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The PD knocks on the makeshift door before sticking her head in. “The episode concept is ‘student council members versus the delinquents.’ Sun’s team are the student council members and Nathaniel’s team are the delinquents. Please dress accordingly.” With that news delivered, she absconds elsewhere.
“Somehow,” I drawl, “the exact right people were picked for each team.”
Hyemi giggles.
We dress quickly, emerging to find Jaewoo and Sun already waiting, both in identical pressed uniforms and eyeglasses. Hyemi joins them, looking adorable in her knee-length skirt and ribboned necktie.
I’ve gone for the role of “Bad Girl,” which probably doesn’t help my image since I already give off those vibes, with a crooked tie, my skirt rolled at the waist, and heavy eyeliner. I’m also wearing track pants for range of motion.
Youngmin joins us, his hair mussed and his tie discarded altogether.
Then Nathaniel emerges and Youngmin falls on the ground, laughing.
“What kind of delinquent are you supposed to be, Nathaniel-ssi?” Heartthrob asks.
Nathaniel has fully embraced the role of delinquent, specifically one that gets into fights, presumably in an alley behind the school.
Jaewoo and Jolly hold each other, tears running down theircheeks. “He’s put a Band-Aid above his brow,” Jaewoo says, pointing.
“Is that... blood?” Youngmin can’t breathe. Nathaniel’s blotted red ink at the corner of his mouth.
Nathaniel turns to the center camera with a smirk, and I can already picture an editor later adding “Bad Boy” text over the video.
We record our second intros, then move to our next locations inside the main building of the school. My cameraperson walks with me up the wide steps after introducing himself. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Youngmin’s cameraperson with his hands pressed together as if pleading with him.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
My cameraperson looks over. “Ah,” he says, “the younger guests can be quite... fast.”
For this part of the game, we’re separated and brought to different areas of the school.
“Fighting!” I raise my fist to encourage Hyemi as her handler leads her away. My own handler wraps a blindfold over my eyes. As I walk, I go over the rules of the game in my head. It’s fairly straightforward. Somewhere in the school, three tokens are hidden. The team that finds the most tokensortags out of all the members from the opposing team wins.
I try to guess where my handler is leading me, but quickly lose all sense of direction. There’s a whoosh of air as a door opens, and then I walk a few more steps before my handler releases my arm. She unties my blindfold and I blink several times before taking in my surroundings.
I’m in the cafeteria.
The sound of the school bell goes off, the light, familiar tune filling me with warmth, bringing me back to when I was a student here, sitting with my friends at these tables, laughing between classes. Then the cheerful melody ends.
At this moment in the episode, viewers will see eight separate boxes on their television screens, showing all of us at the start of the game.
Ready, set, go!
Fourteen
My goal is to find Hyemi so that she can tag me out, but I have to wait or it’ll be too obvious.
I scan the empty tables in the cafeteria. It’s unlikely they’dstarta player in the same room as a token, but I might as well search since I have time. I move toward the kitchen area, beside the cafeteria. The lights are turned off, which indicates there’s nothing to find here, and yet...
I start to open cabinets, crawling on my hands and knees to look through shelves stacked with stainless steel pots and pans. My cameraperson follows me, recording my every action.
I don’t know what I’m looking for. They didn’t tell us what the tokens look like, only that we’ll know them when we see them.
I twist open the door of the walk-in cooler and a blast of cold envelops me. I immediately spot an object that doesn’t belong among the frozen meats and vegetables. Grabbing it, I rush out of the fridge and hurriedly duck behind the counter. Crouched on the floor, I reveal the token to the camera. It’s a little stuffed animal of the mascot of our school, a bunny holding a tiny trumpet.
It’s socute. I press it to my chest in a moment of bliss, then remember I’m being recorded. Opening my backpack—they’d given one to each of us at the start of the game—I tuck the bunny inside, then swing it onto my back.
“You didn’t zip your backpack all the way,” my cameraperson says.
