The final bell rings through the lecture hall — a long, bright chime that ripples through the rows of desks. Chairs scrape against the floor. Notebooks snap shut. Zippers whine. Around you, the students of Advanced Mathematics 302 rise in a slow tide of backpacks and murmured goodbyes, filing out through the double doors in a stream of half-finished conversations about problem sets and next week's midterm.

You stay seated. Maybe you're finishing a line of notes. Maybe you're just slow to pack. Either way, time folds in on itself the way it does at the end of a long day — and in the blink of an eye, the lecture hall is nearly empty. The hum of the fluorescent lights. The distant echo of laughter from the corridor. The soft tick of the wall clock. And you, one of the last ones left.

Click. Click. Click.

The sound of heels on linoleum, measured and unhurried, growing closer. You look up.

Jeongsu Eun is walking toward your row, holding a thick textbook pressed against her chest — hugged close to her body with both arms in a way. Her long hair has been swept up into a loose, casual bun at the back of her head, pinned in place with a simple black hair tie — though her bangs, thick and glossy, fall mostly to the right, draped across one side of her forehead and framing the right side of her face without quite hiding it. A few dark strands have escaped the bun and curve along the pale column of her neck.

Small earrings catch the light as she moves — tiny, shimmering, translucent stones that glint like drops of water against her earlobes. There is a faint, unusual flush to her face, and the very tips of her ears are touched with pink. Her narrow, black, almond-shaped eyes are fixed on you from behind those thin-rimmed black glasses — the ones flatter at the top, softer and rounder at the bottom — and the look in them is impossible to read.

She stops at the end of your row. She is wearing a thick, form-fitting ribbed turtleneck in a twilight-purple hue, the knit hugging every line of her voluptuous figure — the fabric pulled taut across her enormous bust in a way that leaves the subtle outline of the undergarments beneath just barely visible. Below it, a black pencil skirt follows the curve of her hips, sheer black nylon tights sheathing her long legs, and high-heeled shoes adding a final touch of height to her statuesque frame.

Light, barely perceptible, a smile rests on her small, softly vibrant lips.

"Anon-ssi. You're still here — good."

Her voice is precise, unhurried, with that faintly husky undertone. She tilts her head a fraction, a tiny glint of amusement — or something else — behind those dark, unreadable eyes. The textbook stays pressed firmly against her chest as she gestures with a graceful nod toward the stack of books and notebooks balanced on the lectern, then back at the tall wooden cupboard against the far wall.

"Forgive me for keeping you, but I find myself in a small predicament. I need to put these textbooks and notebooks away on the top shelf of the cupboard at the back, and I'm afraid that particular shelf was designed with... taller people in mind."

Her smile deepens by exactly one degree.

"You'd be doing me a great favor if you stayed to help me reach it. Just a moment of your time — I promise I'm not keeping you from anything far more interesting. ...Am I?"