Tomorrow was Teacher’s Day.
Each class, club, and activity circles were busy preparing events for their respective teachers.
Of course, there were some who did not have a good student-teacher relationship, and for them, they compromised to just buying carnations from street vendors in front of the school.
However, most of the students carefully selected carnations and prepared for the event.
‘I think our class will end up with a simple tea party.’
The way things are now, my class won’t have anything exciting, but it took days for us to pick the right carnations and refreshments.
Mr. Ham would notice our efforts.
As I walked, thinking so, I heard the voices of other students.
“Class 0 kids seem to be doing something again.”
“Last year’s Moai was DOPE.”
“What, that Horror House? Haunted house? I wish they made it again and sold tickets for that. I really want to try it out.”
“Honestly, I care more about their teacher’s version than theirs.”
It was on the way to school.
Perhaps because it was the day before Teacher’s day, but topics of the students’ conversation were similar.
Among them, class 0’s events were the main topic of conversation.
“I heard second-grade class 0 cleared all kinds of Other-worlds this week.”
“What the hell are they trying to do?”
“Saeron Moon, a first-year in the newspaper club, tried to sneak along but got caught. She was lured into and locked up in their class president’s Air Hotel suite until they finished clearing the Other-world.”
“Hotel SUITE? I want to be locked up in there, too.”
The legend of the second-grade class 0 and the failure of Saeron Moon to cover their story seem to be continuing.
Ding Dong -!
Before arriving at the Grade 1 class 0 classroom, my device gave me an incoming message notification.
‘What’s up with the official student council announcement early in the morning?’
The message was an official announcement.
I saw students checking their devices too, so I wasn’t the only one who got the message.
[Guidelines for Safe Teacher’s Day Events]
‘Safe Teacher’s Day……? What’s there to be dangerous about?’
Roughly, the contents were as follows.
Introduction to the events committed by the 0 classes, historically.
Plus all the school rules that were violated and punishments.
This is an official statement with a euphemistic message: ‘Please don’t take it this far.’
‘This is practically aimed at class 0!’
Particularly, second-grade and third-grade class 0.
It was natural for the student council to be wary of second-grade class 0 as they were literally rascals.
Recently grade 3 class 0 have behaved themselves more, but given the things they’ve done in their 1st and 2nd year, they need to be kept an eye on, also.
The current third-year student Council officers had been watching their messes for years, so they had the right to be on their toes.
“Hey, what’s that!”
“OMG.”
Fizz-!
Some of the students looked up at the sound of firecrackers shooting up in the air.
Several psychic firecrackers were popping in the sky.
“That’s a psychic firecracker.”
“What are they going to do with shooting that?”
“It’s still the 14th, why are they already starting the Teacher’s Day event!”
“Someone’s shooting psychic waves…… Oh, letters.”
Due to the flow of the psychic wave, all students’ attention left the announcement sent by the student Council and turned toward the sky.
‘The student council was a little late this time. Although nothing would’ve changed that from happening.’
Huge scarlet letters began to appear in the sky.
Scarlet, as in, the complementary color of sky blue, so they would stand out in the sky.
[Gauntlet]
“What the hell, what gauntlet.”
“That’s got class 0 vibes.”
“What are they going to do, challenge someone?”
The letters continued.
[3rd Grade 0 Class offers teacher Yeon-hwa Lim a rematch challenge on Teacher’s Day. The losing side shall surrender publicly in front of the main gate’s clock tower. You up for it?]
What bullshit is that?
The students who had read that “Gauntlet” sign lost their words and just stared at the sky.
‘So the haunted house they made to scare Ms. Lim last year blew up in their faces…… They actually waited a whole year for revenge?!’
So their lack of mischievousness was really just to prepare for this day?
This public challenge was crazy, and so were third-grade class 0.
Fizz-!
“Hey, it’s not over yet!”
“What? What more do they have left to say?”
This time, the writing was black, not red.
[Challenge accepted.]
“I think Ms. Lim sent that.”
“No way. You sure that’s not someone else pretending to be her?”
“It’s her, all right. She uploaded it on her SNS.”
That was the reply from Yeon-hwa Lim, homeroom teacher of 3rd-grade class 0.
‘Even the teacher’s crazy!’
On Teacher’s Day, Yeon-hwa Lim vs 3rd Grade class 0’s showdown was confirmed.
In the bulletin board, the class president of third-grade class 0 stated that the method, location, and time of the confrontation will not be disclosed in order to completely exclude outside intervention and to make the showdown “a real one.”
‘Let’s wait for reviews.’
I scraped some of the posts on the general bulletin board and headed to our class.
* * *
First-grade class 0.
I was the latest one to arrive today.
“Hi, Ui-shin!”
“Hi.”
The kids who got here before me greeted me.
I heard that they were shopping yesterday all night long, but everyone looked fine.
“We were at the flower market at dawn, and there were so many pretty flowers! It was really fun.”
“I never thought there would be so many types of carnations. I loved the pastel-colored carnations, especially the turquoise and coral ones.”
“It’s a shame we can’t buy other colors because of their meanings……”
“Well, we can focus on flower decoration instead. We still haven’t decided between a bouquet and a basket of flowers, it so hard to decide.”
According to Yuri Kim and Lenna Lee, the carnation buying team went to flower markets every dawn but still hadn’t made up their minds.
‘Which means they’ll go again after school because tomorrow’s Teacher’s day.’
They couldn’t possibly have gotten sleep, but they didn’t seem tired.
Meanwhile, Hyo-don Maeng, who accompanied the two, was watching their conversation with a soulless expression.
To Hyo-don, who had no interest in flowers whatsoever, everything would’ve looked the same.
And he wasn’t the one to slack off and avoid it by saying he’ll wait outside, or go get coffee or something.
He would’ve gone with the girls to every place, and I could just picture him tagging along half-heartedly.
“You okay?”
“……Yeah.”
He looked fine physically, but mentally, he seemed exhausted.
“I could change teams with you if you want. All our team has to do is decide on the food and get the caked we reserved at the bakery outside the southern gate.”
At the word ‘cake,’ Hyo-don seemed to snap out of it.
After a brief hesitation, he shook his head.
“Nah.”
“Yeah?”
Guess Hyo-don will work his mentality out at the flower market.
I displayed the category that Se-eum Sawol and Han-yi sent to me on a hologram.
It was a list of all the menus still reservable, like cakes, waffles, donuts, brownies, and tarts.
I decided to give my choice of menu to poor Hyo-don.
“Pick what you want to eat.”
“Oh, you’re letting me pick?”
“I haven’t picked one yet, so it’s okay.”
Dark chocolate brownies with walnuts.
Croque Monsieur with bechamel sauce.
Hyo-don was inwardly debating between those two. A fierce debate, but a happy one.
I decided to buy both menus by handing over the option of Jiho’s share to Hyo-don, as his debate was getting too long.
* * *
We were busy after school preparing for Teacher’s Day.
The newspaper club also wanted to prepare an event for Jae-gul Jegal.
“I want to give carnations to Mr.Jegal. But every single person in second-grade class 0 brought their own flowers for Mr.Jegal last year! Mr.Jegal had to carry dozens of carnations…… It didn’t seem very comfortable. Let’s try something else this year.”
The head of the newspaper club showed me the draft of the magazine.
It was about Jae-gul Jegal’s performance as a player and his interviews with the media.
‘I want to have this, too.’
Instead of first years, who had a lot of homework, the second and third-year seniors had completed more than 90% of the magazine.
Club members each wrote brief comments for Mr. Jegal and wrapped up the club meeting.
* * *
My dorm room after evening training.
There was a bunch of messages I received during training on my device.
I sat on the sofa and checked the messages in order.
[Chess Tournament Schedule Notification]
This was a notification message from a chess activity group, ‘Stalemate.’
According to the message, the chess tournament was scheduled for next week.
‘Why do things I dread come so quickly?’
…… Maybe I should cancel it now.
As I was thinking about canceling my application, I saw a few names I know that were competing in the tournament.
‘There’s a lot of playable characters!’
I could lose, but I couldn’t bear letting my playable characters know that I’ve dropped out. I didn’t want to look pathetic in front of them.
‘…… I shouldn’t give up.’
My participation in the chess tournament was decided.
Next message.
[Juo Group, TC Group Joint on-board Party Invitation]
The message was an invitation that came through the Players Association.
It said that they wanted to personally repay the players who participated in the Other-world attack at the Jamsil Baseball Stadium incident on Children’s Day.
‘That’s what Nam-wook Jang talked about the other day.’
I think I heard him say to leave our weekend empty for a party when Sang-hoon Yoo, Nam-wook Jang, and I hung out last time.
It was not an event in the game, but a similar event existed.
‘It’s a party on board······. Don’t feel good about this.’
I absolutely needed to leave my schedule empty this day.
The following message came from a group chat room with Nam-wook Jang and Sang-hoon Yoo.
[Nam-wook Jang] It’s so hard to prepare for teacher’s day!
[Sang-hoon Yoo]?
[Nam-wook Jang] It started from a joke Si-hoo made, but now it’s serious business T.T
[Sang-hoon Yoo]?
[Nam-wook Jang] a;ldksjg;;ljk
[Nam-wook Jang] 329slxczvsad;fljk
Suddenly, he was sending texts that looked like a cat typed it.
It was strange since Nam-wook usually never had a typo.
After a while, Nam-wook stopped typing weird words.
[Me]?
[Sang-hoon Yoo] What?
[Nam-wook Jang] Nam-wook’s not available at the moment
The device is usually worn on the body, so what is up with ‘not available?’
‘The other day, Nam-wook was caught in the Gwanglim of Si-hoo Do and his device was taken away.’
It was said that Si-hoo Do’s Gwanglim wasn’t exactly an attack type, but a capturing type.
Nam-wook’s roommate, Si-hoo, must have used Gwanglim again and done something.
[Sang-hoon Yoo] That’s Si-hoo Do
[Me] Where’s Nam-wook Jang?
[Nam-wook Jang] Nam-wook was caught leaking information, so he’s in isolation!
[Sang-hoon Yoo] Da hell
I had no idea what was going on but it seemed that Si-hoo, top student of the military academy, was preparing for the Teacher’s Day event.
Nam-wook somehow got caught up in it and was now in “isolation” for some weird charges.
‘I don’t even want to know what the military academy guys are doing……’
Nam-wook seems to be suffering, but it was nice to hear that the military academy students and teachers were getting along.
The next thing I checked was a message from Gyubin Hong.
[Gyubin Hong] Ui-shin, it was concluded that Jared Lee is innocent.
I didn’t expect for him to suddenly gush about that problem.
[Gyubin Hong] to only explain what I can, The Korean player that Jared Lee remitted money to, had a different nationality from Jared Lee but was a distant relative. Although the player is now permanently expelled.
Jared Lee’s nationality is British.
The nationality of Jared Lee’s relatives on the Dream auction list is Korean.
And his relatives have been permanently removed and banned from the Players’ Association for their involvement in the Dream auction scandal.
I checked the messages and organized the information one by one in my head.
[Gyubin Hong] Something that concerns me is that the source of the funds is from Jae-in’s private property.
[Gyubin Hong] It was transacted with Jae-in Kwon’s consent. She wanted to help Jared Lee’s relatives.
[Gyubin Hong] We received consent from Jared Lee and Jae-in Kwon, and we reviewed all the message histories, but there were no interactions other than simple remittance. He really only sent money. The EverLake team did not benefit from the Dream Auction.
According to Gyubin’s words that day, the amount remitted over 10 years is more than 30 billion in Korean won.
In addition, the subject of remittance is Korean, who was also a player.
They were financed without any interactions or conditions?
Something was strange.
‘There are so many suspicious things.’
Especially considering all the actions and remarks of Jae-in Kwon since she came to Korea.
[Me] Thank you for letting me know.
[Gyubin Hong] No problem. Call me if something happens or if you need anything.
[Me] Yes, I will.
[Gyubin Hong] So I’ll get back to work then T.T
Still working, huh.
The EverLake team members who heard the message of Biryung Na informed the association about the frozen Other-world, so high-level players like Gyubin Hong had to be busy.
Last message.
The caller was ‘Unknown.’
‘Wait, is this……?’
It was someone I had been waiting for for days.
[Unknown] Hey.
[Unknown] So all I need to do is go to school for only teachers’ day?
It was Green Min who sent the message.
Comments