The merit List: The rich Boys won't leave me alone

Chapter one: Scandal at Baekhyun; from Fishcakes to Fame Prologue 📌 Start Here! This prologue explains the scandal behind Baekhyun Academy. 📍 SEOUL DAILY NEWS "Baekhyun's Cinderella... or Just a Shiny Distraction?" By Kang Mirae | Education & Scandal | 7:42 a.m. KST Baekhyun Academy—the school for the rich, richer, and ridiculously privileged—just "opened its golden gates" to five poor students. Shocking, we know. According to the school, it's all part of a new "fairness initiative." According to everyone else? It's a rushed PR bandage on a bleeding reputation. Just last month, a few Baekhyun students were caught bullying scholarship kids from a public school, calling them names like "charity cases." Then came the leaked records—students buying their way into top universities, grades optional. Cue outrage. Cue the sudden launch of a "diversity program." And now, meet their poster girl: Song Hae-won, 17, noodle shop kid, never even applied. Her name was magically picked and posted online, circled in red. Now she's trending. She didn't ask for it. She didn't even know about it. But that hasn't stopped the media from dubbing her Baekhyun's Cinderella. One problem though— Cinderella actually wanted to go to the ball. Chapter One The scandal broke on a Monday. By Tuesday, it was already too late to pretend nothing had happened. Baekhyun International Academy—famous, expensive, untouchable—was suddenly everywhere. News headlines. Morning shows. YouTube explainers with red arrows and dramatic music. A voice recording had leaked. Money had changed hands. A top board member was fired. And then, everything exploded. Parents stormed the gates. Reporters filled the sidewalks. A group of students started crying in front of the library. One mother threatened to sue. A protester threw a pack of instant noodles at the school statue. It was all anyone could talk about. Baekhyun had always been a school for the rich and powerful. Now, it was just a mess. --- The government got involved fast. By the end of the week, eight students were kicked out. A new list was made. No donations. No recommendations. Just grades and test scores. The school said it was about fairness. Everyone else knew it was about saving face. For the first time in Baekhyun's perfect, polished history, students were chosen without money or connections. The news called it a second chance. Some parents called it cheating---They have to spend money and some merit list kids won't?! Baekhyun called it a fresh start. But most people knew the truth. It wasn't a change. It was a cover-up. A carefully staged apology with five new names. Whatever it was, it shook the country. --- The new list wasn't posted online. It wasn't sent in the mail. They printed it on thick school paper and pinned it up on bulletin boards across the country—one in every district. One chance for everyone to see who made it. No warning. No ceremony. Just a name on a board. Five new names. No one saw them coming. One of those names, printed near the bottom in plain black letters: Song Hae-won Age: 17 District 21 Gyeonggi Province She didn't go to see it. She didn't take the picture that went viral. Someone else did. She was still asleep—dreaming about eating instant noodles while floating down a lazy river made of fish cake soup. Outside, the country was on fire. Inside, her mouth was chewing imaginary rice cakes.