It’s a good day, and Jiwoo wishes that it will last until the end of her day. Everything has been sailing smoothly for Jiwoo, starting from the perfect pancakes she made for her breakfast, to the smooth-sailing commute from her apartment to her school, and to being actually early for class, 20 minutes earlier to be exact, which never really happened for before. It was always between being late or arriving in a clutch just in time before her teacher arrives.

Jiwoo went up to the back part of the room where her desk is located and found that her best friend from childhood, Chaewon, is already on her seat with her head down on her table. The younger girl is probably taking a nap since she had to wake up an hour earlier than Jiwoo since she needed to prepare her younger sibling’s food that the kid will be bringing to her school camping later that afternoon.

The older girl tried to make zero noise while trying to slide her chair across the floor to sit down.

“You’re early.” Jiwoo was in the middle of “quietly” arranging her things when her best friend spoke up with her head still down.

“I don’t know, maybe I’m just excited for our last rehearsals.” Jiwoo enthusiastically said, jumping a little bit on her chair. The bubbly girl is, for everyone’s information, the head of the school’s official chorale and the golden girl of their high school. Jiwoo possessed everything a mother would want her daughter to have, talent, brains, and the gift to be beautiful both inside and out.

Tomorrow, the regional Christmas carol fest would be held and their school will be the host for the competition, so the chorale, after hearing the announcement a month ago, immediately prepared and practiced every single day, even on Saturdays. Along with the carol fest, the final rounds for the National games and Academic bowls, after being delayed for months, will also start tomorrow. To say that almost half of the population is participating is an understatement because Jiwoo believes that everyone in their school is preparing for something.

The other day, just after Jiwoo’s class was dismissed for lunch, the girl immediately hurried to get to the cafeteria before everyone else does to grab some snacks and to get to practice. To her shock, the canteen’s waiting line is about half a kilometer long already, even extending to the school’s halls. Jiwoo understands that it is competition season and everyone is in a constant hurry to finish their tasks in order for them to prepare, but the girl didn’t expect that it would be this intense. Last year, the sports and academic competitions were held in different months in the first half of the year and all the performance ones are in the second half, but due to unforeseen problems by the national school board, the contests for the first half was pushed and pushed until it finally started a month ago.

Even the girl sleeping, or maybe not, beside Jiwoo is actually a contestant for tomorrow. She’s the princess of the volleyball team, their most prized setter, and the brains that let the school to the finals with her quick and unmatchable wits. Chaewon was barely seen in class since she has practice in the mornings, afternoons, and evenings. After their first class, Chaewon probably needs to run and train with the team. “I’ll be dead if I had to do all that training.” Jiwoo once told her. Luckily for Jiwoo, her practices are all just in the late afternoons, the chorale just needed to train for a few hours so their voices wouldn’t be strained.

All these training and practices are fun and it makes the whole place livelier by having this busy vibe wherein you have no choice but to just work and work and if you ever stop, you’ll be dead meat by being stomped over by all of the other students, but Jiwoo sure does miss her friends and most importantly, her sweet girlfriend.

Sooyoung, the school’s pride and glory, excelling in both academics and extracurriculars. She’s the team captain of the school’s women’s basketball team, her batch’s only candidate for valedictorian, and the campus’s most respected student council president. The older girl needed to divide all of her time in order to balance all her practices and her duties, morning practices for basketball, afternoon reviews for the academic c