Before school, in the study room with the standing fan 🔍

At 6:15 a.m., I sit at my small desk with my elbows planted firm on the English vocabulary notebook, trying to force the words into my head before the summer heat makes my brain completely useless. The fan rotates back and forth in front of me, and my school uniform—the navy blazer I'll change into in twenty minutes—hangs on the back of the door. Through the window, I can see the sky turning from dark purple to pale blue, and a few ajummas are already out sweeping their storefronts. My mom's footsteps creak past my door downstairs; she's making my lunchbox again, the same kimbap she packs every Tuesday. I take a sip of the cold corn tea from yesterday's bottle, my throat dry from hours of silent reading last night.

School hallway mid-morning, the bustle before second period 🔍

At 10:45 a.m., the hallway between classes is packed with students shouting about the English vocabulary quiz we just took, and I'm standing at my locker, shoving my Korean history textbook in and pulling out math. My friend Hyejin is beside me complaining that she completely blanked on the word for 'apprentice,' and I nod even though I'm not really listening—my head is still half-stuck on whether I got the conditional tense right on question seven. The sun is streaming in through the tall corridor windows, and it's so hot that a few boys have already rolled up their uniform sleeves, breaking dress code but nobody seems to care. My neck is sweating under my collar, and there's a smudge of lead pencil on my wrist from where I was gripping my pen too hard during the test.