A New Member... Or So It Seems
After the birthday party that made her wonder if she'd always been this much of a crier, a few days passed.
It was lunchtime, a few days later, in Class 3-1 — Yeoncheong's classroom.
Seoha sat at the center of the group, friends gathered around her in a circle, offering their congratulations.
"You worked hard this past year."
The school year had barely begun, and after roughly a month, she had stepped down from her duties as student council president.
Yeoncheong didn't know the details of everything she'd done, but there had been club management, the sports festival, the school festival, and so on.
Remembering how Seoha had run herself ragged from place to place, Yeoncheong figured the job had been even more demanding than she could imagine — if anything, more so, certainly not less.
"Thank you."
To the girl who answered with a smile like something out of a painting, Nayun posed a question.
"By the way, the one who got elected as the new president... Chaerin, was it? Why is she looking half-dead at her desk? Any idea?"
In a way, it was only natural.
Chaerin, whom Yeoncheong knew by face, had joined the student council with her eyes fixed on Seoha alone — it was no exaggeration to say so.
With Seoha gone, there was no longer any reason for her to be there, so she'd naturally tried to step down. But by tradition, the first-year vice presidency was the top seed for the next council president, and her application had been an impulsive one, made on the strength of a single remark from Seoha: 'I think you'd do well.'
She'd come to her senses too late and prayed she'd lose the election, but with no real competition to speak of, she'd sailed straight through to victory.
Given how she felt about it, it would have been stranger if she'd looked pleased.
"Hmm... who knows?"
Seoha had a rough idea of the situation, but for the sake of the junior who had suffered for a year and would suffer for another, she decided to keep a small secret.
"Tsk... no fun."
"Well, having you as her predecessor might have felt like too much pressure," Hasol offered.
Her answer seemed to satisfy Nayun, who nodded and pressed on.
"Then... does that mean you'll be joining Yeoncheong's club now?"
Even without anyone saying it aloud, everyone had been making the same prediction as Nayun.
Seoha was a free woman now, after all. There was no reason on earth not to go where the friend she loved was.
But Suyeon, as if she'd looked something up, shook her head side to side.
"Ahh~ no can do. Third-years aren't allowed to join new clubs."
The club regulations came out as if she'd been waiting all along for her cue.
Almost no student bothered memorizing rules down to the fine print, so Hasol narrowed her eyes and probed her friend.
"Oh really? And when exactly did you look that up? Keeping anyone from monopolizing Yeoncheong, are we?"
"N-no, I wasn't! Back when we had that whole club room incident. I was checking over things briefly in case something else came up. That's the only time I saw it."
She shook her head so violently her hair flew, waving both hands in frantic denial — but if this was her whole-body denial of hitting the mark, it wasn't very convincing.
"Mm-hmm~ Sure. I'll take your word for it."
"Suyeon, I'm a little hurt."
Hasol deliberately chose to take it at face value, and Seoha piled on with a playful jab from the side.
Now it was Suyeon whose ears had gone scarlet, and she denied it with everything she had.
"No, nooo! Seoha, that's not it at all, I swear."
Meanwhile.
So... what exactly are we doing now?
Yeoncheong was curious about her friend's destination — the friend who had refused to tell her what she was planning until the very end.
When their eyes met, the person in question — whether she read Yeoncheong's mind or not — only smiled a crescent-moon smile.
***
It didn't take long to find out what Seoha was up to after school.
While Suyeon had gone to the teachers' office to sort out club paperwork, Seoha came to the club room herself, where Yeoncheong was keeping watch alone with a book.
"Hello."
School bag still on her shoulder, no less.
Whether the door had been left slightly ajar or not, her friend slipped in without a sound, and Yeoncheong jumped, slamming the book shut.
"S-Seoha? What brings you here?"
"What do you think? I came for club activities."
The reply was natural yet utterly out of left field, and Yeoncheong blinked.
"Huh?"
"Mm."
Short question, even shorter answer.
Seoha simply nodded along with her clipped responses.
In the end, Yeoncheong had to string some words together and press for details.
"Suyeon said at lunch that you can't newly join clubs. So how are you—"
"I'm not a new member, though?"
It was like being handed a riddle with no clues, and Yeoncheong's face scrunched up.
"What's that supposed to mean? If you're not a new member, then what are you?"
"Do you know which club I was in last year?"
Whether she wanted Yeoncheong to figure it out herself, or simply enjoyed watching her squirm with curiosity, Seoha answered each question with another question.
Deciding she wasn't going to get a straight answer, Yeoncheong began dredging up her memories of last March, combing through them inch by inch.
And then it came to her.
She remembered being dragged around by Suyeon and Hasol, touring one club after another, and finding Seoha waiting at the very last one they visited.
She also remembered Suyeon's pleading — that she was bored alone, that Seoha should stay with her until she became student council president.
"Oh. Don't tell me..."
"'Returning to my old club'... I think that's the most accurate way to put it."
Seoha smiled as if to say, yes, that's the answer you're thinking of.
"It's only for one semester, but I'm counting on you."
Not a new membership — a rejoin.
She'd picked apart a loophole in the regulations and engineered this whole situation. A clever girl. A very, very clever girl indeed.
***
After hearing a detailed account of the whole process, Yeoncheong's verdict was as follows.
"Seriously, was all that really necessary...?"
It seemed absurd that she'd gone and argued the regulations point by point with the teachers.
Honestly, the club was so loose and laid-back — Suyeon and she only stayed because they had nothing better to do.
Seoha could have spent that time studying on her own, or pushed her way into a different club with all that effort and built up a far more impressive activity record.
For a girl who lived two or three academic tiers above everyone else, watching her squander time like this felt like a genuine waste.
"It's because you're here."
But from Seoha's perspective, none of it was wasted.
If anything, it was reclaiming time that had already been wasted.
Yeoncheong had somewhat expected that to be one of the reasons, but having it said outright — I came here for you, and you alone — made her jolt.
She was delighted to learn she was such an enormous presence in Seoha's life, yet the sliver of reason still cowering in the corner of her mind barely managed a voice.
"Th-that's still... there's college coming up. It's a critical time for you."
"Are you seriously worried about me?"
The owner of those round red eyes let out a soft laugh and shook her head, and the black hair swaying with the motion stole Yeoncheong's gaze entirely.
"Yeoncheong."
"Y-yes?"
Yeoncheong flinched, caught out for being so absorbed in her friend's hair.
"Before you arrived, and every year since, I've been first in the school. And I'm confident I'll be first again going forward. It might sound insufferably arrogant, but I'm certain that even now, I could have my pick of universities."
Arrogant to the core — and Seoha seemed to know it.
But it was a fact she had proven with two straight years as the top student in her grade, and one she would very likely prove again.
"Filling in more of what's already complete is just inefficient. So instead, I intend to pour my energy into the side of my life that's been lacking."
The red eyes fixed on Yeoncheong glistened with spring sunlight filtering through the window, and following the gentle breeze, the corners of her mouth lifted.
At that expression granted to her and her alone, Yeoncheong's blue eyes darted this way and that.
How could anyone be this shameless about expressing their feelings?
As Yeoncheong floundered for a response, Seoha's lips moved lightly.
"And besides — the one who should be worried about college is you. Because I want to go to the same university as you."
"Th... that might be asking a bit too much, don't you think...?"
Seoha lived two or three tiers above everyone else academically. A miracle might happen once or even twice, but even a single miracle was close to impossible here.
The clever girl surely knew that too.
It was nothing more than groundwork for the next part of the conversation.
"You think so too, right? That's exactly why I came. This is the last year I get to be by your side like this. And club activities are the only way to get even closer than we already are."
Not like the butterfly effect — nothing carefully packaged and pretty. These were words that flowed out as naturally as breathing.
And every one of them kept hammering away at Yeoncheong's heart.
When she wasn't paying attention, she could shrug it off. But now, each and every line landed like a critical hit.
"Er... um. Okay, I get it. You didn't really need to explain it in this much detail."
And so Yeoncheong begged for mercy.
"You seemed like you didn't quite understand, though. I wanted you to know for certain, since it matters."
Seoha's hand, resting idly on the desk, climbed atop the back of Yeoncheong's hand and gave it a little tap-tap.
As if to prove she hadn't forgotten about it sitting there all lonely — she had no intention of stopping.
Suyeon wasn't around to intervene, either. She'd stripped out her brakes a long time ago.
"Th-then, can I ask you one more thing?"
At that moment, Yeoncheong looked up into her friend's eyes, her face flushed.
Blocking Seoha was impossible anyway. So she resolved to ask the question she'd always been too embarrassed to ask.
Her friend shrugged, as if to say, go for anything.
"Um... you know the butterfly effect thing?"
"Wh-what...?"
At the appearance of a word she never saw coming, Seoha flinched.
Whether she noticed that reaction or not, Yeoncheong pressed on.
"I've been thinking it over, and does that mean you like me because I'm a girl?"
"Huh? How does it turn into that?"
"Because I became a girl, and I transferred, and then I met you — that's what you meant, right? You also told me not to think of becoming a girl as a misfortune."
Hearing her own almost-confession quoted back through someone else's mouth was mortifying.
Especially since the person herself had branded that whole episode as her cringe-worthy past...
Her face coloring in a peculiar way, Seoha forced herself to cool down and analyzed her friend's words.
Ah. So there was a misunderstanding.
No metaphor is ever one hundred percent perfect, they say — and her clumsily packaged words had apparently invited exactly that.
Hoping to redeem that old embarrassment with this chance, Seoha shot up from her seat.
She moved slowly around to Yeoncheong's side, lips parting.
"First of all... the butterfly effect. Just forget about that. I regret how I put it, too."
Apparently this was an awkward memory for her as well — Yeoncheong caught her absently twisting her long hair around and around.
"As for telling you not to think of it as a misfortune... that was because you'd been through something painful. It was a comfort — a reminder not to dwell on something that couldn't be undone. And underneath it, I hoped that my existence might be some small comfort to you."
It wasn't exactly a problem-solving session.
But walking through her words one by one was both funny, and — for a Daengcheongi who'd only recognized her own feelings a full year later — a thorough explanation like this wasn't half bad.
Yeoncheong was the type who actually understood things worse when they were phrased roundabout, after all.
Before she knew it, Seoha had arrived and settled naturally into the seat beside her.
"And finally — whether I like you because you're a girl... hmm. I never knew you as a boy, but it's not just the way you look."
The red eyes gazed straight into the blue ones, as if to see straight through them.
"Your manner of speaking, the way you act, your personality — I've come to love everything about you. Does that answer your question?"
An answer that said she loved the whole of who Yeoncheong was.
The head in question — red past blushing, on the verge of bursting — bobbed violently up and down.
That face of hers, with every emotion showing plain as glass, was itself one of the things Seoha loved.
Even now, she was surely wondering whether she deserved such extravagant affection, at a complete loss for what to do.
At that adorable sight. In that atmosphere gone warm with all the blush-worthy words they'd traded.
Seoha naturally leaned in and brought her lips to Yeoncheong's cheek.
Smooch.
The instant those soft lips brushed lightly against the faintly warmed cheek—
BANG!
Suyeon kicked the door open and swept the club room with her eyes.
She'd been in the final stretch of her conversation with Teacher Jisu about club activities when word came that Seoha had shown up, and she'd sprinted over like a madwoman. Judging by how fast she must have run — panting, breath still a ragged mess — she shouted without even trying to compose herself.
"What is this! What is this atmosphere! I told you two not to race ahead on your own! This is cheating!"
Yeoncheong hurriedly protested that it wasn't like that, that she'd only asked how Seoha could even join the club.
She slipped the book she'd been reading onto the old bookshelf in one swift motion and set about calming Suyeon down.
They had exchanged embarrassing confessions with each other, after all — so she shot Seoha a meaningful glance, silently asking her to play along.
What book was that, I wonder?
Fingering her lips, where the sensation still lingered, Seoha studied the bookshelf with keen interest.
Startled into slamming it shut, and never once opened since someone walked in... just what kind of book could it be?
Her curiosity had been well and truly piqued.