➪The Man|| WINRINA

𝚉𝚎𝚛𝚘

"I think you missed the point." Hwang Yeji grumbled, eyeing her best friend who sat across her. She wondered how she even ended up being friends with this idiot. "You're supposed to go there and register and take the entrance exam. Don't worry, if your grade in science, math, and english are more than 85, you don't need to take the exam. " she stated matter of factly.

Winter gave her best friend a passive look. "My grade in science is 84, english is 82, and math 80! I'm going to need this entrance exam." She grumbled in frustration, shoulders slouching as she realized her predicament. "And why does it have to be the core subjects? I vould pass with just PE."

"Well, as our professor said, if your job is going to be office work, knowing the volleyball team positions would be irrelevant. Not like you're going to play volleyball in the office." Yeji relied. She's surprised, she really is since she could remember the words of her professor.

Winter looked at her, surprised. "When the hell did you get smart?"

"Well, when you attend the academy, being smart means you'll survive." Yeji muttered. She isn't fond of her school life. It was like she needed to be in the top half of the ranks to be considered a decent human being and not a pig.

Winter only shook her head. Yeji won't stop telling her how horrible the school was despite its five star ratings online. Not to mention how it's always mentioned in the news when it came to the top notchers of the board exams and for being one of the best schools in their country.

Not to mention that the tuition was affordable. It was not like SMU who needed you to make a loan if you wanted to pay full tuition. It was in short, very expensive.

Winter sighed. She really had no choice. Her parents, who worked abroad, asked her to transfer to a cheaper private school if she wanted an all private education until college.

SMU was too pricey and recently, the school has gotten itself in a tight situation after they “accidentally” kicked out the Jung clan's successor. That caused the school to receive some backlash from the other elite families who enrolled their children there. Majority of them pulled their children out and enrolled elsewhere.

Yeji sighed, sensing the shifted mood. "Look, I'll help you with the application. All you have to do is go to the main building where the registrar's office is located. Same requirements as SMU and try to pass the entrance exam. That's the only way you can enter the academy."

Winter nodded her head. "Yeah, sure, I mean, how hard can the entrance exam and actually getting enrolled be?"

🧑

Apparently very hard.

Winter grumbled, just realizing how popular the academy was. She stood in front of the tall gates of the academy. The gothic building behind it and loomed daringly over her. She felt small, which was weird as the school was roughly similar in scale to SMU.

But that didn't matter, what mattered was her getting enrolled and passing the entrance exam. Yeji informed her that she only needed to take the math exam. Yeji managed to pull some strings for her.

Taking a deep breath in and out, she straightened her psyure before taking big and confident strides toward the entrance  of the academy. Behind her were the more nervous enrollees who either had books full of notes or index cards with “necessary ” information. She even spotted one with a map.

Yeji told her that the testing office would be beside the registrar office. She first needed to answer her enrollment form before heading to the testing office where she would take the entrance exam by batch.

But before that, Winter marvled at how luxurious the academy was decorated. She expecred it to be in the more rustic side but was surprised when the interior of the building leaned into more modern and simplistic designs. Of course, it still had that gold accents everywhere you look. Not to mention the huge gold statue of King Youngho and silver statue of Emperor Yonho at the center of the lobby.

She whislted the sound echoing. "Wow, " she did a whole 360 around the lobby. "This place is huge."

"I know right," she turned to the voice. It was guy she guessed was around her age and had an accent as he talked. Maybe Chinese. "This academy is a hidden gem. Only a handful of people enroll here and the only way you can enroll here is you have someone to back you up."

"Back you up?" Winter furrowed her brows, confused. "I thought we needed to pass the entrance exam and stuff."

The guy chuckled, "That's the first part. From what I heard, most students here come from influential families that pulled strings to keep there place here. The school has these quarterly exams that determines your rank. Once you miss the rank, " he made a slicing motioning with his hand. "It's over for you."

Winter grew worried. If anything, she is terrible in keeping her rank. As she recalled, her most recent rank in SMU was a rank D, the lowest rank one could get. She was dead.

She awkardly chuckled, "I'm sure it's not like that. Not lile they have a student limit."

"Oh they do, the top one hundred are treated like humans while the rest are pigs. "

Winter wondered if she was doing the right thing. Well, she is since she found a cheaper private school, but she meant was if the right thing was attendong a school full of powerful sons and daughters and possibly mafia bosses. How scary.

She glanced down at the enrollment form that was mostly blank, save for her name.

Name: Kim Minjeong

She stared at ther name.

The guy from before left her once they reached the registrar's office. The place was packed by hopefull enrollees, Winter being one of them.

"I can assure you, Gi, I'm enrolling myself now for the school year."

Winter raised her head, turning to the girl who was busy talking to her phone in a hushed tone. The girl was answering a similar enrollment form as her. She wondered of the girl was going to be a transferee. Maybe they could even be friends. She was about to call the girl when the hoarse voice of the registrar rang through the office.

"Five minutes for filling up and the first batch goes to the testing office. I repeat, five minutes."

"Shit." Winter back to her own form, hastily writing down the needed information. She didn't read the contents. She meant, it was like and other enrollment form, right?

Academy Building Attending:

[✔] Shang Academy BS
[     ] Shang Academy GS

-𝐭𝐛𝐜-

Warnings (these are mentioned in the description as well)

➪Mentions of:
Abuse
Misogyny
(Extreme)Homophobia
Phobias
Mental illness
Foul Language
Abuse of power
Sexual references
Mature themes

This won't include sex scenes

I will switch on the mature settings if I feel the story has reached that point.