STRANGERS

Part 24 (Own)

The school festival had been running since morning, but by the time the sun dipped entirely below the horizon, the campus had fully transformed into organized, pulsing chaos.

The campus glowed under layers of paper lanterns strung between trees and buildings.

The air was thick with the scent of tteokbokki sauce, burning charcoal, fried chicken oil, roasted chestnuts, and the ever present, suffocating undercurrent of expensive perfume and hairspray.

Students moved in every direction. some half dressed in festival costumes, some with face paint smeared across their cheeks, others staggering under the weight of oversized, plastic prizes they had no earthly idea how to carry back to their dorms.

Everyone was talking, laughing, arguing, or frantically trying to document the disaster on their phones.

Naturally, the evening wouldn't be complete without a full scale public breakdown.

Near the open plaza, surrounding the large stone fountain, a particularly vicious argument had already drawn a massive, gleeful circle of spectators.

A group of senior boys had formed a circle around the class captains, their voices overlapping, rising and falling with the stubborn energy

"I'm dead serious"

One of them insisted, jabbing a finger toward the empty, fairy lit dance floor that had been hastily assembled near the water.

"The couple dance should be mandatory. What's the point of having a festival dance if we can't actually dance with girls? It completely defeats the entire purpose of high school romance!"

The girls standing opposite them looked entirely unimpressed, arms crossed over their festival hoodies with expressions that could freeze water.

"We *want* to dance" a girl with twin braids replied, her voice dripping with sharp sarcasm.

"Just not necessarily with *you*. Or your friends. Why does every school tradition have to feel like a hostage negotiation?"

"So what are we supposed to be then?"another boy shot back, tossing his hands up.

"You're rejecting us like we're walking disease!"

One of the girls tilted her head, blinking slowly. "Are you actually hearing the sounds coming out of your own mouth right now? Listen to yourselves."

The back and forth escalated instantly.

Some of the boys insisted it was an unwritten constitutional "tradition" that needed to be preserved for future generations, while the girls argued passionately that tradition could happily die in a fire.

A half dozen students on the sidelines were recording the entire meltdown on their phones, likely zooming in on the boys' flushed, dramatic faces for group chat.

Standing right in the center of this human dumpster fire was Taehyung.

He held a black leather clipboard pressed flat against his side like a shield.

In the last twelve hours alone, he had dealt with a completely flooded cotton candy machine, two missing microphones, a student committee member who had locked themselves inside the storage closet crying over a bad haircut, and at least three separate formal complaints regarding the illegal inflation of tteokbokki prices.

This argument was just the latest bullet point on a very long, very depressing list.

He waited patiently, watching the verbal tennis match bounce back and forth until there was a two second gap in the shouting. That was his window.