A Notebook from the Library
Several days had passed since that awkward incident.
Was it trauma? Maybe, in a way.
Every day there was PE class, Yeoncheong came to school bare-legged, then changed her clothes in the bathroom—again and again.
As they always said, time heals all wounds.
Thankfully, Yeoncheong had managed to return to her usual self.
Of course, her friends' tactful silence played its part in that too. Which meant whether Suyeon and Seoha—sitting directly across from her at the time—had actually seen anything remained a fact known only to the two of them.
During break, Nayun flopped face-down onto her desk with a groan.
"Ughhh, I'm dying~"
Her tousled yellow hair swayed left and right along with the head shaking its owner on top of the desk.
"How does the Korean teacher go a whole class without a single break?"
"Why are you surprised? You know what she's like."
She said it lightly, but there was a weary edge to her voice. This aimless stretch after finals, with winter break looming, seemed to be too much even for the diligent Hasol.
Nayun lifted her head slightly and licked her lips.
"Yeoncheong, say something to the Korean teacher for us."
"Yeah. Show us the power of the class president."
Yeoncheong pushed Nayun's head away and grumbled.
"You spend all your time calling me Daengcheongi, and the moment you need something, I'm the class president?"
Suyeon, who had been quietly listening to the exchange, cut in.
"Hey, Nayun. Why are you sitting there, by the way?"
"Huh?"
Nayun turned her head to the side and looked at Suyeon.
That was the thing. She had turned her head to the side. In other words, Nayun was looking at Suyeon from Yeoncheong's seat. The problem was that Yeoncheong, naturally enough, was also sitting in her own seat.
confronted with the sight of a friend peering down at her with arms crossed, Nayun tilted her head.
"Is there a problem?"
"...No. It's not that, exactly..."
Nayun, for her part, was playing it cool. She sat on Hasol often enough, and had Hasol sit on her lap too. Suyeon didn't really have a counterargument.
Her frown deepened, and her furrowed brow swung toward Yeoncheong—who had Nayun sitting on her knee.
"And why aren't you saying anything?"
"Hm? About what?"
The same unbothered tone as Nayun's. It was almost laughable, thinking back to how agonized she'd been the first time she'd let Suyeon sit on her lap.
Letting out an awkward laugh, Suyeon said, as if she truly couldn't believe it.
"Seriously, this is a completely different attitude from the one you had with me and Seoha back then."
"Oh, that. Hmm..."
Yeoncheong finally caught up to the question and looked down at the friend perched on her knee. Her hand drifted, without her quite noticing, toward the ponytail. Playing with the tip of Nayun's ponytail, Yeoncheong considered.
The difference between Nayun and the Seoha and Suyeon of back then...
It didn't take long to settle on.
"She's got no ulterior motives."
"Huh?"
Suyeon tilted her head to one side, wanting a more detailed explanation. It wasn't a complicated one, so Yeoncheong wet her lips again.
"Back then, you and Seoha both had something else in mind with me. But with her, I don't feel any of that at all."
Granted, going through all that with the two of them had lowered her walls considerably.
Back then, both of them had been working toward advancing their relationship with her. Nayun, on the other hand, had simply chosen Yeoncheong's thighs as a marginally softer chair, with Hasol unavailable.
No one could keep every door barred forever.
By now, Yeoncheong could allow this much.
Nayun grinned smugly, proving Yeoncheong's point.
"See, see? I'm completely innocent. The door kept slamming open and shut and it was noisy, so I evacuated to the back."
The problem was the teasing lilt in her voice.
Suyeon's wounded cheeks puffed out. And now the back of her head was starting to sting, too.
Realizing she'd have to smooth things over for the sake of a peaceful day, Yeoncheong sighed and added one last thing.
"You two can sit whenever you want, too."
"Really? Can we? No take-backs?"
Suyeon's puffed cheeks deflated into an open-mouthed grin, and the back of her head that had felt like it might burst settled down at once.
Yeoncheong answered with a light shrug.
"As long as you don't do anything weird. Why wouldn't it be fine?"
"For real? You swear?"
Hearing herself say that much made her a little uneasy, but taking it back would only cause a far bigger uproar.
"Um... can I do it too?"
Then Hasol, from the seat in front, asked while rubbing her cheek. Yeoncheong couldn't fathom what was so special about her lap that everyone was coveting it like this.
"Well, obviously... but you too, Hasol? What, is something written on my lap? Why's everyone so desperate to sit here?"
"It's not that. It's just that you always seemed to hate that kind of contact, so we held back."
"I mean... fair..."
Compared to Seoha or Suyeon, Nayun and Hasol had been careful about that sort of thing, barring special circumstances.
Meanwhile—
"Nayun, you heard him. You're next, so get off already."
"Nope. I'm staying right here until this break is over."
"Suyeon, what's that supposed to mean? We agreed on the order—me first."
It wasn't as if they were reserving spots on an amusement park ride. Watching her friends fight over turns, the owner of the lap could only stare in disbelief.
"Guys... shouldn't you ask how I feel about this?"
Yeoncheong tried to mediate.
"Excuse me? Can anyone even hear me?"
But Seoha and Suyeon, locked in rock-paper-scissors to settle the order, heard none of it.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
"Aigoo... my thighs hurt."
One careless remark, and now Yeoncheong was offering up her lap every single break.
After school, in the club room, she massaged her poor overworked thighs and shot a sideways glance at the friend sitting beside her.
"Anything you'd like to say?"
"Hehe... if it hurts, want me to rub it for you?"
The very person whose words had turned Yeoncheong's lap into public property scratched her head and flashed a friendly smile.
Even now, she was unmistakably trying to sneak in a little personal gain, and Yeoncheong clicked her tongue.
"I'm good."
Her answer didn't matter in the slightest. Suyeon dragged her chair over, wiggling her fingers as she crept closer with a sly look.
"Back off."
Yeoncheong hastily blocked the chair with her foot and changed the subject.
"So? What are we doing today?"
"The Yeoncheong Fatigue Recovery Project."
"How about we do that fun thing you got a while back?"
Yeoncheong answered for her friend, who was already off track.
"A while back...?"
Suyeon paused mid-question, then clapped her hands and jumped up from her seat.
"Oh, right! That thing!"
About a month ago, Suyeon had discovered something intriguing and had been building up expectations about it ever since. But with Yeoncheong flat out preparing for finals at the time, it kept getting pushed back.
Having forgotten all about it, Suyeon headed for the desk that doubled as a storage closet. After a brief rummage through the bottom drawer, she pulled out a notebook that looked decently aged.
"This is it. Seobin gave it to me."
"From Seobin?"
Yeoncheong took the notebook and gave it a quick flip through, front to back, while Suyeon explained how it had come into her hands.
"She found it while tidying up the library recently. It was stuck between some thick books that never get pulled out, so nobody knew it was there. Seems like it belonged to a senior who went here way before us."
It must have turned up while they were preparing for a library event. Having confirmed there was no name written anywhere, Yeoncheong opened the notebook.
"But why would Seobin give it to you?"
"Ah, I was helping her throw out the books they couldn't keep, and she mentioned it then. I got curious about what kind of notebook it was, so I asked for it."
Yeoncheong skimmed the contents quickly, and her reaction was lukewarm at best.
"What part of this is supposed to be fun?"
Whoever the senior had been, they'd clearly been a diligent student—the meticulous handwriting stood out. But that was all. As far as she could tell, it was a perfectly ordinary notebook you could find anywhere.
Suyeon, saying she'd thought the same thing at first, held out her hand. She flipped through the returned notebook with a swish of pages, then opened to a single spread.
Densely packed writing, with the occasional sketch. Naturally, Yeoncheong had assumed it was notes from some class—but looking closer, it was nothing of the sort.
Neat, elegant handwriting belonging, presumably, to the notebook's owner, alongside a wildly expressive scrawl. What she'd taken for study notes was actually a written conversation passed back and forth.
"That's not all, either."
Suyeon showed her other sections she'd found in advance. Traces of short exchanges tucked into the margins, little bits of idle chat wedged in the middle of the notes themselves.
Once her eyes caught on to it, she saw them everywhere.
A few of them did earn a snort of laughter, but she doubted Suyeon would have hyped up this much as "fun."
"This isn't all of it, right?"
Perhaps thanks to all the time spent watching her, her prediction landed right on the mark.
"Of course not. The really important part is here."
The final page Yeoncheong hadn't reached during her quick flip-through held nothing but a short written exchange.
'You still haven't found it? Disappointing.'
'Give me a hint. You said you'd obviously know where it is. That's way too hard.'
'Special hint, and this is the last one. The answer is in this notebook.'
'(angry face drawing) Hey, do you have any idea how much of this notebook is notes?!'
'Fine. Truly the last one. It's hidden in the conversations we shared.'
'You have to find it by this weekend, no matter what. It's really important. I mean it. Promise.'
Judging from the context, the notebook's owner had been searching for something their written-conversation partner had hidden.
It was nothing but black ink stitched across paper, and yet she could feel just how close the two people trading these notes must have been.
Suyeon's eyes sparkled beside her, so Yeoncheong reread the exchange several times—but once again, she couldn't find anything special about it.
"Why? What about it?"
"You still don't see it? Wow, Yeoncheong, you really have no eye."
Slightly stung, Yeoncheong barely managed to drag the corners of her mouth upward.
"...If you ever want my lap again, you'd better watch yourself."
"Tch. So petty."
Evidently the value of Yeoncheong's knee-chair was considerable. Still grumbling, Suyeon helpfully pointed to a corner of the notebook.
Yeoncheong stared hard, and there it was—page covered in the ghosts of words written and then erased.
She didn't even need to shade it lightly with a pencil to raise the indentations. Whoever had written it had pressed down hard. Up close, with focus, it was just legible.
Yeoncheong traced the marks with her fingertip, working her lips.
"I... I really can't find it. Is it about OO?"
The name had been completely blacked out, impossible to read.
Yeoncheong had barely finished reading the sentence before Suyeon slammed her hands on the desk and shoved her face in close.
"Well? Even now, doesn't it pull at you?"
"Wait... you want us to go looking for it, don't you?"
A written conversation between two seniors who'd clearly been close. Something that never got passed on.
By this point, she'd have to be willfully blind not to know what Suyeon was after.
Honestly, how many people could read something like this without their heart stirring? It was true that Yeoncheong's curiosity had been piqued too, but...
"Would it even still be there?"
It depended on how it had been stored, but the notebook looked to be at least ten years old. In that much time—if the owner had simply failed to find it—someone else stumbling across the answer, or the whole thing being lost to time, wouldn't be strange at all.
In other words, the odds of it all being a wild goose chase were high.
Suyeon seemed to know it too, hesitating for a moment.
But the girl in front of her was, first and foremost, the president of the Free Inquiry Club. She was constitutionally incapable of passing up an interesting mystery that fell from the sky—or, more accurately, fell out of a bookshelf.
"Searching is free, isn't it? Aren't you curious? What kind of story might be hiding behind this?"
"I-I mean, I am curious, but..."
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained. We've got nothing else to do—let's look for it. Come on?"
As always, Suyeon was ready to cling to her and flash those sparkling puppy-dog eyes. But Yeoncheong, muttering that it was cold, was already putting on her padded jacket.
She had her own interest in it, and bending Suyeon's stubbornness was a losing battle anyway. Acting quickly was simply the smarter move.
Thanks to that, as she rose to her feet, Suyeon's outstretched arms closed around empty air. Yeoncheong tilted her head at the sight of her frozen friend.
"What? Weren't you the one saying we should go?"
"Wh—yeah. Right. Let's go."
Flustered, Suyeong grabbed the notebook and her coat and scrambled after her.
"Hey, wait up! I've got the notebook over here!"