The Start of the Second Semester and the End of Being Left on Read
Yeoncheong had kept her word, absolutely and without exception.
Right up until the last days of the summer break ran out, she never once reached out to her friends first, and she maintained a flat refusal to respond to their texts and calls.
Part of it was needing time to cool her anger over their mischievous prank. But the bigger problem was that a grown woman—a person old enough to know better—had teared up in front of her friends because she needed to use the bathroom.
In other words, she needed time to recover from the psychological damage.
And so, as the days slipped past one by one, the day she'd been praying would never come finally arrived.
Her smartphone alarm, which had been on an extended vacation all break, went off. A hand shot out from under the covers, fumbled around the nightstand until it found the phone, and silenced it. The hand, its duty done, burrowed back under the blanket.
She was just drifting off again when—
Bolt upright.
Half-lidded, Yeoncheong pushed herself up in bed.
"Ah... today's the first day of school, isn't it..."
With a sigh, she pried herself free of the bed's relentless grip. It had been less than a month, but a break was a break.
She folded the blanket, headed for the bathroom, came back to lay out her uniform, got bread ready for breakfast and completely forgot the jam—her once-smooth school-morning routine was sluggish and creaking at every step.
Which meant that at the time she would normally have been walking out the door in full uniform, she was still in the middle of getting ready.
It was only mid-bite into her breakfast bread, fresh out of the shower, that the realization hit her.
"Oh, crap!"
If she was late on the very first day of the semester, there was no telling what kind of lecture her homeroom teacher, Jisu, would unload on her. She threw on the uniform she'd laid out, skipped checking herself over entirely, and bolted out of the house.
Today was the end of summer break—the day the second semester began.
***
The first day of the second semester, arriving at last to cut the sweet summer holiday short.
Yeoncheong took one look at the noisier-than-usual road to school and let herself relax. Judging by her hard-won experience, this level of racket meant everything was fine, and so she gradually slowed her pace.
Summer break ending didn't mean summer itself was over, and this particular summer only seemed to grow more vicious by the day—she was breaking a sweat first thing in the morning.
She climbed the stairs and turned into the corridor, and there was her homeroom teacher. Her accumulated life experience had not lied to her.
"Good morning, Teacher!"
Jisu, who had just arrived at the classroom door, narrowed her eyes and studied Yeoncheong.
"I'm not late, am I?"
"If you come in after me, you're late."
"Aw, Teacher!"
Yeoncheong slipped into the classroom at practically the same moment as her homeroom teacher.
Perhaps to avoid any squabbling over seats, her classmates had settled back into where they'd sat before the break. And so Yeoncheong naturally made her way to the seat next to Hasol, who was leaning against the hallway-side wall.
"You really didn't message me even once..."
On the way to her seat came Hasol's wounded voice from right beside her, and she could feel three pairs of pointed stares boring into her—but she resolutely looked away and sat down.
Only when Yeoncheong sat did the classroom desks fill up completely, with no empty seats left.
"All right, it's been a while, so let's do a proper roll call, shall we?"
Having swept her gaze across the room, Teacher Jisu spotted Hasol seated beside Yeoncheong and called the first name.
"Kang Hasol."
"Here."
Jisu made eye contact with each student as she finished taking attendance, then passed the time with light small talk—did everyone rest well over the break, did anyone go anywhere nice.
When the break-period bell rang, signaling them to prepare for first period, the homeroom teacher looked around the classroom and spoke.
"It's the second semester starting today, so get back to studying hard. Don't think just because it's the first day back that you can sleep through class, all right?"
"Yes, ma'am."
Jisu's gaze came to rest on Yeoncheong.
"Teacher, I pay great attention in class."
"...Right. I'll take your word for it."
Maybe it was because of her grades. The teacher left, clearly placing zero faith in Yeoncheong's answer, and the classroom burst into chatter.
"Hey, you went overseas this break, right?"
"Yeah, that's right. With my parents..."
One friend was eagerly recounting tales of a trip abroad over the summer.
"BWAHAHA! What happened to your hair? Your hair, it's..."
"Oh, dammit! Don't look. I went to a new salon a few days ago and..."
Another was grumbling about botching a haircut right before the semester started.
Everyone was seeing each other for the first time in ages, and they all seemed busy catching up on what they'd missed.
With the memory of summer break still lingering in her body, Yeoncheong instinctively slumped onto her desk to make up for her lack of sleep—but—
"Hey, Ha Yeoncheong. Comfortable up there, is it?"
The owner of that thoroughly irked voice was Suyeon.
"I know full well you're not sleeping."
"...I'm tired, though."
Out of options, Yeoncheong poked her head up and looked around at the friends surrounding her.
"Do you have any idea how worried we were when you went completely silent?"
She did have a track record of vanishing once before, so her friends' concern wasn't entirely unfounded. She'd felt it through the steady stream of worried texts they'd sent, but seeing them carry on like this in person meant they must have been genuinely, seriously worried.
Even Yeoncheong, who had ignored every single message, felt a pang of guilt.
"...I needed time to recover from the psychological trauma."
Her defiant voice shrank a little at the edges.
Nayun crossed her arms and let out a sigh.
"I mean, it wasn't even a real mistake, was it?"
".........Right. Not a mistake."
The answer came so late it registered as pure silence, and Yeoncheong's eyes slid away.
No one needed to go first—Seoha, Suyeon, and Hasol's hands rained down on the back of their utterly oblivious friend. Then Suyeon dragged Nayun, who'd collapsed under the group lynching, off to a nearby empty seat.
As Suyeon shook out her hand, Hasol bent one knee down to bring herself level with the seated Yeoncheong, meeting her eyes.
"Yeoncheong, still—when something's wrong, you should talk it out. Not just clamp your mouth shut and disappear."
"I know that, but..."
Yeoncheong had no rebuttal to the model answer Hasol was laying out.
"What if we'd decided to stop answering your texts? What would you have done?"
"That—!"
Yeoncheong jolted, crying out before catching herself and mumbling under her breath.
"...That wouldn't be okay..."
As if it had never once crossed her mind that her friends could ever do such a thing, her blue eyes wavered violently as they darted between their faces, searching for a reaction.
Hasol smiled faintly.
Lips still opening and closing without a word, Yeoncheong finally forced the apology out.
"I-I'm sorry too... for ignoring everyone..."
Her friends nodded along beside her. Truly, putting yourself in the other person's shoes worked wonders.
But then the words that followed out of Yeoncheong's mouth left them all completely at a loss.
"...I'll pay for this sin with my body."
"Huh?"
The sound burst from the mouths of all three friends—everyone except the felled Nayun—at the exact same time.
***
The teacher, who had hammered home the fact that break was over from the moment she walked in, dove straight into new material starting with the very first class of the first day. For students still needing time to come to terms with the reality of school being back in session, it was sheer agony.
But while the lesson went in one ear and out the other, Yeoncheong's friends were distracted for an entirely different reason.
Pay for it with her body.
It was because of Yeoncheong, who had dropped a line that belonged in a novel or a movie. They'd tried to press her right then and there about what on earth she'd meant—
—but with the teacher walking in exactly as the first-period bell rang, the conversation between Yeoncheong and her friends never got to continue.
Hasol glanced over at the girl sitting beside her. The fact that the very person who'd said it was now listening to the lesson with grave concentration only infuriated them more.
I genuinely have no idea what was going through her head when she said that...
It had been the same at the beach, too. The girl had a real talent for dropping words with catastrophic potential for misunderstanding.
And so, everyone except Yeoncheong finished the first class of the semester with absolutely nothing left in their heads.
"We'll stop here for today. Remember where we left off."
The instant the teacher left the room, the friends—everyone except Nayun, who'd missed the whole conversation—converged on Yeoncheong.
"Hey. What was that thing you said earlier?"
"Seriously. Did we hear you right?"
"This is a very important matter."
The three of them unloaded all at once, and Yeoncheong flinched backward.
"G-guys... I need a moment to prepare myself..."
The phrase prepare myself set all three friends' nerves on edge in turn.
As hopelessly clueless as Yeoncheong was about that sort of thing, could it be that this time she'd actually meant it that way? Still, they weren't about to beg for an apology that badly over something so small.
Suyeon, Seoha, and Hasol exchanged a look. The three of them led Yeoncheong away to a quiet spot—to give her a stern lesson about treating her body so carelessly.
They arrived at a place where students rarely ventured. Just as Hasol opened her mouth to deliver the first sharp remark—
"Whew..."
With a long, deep breath—
"Okay. Hit me."
Eyes squeezed tightly shut, Yeoncheong bowed her head.
***
Every single one of her friends' faces went blank.
What is she saying right now?
That was the thought written across all three of their faces.
When no blow came no matter how long she waited, Yeoncheong cracked one eye open.
"Y-you're not hitting me?"
The first to recover her composure, Seoha's lips trembled.
"When you said 'pay with my body'... you meant hitting you on the forehead?"
"Huh? Yeah."
Yeoncheong nodded with the most innocent face in the world. At the same moment, a long, deep sigh escaped from all three of her friends.
Hasol gave an awkward laugh and said to her, "Yeoncheong, nobody means it like that."
"She's right. That's not paying with your body, that's just taking your lumps."
"Ah... it didn't occur to me earlier..."
Considering Yeoncheong's mock-exam Korean scores and her literature test results, it didn't sound like a lie. And so the friends' hearts filled to the brim with two things at once: the hollow deflation of worry spent for nothing, and the deep indignation of having had their minds dragged through the mud.
Seoha loosened her hands first and stepped in front of Yeoncheong.
"Yeoncheong, let's make it exactly as bad as what you did. That's fair, right?"
"One hit?"
Seoha shook her head. Yeoncheong's expression stiffened slightly.
"Then... two?"
"..."
"O-okay, fine... it was my fault for ignoring everyone, especially with my record. I can... I can take up to three."
"..."
"Seoha? Seoha?"
"Guys, hold Yeoncheong down for me."
Hasol and Suyeon slid in on either side and seized both her arms. Panic seized Yeoncheong and she called out her friends' names, but it was no use.
Seoha gently swept back Yeoncheong's bangs and drew her fingers back.
And then—
Thwack.
A sound like something splitting, followed by a scream that never made it into actual words. Even the two friends holding her down flinched.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Four more cracks echoed out in quick succession, and when she was finally released, Yeoncheong clutched her forehead and wailed her grievances.
"Aaaaaagh..."
"Yeoncheong, we're not done yet."
With a refreshingly bright smile, Seoha traded places with Hasol.
"M-me too?"
"If you're going to do it, you do it properly. That's how she learns not to do it again."
Nodding at Seoha's words, Hasol hooked her middle finger against her thumb and flicked Yeoncheong's forehead—lightly, but with pinpoint accuracy. The bright red highway Seoha had paved across Yeoncheong's forehead gained vivid new lanes.
After taking her own five flicks and being released, clear beads of tears welled up at the corners of Yeoncheong's eyes and trickled down.
"G-guys... I'm really, really sorry. It hurts so much..."
"It's okay. There are only five left, see?"
When Suyeon traded places with Hasol with a smile, Yeoncheong went white as a sheet, shaking her head back and forth in furious resistance.
"P-please spare me! Mmmph... mmph!!!"
And so Yeoncheong was led to a quiet place where students rarely ventured. There was no one, anywhere, to save her.
***
When Teacher Jisu entered the classroom at the second-period bell, she shot Yeoncheong a sharp look.
"Yeoncheong, didn't you tell me just this morning that you pay attention in class?"
"Me? I was listening super carefully, though?"
Yeoncheong lifted her head with a look of pure injustice on her face.
Her homeroom teacher pointed at Yeoncheong's forehead.
"Your forehead is bright red and you're going to lie to me?"
"No, this is..."
Yeoncheong, who'd opened her mouth to explain, hung her head instead. It was simply too embarrassing to admit that her forehead had been flicked within an inch of its life.
"I'm sorry..."
She puffed out one cheek and stared off into the distance with a sulky pout. Watching their friend like this, Hasol, Suyeon, and Seoha were giggling away to their hearts' content.
