Laid Bare
After the school trip, an awkward tension had settled over Yeoncheong and her friends. Still, they were students, and there was nothing to be done about it. Even with finals bearing down on them, they couldn't afford to focus on that alone.
One week had flown by in an instant.
The desks of Class 2-1 were arranged in numerical order, and just as she had for the midterms, Yeoncheong sat in the very back row. For a moment, she glanced over at her friends, all of them cramming in a last burst of effort to button up the start of final exams properly—then the front door slid open and the proctor stepped in.
"Put your books away."
Even at the last second, students squeezed in one more line before stuffing the books into their bags. Yeoncheong let out the deep breath she'd been holding, closed the book she'd been reading, and did the same.
Thus began the first semester finals at Hwaryeong High School.
***
During the break, Nayun stretched her arms to the ceiling and went hunting for Suyeon.
"Hey, what'd you get for number eleven?"
"That one... I think it was number three."
Suyeon said this while popping an alphabet chocolate into her mouth, and Nayun balled her fist in triumph.
"Why? What's up?"
"Because I totally guessed on it."
Stretching out her hand to collect a chocolate of her own, Nayun began humming a little tune. She pulled one from the bag and fiddled with it for a moment, then said:
"If you want to give her one, go give it to her. You had no problem with it during midterms. What's with the sudden shyness?"
"I'm not being shy. I'm studying."
Nayun followed the direction of Suyeon's pointed chin.
There sat Yeoncheong at her desk, buried in the next exam subject.
"Wow... don't tell me I'm gonna be the only one stuck in remedial finals at this rate."
"If you're that worried, go home and study."
Nayun fished another chocolate out of the bag and shook her head.
"Looking at it now wouldn't make any difference to not looking at all."
"...That's something to brag about?"
The bell signaling the end of break rang, and Teacher Jisu walked into the classroom, pointing straight at Nayun, who was perched on Suyeon's desk munching chocolate.
"Kim Nayun, how hard did you rack your brain that you need chocolate? You told me you did well on the math section, didn't you?"
Nayun crammed the wrapper into her pocket and squared her shoulders.
"Of course. Number eleven was number three, right?"
"It wasn't."
Nayun froze, then hurried to the teacher's desk.
"What? It's really not?"
The homeroom teacher pulled the test papers and OMR answer sheets from the desk, sorting them by row as she spoke.
"Not telling. Go sit down—hurry. I'm handing out the answer sheets."
"Aw, Teacher, come on! At least tell me if it's wrong or not! If I missed that one, I'm in serious trouble!"
Amid the classmates bursting into laughter, Yeoncheong mulled it over with grave seriousness.
Ha... damn it. I guessed too, and I put number three...
***
Mornings were spent on finals, afternoons in the club room studying the next day's subjects with her friends, and then the walk home. Having survived the first day of finals, Yeoncheong's verdict was half a success.
There had been questions she'd answered with total confidence, but there were plenty of regrets too—problems where nothing she'd studied would surface in her memory.
Still... at this level, maybe I can call it a win.
She couldn't dwell on it forever, not when there'd been stretches where she'd neglected her studying.
"Yeoncheong, see you tomorrow!"
At the sound of her name, Yeoncheong snapped back to reality. Suyeon and the others were waving. She nodded silently in return.
Once home, Yeoncheong picked at her dinner and studied for tomorrow's exams right up until she fell asleep.
Though since she was studying alone, the fact that she'd spent half the time fiddling with her smartphone was a secret known to Yeoncheong and no one else.
***
The second day of finals.
Before the last exam of the day, on her way back from the bathroom, Yeoncheong ran into a familiar face.
The twins had the kind of looks that, in passing, nine out of a hundred people would mistake for each other. But once you learned to tell them apart—their aura, or whatever you'd call it—it became possible to distinguish them well enough.
"Siyeon?"
At the sound of her name from behind, Siyeon, who had been peeking into the classroom, jumped out of her skin. She pressed her back against the wall, calmed her pounding heart, and shot Yeoncheong a faint glare.
"Why'd you sneak up behind me?"
Yeoncheong held up her still-damp hands. Meaning: she'd been to the bathroom.
Seeing this, Siyeon muttered under her breath.
"You went to the bathroom? And here I was looking for you in the classroom for nothing..."
"You were looking for me?"
Wide, round blue eyes. Yeoncheong tilted her head. Faced with that look, Siyeon averted her gaze, her voice rising for no reason.
"Y-yeah! I was. Just wanted to see if you did okay on the subject I tutored you in..."
But her initial bravado had evaporated somewhere along the way, and by the end her voice had dwindled to a mumble. Yeoncheong smiled warmly and told her it had gone well.
"Oh, right. Thanks to you, I think I did better than on the midterms. It really helped."
"R-really?"
Siyeon brightened—then quickly shook her head and cleared her throat.
"Ahem, cough. W-well, obviously! I taught you way better than Baek Suyeon would have."
"Ha, true. You were the better teacher, no contest."
At the twins' request, Yeoncheong had grudgingly set aside time to supervise Suyeon, and on top of that had received test prep help she'd never even planned on. It was only natural for Yeoncheong to thank her.
But Siyeon glanced around self-consciously and bolted back toward her own classroom—only to suddenly about-face and double back.
"Um... good luck on the rest of your exams, too..."
That little parting remark was a bonus.
Back at her desk, Yeoncheong opened a book to squeeze every last minute of the break into studying—and the alphabet chocolate resting on top went thunk, tumbling onto the desk. She thought of Suyeon, who since yesterday had been handing out alphabet chocolates from a bulging bag.
She slipped it in for me, didn't she?
She looked over at Suyeon's seat—and caught her friend's head snapping sharply away. Yeoncheong didn't want to interrupt her studying, but she'd wanted to give her the chocolate, and imagining Suyeon lingering, waiting for the right moment until Yeoncheong left her seat, a giggle slipped out before she could help it. Yeoncheong cracked the chocolate and popped it into her mouth.
"Sweet..."
The two of them were so alike yet so different—different yet so alike.
***
The final bell rang, announcing the end of finals. Between the groans of despair and whoops of joy, the proctor collected the answer sheets, wished everyone well, and left.
Yeoncheong turned in her answer sheet, came back, and slumped face-down over her desk. The sigh that escaped her seemed to scrape the very bottom of her lungs. It was the fault of these past two days of finals, from which point onward her brain had been screaming why is this happening to me in a way it never did on ordinary days.
"Everyone, I'll wrap this up quickly, so stay in your seats..."
Teacher Jisu, arriving from proctoring an exam in another classroom, looked every bit as exhausted.
"Is everyone here?"
The homeroom teacher swept a glance across the classroom.
"You all worked hard on finals. Spend today resting and having fun... See you tomorrow. Get home safe."
A homeroom meeting that took less than ten seconds. With the exams over, the classroom erupted into loud, energetic farewells as her classmates' vitality came roaring back.
Yeoncheong was wearily gathering her reference books and texts when a shadow fell across her desk.
"Yeoncheong. Um... you're coming, right?"
The four friends had gathered at some point and were looking down at her. Considering her remaining energy, the words no climbed all the way to the tip of her tongue. But they'd made the promise a month ago, and it was to celebrate a friend's birthday.
Besides, she couldn't hide away forever. If she wanted to hold on to her daily life—if she wanted to go back to the way things were before the school trip—running wasn't the answer.
Yeoncheong nodded slowly, deliberately, and her friends' faces lit up.
***
Together, Yeoncheong and her friends filed through the school gate, a babble of voices debating where to go—when a low voice cut through, one you'd rarely hear at a girls' school.
"Hey."
Yeoncheong and the friends nearby turned naturally toward it. Suyeon asked for all of them.
"Can we help you?"
The boy leaning against the wall flashed a grin at Yeoncheong.
"Looking good."
Unlike the smile on his face, Yeoncheong's own went pale.
"Wow~ never would've guessed you'd end up at a girls' school. Took me forever to find you."
The boy shot Suyeon a sidelong glance, as if to say it was all her fault. But it was a face she'd never seen before, and she narrowed her eyes at him. Too late, Yeoncheong cursed her past self, whose gaze had narrowed into nothing when it came to people—but it was far too late for that now.
Her friends had more or less pieced it together: this was someone Yeoncheong had crossed paths with during the school trip. And that whatever connected them, it was nothing good.
The four friends closed ranks around Yeoncheong and glared at the boy. Under the searing stares of four girls, instead of shrinking back, the boy only grew bolder. The malice in his eyes was aimed solely at Yeoncheong; everyone else was beneath his notice.
"Wow. You even decorated your bag the same. So this is you living in a bed of flowers, huh."
The boy smirked at the capybara plush dangling from Yeoncheong's bag. A sneer—no, closer to a smile of pure mockery—and he kept talking.
"Originally I was just going to call you out quietly, alone... but seeing you doing so well for yourself, I'm feeling a little... no, a lot ticked off."
"Hey. Take this somewhere private."
Apparently some shred of their history still counted as friendship—Yeoncheong was the first to grasp what he intended. She tried to push through her friends to speak with him separately. But his malice had already chosen its target.
"Why should I? I told you—if you'd ended things cleanly, it never would've come to this."
"Yeoncheong? What's going on?"
The friends who knew nothing of the history between them couldn't follow the situation. As they strained to pull her back, Yeoncheong dug in—and the boy looked straight at her friends and gripped her arm harder in resistance.
"Hey, did you all know?"
"Shut your mouth!"
Yeoncheong's shout cracked through the air. The arm that tried to force its way over her mouth was caught, lightly, in her grip.
"This girl was a guy until just last winter. A guy, I'm telling you."
Words that could never be taken back. The secret she'd buried—dropped between Yeoncheong and her friends like a bomb. A small voice, from no one knew whose mouth, broke the silence.
"...What?"
"Didn't hear me? She was a guy. A guy. If you don't believe me, I'll show you the photos."
The boy held up a single photo on his phone.
It was undeniably a boy who resembled Yeoncheong.
But it was an absurd thing to believe on that alone. Nayun burst out laughing.
"Ha! This guy's a lunatic. You came all the way out here to spew that nonsense? Yeoncheong... Yeoncheong?"
Nayun glanced around. Yeoncheong, who had been holding onto the boy's arm mere seconds ago, was gone. The boy doubled over laughing at the stunned girls.
"Ha! Yeah, THAT'S it! That's the face I came all this way to see. Now I can finally breathe easy."
He kept talking through his unstoppable laughter.
"Hahaha! Believe it or don't, I don't care. If she had nothing to be ashamed of, why would she run?"
"Maybe she ran because of YOU, you psycho!"
In the spot where Yeoncheong had been standing, Nayun and the boy went at it like a flint striking sparks. Just as it seemed a fight might actually break out, Seoha pointed at him.
"Sir. That person, right there."
At some point Seoha had slipped away and returned with the school security guard.
"Which school are you from, hanging around loitering in front of a girls' high school? Get over here."
As the guard strode past Yeoncheong's friends toward him, the boy spat a curse and fled without a backward glance.
"Hey! Hey! Stop right there!"
The guard gave chase, but catching a boy in the prime of his youth was beyond him. With a promise to be told if the boy showed up again, the security guard departed.
And between the four friends who remained, a heavy silence descended.
"Could it be... true?"
A voice squeezed out through dry lips broke the stillness. Hasol tried her best to deny the possibility in front of her.
"No way. Something must have happened... there has to be an explanation."
"That's right. Guys like that, the best thing is to ignore them and walk away."
Nayun, still fuming, chimed in too.
Suyeon, drawn in on herself, forced her mouth open.
"I... I guess so?"
"Of course. Let's ask her ourselves at school tomorrow."
Hasol soothed Suyeon with a warm smile.
But.
The next day, Yeoncheong didn't come to school.