A new session.
The words were supposed to mean a fresh start. For Kang Da-som, they just felt like a reprieve. A temporary stay of execution.
She stood before the door to Class 2-B, her new homeroom. The hallway buzzed with the bright, chaotic energy of the first day, but none of it seemed to reach her.
She smoothed the front of her pale blue vest over her crisp white shirt, a nervous gesture. Her reflection in the small window of the classroom door was a pale, tired ghost. Short, dark blue-black hair framed a face that was too thin, dominated by wide, lavender-colored eyes that held no sparkle.
She was supposed to be in there, greeting her new students. She just needed... a second.
A single second was all it took for the memories to flood back.
Last session.
It had started with a betrayal, so cliché it was almost laughable. Her boyfriend of five years, Mr. Choi Min-jun, the school's charming English teacher, entangled with a rookie art teacher, Lee So-hee, in an empty classroom.
But the betrayal wasn't the worst part.
The worst part was the twist.
With terrifying speed, her ex had painted himself as the victim. She was the problem.
"Dasom, you're making me uncomfortable."
"I just think you need some help. You seem... stressed."
"Please stop stalking me. It's unprofessional."
He had gaslit her so completely, so publicly, that the narrative stuck. Her pain was reframed as obsession. Her shock was labeled hysteria. The whispers started in the staff room, then bled into the student body.
"The Mad Teacher."
It culminated in a humiliating meeting in the principal's office.
"Ms. Kang," the principal had said, steepling his fingers. "Parents have called. They've heard... rumors. They don't believe a 'woman like you' is a good example for their children."
She had almost lost her job. Her reputation, however, was already gone.
The hallway noise suddenly rushed back in, making her flinch. She was still standing there. A ghost in a blue vest.
Da-som inhaled, her eyes shutting tight. You survived. You are still here. That's all that matters.
She exhaled, her eyes snapping open. The haunted look was gone, replaced by a practiced, hollow mask of professionalism.
Ms. Kang, the literature teacher, was ready for class. She fixed a small, neutral smile on her face, gripped the cold metal handle, and slid the door open.
---
The noise hit her like a physical force.
Class 2-B was in full-blown, first-day-of-school chaos. Teenagers in varying states of uniform disarray were shouting across the room, laughing with their heads thrown back, tossing a balled-up piece of paper. No one had noticed her entrance.
She walked to the teacher's podium at the front of the room, invisible.
Dasom placed her attendance book on the wood. She cleared her throat. Nothing.
She tapped the podium with her knuckles. Tap. Tap. Tap.
The sound was sharp in the small bubble of space around her. A girl in the front row, busy applying lip gloss, finally looked up.
Her eyes widened. She froze, lip gloss wand hovering. She violently jabbed the boy next to her. "Hey. Look."
A ripple of silence spread backward from the front row. The shouting stopped. The laughter died. The paper ball fell to the ground with a pathetic thwack.
It wasn't a respectful silence. It was a heavy, suffocating blanket of awareness.
Every student in Class 2-B was now staring at her. Dasom could see the whispers break out, hands covering mouths.
"No way..."
"Is that...?"
"We got her?"
"...the Mad Teacher..."
Dasom's grip on the podium tightened until her knuckles were white. Her practiced, neutral smile felt like it was about to crack. This was it. The first test.
"Good morning," she said. Her voice was clear, but a fraction too high. "My name is Kang Dasom. I will be your homeroom teacher and your literature teacher for this session."
A boy in the back, slouched so low he was almost on the floor, let out a loud snicker. A girl nearby giggled into her hand. Someone in the middle row "accidentally" knocked a heavy metal textbook off their desk. It crashed to the floor with a loud BANG, making Dasom jump, her whole body flinching.
A few more laughs. The message was clear. They knew. And they had zero respect.
Dasom closed her eyes for a single, painful second. You are a teacher. You are in charge.
She opened them. "Please be quiet. I'll be taking attendance."
Her "fresh start" was already over. This was just... survival.
The giggles and whispers abruptly died, replaced by a single, clear voice. It was sharp, confident, and dripping with a boredom that felt more dangerous than outright malice.
"Yah, Mad Teach—"
The voice paused, followed by a dramatic, insincere sigh. "Sorry. Ms. Kang."
Dasom's head snapped toward the sound. In the third row, a girl with a ruler-straight posture and immaculate black hair was examining her perfectly painted nails. Han Yoo-ra. Dasom's stomach clenched. She knew that name. Her father was the chairman of the school's parent-teacher association and a major donor.
Han Yoo-ra finally looked up, her eyes cold. "I do not wish to learn from a fake like you."
The room was so quiet, the buzz of the fluorescent lights was suddenly deafening. Dasom's voice came out as a strained, disbelieving whisper.
"Excuse me?"
Han Yoo-ra gave a small, dismissive smile. "You heard me." She then swiveled in her chair, ignoring Dasom completely, to address the rest of the class as if she were running a meeting.
"Yes, all in favor of kicking her out and requesting Mr. Choi Min-jun, raise your hands."
A few hands, clearly belonging to Yoo-ra's clique, shot up immediately. A few other students looked around nervously, their hands wavering, sensing the shift in power. Most of the class just stared, their eyes wide with the delicious, horrified thrill of a public execution.
Dasom stood frozen at the podium. This wasn't just a rebellious student. This was a calculated, political attack. Han Yoo-ra wasn't just a child; she was a proxy for the very parents who had tried to get Dasom fired last session. And she was openly, brazenly campaigning for the man who had ruined her life.
'On my first day,' Dasom thought, but the panic was gone, replaced by a cold, sharp annoyance. 'Really?'
The practiced, neutral smile didn't just vanish; it was retracted.
Dasom leaned forward on the podium, her weight on her hands. She slowly, deliberately scanned the room, making brief, hard eye contact with every student who had their hand raised. They started to falter, hands wavering and dropping one by one under her icy, lavender gaze.
She finally let her eyes land on Han Yoo-ra. Her voice, when it came, was no longer high-pitched. It was low, calm, and clear as glass.
"Thank you, Han Yoo-ra, for that... demonstration."
Yoo-ra's smug smile faltered, just a fraction. This wasn't the breakdown she was expecting.
"But I think you're confused," Dasom continued, her tone dangerously pleasant. "This isn't a student-run popularity contest. This is a required literature class. And I am the teacher assigned to it."
She straightened up, clasping her hands behind her back. "You said you don't wish to learn from a 'fake.' I appreciate your honesty. Neither do I. So, let's stop the performance."
She was talking to Yoo-ra, but her eyes swept the room. "The one where you pretend your opinion on staff scheduling matters."
A few students gasped. A boy in the back snorted, trying to hide a laugh.
Dasom's gaze snapped back to Yoo-ra, her expression now utterly unbothered.
"As for your request for Mr. Choi," Dasom said, checking her watch as if she were bored, "He is an English teacher. This is a Literature class. Your request is, by definition, illogical."
She picked up her attendance book.
"So, Han Yoo-ra. Two demerits. One for disrupting the class, and one for a baseless challenge to a teacher's authority. Your father will be notified, as per the school's new policy."
Dasom looked up, her face a mask of perfect, professional calm.
"Now. Put your hand down. Unless you have an actual question about literature."
The room was dead silent. Han Yoo-ra was staring, her face red, speechless for the first time in her life. The class was staring, too, but the looks were no longer pity or mockery.
They just saw the "Mad Teacher" calmly and completely dismantle the most powerful girl in school in under sixty seconds... and she didn't even raise her voice.
This was not the woman from the rumors.
"Good," Dasom said into the silence. "Let's begin. Ahn Ji-sung?"
She began to call attendance as if nothing had happened.
---
The defiant energy that had carried Dasom through her class with Han Yoo-ra evaporated the moment the lunch bell rang.
She walked into the teacher's lounge, and the familiar, cheerful chatter
faltered. It was a brief hesitation, a tiny skip in the room's rhythm, but it was enough.
In the last session, this was her sanctuary. Teachers would call out, "Ms. Kang! Come sit with us!" She'd shared bento boxes, laughed over student typos, and felt, in a word, safe.
Now, she was an island. The chatter resumed, pointedly louder, as she walked to the staff refrigerator. She was completely isolated.
As she grabbed her simple lunch box, a voice cut through the noise, high and performative.
"My goodness, did you hear? I heard from a very reliable source that Choi Min-jun might propose to Lee So-hee at the staff dinner on next week!"
A second voice chimed in, barely bothering to whisper. "Oh, I'm sure some people already know. She's a stalker, right? She should already know all about it."
Dasom's hand froze on the refrigerator handle. Her lunch box suddenly felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. A dull, tired ache throbbed behind her eyes.
She sighed, the sound lost in the noise. She wasn't hungry.
She set her lunch box back on the shelf, closed the refrigerator door, and walked out of the lounge. No one said goodbye.
She didn't know where she was going, she just knew she couldn't be in a public space. Her feet carried her on autopilot, through the main building, past the humming vending machines, and out the back door toward the old, unused gymnasium. She slipped down a narrow, weed-choked stairwell that led to a boarded-up maintenance door.
It was secluded. It smelled like damp concrete and cut grass. It was perfect.
Dasom leaned against the wall and slid down until she was sitting on the dirty steps. Her hand trembled as she dug into her pocket and pulled out a cigarette pack and a small, pink lighter. She'd bought them this morning, feeling like an impostor at the convenience store.
She shook one out. It felt foreign between her fingers.
'Now that I am a mad teacher,' she thought, a bitter, hollow feeling in her chest, 'might as well do everything a mad teacher would do. Even though I have never done it before.'
She put the cigarette to her lips and fumbled with the lighter. The wind made the tiny flame dance. Flick... flick...
"Damn it," she muttered.
She cupped her hand, protecting the flame, and tried again. The end of the cigarette was just about to catch...
A large shadow fell over her.
A hand plucked the cigarette from her lips. A second later, the same hand took the entire pack from her grasp.
"Ms. Kang, do you want to die early?"
Dasom looked up, startled, as she mumbled, "That's a lie, smokers live longer than most..."
She trailed off. Towering over her was Kwon Ji-hoon. The PE teacher. He was tall, built like the former athlete he was, and wore his "scary strict expression" as his default. He stared at the crumpled pack in his hand, then at her.
"Ms. Kang," he said, his voice a low, blunt rumble. "You have never smoked before. Why start now?"
Dasom's embarrassment immediately curdled into defensiveness.
"Mr. Kwon, do you plan on scolding me?"
He looked at her, and his expression didn't change, but his eyes seemed more... analytical than angry. "No. I find it odd." He held up the cigarette. "This isn't good for someone like you."
"Someone like me?" she scoffed.
"The 'Angel Teacher' of Saehwa High School."
The title, the one she used to be so proud of, the one that had been her entire identity, hit her like a slap.
A sound ripped out of her, shocking them both. A laugh. It was sharp, cold, and completely devoid of humor.
"I am no angel, Mr. Kwon."
Dasom looked up, really looked at him, perhaps for the first time. Kwon Ji-hoon was... a walking contradiction. He was tall, with the broad, solid shoulders of the former judo champion the school was proud of, but everything else about him screamed "problem."
His hair was bleached blond, a color that had scandalized the PTA. It was cut short on the sides, with the top left messy and spiky. Then there were his eyes. They were a sharp, piercing blue that seemed to analyze everything with a cold, intimidating light.
This was the other teacher the parents whispered about. Where she was the "Mad Teacher," he was the "Delinquent Teacher." The only reason he hadn't been fired, she'd heard, was because his athletic record was untouchable and he'd somehow (miraculously) turned their failing judo team into national contenders.
"Angel or not," Ji-hoon said, his voice a low, blunt rumble that didn't match his flashy appearance. "My point stands. Why start this?" He gestured with the cigarette pack.
Dasom's hollow laugh died. She pushed herself up from the dirty step, brushing off the back of her vest. She was angry. At him, at the school, at Choi Min-jun.
"Why?" she snapped, her voice sharp. "I mean, should I kill myself then? Or just, I don't know, go into hiding forever?"
He stayed perfectly quiet, just watching her. His blue-eyed stare was unnervingly steady.
"Give me back my cigarettes, Mr. Kwon," she said, holding out her hand.
"No."
"What?"
"No," he repeated. "You are the most innocent teacher I know."
"I don't want to be innocent anymore!" she burst out, the words tearing from her throat. "I'm not that angel! Everyone here thinks I'm crazy. They all whisper about me because..." Her voice cracked.
He just watched her.
"If you want to cry, just cry," he said, his voice still blunt, but not unkind. "Don't do... this. It's not worth it."
Dasom stared at him. "Not worth it?"
"They even say things like... 'she hasn't dated anyone yet because she's still obsessed with her ex'," she whispered, the humiliation burning in her cheeks.
Ji-hoon considered this for a moment, as if processing a new piece of data. His reply was simple and pragmatic.
"Then find someone to date."