No Appetite
After the BMI measurement wrapped up, the fitness testing for Yeoncheong's class finally came to an end.
Classes. Getting dragged out during lunch. More classes. Planning club activities after school. She'd been spending her days in the same peaceful routine as always for the past few days.
But her unusual behavior had started to puzzle her friends.
There was clearly something going on, but she wasn't talking about it...
So at lunchtime, after leaving Yeoncheong in the care of Siyeon and Seobin, the others gathered in secret for a meeting.
They did this because, as they kept reminding themselves, there was precedent. Things might vary from case to case, but if she'd just been honest about her worries each time, it would never have come to this.
"So. Anyone have a guess as to why Yeoncheong's been acting like this lately?"
Hasol, who shared a class with her, asked first, but no answer came back.
It should have been easy to notice, with the way the atmosphere around her had changed, but she had a habit of pressing her lips shut tight—and nobody knew the reason.
Amid the brief silence, Suyeon, who had been watching everyone's reactions, shrugged first.
"She won't answer even when we ask, so how are we supposed to know?"
"What's she like when she's with you guys?"
Seoha asked what she was like around friends in the classroom. She was hoping to piece together the information and dig up a new clue.
Hasol glanced sideways at Nayun, who was in the same class, her lips wavering.
"Hmm... kind of low on energy?"
"Like she's deliberately not spending any of it."
Nayun nodded as if agreeing with the assessment.
Chin propped on her hand, Seoha recalled their recent lunches and murmured.
"She seems about the same as when she's with us..."
"Yeah, she's been picking at her food lately. Her appetite's definitely dropped."
At Suyeon's remark, offered up like an answer to a call, Hasol and Nayun spoke at the same time.
"Right."
"Definitely lost her appetite."
At some point she'd started turning down the snacks she used to devour without hesitation, and at lunch she took less rice than usual.
Once they'd landed on the common thread—a loss of appetite—Nayun offered up a plausible theory.
"Do you think it's that time of the month? I've heard some people lose their appetite during it."
Eating is such an essential part of human life that the old saying about clothing, food, and shelter exists for a reason. If she couldn't eat properly because she had no appetite, that would perfectly explain why she'd been looking so drained lately.
The other three friends must have agreed, because heads started nodding one by one.
Except.
"Then there's nothing we can do about it, is there?"
Just as Hasol said.
If that was the case, there was no real fix. From what they'd heard before, the best you could do was take medicine preemptively if you felt off, that sort of thing.
Apparently she managed it thoroughly these days.
All that remained was to wait for that day to pass.
Having resolved the reason for their meeting more anticlimactically than expected, Nayun leaned back in her chair and looked around.
"Anyway. This place really does feel like a proper hideout."
"Right? I'm pretty satisfied with it. I've even been thinking about redecorating at some point."
So this was where the four of them could meet so comfortably—had Teacher Jisu, who had entrusted her keys to these girls out of trust, seen this scene, she would have gasped in dismay.
Seoha got up, strolled around the room for a bit, then stopped in front of the window.
"So this is where that fun little incident happened... What a shame I missed it."
"It was only fun for us. Yeoncheong looked like she wanted to die of embarrassment."
"No exaggeration. When I asked her what color they were, the wind started blowing like something out of a manga..."
With that worry settled, they decided not to head over now—they might needlessly run into Yeoncheong in the cafeteria.
And so her friends passed the time regaling the absent Seoha with the story of that day.
Meanwhile.
...Someone's talking about me, aren't they.
Eating lunch with the unfamiliar pairing of Siyeon and Seobin, Yeoncheong's ears were prickling for some reason. She glanced absently around the empty air.
Just as her friends had figured out that something was off about her, she too noticed the change within a single day.
Unlike her friends, who had needed days of observation to catch on, there was a painfully funny reason Yeoncheong caught on so fast...
What's with them? Why are they being so nice to me?
It was because her friends—especially Nayun and Suyeon—had started treating her the way you'd treat a sick person.
Nayun, who'd only recently been teasing her with "Sky-bluey" instead of "Daengcheongi," and Suyeon, who'd been snickering about her underwear color just days ago. So it didn't take her long to realize her friends had once again cooked up some bizarre misunderstanding.
The fact that she'd noticed something was wrong at that particular point made her feel like she was officially certifying herself as the group's designated punching bag, which left her with mixed feelings—but first things first, the misunderstanding in front of her needed clearing up.
"You guys. Is there a reason you're all being so nice to me?"
At lunchtime, when Yeoncheong gathered her friends and asked this,
Suyeon, nodding as if she'd known this was coming, spoke for the group, lips pursing thoughtfully.
"We know your condition's been off lately, okay? Consider it our warm, loving care."
They were deliberately avoiding naming it directly, so their daengcheong friend tilted her head and pushed back.
"Me? My condition's off?"
In the end, Seoha laid out their airtight theory—and the girl in question's face crumpled before this answer came back.
"That time of the month...? What are you talking about? Mine already passed."
At the instant reply, without a shred of a lie, the four friends' eyes went wide as they scrambled to exchange glances.
They'd been convinced Nayun's theory was one hundred percent correct. A second and third predicted answer had never existed in their plan.
Just as everyone stood flustered and at a loss, Seoha chose to charge straight through.
"Then what's going on with you? You've barely been eating, and you've had no energy lately."
"Th-that's right. What's wrong with you?"
"It wasn't that time of the month killing your appetite?"
Suyeon and Nayun piled on questions the instant the previous one ended, talking over each other, and even quiet Hasol looked like she genuinely wanted to know the reason.
Concern is better than indifference, sure—but there was really no need to show concern about that particular direction.
Yeoncheong looked back at her friends with a face full of awkwardness.
"Ah... that thing...?"
Trailing off and avoiding their eyes.
So there was something she was hiding.
Seoha slammed both palms on the desk, cornering her.
Her neat, fine hair—sharp enough to cut if it touched you—slid forward along her body as she leaned in. Those crimson eyes looked her up and down from above. Layer on top of that Seoha's signature air, always cold yet utterly self-assured, and what you got was—
The presence of a predator.
Yeoncheong's body instinctively shrank back, her lips fluttering.
"D-die... di..."
"Die?"
While Seoha was puzzling over what word could possibly follow, Suyeon produced the answer from behind her.
"Wait—do you mean a diet?"
"......Yeah."
Yeoncheong answered after a long moment of deliberation and hung her head.
In that instant, only a single thought filled her friends' minds.
Why on earth?
Dieting was certainly a lifelong project for women, but it wasn't a word that suited Yeoncheong at all.
The swimsuit figure they'd seen last summer vacation was all curve where it should curve and tucked-in where it should tuck. She didn't binge eat, and she ran around gleefully during PE, so they'd assumed weight worries would never be a concern for her.
Though the fact that she was now worrying about it just like every other girl struck her friends as oddly refreshing.
Hasol, mulling over when exactly she'd changed, suddenly cried out.
"Oh! The BMI measurement the other day!"
"That's right. We weighed her then too. No wonder she was running around harder than usual that day."
The moment her friends' worry had kicked in came after she'd started eating less and losing energy. Nobody had even considered the day she'd run laps around the field grumbling in shock about gaining weight.
Skipping breakfast out of shock. Cutting back on lunch and dinner. Avoiding snacks entirely... Given Yeoncheong's usual activity level, it was no wonder she had no energy left—she'd built the perfect environment for it.
In the end, her friends' worry had been a whole incident manufactured by Yeoncheong's clumsy first-ever diet.
Relieved, Nayun sneaked a careful look around her before venturing a question.
"So... how much did you gain, that you're making this big a fuss? Can you tell us?"
On the outside, nobody could see any difference at all.
Yeoncheong was a girl now, and weight was a sensitive subject for girls. Even Nayun respected that line.
After glancing around, she gathered her friends' ears together in a huddle and whispered softly.
"Aww~ it's not that much. That's well within margin of error."
Nayun's reaction, the first one out, essentially became everyone else's.
But apparently even that tiny increase in weight didn't sit right with her, because Yeoncheong pouted her lips and grumbled.
"Still... it's basically the first time in my life I've gained like that."
"Have you been eating a lot of something new lately?"
"Anything special you've been having?"
Yeoncheong shook her head, then started folding down fingers as she recalled what she'd been eating recently.
Bread for breakfast. School lunch in the afternoon. Dinner eaten alone. The occasional snack—jelly or chips—with her friends.
In this thoroughly ordinary list, there was one item that made Suyeon and Seoha doubt their own ears.
"Hold on, hold on. The chocolate—don't tell me...?"
"Mm, the one you two gave me for Valentine's Day."
She nodded as if it were nothing at all, but the faces of Seoha and Suyeon twisted at the answer.
The problem wasn't that she'd only just gotten around to eating it. It was chocolate, after all—keeping it in the fridge and rationing it out over time was a perfectly reasonable option.
What the two of them took issue with was the fact that she'd finished it in a single day.
"You ate it ALL in one day? That much?"
"You ate it ALL in one day? That big?"
Hasol and Nayun blinked rapidly, wondering what on earth the two of them had given her.
What the two of them didn't know was that those creations had been made with a confession half-hidden in the heart—which meant both Seoha and Suyeon had poured no ordinary amount of effort into them.
Needless to say, the quantity must have been considerable.
And she'd eaten it all in one day... the calorie count was beyond imagining.
"Aigoo! Aigoo!"
Like a parent scolding a child who couldn't stay out of trouble, Suyeon smacked Yeoncheong on the back—thwack, thwack—while Seoha pressed a hand to her forehead, unable to find words.
"Yeoncheong..."
"I figured I couldn't just leave a gift sitting in the fridge forever."
"That doesn't mean you had to eat it all at once!"
"Well, it was delicious, so."
At this unguarded admission, the two gift-givers flinched in unison.
Having been told that the chocolate they'd made with such care was delicious, they found themselves stripped of the will to scold any further.
Suyeon cleared her throat for no reason and straightened her collar. But the delight bleeding into her voice was not so easily hidden.
"Is, is that so? Then we can count on something for White Day, right?"
"Yeoncheong. I'm counting on it too. That was the first chocolate I've ever made in my life, you know."
And so Seoha, who'd been radiating predator's aura just moments ago, was now looking forward to the White Day return gifts coming up...
"Wow... we're playing the partition wall here, and these two are doing WHAT exactly?"
"Seriously. If it's that good, share some with us too. I'm honestly so hurt..."
"Hasol. I think we should just play by ourselves from now on~"
They'd always known they'd witness scenes like this someday, but seeing it in person made their sides ache for no good reason.
"Guys, can somebody help me out here? Hasol? Nayun?"
And so Yeoncheong, wedged between the two clinging friends, cast desperate pleading looks for rescue—and it was, once again, a day no different from any other.