On a School Trip, Divide the Fear?
The second day of the school trip wrapped up at Aqua Planet, and now the bus was rolling back toward the lodgings.
Suyeon, seated in front, twisted around in her seat.
"Seoha, is Yeoncheong still mad?"
Seoha answered by shifting her body aside just enough to clear the view.
That put her face to face with Yeoncheong, who was glowering from beneath the jacket Hasol had lent her, eyes sharp as knives.
"...Yeah. Still mad."
Suyeon turned her gaze back to the front.
A dolphin's sudden prank. A disproportionate share of the splash directed at Yeoncheong. Suyeon and Nayun using their friend as a human shield. And Yeoncheong, left to walk around wearing whatever lingerie had been within arm's reach.
An accident born of several coincidences stacked on top of one another.
Though the victim, of course, refused to see any of it as coincidence.
When the bus pulled up to the lodgings, their homeroom teacher Teacher Jisu showed some mercy — headcount skipped entirely — and Yeoncheong headed straight for the room.
"Take the key and go on up. Sitting around in wet clothes is bad for you. Go shower right away."
"Yeoncheong, would you mind taking this up with you...?"
From behind Hasol, who was handing over the key, Suyeon peeked her head out. In her hand was a souvenir from the aquarium.
Yeoncheong, clutching her jacket closed with one hand, glared daggers at her.
"There it is. Of course not, right...?"
She clearly knew she had no shame to stand on — her outstretched hand crept slowly back behind her. But before it could disappear entirely, Yeoncheong snatched the shopping bag out of it.
"And yet you're taking it anyway."
Hasol said it with a small laugh.
"Yeoncheong..."
Suyeon's grateful eyes sparkled.
"Oh. I had something too."
And there was Nayun, sounding disappointed.
The friends didn't return to the room until around the time Yeoncheong finished her shower.
"Ah, right, we don't have our key."
"Yeoncheong. Open the door."
"What if she's sulking and won't open it?"
"Should we call her?"
Voices mingled with the sound of knocking on the door. Yeoncheong paused her hair dryer and went to answer it.
"I'm not sulking."
She tried to figure out which of them had said it through the door, but everyone studiously looked elsewhere, and she never found out.
***
While the other four took turns showering, the TV murmured in the background as the group leafed through the day's photos.
"Yeoncheong... you spend your entire daily allowance of talent on one shot. What even is that?"
Faced with Seoha's single luminous photo among the wreckage, the friends' reactions were more or less identical.
"Should we call this good photography, or bad photography?"
"Pick one. Compliment or insult."
"It's a compliment. Which means we absolutely have to have her take ours too."
Suyeon scrambled to gather up her words and dress them nicely. Yeoncheong regarded her friend with narrowed eyes.
"Do that one more time and I'm throwing you off the waterfall tomorrow."
"Understood. Won't happen."
Suyeon pressed both hands flat together and bowed her head, a good-natured smile bolted onto her face.
Still unsatisfied, Yeoncheong muttered with her eyes reduced to slits.
"Big talk..."
***
Once the photo-viewing was done, the friends clustered around the small sofa, eyes glued to the ever-flickering TV screen.
One by one, yawns began to spread.
Unlike the first day, which had only an afternoon itinerary, they'd been up and moving from the early morning to make it to Seongsan Ilchulbong at the eastern tip of the island, then burned through the rest of their energy buzzing around the aquarium. The accumulated fatigue was catching up.
Blue hair swayed along with a head already nodding off. When Suyeon lifted the hem of her sweatshirt that draped over her dolphin pants, her eyes flew wide open.
"Don't."
"Tch."
Suyeon, perched on the sofa's armrest, draped herself over Yeoncheong.
"Don't fall asleep yet aaa~"
"What am I supposed to do about being tired?"
Yeoncheong's body rocked back and forth under the assault.
Hasol was already half asleep, and Nayun — who had declared climbing around Sunrise Peak counted as exercise — looked to be running on empty too.
It was proof of just how fun the day had been, but Suyeon was still wide awake. Seoha, too, naturally.
Grabbing the remote, Suyeon flipped through channels in search of something that might wake her friends up. And then—
A sharp scream burst from the TV speakers, and everyone flinched.
"What? What is it?"
Nayun shot to her feet and scanned the room, while Hasol clutched her chest and calmed her startled heart.
Suyeon checked the movie title in the corner of the screen and murmured.
"Oh, it's a horror movie. Looks like it just started?"
"This one's famous."
Seoha, somehow, seemed to know the film and added the explanation.
Suyeon looked around at her friends as if this had all worked out perfectly.
"Guys, let's watch this together."
The suggestion to voluntarily watch a horror movie left everyone at a loss. Everyone except Seoha.
"I'm fine with it. Might be less scary with company anyway."
The way she said it while looking directly at Yeoncheong made it sound very much like a targeted remark.
Finding her opening, Suyeon pressed on.
"Exactly. Joy shared is doubled, and sorrow shared is halved, right?"
"And you think fear shared becomes half as well?"
Suyeon snapped her fingers at Hasol, who had predicted exactly where this was going.
In the end, Hasol agreed to the horror movie on the condition that everyone watch it together, all the way through.
As for Nayun—
"Scared?"
"Ha! Fine, let's see just how scary it is then."
She folded at a single syllable.
Suyeon grinned and was about to say the same thing to Yeoncheong when—
"I'm not watching. I can't watch."
Yeoncheong shook her head without a trace of hesitation.
She'd witnessed Suyeon and Hasol flinch firsthand, and Seoha seemed to have caught on to some degree as well.
Three of the four friends present already knew.
There was no reason to hide it, and no need to walk into her own grave.
But.
"That's a majority. Mandatory screening."
Suyeon, still perched on the armrest, used her whole body to pin Yeoncheong so she couldn't escape.
"Hey! That's not fair!"
In that moment, Yeoncheong learned the flaw of democracy through firsthand experience.
***
Atmosphere is everything, they said. Every last light switched off, the room pitch-black.
A monster suddenly appeared on the glowing screen.
A jump scare that did her heart no favors whatsoever — a gap-to-pop, as the kids called it.
"Kyaaah..."
A sharp scream, muffled by a large pillow. It was Yeoncheong, who had negotiated the compromise of bringing in the pillow she'd used the night before.
Legs drawn up and folded onto the sofa, pillow raised and ready to block her view at any moment. This was no situation for preserving dignity or face in front of a horror movie.
But... she was a terrible match for this film.
Some horror movies work through music and overall atmosphere, letting the dread seep into the viewer gradually. Others just have things pop out of nowhere and startle you first, ask questions later.
The movie they were watching leaned heavily toward the latter.
Reaction time, perfectly consistent. Every time the monster lunged out, exactly half of Yeoncheong's scream made it into the air.
At some point, though, she simply clamped the pillow over her mouth entirely, and from then on it was a continuous stream of stifled, suffocated shrieks.
Seoha was unmoved — perhaps because she'd seen the movie before.
Suyeon didn't seem to have much resistance to this genre either, jolting every time a scene cut abruptly. Though for all that, she never screamed or looked away from the screen.
Hasol, having set the condition herself, enjoyed the movie in perfectly normal fashion — screaming on cue at the scary parts.
With every one of her friends behaving this way, Yeoncheong should have stood out the most... but the odds of five people gathering with only one of them being a scaredy-cat were never good.
When all you have left besides family is your friends.
Beside her on the cramped sofa, pressed right up against Yeoncheong, was Nayun — pillow raised like a shield.
Nayun, who had taken the bait and marched boldly into the movie, was at some point discovered screaming along beside her.
Too late, she realized Suyeon and Hasol's saying was fundamentally flawed.
Joy shared is doubled, sorrow shared is halved.
But fear, when shared—
"KYAAAH!"
The most terrified person got it all.
How many screams did the two of them let out together?
The screen faded to black. White text began to crawl upward, announcing the end credits.
Seoha turned on the light on her way to the bathroom. The living room brightened again, and the friends stretched as they turned to look at Yeoncheong and Nayun.
"Yeoncheong, Nayun. You two okay?"
Behind the concern in Hasol's voice came the sound of Suyeon snickering.
"I expected it from Yeoncheong, but Nayun, you're a huge scaredy-cat too?"
"...Am not. It just kept popping out of nowhere, so I got startled. That's all."
Whatever her words claimed, Nayun had collapsed onto the sofa with no apparent intention of getting up.
Their gaze shifted next to the other side of the room, where Yeoncheong lay sprawled.
She'd been holding on so tightly that only her eyes peeked out over the thoroughly crumpled pillow.
"What? What do you want?"
Her voice, filtered through the pillow, was muffled — but communication was achieved.
"You startled yourself so badly the rest of us stopped being scared."
"Keep teasing me and you die."
It was as if a snarling muzzle were visible beyond the pillow. Suyeon raised both hands and gave up on teasing her.
On the way back, Seoha, who had peeked out the door for a moment, said:
"Let's sleep now. If we stay up any later, Jisu-teacher might come chew us out."
***
In the darkness, a pair of eyes snapped open — blue ones.
'Ah... damn it. We're screwed.'
It was the night Yeoncheong and Seoha were due to share the bed. Under normal circumstances she'd have fought tooth and nail to dodge it, but she'd taken into account the special circumstance of having just watched a horror movie.
She wouldn't be sleeping alone, so surely it would be fine, she'd thought...
'I can't sleep.'
Apparently one person hadn't been enough.
Blinking into the dark, Yeoncheong rose carefully so as not to wake Seoha. She stirred briefly at the rustle of fabric, but Yeoncheong slipped out successfully.
Well, she was up — might as well use the bathroom.
With that thought, Yeoncheong went and came back.
Bathing in the white light of the pristine bathroom, she'd found some calm. She flushed and stepped out, and that was when—
"Not sleeping?"
Yeoncheong flinched and looked around wildly. Hasol was rubbing her eyes — apparently woken by the running water.
"No. I'm going back to sleep."
"Want to sleep together?"
Hasol lifted her head from her phone, where she'd been checking the time.
Whole conversations went unspoken, but the meaning came through as clearly as if they'd been said.
For Yeoncheong, who already had one night spent like this under her belt, it was an offer impossible to refuse.
Still, flatly accepting felt like too much, so she offered a compromise instead.
"One sec. I'll lie down for a bit first, then come over."
As if it made no difference to her either way, the yellow hair swayed up and down in the darkness.
Hasol graciously lifted the blanket and beckoned her over. Yeoncheong tiptoed around her soundly sleeping friends and wedged herself in between them.
Silence settled in again, and in the big room, a pair of red eyes glinted.
***
A woman in slippers and comfortable clothes yawned her way down the pitch-dark corridor.
'Seriously... fine, I get the worry. But why do I have to check inside, too.'
The contraband sweep had turned up a fair amount of alcohol, so the order had come down: just in case, verify everyone was actually asleep on time.
Teacher Jisu pulled out the spare key she'd collected from the front desk on the first floor.
'If you're that worried, come check yourself.'
But she was a teacher, yes — also a salaried employee. The department head's instructions were not hers to ignore.
The lock clicked open. Teacher Jisu killed her footsteps and slipped inside.
What had started as grumbling was somehow already at the last room.
'This is... the room with Hasol and Seoha, right? Then they should all be asleep by now.'
Just as expected — between the ticking of a clock, the only sound was soft, even breathing.
Since she was already in, the teacher swept her gaze across the room to confirm with her own eyes.
'Huh?'
Wondering if she'd seen wrong, Teacher Jisu tilted her head and rubbed her eyes.
'Why on earth are these kids sleeping out here with perfectly good beds going to waste...?'
In the spacious living room, five figures lay tangled together, sleeping as one.