Everyone Knows Except You
After a day that would go down in her personal history as one where she'd cried more times than she could count, Yeoncheong spent her days doing only one thing: counting down to summer break.
She explained the menu items written in the notebook she'd gifted to Hasol, begged Suyeon to please, please let them have a normal club activity for once, and on days when PE class had devolved into free time, she made a beeline for the court with Nayun, ball in hand. And in the meantime, well—she got to spend her school days with Seoha just like before.
Anyway. And so, living out this perfectly ordinary daily routine, the closing ceremony arrived just one day away.
The Annex. The club room.
In the spacious classroom she hadn't visited in a while sat the usual crowd—or close to it.
"Huuuuh..."
A deep sigh escaped Yeoncheong's lips as she propped her chin on the desk, her gaze fixed on the three chattering girls.
"Why are you two even here?"
At Yeoncheong's question, the two friends with similarly yellow hair turned their heads.
"The volleyball club took over the gym to prep for their tournament."
"We decided to take today and tomorrow off."
She had technically asked why they'd come here specifically, but she decided to let it slide.
Because there was something in that answer that rubbed her the wrong way.
"The volleyball club took over the entire gym?"
"No, there's space left. It's just way too cramped for the number of people, so we gave up and came out here."
"There are outdoor courts, aren't there?"
Blue sky. Merciless sunlight beating down.
Nayun answered by jerking her chin toward the window instead of saying anything. Yeoncheong followed her friend's gaze outside and nodded in understanding.
When the two's conversation wound down, Hasol called out to Yeoncheong.
"Yeoncheong, if you've got nothing to do, come over here too."
"Why?"
"We have to coordinate our summer break schedules."
Yeoncheong dragged herself up from her chair and shuffled over to the desk where the three had gathered. A smartphone lay in the middle, its calendar app open on the screen.
She took the chair Suyeon pulled out for her and peered at what they were discussing.
There it was: Nayun's and Yeoncheong's remedial class schedules, the dates of Hasol's family trip—each of their personal plans laid out in full.
"Okay, Yeoncheong, write yours down too if you have anything."
"Why would I write that down?"
"So we can roughly figure out which days to all go somewhere together—like the beach, or wherever."
"That's fair," Yeoncheong was nodding along when she paused, tilting her head as if she'd misheard something.
"The beach?"
Suyeon, silent until now, cut into the conversation.
"It's summer, isn't it? Then going to the beach is just common sense."
"Doesn't common sense say you stay home because it's hot?"
Hasol and Suyeon blinked at her this time, as if perhaps they were the ones who'd misheard. Then, deciding their ears had worked just fine, they urged Yeoncheong to hurry up and write down her personal schedule.
Since arguing further would clearly get her nowhere, Yeoncheong quietly turned her attention to the calendar instead.
Even with the smartphone pushed right in front of her, she just sat there staring blankly. Hasol's voice dropped a few degrees.
"Yeoncheong? Write it down while I'm asking nicely."
"N-no, I mean... even if you tell me to..."
"Hm?"
The girl was smiling with her mouth but her eyes hadn't moved an inch. Yeoncheong shrank back slightly.
"I don't have any plans for break. That's the thing."
The atmosphere turned abruptly heavy.
Nayun spoke up as if something had just come to mind.
"Oh, right. Yeoncheong. I'm your only friend, aren't you?"
Having hit the reset button on her social relationships once, Yeoncheong's network of connections couldn't fill all ten fingers of one hand.
Stung by Nayun's dead-straight fastball, Yeoncheong flared up.
"Hey! I have plenty of friends... I do..."
And in truth, she had had quite a few friends once.
Up until the beast she'd thought was a friend had nearly done something terrible to her, and by extension she'd found herself unable to trust any of the others either.
Yeoncheong's voice dropped to a faint croak as she reminisced about the past.
"Ack! Ah! Stop hitting me!"
Suyeon, oblivious to the mood, had started mercilessly pounding her friend's back.
Hasol, meanwhile, was soothing Yeoncheong, saying it was all fine now.
Glaring daggers at Suyeon as she rubbed Yeoncheong's back, Nayun changed the subject.
"Seoha already told us hers over text, so can't we just pick from the days that are still empty?"
"Right."
Suyeon said so, checked the calendar, and let out a sigh.
"No matter how I think about it, summer break is way too short."
"It's always been shorter than winter break."
Grumbling all the while, Suyeon wrote in big block letters across an empty stretch of the calendar: G.O. T.O. T.H.E. B.E.A.C.H.
Right between the remedial classes, on the weekend, went another entry: 'Shopping with Yeoncheong.'
Yeoncheong didn't let that slip past her.
"What's this one?"
"Oh. You promised me, remember? That we'd go clothes shopping together sometime. That's this."
A promise made during the midterm exam after-party. Yeoncheong nodded and let it go.
"Anyway, we're done now, right? Enough with the boring stuff."
Having declared the scheduling complete, Hasol handed the smartphone back to its owner.
***
With all the break plans settled, the three of them stared at Yeoncheong in silence. Under the weight of those gazes, Suyeon finally spoke up.
"Did you fight with Seoha?"
"Huh? Why would you ask that?"
Yeoncheong flinched, completely unprepared for the topic.
A one-hundred-percent guilty reaction. Suyeon narrowed her eyes and asked again.
"Then why on earth are you being so weird around her?"
Suyeon, who ate lunch with her every day, had noticed.
Seoha was perfectly normal—but Yeoncheong alone walked on eggshells around her.
And since that behavior wasn't limited to lunchtime, Hasol and Nayun had caught on quickly too.
Deciding she couldn't keep living like this, Yeoncheong squeezed her eyes shut and told them what had happened that day.
Silence.
It was one of the reactions she'd anticipated.
But as she opened her eyes, racking her brain for how to salvage the situation, she couldn't help but be thrown off balance.
Because her friends were staring back at her with looks of pure, withering pity.
"What? Why are you all looking at me like that?"
Why was she the one getting those looks? She was the one suffering here. Her voice rose with indignation—
—but her friends just huddled together and whispered among themselves.
"Ugh... and here I thought it was something."
"How do you function being that oblivious, seriously."
"Right? I almost feel sorry for Seoha."
"Can't be helped. The one who falls first has to bear the weight of it."
Even hearing the conversation flowing around her, Yeoncheong was not so great a fool that she couldn't read the room.
"Wh-what? You all already knew?"
Her friends nodded as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Suyeon spoke for them.
"Everyone knew except you."
"H-how?"
Hasol shrugged.
"Seoha's never been the type to hang around someone like that in the first place. I don't know how deep her feelings go, but I figured, yeah, there's definitely something there."
"No! They're both girls!"
At talk so far beyond her imagination, Yeoncheong shot up from her seat.
Having lost interest, Nayun pressed her face against the relatively cool desktop and said:
"It happens. You go through all-girls middle and all-girls high, and there are always those pairs that stick together and give off that whole vibe."
"Haaah..."
Deflated by her friends' reactions, Yeoncheong slumped back into her chair.
Suyeon scooted her chair right up close and smirked.
"What? Did Seoha confess to you too?"
Yeoncheong slowly replayed the memory of that day and shook her head.
It hadn't been an outright confession, but there was no mistaking it—an action that clearly said I like you.
"No... nothing that direct."
"Ugh. Boring. Then just keep hanging out like you always do."
Her excitement clearly fizzled out, Suyeon's tone turned dismissive, and Yeoncheong shot back at her.
"H-how can you say that! It's way too easy to talk big when it's not your problem!"
"You haven't even confessed, right? Just keep things as they are. You can worry about that stuff after you get a yes—it won't be too late then."
Nayun, who by now had pressed her other cheek against the desk, chimed in.
"Or why not just try dating her the way you'd date a girlfriend? You were a guy anyway, weren't you?"
Yeoncheong's head dipped low, and her lips twitched.
"...Never."
"Hm?"
Nayun lifted her head from the desk as if she'd misheard.
Face burning crimson, Yeoncheong shrieked at the top of her lungs.
"I said I never did! Never dated a girlfriend!"
"You never did?"
Hasol, who'd been quietly listening, asked.
"You've never been confessed to either?"
"I have, but... I turned them all down."
"Why?"
Suyeon's ears perked straight up. The sparkle in her eyes at any mention of romance went without saying.
Yeoncheong gave the bland answer that she'd been busy with family matters.
But since Yeoncheong herself had opened the floodgates with stories of the past, her friends took that as their cue and unleashed every question they'd never managed to ask her before.
***
What school did she used to attend? How were an all-boys school and an all-girls school different from what she'd seen? How had she felt after the change? Did she still like women?
They were all questions that had been abandoned back on the day they'd barged into Yeoncheong's apartment—no atmosphere for it then—but now they came pouring out.
Suyeon's questions in particular aimed at entirely different targets. The water level was higher, to put it one way.
"Does it feel different with a guy versus a girl? You'd know, wouldn't you?"
"I-I've never done it! You perverts! You... you don't get to say that, you're a girl yourself!"
Suyeon just shrugged as if to say, what's wrong with a little curiosity?
Boys' school or girls' school, it made no difference—a gathering of hot-blooded teenagers was a gathering of hot-blooded teenagers.
In other words, only the degree of explicitness differed. At an age when curiosity about such things was at its absolute peak, expecting anyone to behave otherwise was pure prejudice.
Yeoncheong, red from her face all the way to her ears, could only watch her own eyes spin in circles.
Suyeon kept hammering away, waiting for a different reaction to surface.
"When it first happened, you didn't touch your chest? They always do that in the movies."
Yeoncheong, who had been shoving her away and telling her to knock it off, suddenly froze.
Having finally extracted a meaningful reaction, Suyeon grinned wide.
"Oh, you did touch it? Did it feel good?"
Apparently the others were a little curious about this one too, because Suyeon and the rest all dropped their previous questions and leaned in.
"I told you before, didn't I? We're all girls now, all the same. Don't hide it—just say it comfortably."
Her entire body burning, Yeoncheong finally—
"WAAAH! TEACHER JISU!"
Heeding her homeroom teacher's advice, she chose the path of a lawful citizen: calling for adult supervision.
"Hey! Ha Yeoncheong!"
Suyeon and the others chased after Yeoncheong as she bolted out of the club room.
A midsummer chase, in full swing.
Nayun stuck right on Yeoncheong's heels, with Suyeon and Hasol trailing behind.
"Hey! Who runs to tattle to a teacher now that she's in high school!"
But the distance wasn't closing. With such a head start, it looked like she'd reach the teachers' office without getting caught—
—if a variable hadn't appeared, that is.
Nayun called out to the familiar figure standing in front of the teachers' office.
"Seoha! Grab Yeoncheong! Grab her! Hurry!"
"Seoha! Move! You'll get hurt!"
Despite Yeoncheong's warning, Seoha didn't budge an inch. On the contrary, she spread both arms wide in a pose that said come right this way.
Not that she'd meant it literally. She had no intention of slamming into anyone at a full sprint.
In the end, braking hard at the last possible second, Yeoncheong managed to stop just inches from Seoha's face.
Her upper body, carried forward by momentum, leaned in. When Yeoncheong lifted her head, her eyes met Seoha's dead on.
"Didn't crash after all?"
Seoha smiled slyly. If anything, she looked faintly disappointed.
"Besides, you coming to find me first? That's always welcome."
The memory of that day's kiss flashed through Yeoncheong's mind, and she started stammering incoherently.
Her friends caught up with her.
Hasol and Suyeon pinned her arms. Nayun clapped a hand over her mouth and dragged her friend away.
A little later, Teacher Jisu opened the teachers' office door and poked her head out.
"Hm? Seoha, weren't there other kids out here just now?"
"No, ma'am. Nobody."
"Really? I could've sworn I heard Yeoncheong's voice and a bunch of kids..."
Tilting her head in puzzlement, Teacher Jisu went back inside with Seoha, who said she had an errand.
***
After a day that made her seriously wonder whether this counted as a police-reportable offense, the day finally arrived.
The closing ceremony.
Extreme heat warnings had persisted for days, so the ceremony was broadcast into the classrooms.
Perhaps because no one had to stand this time, and because the ceremony was held in classrooms with air conditioning running full blast, the principal's speech ran longer than it had at the opening ceremony.
Just as the refreshing breeze of the AC began lulling the students into drowsy nods one by one under the sweltering weather, the principal's closing remarks finally began—and every student in the room, homeroom teachers included, locked their eyes on the screen.
With a final note that summer break was starting now, the broadcast cut off. As the students burst into chatter and the room rippled with excitement, the homeroom teacher rapped on the lectern.
"Your teacher has something to say. One minute of quiet, please."
Only after the classroom fell silent did the homeroom teacher take in each student's face, one by one.
"You all worked hard this semester. Don't hurt yourselves out there, and I'll see you next month. You lot with remedial classes—take tomorrow off, then I'll see you again next week."
Teacher Jisu clapped her hands to bring things to a close.
While the class broke off into their friend groups, everyone chattering about where to go, Suyeon went looking for Hasol and Yeoncheong.
"Huh? Where'd Yeoncheong go?"
Yeoncheong's seat was empty. Her bag was gone too.
To Suyeon, glancing around in confusion, Hasol answered with an awkward smile.
"She said we're all off-limits and ran for it."
"Were we too harsh yesterday?"
"...Maybe a little?"
Arriving one step late, Nayun added:
"Honestly, you guys were pretty harsh."
And with that, Seoha joined the group as well.
"What even happened yesterday?"
"I'll explain on the way."
The four friends left the classroom together, saying they'd all go out somewhere, just the group of them—
chasing after a girl who was fleeing her mischievous friends.
And so, by running away, Yeoncheong too marked the beginning of her very first summer break as an all-girls high school student.