The First Club Activity
With Seoha having left due to student council business, and the brief commotion settled, only two people remained in the classroom.
Suyeon pressed Yeoncheong to fill out a club application form before she could change her mind. And the moment Yeoncheong finished writing it by hand, Suyeon snatched it away.
“I'll go hand it to Ms. Jisu. Wait here!”
Delighted by who-knows-what, Suyeon practically flew out of the clubroom. Her footsteps were already fading down the hallway. Yeoncheong leaned back in her chair.
There were ten or so desks and chairs in the room. Having counted them, Yeoncheong tilted her head back and stared up at the ceiling.
Normally, second year probably had around ten members too.
Not every student without a club they wanted to join chose the Free Inquiry Club. Some would attend cram schools for the sake of their studies, or use the school's self-study room instead.
Among the second-years, Suyeon had been left alone—the unlucky case.
Hah... being alone like that, I couldn't help but feel for her.
Different circumstances, perhaps, but Yeoncheong, who had grown painfully accustomed to being 'alone,' found she couldn't push the thought away.
Here she comes.
A burst of footsteps much like the ones from when Suyeon had left echoed in from the hallway. As Yeoncheong's head came down, Suyeon opened the door.
“Yeoncheong.”
The application form was still in Suyeon's hand.
“She says you have to submit it in person.”
“You should've just called me. Why'd you go running all the way there and back?”
Yeoncheong gathered her and Suyeon's bags and rose from her seat. Taking her bag, Suyeon narrowed her eyes. Her mismatched eyes, one red and one blue, glared at Yeoncheong.
“Do you know my number?”
There was a faint edge to her voice. When Yeoncheong couldn't manage a word, Suyeon pressed on.
“There's no way to reach you. How am I supposed to call you? Yell out the window?”
“Y-you could've asked. I would've told you...”
Even as she said it, Yeoncheong apparently felt self-conscious, because her eyes darted away.
“How am I supposed to ask when you keep your distance?”
“Distance? Me?”
Yeoncheong turned her head to meet her eyes, insisting she'd never done any such thing. Suyeon, delighted at the opening, crossed her arms outright.
“If she asks first, you give a nice short answer. But if she comes close, you subtly edge away, don't you?”
It was avoidance of unnecessary physical contact—and an unconscious habit Yeoncheong herself hadn't even known she had.
And the girls of an all-girls school were exquisitely sensitive to the smallest of movements.
“No, wait... that wasn't on purpose, I just...”
It was a fact Yeoncheong had never dreamed of. She'd thought she was getting along fairly well, but apparently not at all.
As the mood turned to something like a scolding, Yeoncheong's voice shrank smaller and smaller. Finally, Suyeon held out her hand.
“So hand over your phone.”
“Huh?”
“I'm giving you my number, so give it up. We've been together for a few days now and you seem a little more relaxed around me, so this is fine, right?”
Yeoncheong certainly had been dragged around semi-forcibly on the clubroom tours. With the tension draining from her body, she was indeed treating Suyeon and Hasol more comfortably than before.
She nodded and held out her smartphone, and Suyeon asked with a puzzled face.
“You have to hand it over unlocked, you know.”
“I don't have a lock.”
Suyeon checked Yeoncheong's smartphone. One light swipe, and the screen opened. Just as she was about to scold her, Suyeon decided to accomplish her original goal first. She registered her contact information and called, leaving the number on her own phone.
“Okay, let's go submit the application.”
Yeoncheong took her smartphone back, and the two headed for the teachers' office to turn in the form. Ms. Jisu, receiving the exact same application twice, asked:
“So it was real... I thought Suyeon was playing a prank.”
“Ms. Jisu, come on. I'd never pull a prank like that.”
The homeroom teacher let Suyeon's words slide right past her.
“Well, there's still second semester, so it'd be fine to change then, I suppose.”
“No way! Yeoncheong is going all the way to the end with me!”
Suyeon wrapped her arms around Yeoncheong's waist and clung on as if she'd never let go. The sudden skinship made Yeoncheong's panic plainly visible. Watching the two of them, Ms. Jisu emphasized once more:
“Yeoncheong, if anyone is threatening you, you absolutely must tell me.”
“Ah! Ms. Jisu, I said she's not!”
Thus Suyeon, her voice swelling several sizes, was chased out of the teachers' office. Yeoncheong, standing beside her, getting scolded along with her was a bonus.
The sun had set, and outside was completely dark. The steady hiss of running water stopped, followed by the sound of hands being shaken dry. Yeoncheong, finally done with the pile of dishes she'd put off, collapsed face-down onto her bed. It had been a day that drained her down to the marrow, all because of a club application.
A short vibration. Yeoncheong rolled across the bed in search of the smartphone sitting on her nightstand.
Expecting a mundane ad or spam text, she shot upright in bed. It wasn't a text message—it was a messenger app notification. And it was neither an ad nor spam, but a message from Suyeon.
A "do you have time?" message had arrived alongside a cute sticker. After a moment's hesitation, Yeoncheong's fingers moved across the screen.
Her fingers were frighteningly quick—the next sentence was already appearing on the screen.
“What?”
At the bewildering proposal, a word slipped out of Yeoncheong's mouth. She moved her fingers for the benefit of the person who couldn't possibly hear her.
Urgency bled through the messages. A sticker with a huge question mark popped up, and Suyeon explained.
“It's the downside, though...”
As if she'd heard Yeoncheong's muttered complaint, messages came flying one after another.
A conversation that began in an instant, and ended just as fast. Yeoncheong stared blankly at the screen, and soon enough, the dark glass reflected her face back at her.
A beat behind, Yeoncheong snapped back to her senses and gave serious consideration to whether this wasn't some kind of joke.
A bunk bed, identical stuffed animals lined up side by side, two desks each claiming a wall of the room.
Having finished messaging Yeoncheong, Suyeon turned her head toward the roommate who shared the space—her younger sister.
“Siyeon.”
“What?”
A curt reply came back. Suyeon, long used to this, brought up what she wanted to say.
“When someone transfers schools or whatever, do people normally erase all their contacts?”
Her sister turned her head. Deep blue hair spilled down over her shoulder, and two eyes of different colors looked back at Suyeon.
“Why would you?”
“Right? That's what I thought too.”
“Unless they got wiped by accident, there's really only one reason.”
Her sister Siyeon, turning her gaze back to her desk, continued.
“That it's someone they never intend to see again. For the rest of their life.”
Suyeon nodded silently. Her sister Siyeon, apparently curious, asked.
“Is this about the transfer student?”
“No. It came up in a video I was watching.”
Siyeon told her to stop watching weird stuff, then settled herself onto the bottom bunk. It was her way of declaring the conversation over. Suyeon, still staring at the dark screen, sank into her own thoughts.
Yeoncheong's contact list, glimpsed by chance while registering her number. She hadn't even needed to scroll.
Her father, the Board Chairman, and her homeroom teacher included, it held barely ten entries.
At a glance, it was obvious something had happened. Suyeon had at least that much intuition.
Even I couldn't just ask about something like that...
So what she'd come up with was exchanging contacts under the pretext of a club activity. Left alone, Yeoncheong would clearly go on living exactly as she always had.
School life was supposed to be fun. For Suyeon, who held that as her creed, anything else was unacceptable.
“Aren't you sleeping?”
Siyeon spoke, lifting only her head from the bed. Suyeon said she'd turn in now and rose from her seat.
“Turn off the light.”
“I'm on the top bunk?”
Siyeon's answer was to simply burrow under her blanket.
“Fine, I'll get it this once.”
Siyeon was the one who always gave the orders, so this time Suyeon switched off the light herself. And then—
“Ow!”
Lost in sudden darkness, Suyeon stubbed her toe.
The club application submitted, the weekend had passed and Monday had come around again.
On her way up the stairs, Yeoncheong ran into her homeroom teacher heading for the classroom.
“Yeoncheong, you live so close—how about showing up five minutes early?”
“...I'll work on it.”
Her morning routine was razor-thin as it was; even the slightest delay spelled danger. Lately, with how often she found herself walking into the classroom alongside Ms. Jisu, the "come to school earlier" lecture had followed.
The teacher's eyes went to the shopping bag Yeoncheong was carrying.
“What's that?”
“I borrowed some clothes when I visited the tennis club. I'm returning them.”
The teacher slipped in through the front door, Yeoncheong through the back, and they entered the classroom quietly. While most of the class was watching the teacher, Suyeon turned her head to look at Yeoncheong.
Suyeon passed along a morning greeting with a smile, and Yeoncheong, after a quick glance around, gave a small nod in return.
Once attendance was taken and the brief homeroom meeting wrapped up, there was a stretch of free time before first period began.
Reading or studying was the officially encouraged activity, but it usually degenerated into a stretch of quiet gossip, conducted just out of the teacher's sight and hearing.
“...cheong-ah. Yeoncheong.”
A quiet voice, pitched low, near the floor. Yeoncheong turned her head. It was Seoha.
Seoha, who always spent her spare moments with a book. An unexpected situation, but Yeoncheong leaned slightly toward her all the same, bringing her ear close.
“Did you pick a good club?”
Yeoncheong gave a small nod.
“The Free Inquiry Club?”
“Yeah.”
“That's good—Suyeon was all alone in there.”
The words carried a certainty that she herself would not be around to share the space from now on—that she would become student council president. The teachers' esteem for her, and her singular presence among the students, were proof enough of that conviction.
With the bell marking the end of homeroom, Ms. Jisu rose from her desk.
“Pay close attention in class, everyone.”
The voices of classmates who'd been whispering behind their hands grew louder one by one. Among those preparing for class or heading off to the bathroom in little groups, Suyeon came over.
“Yeoncheong, come to school earlier.”
“Ms. Jisu already told me on the way in.”
“If you do, you can talk with your classmates and get closer to them.”
The jab hit a sore spot dead-on, and Yeoncheong flinched. Suyeon, paying it no mind, kept the conversation going.
“So, do you have a plan?”
“I do, sort of... but it is an actual club activity, right?”
“Of course. Did you seriously think I was joking?”
She couldn't bring herself to admit, to her face, that she had. Yeoncheong cleared her throat and did her best to keep the lie from showing.
“O-of course not.”
“So what's the plan?”
Suyeon grinned, clearly enjoying herself. Yeoncheong waved her over, telling her to lend an ear. When the explanation was done, she waited anxiously for Suyeon's reaction.
“What... is it kind of weird?”
“No. It's perfect.”
Having heard the plan, Suyeon's eyes were sparkling.