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Park Sun-hwa rubbed the bridge of her nose, letting out a long, heavy sigh that rattled through her chest. Being a high school teacher in a town like Hyosan meant wearing a dozen different hats: part educator, part mediator, part unpaid psychologist. On any given Tuesday, her mental roster wasn’t filled with lesson plans, but with the quiet tragedies and razor-thin patience of her classroom.
She knew about the crushing weight of household expectations pressing down on the top performers, the hidden bruises left by parents who only saw perfection, and the desperate, quiet loneliness of the kids who hid behind snark and money. She saw how Lee Na-yeon’s snobbish arrogance was just a fragile shell protecting a desperate need for control, and how Han Gyeong-su’s loud humor masked the shame of wearing the same scuffed shoes every semester. Reaching these teenagers was a grueling exercise in patience; pride was often the only currency they felt they owned, and they guarded it fiercely with bared teeth.
Sun-hwa had spent weeks delicately untangling that pride, nudging Na-yeon to see past her privilege and helping Gyeong-su keep his dignity intact. It was painstaking work—crumb by crumb, conversation by conversation. Rome wasn't built in a day, after all.
Then came the sharp crack of a plastic ruler hitting a wooden desk, followed by a sudden spray of cold, soapy water that splashed across the front row.
Sun-hwa opened her eyes to witness total, immediate regression. Na-yeon stood dripping wet, her silk blouse ruined, clutching a half-melted ice pack while Gyeong-su held a empty squirt bottle, his face pale with sudden regret as the rest of the class erupted into finger-pointing chaos.
Months of therapeutic progress vanished in a single, petty second of vengeance. Sun-hwa stared at the dripping ceiling, listening to the shrieks of offended pride resetting her classroom back to day one, and silently calculated just how little she was being paid to rebuild an entire empire from the rubble.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Byeong-chan groaned, dropping his head onto the cluttered surface of his desk with a hollow thud. “Tell me a pipe burst. Tell me a ceiling tile gave out. Anything except what I’m actually hearing out there.”
Ms. Park—or Sun-hwa, as she preferred when the classroom doors were finally shut—stepped into the faculty lounge, running a hand through her hair. "What could have possibly happened out there?" she muttered to herself, staring back down the hallway as the distant sounds of shrieking echoed off the linoleum.
"Don't look at me," Byeong-chan said, his voice muffled against a stack of ungraded biology quizzes. "I’m legally blind to whatever happens outside this office after 2:00 PM."
"It's a water balloon fight," she said, sounding as bewildered as she felt. "In the 3rd-floor corridor."
"Water balloons?" Byeong-chan lifted his head, a single eyebrow raised in disbelief. "Seriously? Not another TikTok trend or an underground black-market vape ring?"
She couldn't even blame his cynicism. It was a school full of teenagers; they did reckless, unexplainable things on a daily basis. The faculty had long since grown desensitized to the madness. They had all been stuck at Hyosan High far too long to ever be genuinely shocked by student antics. In fact, the endless, unchecked chaos was the exact reason the principal had instituted the strict "phone bucket" rule at morning roll call—a direct response to last month's fake bomb threat that brought three squad cars and a news van to the front gates. But a localized flood caused by rubber balloons filled with tap water? That was surprisingly a new low.
"Look, Sun-hwa," Byeong-chan said, rubbing his temples as he pushed his chair back. "Just tell me no one called the fire department this time. Please. Please. I cannot handle another mandatory administrative debrief."
Sun-hwa sighed, picking up a handful of dry paper towels from the lounge sink. "No fire trucks. Just two very soaked, very stubborn kids, and a hallway that looks like a splash pad. I'm going back out there before someone slips and breaks an ankle."
It was, objectively speaking, an absolute train wreck of an idea.
The kind of scheme that guaranteed a week’s worth of after-school detention, endless lectures from Ms. Park, and a stern phone call straight to their parents. But as the morning sun barely scraped over the horizon, casting long, cold shadows across the deserted schoolyard, it also felt like the most glorious, irresistible fun imaginable.
Leave it to Yang Dae-su to come up with something this chaotic. He had convinced the rest of the guys that if they snuck onto campus forty minutes before the main gates opened, they could set up an ambush zone. Armed with three garbage bags full of brightly colored, tap-water-filled rubber balloons, their mission was simple: drop payloads from above, record the chaos, and vanish before anyone figured out where the splashing was coming from.
To Dae-su's absolute shock, everyone had agreed without hesitation. Even Oh Joon-yeong—usually the voice of reason who panicked over unsharpened pencils—had signed off on the blueprint. Now, the four of them were huddled like covert ops soldiers behind the thick bushes near the front entrance, shivering in the morning chill and peering through the leaves for unsuspecting targets.
They had to play it smart. If any member of the faculty caught so much as a glint of wet latex in their hands, they were as good as dead. Their operational strategy was strictly "hit-and-run": toss a balloon, duck out of sight, and relocate to a new hiding spot before the shouting started.
Through the foliage, Dae-su spotted his first prime targets strolling down the concrete walkway. It was Cheong-san and On-jo. Ever since the two of them had started officially dating, the entire morning dynamic at Hyosan High had shifted. They didn't aggressively race each other to the school steps anymore like they used to. Instead, they walked at a infuriatingly slow pace, holding hands, lost in their own quiet world. They still maintained their petty bets over who had to buy lunch snacks, but the high-speed sprints were definitely a thing of the past.
Which made them incredibly easy targets. They weren't running fast enough to dodge anything.
So far, the gang's accuracy had been dead awful. Three balloons had smashed into the gravel near a group of second-years, missing them by a good five feet, though the resulting splash was enough to trigger a chorus of high-pitched, hysterical shrieks that sent the boys snickering into their sleeves. But time was ticking down fast. The early-warning bell was set to ring in five minutes, and they still had at least two dozen heavy, sloshing balloons sitting at their feet. The courtyard was filling up with more students by the second, giving them a target-rich environment and a much higher chance of actually scoring a direct hit.
Su-hyeok let out a low, villainous laugh from behind a row of cherry blossom trees, carefully tossing a dark blue water balloon up and down in his palm. "Look at them out there. Sitting ducks. Every single one of them."
"If we're doing this, pick someone who actually deserves it," Joon-yeong muttered, adjusting his glasses as he peeked around a trunk. Dae-su swore he caught a brief, sharp trace of bitterness in the boy's voice, but before he could process it, Joon-yeong just shrugged it off, reaching into the plastic bag for ammunition. "Just don't hit anyone who's going to track us down and murder us."
Dae-su suddenly cackled, his booming laugh almost giving away their position immediately. "Target acquired! Look at the posture on that guy! He looks like he hasn't cracked a smile since the Joseon Dynasty!"
He was pointing straight at a tall senior walking alone, clutching a immaculate leather briefcase, looking like he was on his way to execute a corporate takeover rather than take a mid-term exam. The guy didn't emote, didn't smile, and certainly didn't look like he tolerated foolishness.
"You won't do it," Wu-jin chuckled, crossing his arms and leaning back against the brick wall. "He'll eat you alive, Dae-su."
"Watch me make history!" Dae-su cried, rearing his arm back like a championship pitcher and letting the bright pink balloon fly high into the air.
The taller boy just shrugged, completely unbothered, stepping back into the shadows to watch the trajectory.
A miracle didn't happen. The balloon didn't miss. It didn't bounce harmlessly off the dirt.
It hit the senior directly on the shoulder with a loud, devastating SMACK, detonating in a tidal wave of ice-cold tap water that soaked his crisp white shirt and completely ruined his neat hair.
Silence filled the air.
For a few terrifying seconds, no one moved. The birds stopped chirping. The wind stopped blowing. The drenched senior slowly turned his head, his dark eyes locking onto the exact bush where the boys were hiding, a terrifying aura radiating off him.
Goodbye, cruel world, Dae-su thought, his soul practically leaving his body.
"Holy crap," Dae-su swore under his breath, dropping to his knees instantly.
"We are beyond dead," Joon-yeong agreed, his voice cracking as he backed away on all fours.
They had hoped to pull off the ultimate prank without getting caught, until that exact moment. Because it obviously did go horribly, catastrophically wrong.
“Get back here, you coward!” Gyeong-su’s voice echoed off the concrete walls, sharp and furious over the heavy thud of his sneakers slamming against the floor.
It wasn't just ordinary water dripping off his uniform—it was murky, flowerbed-mud-tainted sludge from the garden hose supply. The fact that the pranksters were still breathing after soaking half the courtyard was a miracle in itself. Where were the bloody teachers when you actually needed them? Or the bell for homeroom? Usually, the morning chime was loud enough to wake the dead, but today the school clock seemed completely frozen.
This chaotic chase had been going on for a good ten minutes already. Dae-su and Su-hyeok were sprinting up the stairwell like panicked deer, with Gyeong-su and a furious Na-yeon hot on their heels. Despite the rest of the gang trying their best to sprint and bridge the gap, there was still a solid twenty feet of distance separating the pursuers from their targets. To anyone watching from the classroom windows, the whole procession must have looked absolutely ridiculous: a parade of screaming, mud-splattered teenagers tearing through the halls at full speed.
“I am going to get you expelled for this! My father will sue every single one of your families!” Na-yeon shrieked, her high-pitched voice cracking as she slipped slightly on a wet patch of tile, clutching her ruined designer bag like a weapon.
It was just typical, however. Whenever you actually wanted a teacher to step in and break up a fight, the halls were a ghost town. But the moment you wanted to handle things privately or sneak out off-limits, they’d magically appear right out of the woodwork.
“What in the absolute hell is going to on here?”
A new, heavily authoritative voice cut directly through the chaotic chatter of the gathering onlookers and Na-yeon’s endless threats. The group skidded to a halt, turning to see Mr. Lee, the biology teacher, standing right outside the faculty office door. He held a thick stack of printed syllabi in one hand, his sharp eyes scanning the mud-streaked walls and soaked uniforms with utter disdain.
“Do I even want to ask why the third floor smells like a stagnant pond?” Byeong-chan asked, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe, his gaze locking onto Dae-su, who was currently trying to hide behind a trash can.
“It was an accident!” they all said in unison, their voices overlapping in a desperate, rehearsed chorus.
Byeong-chan pinched the bridge of his nose, taking a long, agonizing pause as he took in the sheer disaster before him. “An accident,” he repeated slowly after a moment, his tone dripping with dry sarcasm. “So the mud magically organized itself into rubber balloons and threw itself at your classmates?”
Before anyone could cook up a second lie, a muffled, hollow voice echoed from the boys' bathroom at the end of the hall. “Is the coast clear yet? Did someone call my mom?!”
Mr. Lee turned toward the restroom entrance, raising his voice just enough to carry through the tiles. “You can come out now, Dae-su! Unless you plan on living in the third-stall cubicle until graduation!”
Joon-yeong stepped forward, nervously adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses while gesturing to the muddy footprints leading all the way to the faculty doors. “Technically, Mr. Lee, the structural integrity of the hallway floor is compromised. It’s a slipping hazard for the whole building.”
“I don’t care about the physics of the floor, Joon-yeong, I care about my sanity!” came Gyeong-su’s near-hysterical reply from the back of the crowd, wiping a streak of muddy water off his forehead, unable to stop his voice from cracking as he pointed an accusing finger at the entire group.
Park Sun-hwa watched the mud-drenched parade file past her toward the principal’s office, the heavy silence in the hallway broken only by the squelch of Gyeong-su’s wet sneakers and Na-yeon’s quiet, furious muttering.
All the progress she had carefully cultivated over the last few weeks—the shared study materials, the small compromises, the tentative truces—was now completely dead in the water. Working with teenagers was an exercise in endless friction; it constantly felt like taking two tiny steps forward, only to be dragged three miles back by a single moment of reckless stupidity. She leaned against the wall, staring at the muddy handprints smeared across the freshly painted plaster, and let out a dry, breathy laugh. At this rate, short of an actual apocalyptic catastrophe—like zombies suddenly crawling out of the woodwork—she wasn't sure anything on this earth could force these kids to truly put their egos aside and work together.
People never gave high school teachers nearly enough credit. Society liked to pretend the job was just about lecturing from textbooks, grading standardized exams, and drilling students until they were ready for the CSATs. Nobody ever mentioned the invisible labor: playing peacekeeper between volatile rivalries, acting as a buffer against bitter adolescent pride, and trying to keep fragile young people from tearing each other apart before they even made it to graduation.