Not Falling for You, Just Falling
She didn't fall for me, she didn't fall...
Several days had passed since the sports festival.
During break, Yeoncheong, Hasol, and Nayun left the classroom together, saying they were headed to the restroom.
The moment they stepped out, a swarm of furtive gazes trailed after them. Yeoncheong sighed, hiding behind her friends like a shield.
"Is this atmosphere going to last much longer?"
At that shameless remark, the two friends who had so willingly become her protective screen each shot back a retort.
"You pulled that whole stunt—did you really think it'd blow over that fast?"
"Yeoncheong, last year's sports festival kept people talking for ages. This is only natural."
With the weather gradually heating up, the fervor of the sports festival had long since been swallowed by it, yet Yeoncheong's cheek kiss still held the number-one topic spot at Hwaryeong High School.
Granted, that kind of skinship wasn't exactly rare.
Close friends often played around even more shamelessly than that, in fact.
Having experienced both an all-boys school and an all-girls school, Yeoncheong could see that girls were considerably more forgiving about that sort of contact than boys.
The only reason the reaction had been so explosive was that the other party was Seoha, whose icy image made it all the more shocking—and that she hadn't shown even a flicker of displeasure.
"No, but seriously... how am I supposed to prove it happened on the spot, huh? I saw how jealous you all were, clear as day."
"Ahem... ahem..."
"Aha... haha... so you saw that, did you?"
Nayun, who had been grumbling about her annoyingly sharp eyesight, thumped Yeoncheong on the back.
"Hey, look on the bright side. At least nobody's spreading weird rumors that you two are dating."
In an all-girls school, spending too much time glued to someone did tend to spawn rumors like that...
But Seoha's image was so impossibly perfect that the prevailing opinion was "anyone would have been her pick."
Yeoncheong ate with Seoha and Suyeon. Did club activities with Seoha and Suyeon. That ever-present third wheel, who was there almost without exception, had turned out to be surprisingly helpful.
Still, she seemed to have plenty to say about that too, and Yeoncheong let out a deep sigh.
"Ha... that much I'm grateful for. But ever since then, Suyeon's been throwing a fit, demanding I kiss her cheek too."
"That's your own karma."
"Exactly. Totally your fault."
The two friends answered without so much as a breath.
Anyone could see the behavior that had earned her the horns. Finding nothing to argue back with, Yeoncheong changed the subject instead.
"...We're supposed to do a club activity together this week anyway."
"An off-campus one?"
Today was Friday, so "this week" meant nothing but the weekend.
Yeoncheong gave a light nod at Hasol's guess, and Nayun asked from beside her.
"What is it this time?"
"A river cleanup."
Environment Day fell in June, and the activity was being held to commemorate it.
The animal shelter just before this, and now a river cleanup—since she was a senior with college admissions looming in her eyes, Yeoncheong was now also keeping an eye on things that would look good on her student record.
It wouldn't help much for Yeoncheong, who had chosen the regular admissions track, but she figured it made a decent change of pace.
Hasol, who had been lost in thought for a moment, bit her lip.
"They're saying it'll be hot this weekend. Take care out there."
"So what if it's hot? The river's right there. Just hop in and cool off."
Yeoncheong responded to Nayun's thoughtless remark with a hollow laugh.
"Whoa! You're not planning on trashing your clothes, are you? Even by accident, I am not falling in."
***
That weekend.
As summer crept up on them and the citizens' clothing grew shorter, Yeoncheong and her friends met up again outside school in cool short sleeves.
Unlike last time, this wasn't their own improvised scheme but an event hosted by an environmental organization, and quite a crowd had gathered.
"...There's a lot of people."
For someone like Yeoncheong, who never went out of her way to seek out this kind of activity, the sheer size of the crowd left her visibly flustered.
What's more, thanks to the nature of the event—perfect padding for a student record—there were plenty of guys their age in the mix, too.
It was praiseworthy that she didn't cower or shrink away preemptively, but the moment someone happened to brush against her, she flinched... fixing her issues with men while attending an all-girls school was a distant dream.
Besides, she had achieved the original goal of adapting to her changed body perfectly—she had zero regrets about choosing the girls' school.
"Yeoncheong, you okay?"
"Hang in there a little longer. Once the briefing's done, we probably won't be gathering like this again."
Not to mention she now had two kind friends on either side playing bodyguard—including Hasol and Nayun, who weren't even here today.
She'd held out between those two dependable friends through most of the briefing, when—
"Everyone! That wraps up the briefing. We'll be handing out bags now, so please take one as you come through! Just follow the course down with us and pick up trash as you go!"
Handing out big blue trash bags and grabber tongs, they signaled the start of the river cleanup.
***
The volunteers, along with Yeoncheong's group, spread out across the wide area and began picking up trash.
"Jeez... the trash..."
Tucked between the greenery that grew lusher by the day, garbage lay hidden here and there as if it were buried treasure. Plastic bottles still sloshing with their contents, candy wrappers torn clean open, half-eaten chicken—even a single abandoned shoe.
It was enough to make one question the civic consciousness of a country that liked to call itself a developed nation.
Every time Yeoncheong pushed aside a bush, more trash greeted her like an old friend, and her mouth never stopped running.
"Seriously. If you're going to litter, at least do it where it's visible. Why hide it away so carefully?"
"Well, obviously. They don't want to get caught."
"Ha! If your conscience bothers you that much, how about not dumping it here in the first place?"
Their original goal of taking it easy and pacing themselves in the heat had long since evaporated.
Going well beyond simply picking up whatever trash was in sight, Yeoncheong stomped around hunting for it with more passion than anyone—griping all the while.
It was nice that she'd regained her usual self once the guys her age had drifted away from the area.
But at this rate, the day would end with nothing but the sound of her endless grumbling. Suyeon and Seoha exchanged a look and decided to steer the conversation elsewhere.
The June Mock Evaluation—a critical benchmark for students pursuing regular admissions—was just around the corner, as it happened.
Was Yeoncheong, who'd committed to going all-in on regular admissions, actually studying well?
Seoha opened with an easy lead-in.
"How's the studying going lately?"
"St, studying...? I'm working hard, of course."
"Hmm."
At that somewhat unconvincing answer, Suyeon's eyes narrowed—but the claim of hard work was true.
Living on her own had given her plenty to juggle, but conversely, with less time spent gaming, she had more free hours now.
So she was studying consistently. It was just that, with Seoha being the one asking, she lacked confidence.
She worried that by the school's top student's standards, her efforts wouldn't even register as effort.
"Hm? That's plenty. You're studying a lot."
But having heard her daily study hours, Seoha reassured her friend, saying she was doing well and shouldn't worry.
Meanwhile, Suyeon seemed more interested in something other than the mock exam looming before them.
"Do you have a target university?"
"A target? Well... if the goal is to get into the best place I can, then I guess that's my target."
She had a little more breathing room now, but ever since her gender had changed, she'd been scrambling just to keep her daily life afloat.
Back when she was a man, she'd simply imagined a perfectly ordinary future—get into the best university possible, land the best job possible.
For Yeoncheong, who'd never had a particular dream or ambition, it was a question she'd never really thought through.
"What about you, then?"
"Me? Hmm... I might remember if you give my cheek a kiss~"
Suyeon tapped her cheek with her index finger and leaned it out.
She'd asked hoping to maybe get some advice from them in return... and what came back was a mischievous prank.
"You're still sulking about that?"
"Of course I am."
With Yeoncheong's and Seoha's cheek kiss still throwing the school into an uproar, Suyeon acting like this was something she was entitled to.
But what had happened back then was an accidental collision born of a dozen tangled reasons. Yeoncheong didn't have the confidence to pull that off again even with Seoha—doing it for Suyeon was obviously out of the question.
So, as an awkward kind of substitute, she'd even offered a compromise along the lines of "do whatever you want to me," more than once.
"What you do to me and what I do to you are completely different things, you dork."
Just like now. The answer was always the same.
"Then what do you actually want?"
"What do I always say? One kiss on the cheek and I'm good. When have I ever asked for two?"
She'd finally steered things back to academics, only for the mood to drift right off into the weeds again.
Seoha opened her mouth, ready to step in as mediator.
"Oh, I think that's it over there."
"Huh?"
"What is?"
Where she pointed, there was a patch of tall grass.
Covered from top to bottom in a coarse, bristly fuzz that looked rough to the touch, with leaves resembling maple foliage, and nearly chest-high.
Having successfully redirected her friends' attention, Seoha carried on with the explanation.
"That's giant ragweed. Remember I told you about invasive species disrupting the ecosystem? Weren't you listening earlier?"
"Ah... y-yeah, I heard."
"Hmm~ so that's what it looks like."
Yeoncheong and Suyeon nodded along clumsily, clapping their hands with exaggerated delight.
Their words said one thing; their whole bodies were announcing, loud and clear, that they hadn't heard a word of it.
Seoha gave both of them a shove on the back.
"You two. Go pull those."
"Huh? That stuff?"
"Since when were we supposed to pull weeds?"
She'd mentioned that the plant had a tough, fibrous stem—once it grew that large, it couldn't be uprooted bare-handed. Clearly they hadn't listened to the briefing.
Or maybe they were just confident they could manage it bare-handed.
In any case, Seoha gave a small laugh and pointed further back.
"Pfft. There's trash behind it. Go pick that up."
Only then did the two of them spot the garbage piled up along the riverbank, beyond the tall stalks.
"Ah... oh..."
"You could've just said there was trash there from the start..."
Embarrassed, Yeoncheong and Suyeon trudged toward the waterline where the garbage lay.
"Hey, grab the handle. The bottom's all sludgy."
"Must've washed down in the flood."
"Ugh... maybe from soaking up all the water. Suyeon, lift the other side."
It was as if their bickering from moments ago had never happened.
They barely had a moment to feel relieved at how quickly the two friends recovered.
"Keeeeeh! A bug! There are buuugs!!!"
The moment they lifted the sodden cardboard box, their eyes met the indescribably delightful little creatures hiding beneath it—and Suyeon shrieked, flung the trash away, and hopped around in panic before stepping on the slick mud and slipping.
As she fell, she flung out her arms, thinking she had to grab onto something.
"Yaa—yaaaah!"
The only thing within reach was Yeoncheong.
The hem of Yeoncheong's shirt was seized, and she wavered, seeming to hold her ground—but in the end she tipped over. Twisting her body to avoid plunging into the water was the best she could do.
SPLASH!
The two of them went down hard onto the mud, completing a comedy sketch for which no script had ever been written.
"Girls!"
She'd sent them off with instructions to stop fighting and pick up trash, and now Seoha, startled, rushed over to her tangled, fallen friends.
***
Somehow, the river cleanup came to a close.
What if you'd fallen into the water? You shouldn't push yourselves to pick up trash near the waterline.
Yeoncheong and Suyeon got thoroughly chewed out by the adult organizers. Of course, Seoha, who'd only watched, got no less of a scolding herself.
Suyeon, wiping off the worst of the grime with towels hastily fetched for them, grumbled.
"Ugh... I feel so gross..."
"Hey, you at least fell on top of me, so count yourself lucky. My whole back is filthy."
"...Thanks for that, I guess."
Unlike Suyeon, who'd managed to wipe her pants down with a towel, Yeoncheong—who'd cushioned her friend's fall—was a mess from head to her short-sleeved shirt.
It wasn't just slimy mud—the ground was littered with rotting dead plants... in any case, one thing was certain: it felt awful.
"Sorry. That wasn't what I meant to happen."
Maybe it was the guilt of having ruined perfectly good clothes.
Seoha in particular, the one who'd sent them off to fetch the trash, looked guiltier than anyone.
"It's fine. Don't worry about it."
"We're the ones who fell, after all."
Suyeon had panicked and grabbed Yeoncheong in the first place, and her failure to hold her balance was the direct cause of the whole accident.
No matter how many times the two of them said they were fine, Seoha's face stayed frozen as she agonized over it—until, at last, she hesitantly parted her lips.
"Then... want to come wash up at my place?"