Chapter 103
“Got it? It isn’t recess, so you can’t go out into the hallway, and if you need to use the restroom, you have to go quietly. Don’t be so loud that your voices carry into another class, okay~”
-“Yeeee.”-
Are there any days teachers are busier than the first day of a term? Unless it’s a festival or some incident breaks out, today is probably their busiest day of the year.
‘They must be exhausted.’
And of course, the moment the teacher left, the tiny elementary-school brats started shrieking and running around. The noise level was basically indistinguishable from a zoo.
“Anyone who plays Claw, step up. Big bro will wipe the floor with all of you.”
“Kim Hyunmin, you suck. Everyone below me, stand at attention.”
The boys all gathered in one spot and started competing against each other in phone games, while the girls split into two factions and swarmed around a single desk like ants that had found a crumb of bread, buzzing away.
“Look at this. My photocard stickers arrived yesterday, but the material’s so crappy I can’t use them.”
“What is this? Where did you buy it? Did you order it from Temu?”
“I didn’t, okay? It wasn’t even that cheap, but look how it turned out.”
“Buy them from the place you normally do. Are you made of money? Why do you keep throwing it away?”
Unfortunately, Yoo Choa’s desk was right behind mine, so a bunch of terrifying kids crowded around my desk, their chairs pressed together, and chattered about things I couldn’t make out.
“Eve, do you collect photocards too?”
“P-photocards..? Sorry, I don’t really know anything about those....”
They print tiny photos of idols or something, put them in cases, and decorate the cases with stickers and rhinestones, but honestly, I didn’t understand the appeal at all. I’d never really followed idols in the first place, and besides, why cover the case with so many stickers that you could barely see the picture?
I don’t know where they got them, but there were already four folding desk mirrors on my desk. Naturally, they were covered in stickers too, and just looking at them made my head hurt.
“Wow, Eve, then what do you normally do?”
“Me..? I just look at my phone or something..?”
“What do you do on your phone? Reels? You don’t use TikTok?”
“I don’t use that.... Reels sometimes.”
I figured nothing good would come from bringing up the Gallery or anything like that, so I didn’t say anything.
“What games do you play?”
“Ah..! I play—”
“Do you play Zepeto?”
“U-uh-huh..?”
And there wasn’t much about games that I could relate to either. They were already all friends with one another on social media, and there were tons of posts where they showed each other places they’d visited or took pictures of makeup they’d bought at Olive Young and other stores, then tagged a whole bunch of friends so they could like each other’s posts.
“Can I follow you?”
“My account’s kind of....”
“Make a private account. Looking at your photos, you sure have a lot of foreigners following you.”
“You must get tons of sponsorship offers, right? I’m seriously jealous.”
“I think I do, but I don’t really pay attention to them.... I check DMs from companies and stuff....”
“Companies? Really? Is having a million followers really that different? Have you worked with some company?”
“Um... there might be a confidentiality clause..? Or maybe it’s okay to talk about it now.”
Come to think of it, the modeling work I did for Royal Mayfair was supposed to appear in the March issue. Maybe it was okay to tell them now.
“It was some place called Mayfair. I took a few photos there....”
“Mayfair? No way, seriously?”
“That place is insanely famous. How did that happen?”
“They contacted me by DM and asked if I wanted to model, so I said okay and went to England to take a few pictures. That’s all.”
“Wow, so you’re a model? When will the photos come out?”
“They said it was the March issue, but I’m not sure.”
The moment I finished speaking, the kids sitting beside me started tapping away at their phone screens. Maybe magazines were all bought and read online these days too, because within just a few minutes, they were thrusting their screens in my face.
“Is this it? Who’s the girl on the cover?”
“Oh, that’s Eloise—”
“You know her? Is she one of your mutuals?”
“Yeah. She’s my friend....”
“Wow, you have a British friend too. I’m going to buy this one, okay? I’m helping you sell it, you know?”
“U-uh-huh..? Thanks..? But it must be expensive....”
“Eloise has 1.84 million followers too. Together, you have three million?”
I didn’t know why they were adding us together, but a Mayfair magazine probably wasn’t exactly cheap enough to buy on impulse. Was it around 20,000 won a copy?
The girl who said she’d bought the magazine swiped rapidly sideways through her phone, found the pages with me in them, and passed it around while making a huge fuss with the others.
“No way, you’re really in it. Hey, hey, look at this.”
“Did you take these in England? Seriously?”
Come to think of it, Ophelia had recently uploaded a photo of the physical magazine to my account. Was promoting the account part of the contract too? The cover model was, of course, Eloise, a kids’ model, ambassador, and influencer. I remembered chatting with her briefly when the magazine came out.
Because of the time difference, our conversation had been extremely sporadic.
“Your trip to England is on your feed too. Isn’t Claridge’s here incredibly expensive?”
“I-is it..? Mayfair just arranged a place for me....”
“So this is what being an influencer is like.”
“Ham Sieun is just a wannabe celebrity, seriously.”
“Agreed.”
Judging from the context, Ham Sieun must be a sixth-grade senior with 20,000 followers on TikTok.
“No, listen, Eve. They stopped me in the hallway just because I didn’t say hello and started scolding me. And do you know what they actually said?”
“W-what did they say....?”
“They said that if they made this public, my account would be ruined or something. Do they really think they can do that?”
“With 20,000 followers..? That might be a little difficult....”
“Right? It’s ridiculous, but I just treat them like a senior and say, ‘Yes, yes,’ in front of them, so now they think they’re somebody.”
Minseo, who had amassed 8,000 followers by fiddling with slime and posting cathartic stories about putting teachers in their place based on tips sent through DMs, proceeded to trash a senior named Ham Sieun whom Minseo had never even met.
This is what elementary schoolers are like? Where did the innocence I remember from elementary school go? I don’t think I was like this when I was in elementary school.
“Oh, right. Want me to show you their account?”
“Ah, um.”
“This is it. They’re terrible at dancing too—it’s seriously ridiculous.”
On the screen, a girl with extremely heavy makeup danced to a song I’d heard on Reels before, in a dark room where what looked like gaming rainbow lights flashed. It seemed to be a karaoke room, and behind her, friends or whoever were sitting on a sofa holding microphones.
‘Wait a second, is this really an elementary schooler? They look at least twenty.’
I didn’t know whether to call it maturity or looking old for their age, but the disconnect was so extreme that I couldn’t possibly give it a positive evaluation. Their neck was a different color from their white face, which was caked in makeup; they had some kind of drawing around their eyes, and their eyebrows looked like they’d cut out a strip of seaweed and stuck it on.
Did these kids really think this was pretty? The tight clothes, the short skirt.... Looking at it made me feel briefly dizzy.
“Ugh, sorry. I don’t like this kind of thing.”
“Right? It’s just gross.”
“Go say something to them, Eve.”
I’d never even properly met them, so what was I supposed to say? I just gave an awkward smile and tried to brush it off, but Minseo let out a huff, frowned hard, and shook their head.
“Eve, don’t you have any stories? Hunter stories or something. Choa won’t tell us anything.”
“Sorry, but I haven’t even really worked as a Hunter yet, you know?”
“Oh, really? Sorry.”
“I don’t think I have any particularly interesting stories either. There are a lot of things I can’t talk about because of confidentiality clauses....”
“Right? Eve actually knows a thing or two. Hunters keep everything they do secret.”
“Choa, you’re not with Union yet, are you?”
“My mom’s with Union, and once I start Hunter classes, I’ll get a temporary license, right? Then I’ll be part of Union too.”
“Really? What about you, Eve? Who are you affiliated with?”
“I don’t have a guild.”
“What? Seriously? Eve, come to Union. I’ll look after you.”
“Ahaha.... But I have a... collaboration..? A relationship...? with Nova, so I don’t think that would work.”
“Ugh, Nova sure moves fast.”
I couldn’t tell whether I was talking to elementary schoolers or had somehow wandered into a female-dominated workplace. I half-lost my mind enduring all their chatter until the bell rang.
‘Good grief....’
Did these kids adopt me or something? Honestly, I’d rather hang out with the kids quietly playing up front, but these kids are so intense that it’s exhausting.
“Eve, let’s go eat. Awakened students have to eat first and then move to another area, you know?”
“Oh, really? That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
“You fell asleep during the opening ceremony.”
“Gasp....”
Even amid all the noise, Ddaengdaeng was sleeping soundly in my arms. I stood up, and Choa, who had been sitting behind me, came over, slipped an arm around my shoulders, and spoke.
“Eve, if it gets too hard, tell me.”
“U-uh-huh..?”
“The other kids talk a lot, right? It’s easier if you just think, ‘I guess that’s how they are.’”
“I-I see....”
For a moment, I almost said, ‘Wow, that was so hard. Tell them not to talk to me—’ but then I hesitated, wondering if this might be some kind of trap.
If I said the wrong thing here, I could already imagine the gossip: ‘Eve thinks she’s so great, blah blah blah....’
“We have Hunter class starting in fifth period today, and starting tomorrow, after second period ends and third period begins, you won’t see these kids anymore anyway. I’m closer to the Hunter upperclassmen than I am to them.”
“Really..?”
“Yeah. Except on days when something comes up and we don’t have Hunter class, I’ll eat with the seniors too. I’ve known them since first grade, all the way through third grade, so that’s why I hang out with them.”
But after hearing what Choa said next, I started to wonder whether Choa really did think that way.
The cafeteria wasn’t like I’d imagined, where you got a tray of food and ate. It was more like a highway rest stop: you bought a meal ticket at a kiosk, handed over the receipt, and collected your food. There were quite a lot of students, so the cafeteria was split across two floors, and there were older middle- and high-school students there too.
‘Wow, those kids must be first graders. They’re so tiny.’
There were also super-little kids lining up to eat under the homeroom teacher’s supervision. Honestly, from my perspective, fourth graders and first graders had seemed identical, but now that I was here, first graders definitely looked incredibly young.
“Choa, are you going straight over there after you eat?”
“That’s the plan, right? With Eve.”
“Where’s ‘over there’?”
“Where we have Hunter class. Didn’t I just tell you? It’s in a different building from this one.”
“Ohh....”
The kiosks offered all sorts of delicious-looking food that made me think the world had really improved. Back when I was in elementary school, whenever they served chlorella rice and braised burdock, a cafeteria window or two would get smashed. Here, you could just choose whatever you wanted to eat, which was incredibly convenient.
“Eve, look over there.”
“Huh? What is it?”
Choa, who had been waiting behind me for my order, tapped my shoulder. I turned around to see what was going on and found a group of students with hair in every color imaginable sitting together and eating. Judging by their size, they weren’t elementary schoolers—they were clearly middle- or high-school students.
“They’re Hunter Class seniors. Let’s eat over there.”
“Oh, okay. Ddaengdaeng, take out the card.”
ㅡbeep….
I ordered the pork cutlet set meal, then rubbed Ddaengdaeng’s butt against the card slot, and the payment went through. I took the receipt to the lady at the counter, stood around for a moment, and the food came out soon after.
“Choa, are you close with the seniors..?”
“I am. The middle- and high-school seniors walk around the third-grade classrooms and look at each kid’s face, you know? But they’re all nice. Don’t worry.”
“Uh-huh. Got it.”
So Choa and I took our food over to where the Awakened students were gathered.
“Hey, Ahn Gyeongwon. You gave a seriously fucked-up order yesterday, didn’t you?”
“That was a pretty hard order for a dumbass who doesn’t study to understand.”
“What did you say? I’ll smash every crock at your grandma’s house.”
“My grandma got rid of those crocks three years ago.”
“Why doesn’t your grandma make doenjang anymore? Her doenjang is seriously amazing.”
“Because she died, you son of a bitch.”
“Hey. Ahn Gyeongwon, Na Byeongho. There are elementary-school kids behind you, so watch your language.”
“Huh?”
“Er, no.... I-I mean.... So.... You’re not supposed to fight....”
High schoolers are so scary these days.