team 2… anything to side-step away from picking up litters while being scorched by Surya and his kins.

“Okay, okay, pipe down, kids! The victory condition is simple: you have to take both of the opposing teams’ leader headbands. Each class has a leader, right? Which means each team has two headbands they need to protect at all costs. Defeat the opposing team in any way you can. It’s a game to build friendship and solidarity and teamwork… so you better talk this through with your class! Any question?”

A handful of hands shoot up. Miss Jea picks one really eager one.

“Yes, Chanmi?”

“By ‘in any way we can’, that means any way?”

“Yeah. But no roofies. Keep it legal, we’re no Sin City.”

The dejected kicked puppy face on Chanmi is almost audible enough for the whole solar system to hear. It spells Death in a language Nayoung just made up, font style Comic Sans in size 72.

“We’ll start in 15 mins. Group with your team and discuss strategies now. Chop chop!”

With that, Miss Jea descends from the wooden mini-stage and students spread around going to their teams. Nayoung stays rooted to her spot as girls crowd around her, chattering among themselves. With her being the leader, she should reign power before anyone like Heehyun meddles their nosy nose and rises to power. Nayoung claps her hands, trying to gather her teammates’ attention. “Okay, so I guess an intro is along the way. To Class 1-1, I’m Kim Nayoung and I’m Class 2-1’s leader. To 1-1’s leader, please come forward?”

Honestly, Nayoung half-expects someone decent to be her leader-partner simply because Nayoung herself is bad at everything sports. She doesn’t have to be an Olympiad athlete, just someone who can sprint for 40 meters without making dying whale noises on the way before dropping dead.

So, when the familiar face of Kim Sohye reluctantly comes forward with the red headband tied around her forearm, Nayoung knows her death is an impending one.

“U, um, this – I – they sacrificed me – “

“We’re doomed.” Nayoung mutters. Before she turns back to her teammates. “Anyone got plans?”

She’s supposed to pay attention to what her classmates are saying, but she catches the opposing team’s blue headbands from her peripheral vision and that’s enough for her to slowly slip out of the crowd to get a better look as to who Team 2’s other leader is.

She… didn’t expect Doyeon’s fluffball of not-girlfriend to be the other leader…

It makes things harder for her because hurting such pup is against her principle, even if said pup could pull a German supplex on her without breaking a sweat. Yoojung is the very definition of Cinnamon Roll. She really needs to discuss with her team how to win without having to hurt both opposing team’s leaders…

She comes back to Heehyun and Mina leading the discussion.

“So I say, we throw Nayoung and that Kim Sohye kid to them but we strip them off their headbands first. That way they’ll rummage search on the two baits’ clothes and bodies while we keep their headbands somewhere safe. Should be enough to buy us time.”

One irrelevant underclassman raises a relevant question. “What if they… died?”

“Satan won’t accept them so they’ll just respawn back to life. No biggies.”

Mina nods sagely to Heehyun’s unsagely yapping and proceeds to draw a bird-eye view map of the area with a stick, pointing out the checkpoints for the others as she draws a long line, symbol for the river past the forest. Nayoung spots Sohye with her limbs held back by her classmates and taped with a hand. Sohye’s eyes have terrors reflected in them; Nayoung offers her condolences. She must be new to this.

Then again, Sohye looks lost and panicked 24/7. She might be just as an expert as she is at drawing the short end of stick. Just that she lacks any facial expression that doesn’t looks constipated.

“Don’t I have a say in this?”

Chanmi holds up a hand. “Dead people do not speak.”

Nayoung sighs. She’s getting used to this; she’s way too relaxed for a hunk of meat about to be thrown to a pack of hungry wolves. “Oh shucks! I forgot to get me a life insurance.” She whips her head to Suhyun. “Friend, aren’t you going to defend me?”

She stares into the chocolate brown pool that is Suhyun’s eyes. Feels herself getting to the endlessly expanding enigma that is the universe inside. Suhyun owes her a lot, especially considering Nayoung (accidentally) saved her in the Sejeong The Great Incident, so Nayoung expects a show of chivalry.

Suhyun opens , eyes resolute. “Um. Who, you.”

Nayoung sighs. And marches forward to Heehyun, grabbing her archenemy’s shoulders.

“Don’t touch me, Kim, you’re a .”

“I’m hymenally challenged.”

“Same thing. Now shoo.”

“God, Heehyun. Stop this at once. You do . Like, every day, and you know how gives you endorphins? Last time I read endorphins make people happy and happy people do not feed their friend to carnivores.”

“Your point?”

“I can’t believe I have to word it out for you but here goes: don’t do this.”

Heehyun’s brows scrutinize her back. “We’ll make it painless.”

“s aren’t painless.”

“No one is going to travel your south – “

“Heehyun, ing—“

The megaphone screeches as Mr. Jang mishandles the beast. It sounds like Death inching closer, at least to Nayoung’s hurting eardrums. “Um, okay, kids. Time’s up. I’m gonna blare out the ‘start’… uh, we lost our gun because we were kinda smashed last night (she faintly hears the Chemistry teacher, Miss ‘Cheetah’, shouting “We weren’t smashing ya rigid beotch, we were younging!” in the background), so, in the count of three…”

She turns to Sohye, her only ally. “Anything to say, kid?”

“H, how are we going to survive this?”

Nayoung barks a laugh. “Ha! Trust your life to me. I know my way around this – been there, done that. Kim Nayoung, surviving high school 101 extraordinaire.”

Sohye looks at her like she hung the moon, like she’s the very sun. She takes it as a sign of trust. At the very least, she has someone on her side.

The thing is, she couldn’t risk getting her clothes searched.

Not when Sasuke is inside her pocket, breathing and very much alive. She needs it to stay alive. For the next decade, even.

Should anybody find out that she has Sasuke in her pocket… hell, if they accidentally killed Sasuke in the middle of the mish-mash… Nayoung couldn’t even imagine that. Her class will be forced to redo their ongoing personal reports. They’ll burn her at the stake. And Suhyun, but Suhyun deserves it. The idea of redoing her biology report and facing Miss Kahi’s wrath scares her more than the Death that might follow, though.

“Three…”

It’s now or never. She notices Sohye quivering at the thought of functioning as a food. She might run off. And Nayoung is unwilling to die alone.

So, she ties her own red headband to her forearm, undoes Sohye’s, and then ties both headbands together.

“N, Nayoung…?”

“Two…”

She flashes Sohye a reassuring smile. “We die, we die together.”

“One. Iiiiit’s SHOWTIME,”

Cringey opening line aside… it has finally started.

Team 2 moves in a rowdy rioting pack to the mess that is Team 1, who quickly files out of their away and turns to them. She catches Heehyun shouting “Get them!”, witnesses the way everyone in her class (except for Chaeyeon, who’s too princess-y for something so barbaric, Siwon, a kind soul, and Chaekyun, another kind soul) morphs into cold-blooded predators.

To survive, she puts all her strength on her legs and dashes to the opposite way with her team and the opposing team hot on her trails, pulling Sohye along.

“Nayoung,” Sohye’s voice is frantic, “we can’t – are we really going to, um, go independent?”

“I’d like to think myself as a one-man wolf pack.”

Sohye doesn’t look reassured, but she’s quiet now and she has beginning to run on her own.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be able to get through this alive. I’m used to this!”

“Okay…”

…until a group of Team 2 students block their way.

“GET BENT, KIM!”

She recognizes the small bean trying to talk big – Kang Yebin, the sensitive dickhead. The other Nayoung’s friend. Rumor has it that she’s a Salty Spitoon monger, but considering that she looks tiny and flimsy…

“Your tomfoolery ends here, Kim!”

Park Siyeon, Hitler reincarnated. She’s swinging a fishing pole the way fencer does, but Nayoung has seen worse. This is nothing. Sohye, on the other hand, trembles so much the tremor is sent over to Nayoung’s side.

“Get ready, Sohye, we’ll make ‘em wish they could crawl back to their mums’ womb and be reborn again as a Kim Nayoung.”

“Uh,”

“Make some noiseeee!!”
 

---

Their safe haven is small patch of area surrounded by waist-high bushes, laden with mosquitoes and wild flowers. Nayoung falls to the grassy ground and Sohye tumbles along as they wheeze for oxygen, their breathing uneven, but matching each other in the same tempo of desperation.

In short: they’re ed, but they managed to barely save themselves. Since none of them knew how to fight and Siyeon was obviously armed, she had to swing Sohye around as a human meatshield and makeshift weapon of mass destruction. Sohye’s legs managed to land a fatal hit on Yebin’s head (“Damn you, Kim! Now I have to huff some more to gain my much needed sanity and peace of mind!”) and Siyeon’s stomach (“Damn capitalist, to use your friend as a weapon!”).

Siyeon needs to shut the hell up because Sohye didn’t mind.

“N, Nayoung,” Sohye tries to uphold a sentence, “break, I’m dying, like, dying dying,”

“I know. Yeah. I,” she pauses to inhale some more much-needed oxygen, “I need a fifteen minutes break too. We need to sort out our moves. Make plans. Survive.”

They sit, making sure to keep their head rather low to avoid getting caught by stray eyes.

“Sohye, this is gonna sound a bit surreal, but the thing I really need right now is your trust. We need each other’s trust.”

“Are you going to confess that you have some skin-contact transferring disease?”

“Um, no.”

“Thank god! I thought I was gonna get another!”

“Um. Anyway.” Nayoung carefully digs her pocket. Sohye’s eyes are wide as platters when she sees Sasuke on Nayoung’s cupping palm. “This is Sasuke. It’s my class’ science project and those barbars might accidentally kill this guy on the act. This guy dies and it’s game over for me.”

“You… roped me into your survival escape game just so the little guy won’t die…?”

Nayoung nods. “Of course?”

Sohye goes to a montage of different expressions – shock, anger, grief, back to anger, shock, each time increasing in intensity. Sasuke, perhaps terrified at the incoming outburst, scurries back to the safety of Nayoung’s jumper pocket. Sohye is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode and Nayoung might have hit the “push to self-destruct!” button.

And she’s the one to blame when Sohye lunges forward towards her, eyes now unfamiliar to Nayoung as she tries to manhandle Nayoung with inner insanity supplying the force.

“I DON’T WANT TO DIE,” Sohye shouts in a hoarse voice, their situation suddenly curving to a more horror direction.

“Same! I can’t die alone!”

Nayoung is on her back as Sohye pulls on her hair, movements frenzied like she’s someone from The Possession. Nayoung regrets not going to the church because at this rate her only ally might not pull a Judas for her.

She manages to push Sohye’s cheek upwards, squishing her palm on the first year’s cheek. “Listen up, kid! You’d rather die as a conforming dog food? No, back in my time, we fought back! If, in the end, we’ll be a dog food anyway. At least we’re the rebel kind!”

“Y, you’re only a year older than me!”

“Technicalities, psh—OW!” Nayoung nearly loses her grip on Sohye’s face as the girl blindly scratches her face. “Quit it, don’t go T’challa on me. I have the brains necessary to think our way outta this, okay? First of all we need to talk. The adult way.”

It takes seven minutes of blind clawing, Elton John-quoting struggle for Sohye to finally stop with the temporary moment of insanity. Being the war veteran she is, she doesn’t hold it against Sohye. She might even accept the girl as her pupil – even with her drenched lost rat aesthetic.

“Okay, kid.” Nayoung speaks in a more hushed voice. Just to make sure. Sohye leans closer. “Let’s talk about something that might get you relaxed.”

“Uh, umm, sure. What is it?”

“Kang Mina.”

Sohye jumps at the name drop. And stutters her answer in a totally not suspicious manner. “W, why Mina?”

“You’re her friend and I know she can be very -y. I’ve known her for, like… five years, so I know.”

“She isn’t an .” Sohye fists a fistful of organic, living grasses. Poor grasses. The girl looks lowkey pissed.

“Fine, kid. Just consider this a friendly tip from Mina’s longtime friend: her Achilles heel is her ears.” Nayoung grins halfway into her “tip”. She points a finger to her own ear and watches Sohye quirks an eyebrow in confusion.

“Yeah… and what am I supposed to do with this piece of tip?”

“If she’s being an to you, just blow wind into her earlobe. You’ll immediately disarm her.”

Much to her surprise, Sohye combusts into fifty shades of red. “Th, th, that’s dirty!”

“Carbon dioxide isn’t that unhygienic.”

“No!! I mean, like, dirty dirty.”

Nayoung sighs for the umpteenth time. This kid is hopeless. “If you’re too scared to blow air, just bite it. Bite her earlobe.”

Nayoung mentally face-grounds herself as Sohye goes redder past the limit of red. This kid is hopeless… how is she going to help me and my dirty ways?!

“Okay, okay, let me get this straight, kid: you , but there’s one way for you to prove yourself how to not .”

Nayoung will never understand how her y one-liners managed to hook Sohye in. “How?”

“By following my plan.”

While it is nice to have her way out of the damned community service punishment promised for the losers, Nayoung has her own set of goals.

“You know how the reason behind our suffering is that dumbo Ki Heehyun, right?”

“Umm, Mina too.”

“You’re too in love with Mina to pin the blame on her so swallow those words back.”

“Oh, okay… wait what, no—“

Nayoung cuts her off by holding up a hand. “The thing we need to do right now is to redirect Heehyun’s command over our team back to where it should be: the opposing team. That way, we don’t have to fight our way through half of the girls of our year. Combined.”

“True… but how?”

Kim Nayoung has her own set of goals:

1. Make it out of this mess alive. (With or without Kim Sohye.)
2. Make sure Sasuke make it out of this mess alive.
3. To win, or, do anything, really, without having to hurt Sejeong and Choi Yoojung in some way or another (plus she really isn’t in the mood of angering Doyeon. Rumor has it that her father is with the Seven Stars mafia! Brrr.).
4. If the opportunity presents itself, kill Suhyun in a long, painful death.
5. Avoid confrontation with any of the opposing team member! They barely managed to defeat Hitler Lite and the meth-user girl. The other Nayoung has her deadly dynamic entry. Kim Minkyung is the 2016’s Bruce Lee with her drunk kung fu. Confrontation would lead to an immediate death.

“How, kid?” Nayoung flashes her a smile – and she’s sure her smile radiates confidence. “By abducting her princess and pinning the blame on the other team. And by “her princess”, I mean… Jung Chaeyeon.”

Wait for me, Sejeong! I’ll make it out of this alive so we can go to an aquarium together! To see jellyfishes! Jesus, Buddha, Shiva, GodSejeong, any of you, please bless this humble kid’s first ever kidnapping spree! Amen!
 

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Note(s): [1] I had to split it again because it might hit 10k-ish and that’s… not good for the eyes LMAO, plus I promised I’ll get the chapter at the very least at the end of this week D: the latter parts need more revising and stuff to add, so yeah

[2] I’ve been struggling with this arc, but I couldn’t introduce Kim and Sohye’s master-pupil bond any other way @__@ hope you enjoyed this arc so far!