First Day, First Enemy
The gates rose out of the morning fog like something out of a fairy tale gone wrong—wrought iron twisted into gold-leafed patterns, crowned with the school's crest: a phoenix clutching a laurel branch, wings spread wide enough to swallow the sky. Han Seo-yun stood on the sidewalk across the street, close enough to touch the bars if she reached, and felt smaller than she had in years.
She clutched the acceptance letter in her coat pocket, its edges soft now from handling, worn like a prayer card. She'd read it so many times the words had stopped meaning anything and started meaning everything: *Congratulations. You have been selected. Full scholarship.* Her mother had cried when she'd read it aloud at their kitchen table, hands trembling around a chipped mug of barley tea, and Seo-yun had promised herself right then that she would not waste this. Not one day of it.
She just hadn't expected the gates themselves to feel like a test.
A line of cars crawled along the drive beyond them—black sedans polished to mirror shine, one sleek foreign coupe the color of dried blood, a Bentley that looked like it had never once touched a pothole in its life. Drivers in dark suits stepped out to…