Closing Ceremony, Schedule Change
A day had passed since the snow that fell in a sudden ambush overnight turned the girls back into children.
The heat of car engines had melted the roads back to bare asphalt, leaving behind only grimy gray slush, but mounded piles of snow still lined the sidewalks and dotted every corner of the school grounds.
Today, the school was brimming with life inside and out. Today was the day every student had been waiting for: the closing ceremony for winter break.
Class 2-1. Amid the racket of friends huddled together and chattering away, Nayun in the front row twisted around in her seat.
"Wow. I honestly thought winter break was never gonna come."
"Really? Last I checked, it's earlier than last year."
Hasol pulled out her smartphone, saying she'd look it up, and in no time had found the date of last year's closing ceremony.
"Last year was the twenty-third. This year it's the twenty-first. Two days earlier."
For someone who'd been grumbling about the ceremony taking so long, Nayun perked right up at the news — two whole days early — and snatched Hasol's phone to check for herself.
Hasol showed her the academic calendar posted on the school website. There was no denying it.
Suyeon giggled and offered her own theory.
"That's because you're not doing remedials this time. Normally the ceremony would come right after supplements ended, remember?"
"Oh, right. Yeah, that'd be it."
Having confirmed it on Hasol's phone, Nayun flopped back into her chair.
Last year she'd been gasping through supplementary classes only for the closing ceremony to arrive in the blink of an eye. This time, having dodged remedials in a row — first after midterms, now after finals — she found herself with time to spare.
Because she actually studied now. Naturally, Nayun's thoughts drifted to the three friends sitting before her.
The student council president, Seoha; Suyeon; and even Hasol. Girls with whom she, a girl who usually did nothing but shoot hoops, should never have crossed paths — and yet somehow they'd all become her friends.
Her grades, her friendships — if she told her self from one year ago, that girl wouldn't have believed a word of it.
At the thought, a faint smile tugged at her lips, and Suyeon tilted her head.
"Why are you suddenly smiling?"
"Just thinking how weird it all is."
"Huh?"
Suyeon still hadn't caught up with the thread of the conversation. Nayun gave a light shrug, as if to say, listen up.
"Come on, think about it. Did any of you ever actually imagine being friends with me?"
"...Nope."
Suyeon pressed a finger to her chin and shook her head.
They hadn't even been in the same class back in first year, and their interests were nothing alike. They'd never been lumped into the same remedial sessions over grades, either. In short, setting likes and dislikes aside, they'd barely had any common ground at all.
Having read her friend's mind, Nayun gave a small nod.
"Right? Honestly, I didn't expect us to get this close either."
Everyone makes friends in first year. Normally a group forms around some shared common ground.
So what was it that had made these total strangers bond so tightly? Suyeon's gaze drifted, all on its own, toward the desk that still sat empty.
"It's because there's a connecting link in the middle."
Outgoing enough to hang with Nayun, yet with a certain cuteness that surfaced whenever she was out of her depth.
Nayun leaned forward, saying that was exactly what she'd been getting at.
"So like, doesn't that make us a legitimately incredible case, if you think about it?"
Suyeon stared at her, dumbfounded. This was nothing like the Nayun who loved to drop a bomb and walk away.
"Are you actually Nayun? You're way too sappy today. Where'd that come from?"
Nayun's eyes went wide — too late. Suyeon had started the conversation, and everything she'd only been thinking had come pouring out of her mouth.
She smirked and shoved away the friend who was closing in on her, while Hasol, pocketing her phone, jumped into the exchange.
"That's Nayun's good side, though. Remember during finals, when Yeoncheong kept whining about being cold? She went out on her own just to buy her stockings."
"Oh, right. That did happen."
"You little..."
Desperate to steer the conversation elsewhere as fast as possible, Nayun glanced around the room. Her eyes landed on the empty desk. She tapped the unclaimed desk with her fingers, lips twitching.
"Anyway, why isn't she here yet?"
"It's not like cutting it close to the bell is new for her. Maybe she's on her way with the teacher again."
Suyeon agreed with Hasol's guess, calling it a hundred percent likely.
Was it because the sun rose later in winter? Or because it had gotten so hard to crawl out of a warm bed? Either way, Yeoncheong had lately been straggling into school with hair-thin margins more often than not.
Having successfully deflected the topic, Nayun kept the conversation rolling — because if she let it drop here, she knew exactly who would pounce on her and never let go.
"You don't think she's skipping school since the ceremony lets out early, do you?"
"Pfft... No way. Yeoncheong wouldn't do that."
"Exactly, Nayun. You can't project your own standards onto her."
"Excuse me?"
Eyes flashing, Nayun glared at the pair of them.
She scanned her surroundings again, this time in a very different sense from before. Just as she was hunting for a serviceable weapon, the front door slid open and Teacher Jisu walked in.
The moment the teacher opened the door, she caught a student scanning the floor — so her reaction was, in a way, only natural.
"Nayun, are you looking for something?"
"A weapon."
The unexpected answer made her falter, and the homeroom teacher, as if she'd heard nothing at all, strolled calmly toward the lectern.
Suyeon and Hasol kept chatting, only lowering their voices a notch.
"Looks like Yeoncheong's actually late today."
"Maybe she's running behind picking up Seoha's birthday present."
December twenty-first. Today was not only Hwaryeong High School's closing ceremony — it was also Seoha's birthday.
As luck would have it, the two dates had lined up perfectly, and Yeoncheong and her friends had made plans to go out together as soon as the ceremony ended. Which was why each of their bags, the ones they otherwise wouldn't have needed to bring, held a gift for Seoha.
But things took a slightly different turn than expected.
It started when Teacher Jisu, who everyone assumed would rake Yeoncheong over the coals for her empty seat, simply let it slide.
She had looked, plain as day, at a desk with no person and no bag — and passed over it without a word.
Had she gotten advance notice that Yeoncheong would be late?
They chalked it up to her being a little later than usual. But the ceremony came and went, and Yeoncheong never showed up at school at all.
"You all know what's what, right? Next year we're third-years. This is your last chance to play, so play your hearts out — and I'll see you next year without any problems."
The classroom dissolved into cheerful chaos after that stock-standard closing address, and Yeoncheong's friends — Suyeon at their head — swarmed around Teacher Jisu.
"Miss! What about Yeoncheong?"
"Hm?"
"Yeoncheong. She didn't come today."
Between each segment of the closing ceremony broadcast over the school speakers,
they'd sent texts and made calls, but the number 1 stubbornly refused to vanish, and the sound bleeding through from the other end was nothing but the mechanical tone of a powered-off phone.
That was what had brought them to their homeroom teacher, anxious to find out what was going on.
The girls, who had bad memories of a friend suddenly going unreachable, looked distinctly grim — but the teacher herself showed no sign of trouble beyond a shadow of fatigue under her eyes.
"Oh, she called in sick."
"...Sorry, what?"
Far from the catastrophe they'd braced for, what came out of Teacher Jisu's mouth was the most ordinary thing in the world.
"She's got a fever, and her whole body aches. From the sound of it, it seems like the flu, so I just told her to rest at home."
It was certainly a situation that warranted worry. But it wasn't the worst-case scenario burned into their memories.
Suyeon, relieved ten years' worth, puffed out her cheeks and glowered at the teacher.
"Why didn't you tell us?"
"Nobody else asked, and today's just the ceremony and then it's over, so... Besides, I figured you girls would more or less guess why she's sick?"
At Teacher Jisu's words, Suyeon and her friends traded glances, something vaguely guilty pricking at each of them.
Meanwhile, blissfully unaware of her friends' worry,
Yeoncheong lay sprawled in bed, a thick blanket pulled all the way up to her chin, groaning in misery.
Uuugh... I'm dying.
There was exactly one reason Yeoncheong had caught cold in recent memory: that day it snowed all night, she'd run wild across the playground at lunch, swept up in the excitement.
She'd been shoved by Nayun and rolled around in the snowdrifts; she'd even committed a terrible sin and nearly been built into a snowman. Looking back, it was almost foolish to have believed she wouldn't get sick.
She'd felt fine that day and for the next several — but whether the episode had worn down her immune system or not, the cold struck her with a delay.
The moment she opened her eyes that morning, she'd known exactly how bad things were, and after notifying her teacher she'd done nothing but lie in bed ever since.
Staring at the ceiling, blinking slowly, Yeoncheong let out a long sigh.
This is... kind of pathetic, isn't it...
Her whole body ached too much to even shower properly, and short of trips to the bathroom she hadn't left the bed at all. Toast was her usual breakfast, but there was no way something that dry was going down in her current state, so her stomach sat empty — and to top it off, the hunger pangs kept coming, her belly growling nonstop for food.
Her circumstances simply could not have been more wretched.
God, this is the worst...
In a whole year, Yeoncheong hadn't suffered so much as a sniffle — and only now was she getting a visceral taste of the single greatest drawback of living alone.
And with one parent overseas and the other up in heaven, neither could come rushing over because she was sick. The loneliness she felt was beyond words.
For no particular reason, Yeoncheong sniffled.
Ah... I miss Mom.
Probably the first time since elementary school. At the thought that had surfaced unbidden, Yeoncheong rolled onto her side.
Nothing hurt quite like missing someone who could never come back, no matter what you did. As if aching in her body was suffering enough, Yeoncheong shut her eyes tight, resolving to at least sleep the time away.
But even the peace of sleep demanded its bare minimum of conditions.
Her stomach rumbled shamelessly, her body ached from head to toe, and even after taking the fever medicine at home, her head still burned hot.
The medicine was probably old; whatever potency it once had seemed long gone.
If anything, shutting her eyes only sharpened her senses, which delivered every one of those miseries to their owner with painful precision.
She was just trying, at the very least, to find a comfortable position. Yeoncheong was rolling over with her eyes still closed when—
Thud. Thud.
The knock at the door startled her so badly she flinched.
"Aaah..."
Her sore muscles cried out in alarm, and a low, floor-dragging moan spilled naturally from Yeoncheong's lips.
"Yeoncheong! It's us!"
She'd wondered who it could be, but the voice that followed let her breathe a sigh of relief.
"Is she asleep, maybe?"
"Want me to ring the front door bell from downstairs?"
"No, she might be sleeping."
"Let's call out one more time, then leave it at the door."
Maybe it was because the building was so quiet, but the trademark high-pitched registers of high school girls cut clean through the door. She couldn't make out the conversation exactly, but she could tell the hallway was in an uproar.
Gripping the mattress, Yeoncheong dragged herself upright with great effort.
She grabbed the face mask sitting on the nightstand and stretched her legs toward the floor. Her brain had issued the order perfectly — but somewhere along the line, the signals had crossed, and instead of her legs, both arms shot out past the edge of the bed.
Her upper body's center of gravity swung outward. Tilt. Yeoncheong toppled clean off the bed.
Just as a soundless scream tore from her throat,
the muffled thump from inside made the situation in the hallway turn serious.
"Hey, what was that? It came from inside."
"Should we call 911?"
"Isn't that a bit much?"
"Her phone's off — what else are we supposed to do?"
"Then let's just break it down."
"Oh, come on, we're not in a movie..."
"No, wait. Seoha, Seoha...!"
Amid the chaos brewing outside, Yeoncheong hauled herself up by the nightstand and winced.
"Ugh... loud."
Who knew what they'd do if she delayed a second longer. Mustering every ounce of strength, she took a step.
The racket grew clearer with every meter she approached. Bracing herself against the wall, Yeoncheong turned the doorknob.
The friends, frozen mid-scene, found themselves face to face with the very landlady they'd been so desperate to see. Yeoncheong squinted and forced her mouth open.
"Guys, I'm really, really sick, so..."
Her voice was thick and low, and she kept coughing as if her throat were parched. A red flush lingered on her forehead and cheeks — anyone could see she was burning up.
Worse, her hair hung in disheveled strands, as if she hadn't washed properly, and her half-lidded eyes broadcast the fatigue stacked up in her body at a glance.
She was dressed in pink pajamas that would have stolen every gaze in the room under normal circumstances — but her friends' eyes were locked on Yeoncheong herself.
Among them, Suyeon's eyes, damp to the point that a waterfall seemed ready to burst loose at any moment, launched herself at Yeoncheong.
"Yeoncheong!"
"Get... f... off me, I'm si—"
Escaping her was hard enough on a normal day; with her body in this state, it was flatly impossible.
Trapped in Suyeon's grasp, Yeoncheong cried for rescue, and only then did Hasol snap to her senses and pull her off.
"S-Suyeon! Yeoncheong's a patient! A patient!"