Closing Out the Year
'Blankets really are the best place on earth.'
Yeoncheong poked her head out from under the covers, a soft smile playing on her lips.
It had been several days since the rowdy Christmas celebration. The hours, which had slipped by in a blink, had somehow already carried the calendar to its very last page—pointing the way to the end of the year.
The clock floating in the corner of her smartphone informed her that the evening had long since slipped past. She'd eaten dinner, run a load of laundry that was already hung up to dry, and finished all the cleaning by midday, so apart from trips to the bathroom, Yeoncheong hadn't left her bed at all.
The house was quiet. Yeoncheong, who had been watching videos, pushed her phone off to one side. Staring at a tiny screen while lying down must have worn her out more than she realized—rubbing her gritty eyes with both hands, she slowly raised her arms into a stretch.
"Mmmngh..."
Thump.
Her slowly rising fist stopped dead against the headboard, and instead of finishing the stretch upward, Yeoncheong slid her body down the bed to complete it. She rolled over, dragged the blanket back up under her chin, secured herself a proper airway, and stared blankly at the ceiling.
Already the end of a whole year?
It wasn't quite the sensation of waking up to find a year had vanished, but between being dragged here and shoved there, the last day of December had arrived before she knew it.
Which meant it had been about ten months since her entire life had been turned upside down and she'd transferred to the all-girls high school.
Hugging the pillow that sat abandoned at the head of her bed, Yeoncheong thought: Have I not adjusted way too well?
On her first day of school she'd been a frozen bundle of nerves, late and stiff as a board. Yet just days ago her friends had shown up for a group hospital visit, and at Christmas she'd gone out to celebrate one of their birthdays—bearing a gift, no less, as if they were far more than casual acquaintances.
She wasn't an extreme introvert by nature, but it was still a change that made her wonder how it was even possible. All the more so when she remembered the beginning of this year, when she'd been a woman in name only, a shell she barely knew how to inhabit.
Of course, some of it was her own effort. But Yeoncheong knew exactly what had helped her most.
I got lucky.
Lucky. If you had to sum up Yeoncheong's year in a single sentence, no matter how many times she said it, it never felt like enough.
She'd been through something rare enough that you could search the whole world and not find its like, yet there had been an adult looking out for her. For a girl who might have ended up an island unto herself had she failed to adapt, there had been friends—kind-hearted friends who had even embraced a secret she never wanted brought to light.
If you calculated the share each person had held in Yeoncheong's life over the past year, Chairwoman Yurim and her friends would account for more than eighty percent of it.
Granted, her reactions were so delicious that she got roughhoused with, and sometimes—or more often than she'd like to admit—found herself in mortifying situations.
But she couldn't have asked for better friends. Not once more.
"Ha..."
As her chain of thought arrived at that point, a sigh slipped out of her of its own accord.
Everything would be perfect if they just stopped at liking me.
If the affection they professed meant nothing more than friendship—the closeness of best friends—there wouldn't have been a single problem.
It would have been fine if they'd kept the distance Hasol or Nayun maintained. Where on earth had they picked up a taste for her? The two friends who had latched onto her were painfully, inconveniently special cases.
And the bigger problem was...
No tree won't fall to ten blows, as the saying goes—knock long enough and the door opens. Bit by bit, Yeoncheong had started to notice her two friends' displays of affection.
For now things were teetering along on top of ordinary friendly goodwill, but she had a feeling that if anything happened, the whole balancing act would come crashing down at once.
Pushing away friends who had accepted even her secret, just because they liked her, would look strange. But there wasn't the slightest sign of them giving up on her, either.
The more she turned it over, the less answer there was—just more sighs. It was that kind of relationship.
Just then, a notification chimed from the phone lying carelessly on the bed. Yeoncheong stretched out an arm, fished around for it, looked at the screen, and smirked.
Virtually no one goes to bed early and rises early during break, and Yeoncheong was no exception—lying there, she tapped out her own message confirming she was awake as well.
Since Suyeon had been the one to summon everyone, it was naturally Suyeon who broke the ice.
It was just past eleven at night. Whether they were waiting for the new year or awake for other reasons, there was no reason to sleep through the stroke of midnight after staying up this long.
Yeoncheong had only been idly poking at her phone when the night got late, but with no reason to wake up early, she intended to stay up until twelve anyway.
That said, there's always one person who swims against the current.
That one was Seoha. The moment her "going to bed" message landed, Suyeon's replies came pouring down like machine-gun fire.
Suyeon's firing speed far outstripped Seoha's reply rate—and without a single typo in the process, making it a naked demonstration of the difference in their typing skills.
So that's why she asked if we were still awake.
Thanks to Suyeon, Yeoncheong and the other two now understood the reason they'd been summoned. With nothing to do until midnight, Suyeon's scheme was clearly to pass the time gossiping.
Before Yeoncheong could even finish reading the last message on her screen, the group voice call connected.
***
Do we really have to go this far? Yeoncheong and Nayun had grumbled at first, but considering how slowly Seoha typed on a smartphone, and the better part of an hour of gossip ahead, it had been an excellent decision.
Since they were all in the same class, the flow of conversation naturally took on the shape of looking back on the year.
Christmas had been the last time they'd all met, so there wasn't an overwhelming backlog of news—which made it a perfectly apt topic.
"Ha... Seoha was hilarious back then..."
"Right? I always figured Seoha was good at everything."
The conversation jumped forward and back, leaping across the timeline as they all found themselves remembering the day they'd gone to the sea together.
"Oh, right. We all just assumed she was resting because she didn't like the sun."
"It was her first time, so of course she wouldn't know."
The day they'd first glimpsed Seoha's stubbornly human side. Since that trip had been eight or nine parts embarrassing stories about Yeoncheong, an occasion where Seoha became everyone's target like this was a rare treat.
Naturally, Yeoncheong also let her mouth run loose—when else was I ever going to get to tease her?
"Exactly, Seoha. If you've never done it, anyone would struggle. A person can flounder around in water that doesn't even reach their waist."
Besides, at school there would have been real risk of retaliation—but this wasn't school, was it? They weren't even going to see each other for a while.
Practically untouchable, Yeoncheong gleefully set about roasting Seoha.
"It's not like we're mermaids living in the ocean. You can survive just fine without knowing how to swim, so no worries."
Which was why she failed to notice the silence flowing through from the other end of the line.
"...Yeoncheong. Do I look like someone who just sat quietly on the beach reading a book?"
"...Uh, no?"
"I was saving these just for me, but..."
Her friend's voice, pitched low and ominous, put Yeoncheong on edge.
She was just about to placate her—what on earth are you talking about?—when, with a cascade of notification sounds, photos began flooding into the group chat one after another.
Yeoncheong raised her phone to check them and went cold with horror.
Photos brimming with an unconscious, unguarded naturalness—splashing water on her friends with a radiant grin, hitching up her swimsuit with a hand at her hip or chest.
Because her, playing in the ocean with her friends, was captured in every single frame. For Yeoncheong, who had refused every solo shot out of embarrassment over her swimsuit and only ever agreed to group photos, there could be no attack more devastating than this.
Covering her face with both hands, Yeoncheong let out a scream.
"Seoha, stop... stooop!"
"Smartphone cameras really have gotten amazing lately, haven't they?"
In an instant the tide of battle had turned, and while Yeoncheong begged Seoha for mercy with clasped hands, her friends—who had lucked into an unexpected feast for the eyes—were having the time of their lives.
Saving the photos because they were cute. Reminiscing about that day, marveling anew at how bold her swimsuit had been.
And Yeoncheong, off in the distance and caught off guard, was the only one having a miserable time of it.
***
Even after the seasonally inappropriate swimsuit photos had swept through the group chat and moved on, the gossip continued.
The Sports Festival, the Hwaryeong Festival, the school trip. Beyond the seaside trip over summer break, they'd spent a lot of time together as a group, so the well of stories was in no danger of running dry.
Just as the laughter was hitting its peak, Hasol's lips began to tremble.
"Guys... it's 11:59."
At those words the chatter cut off mid-flow, and silence settled over the line. Yeoncheong found herself staring at the clock, and from the tiny sounds of breathing, it seemed the others were all doing exactly the same.
The moment 59 flipped to 00, everyone's lips started to move at once.
"Happy New Year, guys!"
"Happy New Year."
"Happy New Year. Looking forward to more with you all."
"Happy New Year."
Even tangled together, the voices carried slightly different shades of the same wish.
"Happy New Year... guys, really—thank you."
Yeoncheong too greeted the arriving new year with a whole year's worth of feeling packed into the words.
Normally it would have been too embarrassing, so occasions like this—when the mood let her slip her sincerity in edgewise—were a good thing.
But her emotions must have run hotter than she'd intended, because even amid the jumble of voices, Yeoncheong's greeting had apparently stuck out. Hasol asked with a laugh.
"Yeoncheong, why does your voice sound so emotional? You're not crying, are you?"
"Who's crying? I'm fine."
"She's right, though. We'll all see each other next year too. Don't talk like we're never meeting again."
Suyeon teased her as well, lowering her own slightly raised voice in imitation.
No one could see her, so Yeoncheong stuck out her lip in a pout.
"Your friend says thank you and you can't just... take it at face value?"
"Hey, your voice was way too earnest for that."
Nayun's point was valid enough that Yeoncheong had no real comeback. The promised midnight had long since passed. Times like these called for a tactical retreat.
"Anyway, I'm going to sleep now."
"Already? I'm not even sleepy yet. Let's play a little longer."
No matter how Suyeon clung to the phone and wheedled, Yeoncheong remained on the other end of the line, beyond her reach.
Unless Yeoncheong had ammunition like Seoha's photos to counterattack with, stopping her was impossible. Having resigned herself to Yeoncheong's firm resolve, Suyeon asked for one last thing.
"Okay then, Yeoncheong. Just one thing. Just one."
"What is it?"
Yeoncheong answered absently, tidying her covers as she prepared to sleep.
"Dream about me~"
"Wh... what?"
Yeoncheong asked her to repeat it, doubting her own ears, but Suyeon had already left the group call, leaving only those words behind.
"Guys... did I hear that right?"
"Yep. You did."
"Good night. Let's meet up sometime if our schedules line up."
After Hasol, who confirmed there was nothing wrong with Yeoncheong's hearing, and Nayun, who pleaded sleepiness and a rain check, also dropped off, the five-person group call was reduced to an ordinary one-on-one between Yeoncheong and Seoha.
With the once-bustling chat gone quiet, Yeoncheong felt the awkward lull and moved to end the call with a light goodbye—but Seoha beat her to the punch.
"Yeoncheong."
"Y-yeah?"
"If you're going to dream, mine works too."
And with that, Seoha also logged off, leaving only her parting shot behind.
There was no reason to sit still at twelve o'clock at night, so Yeoncheong shuffled out of bed and headed for the bathroom. After taking care of business and sending her father a simple New Year's greeting as well, she sank straight into her mattress.
She must have been genuinely exhausted, because sleep took her almost immediately.
As it happened, she did dream. Suyeon on her left, Seoha on her right.
They whispered I like you into both her ears, each gripping one of her hands and refusing to let go. They ruffled her hair without restraint and peppered her cheeks with kisses, and so—
A good dream...
Mm...
"Nnngh... Seo—nngh, ahh..."
No. It was a nightmare.