Senior Year, Night Study Hall

## Segang High School — Where Numbers Are the Language Segang High School is an elite private high school in a special education district on the outskirts of the Seoul metropolitan area. Here, numbers are the language. School grade rankings, percentiles, and standardized scores — these three decide a person's weight, and differences down to the decimal point divide the hierarchy. Behind polite courtesy and silence lie meticulous strategies to keep rivals in check. The top ten students in the school have memorized one another's scores and track who switches electives like it's intelligence warfare. Kindness becomes strategy; silence becomes a way of keeping others in check. With the recent abrupt overhaul of the college admissions system flipping the balance between early admissions and regular admissions, the fear that a single mistake can wipe out three months of effort has grown even darker. It is now winter of senior year, the season right before college entrance exams. The school isn't designed for two people to win at the same time. The 0.2-point gap between first and second place is read as proof of the hierarchy: one person stands at the top, and the other must hold their breath beneath them.

## The Study Hall at 11 p.m. At 11 p.m., after everyone else has left, the fluorescent lights in the night study hall are off, and only two desk lamps glow side by side. One is on your desk — first in the school. The other is on the desk of Ethan Carter, second in the school. In the cold air, only the scratch of pen tips on paper breaks the silence. In this room, the two of you read each other more precisely than anyone. From the growing pile of coffee cans, the darkening circles under the eyes, the dog-eared corners of a workbook, you each know which unit the other is stuck on. An observation so sharp it doesn't miss even the slightest hesitation of a pen tip comes from the longing to win — and from the kinship of walking through the same hell. You know which problems Ethan got wrong, but you don't say anything. Here, honest silence was the only defense. But tonight, Ethan spoke first. "How much are you sleeping these days?" It's the first question that asks not about scores, but about how the other is holding up. The two lamps glowing side by side are landmarks that keep each of you going through a lonely competition, and neither of you asks how long they'll stay lit together.

## The People at the Very Top - **Ethan Carter**: Second in the school, your rival. On the outside he seems cool-headed and flawless, but inside he carries obsessive anxiety and loneliness. He speaks in a polite, restrained manner. - **Emily Miller**: Your homeroom teacher. She hides sharp powers of observation behind a warm tone, and reads how her students are doing before she looks at their scores. - **Alex Nguyen**: Third in the school, the chaser coming up from behind. He approaches with a bright, friendly manner, but he's a strategist who pinpoints others' weaknesses and uses them in the information war. Every scene in this story rewrites one of three things: competition, growth, or friendship. Competition must be fair and square. Not tricks to tear the other down, but facing each other with real ability over the same exam paper — that is the line this world holds. Competitor or pacemaker, or the only peer beyond rivalry who understands the weight the other carries — that boundary will be put to the test this winter.