Gone Without a Trace, the Hidden Secret
A bombshell dropped by an unidentified male student. The outing planned to celebrate Hasol's birthday and the end of finals had fizzled out into nothing, and while Yeoncheong's sudden disappearance planted a small seed of anxiety in her friends' hearts, that was all the slander from a nameless stranger amounted to.
They believed the misunderstanding would blow over, and the next day came.
Yeoncheong hadn't shown up to school by the time her homeroom teacher, Jisu, walked in. The teacher scanned the classroom to take attendance.
"That's everyone..."
Despite Yeoncheong's seat sitting conspicuously empty, Teacher Jisu breezed right past it. Suyeon shot her hand up.
"Teacher?"
"Yes, Suyeon?"
"Yeoncheong isn't here."
The teacher glanced once at the vacant desk before answering.
"Ah, Yeoncheong's not coming today. She said she's sick."
It was a reasonable enough excuse that Suyeon couldn't argue. Apparently satisfied that she'd answered, the teacher moved on to the day's announcements.
"And don't forget — you guys won the sports festival, remember? The movie trip. We've settled on going sometime next week, so keep it in mind."
Amid the chorus of demands to know what movies were playing, Teacher Jisu cheerfully listed them off one by one — but the unease quietly taking root was stirring up the hearts of Suyeon and the others.
The small hope that surely she'd come tomorrow.
"Teacher, Yeoncheong's still not here?"
"She's resting through today."
Didn't come true the next day either.
"Teacher. Yeoncheong's not here."
"She must be really sick. She said just one more day."
Even the following week, after the weekend passed, that hope went unfulfilled. No matter what messages they sent, no reply ever came back, and the frustration only kept piling up.
Asking every morning whether Yeoncheong had come to school was becoming part of Suyeon's daily routine.
"Teacher. Today too?"
"Uh, y-yeah. Ha. Haha..."
The teacher herself seemed awkward about it, brushing the question off with a laugh.
When the bell rang for break, signaling the start of first period, Jisu fired off her announcements like a machine gun and bolted from the classroom.
"I told you yesterday, right? We're heading to the movies this afternoon, so plan accordingly!"
The classroom dissolved into a bustle of students heading to the bathroom or fetching textbooks. In the middle of it, Yeoncheong's friends gathered in a huddle, and Nayun was the first to speak.
"Our homeroom teacher. She knows something, doesn't she?"
At first they'd genuinely believed Yeoncheong was sick, but as the absences stretched on, the teacher started flinching at the mere mention of her name.
Suyeon bobbed her head in agreement with her friend's words.
"Should we tell her we know something's up, and ask why Yeoncheong isn't coming to school?"
"Let's do it. When?"
"Now."
Seoha was especially eager, and no one raised an objection. All morning, the friends trailed after Teacher Jisu, pressing her for answers.
Information, she insisted, was give and take. They'd shown the cards they were holding first — leaving out, of course, the male student's outlandish claims.
The homeroom teacher had apparently known about the male student loitering around the school gate, but she seemed to have had no idea he had any connection to Yeoncheong. The students, expecting to at least hear something in return, had their hopes lightly shattered. The teacher feigned an urgent phone call and slipped away.
"Hold on — something urgent just came up."
Teacher Jisu had been sworn to silence by Chairwoman Yurim, and her lips stayed just that tight.
"Ah, Teacher! You're just going to run off after listening to everything?"
Despite the resentful voices of her students, she disappeared without so much as a backward glance. In the end, Yeoncheong's friends had shown all their cards and walked away with nothing.
That afternoon, the students of Class 2-1 and their homeroom teacher Jisu turned out in a group for the movie outing. Nayun sipped her cola through a straw and shot a sidelong glance at Teacher Jisu.
"Ugh, this is seriously unfair..."
The teacher, whose eyes had met hers, buried herself among the students and did her best to escape their piercing stares. Hasol picked at the popcorn in front of her and added her two cents.
"I don't usually say things like this, but... same here. I never imagined you'd listen to everything we had to say and then just seal your lips shut."
"She definitely knows something."
Suyeon nodded. As the three of them racked their brains over how to pry the homeroom teacher's mouth open, showtime approached and the theater staff began checking tickets.
Teacher Jisu herded the students in ahead of her and slipped inside first. Watching her go, Suyeon picked up her popcorn and cola and stood.
"Let's head in too, for now."
Suyeon, Hasol, and Nayun took their seats according to the numbers printed on their tickets. Suyeon checked the empty seat beside her and glanced around.
"Where'd Seoha go?"
"Bathroom, maybe?"
"Right, she came in with us."
In the darkening theater, finding Seoha was no easy task.
Phew... why am *I* the one hiding from the kids?
Seated in a corner at the back of the theater, Teacher Jisu wet her throat with cola.
She won't answer my calls, reads my texts without replying. The department head keeps asking why her student isn't coming in. The Chairwoman just says wait and see. The kids keep probing me for information. I'm dying. Seriously...
Besieged from all sides, the homeroom teacher tried to soothe her weary heart by watching the movie. She switched her phone to silent mode and double-checked whether Chairwoman Yurim had contacted her after all.
"Teacher."
The sudden voice from behind made the homeroom teacher's chair rattle. She looked up to find red eyes gleaming in the light of the screen. It took Jisu a beat too long to recognize the student.
"S-Seoha? What is it?"
Seoha's lips curved softly as she looked at the brightly lit smartphone screen.
"Your screen seemed a little too bright, that's all."
"Oh, oh. Right. I'll turn it off right away."
Only after hearing the answer did Seoha give a small nod and leave. Jisu tilted her head as Seoha walked away so obediently — when she'd clearly come to talk about something related to Yeoncheong.
That hadn't been the face of someone who came all that way just to say that. The teacher checked her glowing phone screen and hastily shut it off.
Did she see...?
On the screen, the chat window where she'd been corresponding with the Chairwoman was still open.
Just as the movie was about to begin, Suyeon welcomed the returned Seoha.
"Oh, Seoha. Where'd you run off to?"
Having quietly asked the surrounding classmates for pardon and slipped into her seat, Seoha spoke to her friends.
"Guys. I think we need to go see the Chairwoman."
Seoha briefly relayed what she'd glimpsed on the teacher's phone, and the three friends who listened brightened at once.
When the movie ended, the uniformed students streamed out of the theater. Normally they would have all dispersed straight home from there — and in fact, the rest of Class 2-1 did exactly that.
But.
There were also four students heading back to school alongside Teacher Jisu.
Even in the middle of work, Chairwoman Yurim kept reaching for her phone. The chat window was stuffed with one-sided messages. The read receipt was clearly there, but no reply had come.
If you've read it, at least say so... Do I not deserve a thought from the person worrying about her?
Just as a sigh from deep in her lungs was filling the room, a commotion broke out outside. This was a hallway students rarely walked down, so she cocked her head at the noise — but only for a moment.
Yeoncheong's homeroom teacher, Jisu, and four friends came tumbling into the office together. From the look of it, Jisu had been trying to hold all four of them back single-handedly. Ducking in along with them, the teacher read the room and bowed at the waist.
"Ah, um... Chairwoman. I'm so sorry. I'll take them out right away."
"No, it's fine. Apparently they had something urgent enough to barge in without even knocking. Let's give the students a bit of your time, shall we?"
Teacher Jisu glanced back and forth between the students and the Chairwoman, then withdrew. Yurim spoke again.
"This looks like it'll take a while — why don't you sit instead of standing while we talk?"
But Suyeon had no intention of drawing things out.
"Tell us."
"Hmm?"
"The Yeoncheong we don't know."
Straight to the point. Chairwoman Yurim propped her chin on her desk and studied Suyeon, and the eyes of the friends who'd come with her.
How long did they stand there in silence, like combatants in a staring contest? With a sigh she'd lost count of by now, Chairwoman Yurim closed her eyes tightly.
"Haaah... Jisu never said you all knew this much..."
She kneaded the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger, then opened her eyes again and took in the four students who had invaded the Chairwoman's office. Seen through an adult's eyes, theirs was a friendship of barely over four months.
But Yurim had once been a student too. She knew that the friends of this age — the ones you spent every waking hour beside — were the ones most likely to become your friends for life.
"Are you confident you won't tell a soul?"
Suyeon and Seoha answered immediately; Hasol and Nayun hesitated for a beat, but nodded all the same. As if weighing it to the very last, Yurim exhaled a sigh toward the ceiling.
I don't know if this is the right thing to do...
Yeoncheong had built a wall around herself and shut herself away. Still, trying something — anything — had to beat standing by and doing nothing. Chairwoman Yurim made her decision.
"Come closer. This isn't a story to tell loudly."
The four girls edged forward hesitantly until they stood right in front of the desk. Choosing her words with care, Yurim began to speak.
Phew...
Having spent a lifetime's worth of sighs in a single day, Yurim lifted her head.
"That's everything I can tell you on her behalf, short of her own account. Is there anything you'd like to ask?"
Who should break the silence first? Beneath the heavy hush, while the friends traded only wary glances, Suyeon finally forced her lips apart.
"Is... is all of that really true?"
Chairwoman Yurim gave a wry smile.
"You think I'd come all this way just to lie to you? Honestly, my reaction when I first heard was about the same as yours."
A boy struck down by illness who became a girl overnight. Attacked — nearly — by a boy she'd been friends with for over a year of high school. The incident quietly buried because of her circumstances, followed by a frantic transfer that felt like fleeing the scene.
And on top of it all, after that incident she couldn't even face boys her own age anymore, so she'd come to an all-girls school in a region where she knew no one. All of that had happened in barely a month before Yeoncheong arrived at Hwaryeong High School.
For things happening to a single person, it was far too bewildering — and far too cruel.
Chairwoman Yurim's eyes turned to the other three, who sat speechless.
"Does the absence of questions mean I explained it well? Or that you simply can't believe it?"
She leaned back into her chair, letting her body sink into it.
"Off you go now. You'll need time to think this over too."
"Um..."
"I've told you everything there is to tell, haven't I?"
Chairwoman Yurim shut her eyes altogether. Suyeon and the others had no choice but to leave.
"Oh."
On the way out, Hasol turned back and said,
"Teacher Jisu did nothing wrong. We forced the information out of her, that's all."
"I know, I understand. I won't say anything to her over this, so don't worry."
With those final words, Yeoncheong's friends filed out of the Chairwoman's office.
"Teacher...?"
Had she been pressing her ear to the door, eavesdropping? The retreating figure of Teacher Jisu was just visible down the hall.