Naughty KISS

Episode 3

                                                                               Episode : 3

After Ha-ni surprises everyone with her high test score, the students (led by teacher Kang-yi) chant for Seung-jo to live up to his promise of carrying her around the school. The two had privately agreed to nullify that bet, but can’t explain that to the others without revealing that they’re living together.

 Ha-ni mutters to Seung-jo not to misunderstand — she had nothing to do with this. He grumbles that she’s a public menace, but sighs and tells her to go ahead and claim her piggyback ride. If everyone’s going to assume he’s a flake, he’d rather just get it over with.

Three-year crush notwithstanding, being called a public menace can go a long way in quashing the warm fuzzies, and Ha-ni refuses. He grabs her wrist (oy), and protective Joon-gu arrives on the scene at just this moment, seeing Ha-ni struggling against Seung-jo’s grasp.

Joon-gu steps in and offers the piggyback ride instead, and while Seung-jo hadn’t been eager to carry her, damned if he’ll be upstaged by this guy. What ensues is a double-wrist-grab competition of whose back she’ll climb on. Oh, that we all had such problems.

Joon-gu’s more aggressive, and (literally) sweeps Ha-ni off her feet to carry her outside. Ju-ri and Min-ah reproach him for interfering, and he’s so dense that he thought he was being helpful.

Now he asks suspiciously if Ha-ni still likes Seung-jo, to which she blurts that she doesn’t. He’s cold and mean and lacks any spark of humanity. She totally hates him now.

Suuure. That totally explains her fit of jealousy in special study hall when another girl tries to flirt with Seung-jo, right?

Ha-ni’s the odd duck out in study hall, where we hammer in the stereotypes inherent in this drama: that all humble, average-brained folks are nice and friendly, while smart people are rich snobs. But how does that explain all the dumb snobs I’ve met? And poor jackasses?

Ha-ni is cheered when Seung-jo rejects the girl’s offer of a soda. You’d think she would have a little bit of sympathy for this predicament, but she hasn’t learned the lesson from her own humiliation and bursts out laughing at the other girl, even pointing a finger literally as she guffaws. Wait, drama, aren’t we supposed to like her?

Ha-ni’s presence in the study hall is such an anomaly that you can practically hear the minds being blown as people try to figure out how she got there. One such example: the vice principal, who takes great pride in Seung-jo as the school’s star pupil and therefore can’t understand how Ha-ni squeaked through.

He asks Class 7’s teacher Kang-yi if she finds that odd, but she answers simply that hard work can yield good results. The other teachers are unconvinced, however, particularly the pretty teacher (whom I suspect will be Kang-yi’s rival, or at least her foil) and Class 1 teacher Ji-oh. They even go so far as to speculate about cheating, though they make no accusations.

Each class has an upcoming outing planned, and Classes 1 and 7 get stuck in an athletic competition at Kang-yi’s suggestion, because she’s determined to prove that her class can beat the snooty Class 1-ers at something. Class 7 isn’t terribly enthusiastic, but are won over with Kang-yi’s bribe of pizza if they win all three events.

Motivated by pizza — and yeah, beating Class 1, although mostly the pizza — the class practices for the competition, performing drills and running through relay simulations. It’s pretty cute how enthusiastic they are, so of course haughty Seung-jo has to rain on their parade by sniffing at how silly they look.