to some old readers, if you found this a little bit different than what you’ve remembered reading, it’s because i proofread/edited this on 16.02.19.

“So,” the pale girl starts, “senior year, huh.”

She flashes a pretty smile from the podium that melts the hearts of almost every senior year teacher, hair raven black and amazingly void of any idiotic hair dye any other senior girls have seemed to acclaim over the school break.

“Normally students would be asked to make a speech on the end of the school year, but apparently not this one. Three years have gone by in a blink, and believe it or not, soon we can no longer be kids moping around begging our parents to send us some pocket money because we’d be too tired to even eat after the late night classes we’re going to have for suneung*.”

A pregnant pause ensues, and half the student body nods at the correct statement the girl had said.

“Or even better, we’d no longer be begging for pocket money because we’ve gotten into college and gotten ourselves jobs—God forbid Hyeyoung gets any,” the girl jokes and sends the student body and even some of the teachers into a fit of giggles. Kim Hyeyoung is a—unfortunately for herself—well-known student who’s gotten herself a reputation after caught skipping class one day thanks to a news channel who forgot to blur her face out during a news broadcast of interviewing students that were caught skipping school. Hyeyoung had been in the middle of eating a street-stall ddeokbokki* in Myeongdong when the newscaster approached her.

“Okay, guys, you can settle down now. That was low of me, I’m sorry Hye,” the girl winks, and the said Hyeyoung just rolls her eyes—because fortunately, the girl is also Hyeyoung’s best friend.

“Anyway, so, yeah. Senior year. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for all of our lives, and like it or not, whether the position of your grades right now are what you have envisioned it to be or not, we’re going to get through this together. No matter how hard, no matter how impossible, I hope that we, students of Hankyung High school will not fall short to any of our own dreams or our parents’ dreams of getting where we want to be after high school.”

Cue in collective grunts of agreement.

“I think—no, I know for a fact, that even if we have failed short of our expectations—that we will cherish every last moment we’ve had in this high school. We will cherish the time we have with our friends, our dear teachers—and yes, that means with teacher Jung too,” another pause to let the student body laugh at her brave reference of the infamous killer Math teacher, “and that no moment left here in this school will be of any regret. Do you agree to that?”

More voices of agreement sweep through the crowd.