The Thief's Own Feet Tingle
Last club period, Yeoncheong had finally cleared up Suyeon's misunderstanding. The club transfer window had closed, too. Everything was supposed to smooth over from here on out — but that was nothing more than wishful thinking.
When lunchtime rolled around, Hasol and Nayun headed off to the cafeteria with their usual lunch crowd, and Suyeon and Seoha slid into the empty seats beside Yeoncheong.
"Yeoncheong!"
With startling enthusiasm, Suyeon threw herself at Yeoncheong, who was still sitting and organizing her books, and hugged her tight.
"Hey, come on. I'm in the middle of putting stuff away."
She didn't follow Yeoncheong all the way to the bathroom anymore, but the skinship had somehow grown even closer. Watching the two of them press up against each other, Seoha smiled.
"Looks like you two worked things out."
She hadn't said anything, but trailing after them everywhere, she must have vaguely sensed that something had happened between Yeoncheong and Suyeon. Yeoncheong was trying her best to manage her expression, yet her friend's smile had completely dead eyes.
Everything from the past week flashed before Yeoncheong like a kaleidoscope. She had no idea what torture might follow one wrong word, so her lips moved with painstaking care.
"Um... well... it worked itself out, one way or another."
Even as she spoke, she threw all her strength into prying Suyeon off, but trying to peel someone away while seated turned out to be easier said than done.
"What was the problem?"
A tiny crack began to spread across Seoha's smile.
"Uh... it was, um. A club thing."
"Really?"
The ends of her words ticked upward. Her eyebrows arched. Her face said it all: Would Suyeon really do all that over something so trivial?
"Suyeon, please, please get off me."
"Why? You said you'd stay right by my side, didn't you?"
Yeoncheong, whose life now hung by a thread, begged for mercy, but Suyeon only tilted her head at the remark she'd made back then. A sentence with so much omitted and condensed that it was ripe for misinterpretation.
"Hmm~?"
Seoha hummed through her nose and crossed her arms. Even the mask of a smile she'd been wearing until now was gone.
Yeoncheong thrust both hands up in a panic and tried to calm her friend down.
"It's not that! You've got it all wrong! I never said anything like that. All I said was I wasn't going to transfer clubs, because she was worried I might leave!"
A short silence.
Each second that passed stretched out like an eternity. Just as Yeoncheong, wound tight as a spring, tried to swallow, Seoha spoke.
"...Okay. Got it."
"Huh?"
"I said I get it. I'll believe you."
Her eyes curved gently into crescents. Seoha flashed a bright smile and chose to trust Yeoncheong's story.
"Really? You really do?"
But Yeoncheong couldn't bring herself to believe her.
"Of course I do."
"Your mouth isn't smiling, though?"
Seoha touched her own lips. Only belatedly did she drag the corners of her mouth upward with her fingers, assembling a smile so beautiful it belonged in a painting.
"D-Do you really believe me?"
"Keep doubting me and I might actually get mad?"
Yeoncheong's head whipped back and forth in frantic denial. Then, under Seoha's urging that the cafeteria was about to fill up—
"R-Right! Let's go, quick!"
Yeoncheong summoned superhuman strength, peeled Suyeon off in one motion, and bolted from the classroom.
Two people were left behind. Seoha looked down at Suyeon, who sat there awkwardly.
"Suyeon."
Now that she'd already laid her heart open about Yeoncheong, there was really only one reason for Suyeon to have behaved like that.
"Sorry."
Suyeon scratched her cheek and met Seoha's eyes.
"It's... my heart just wouldn't do what I told it to..."
No wonder she'd once said she didn't stand a chance. Seoha gave a small nod. Considering how Suyeon had acted at the beach and at the party, it had only ever been a matter of time. She'd expected it to take a while, but it seemed something had served as a trigger, and Suyeon had crossed over all at once.
Still, one question remained.
"But you didn't have to tell me, did you?"
"I figured you were the one I owed it to, even if the others don't know..."
Viewed one way, it was a formal challenge to compete fairly and square. Seoha found her friend's attitude genuinely fascinating — if it were her, she would have used the advantage of information to quietly widen the gap instead.
Their feelings for Yeoncheong were the same, but the way the two of them went about it differed in the subtlest of ways.
"I see. Thanks for telling me."
At how coolly Seoha let it slide, Suyeon's mismatched eyes blinked.
"You're... you're not mad?"
Confessing to a friend that she liked the very girl that friend liked. Those were harsh words, harsh enough that Suyeon had been prepared for their friendship to end over it.
"I'm not exactly not mad... but you told me anyway, so."
Seoha brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and gazed up at a sky without a single cloud.
"Besides, the one who's really in trouble is someone else."
"G-Guys? You were still here?"
Yeoncheong poked her head back in through the front door with an awkward smile.
"And h-here I was, sprinting all the way to the cafeteria by myself with no idea. Hehe."
That sunny, sheepish grin. Seoha and Suyeon stared at her for a long, long moment.
Who could have known? That the friend before them, smiling so absurdly dim and harmless, was the very menace who had — without a shred of self-awareness — captured the hearts of two girls at once.
Somewhere Yeoncheong knew nothing about.
After lunch — and the pledge of fair play those two had sworn — the students of Yeoncheong's class were busy changing clothes while gazing out at the blazing sunshine outside. Gym class, which came only twice a week. And today, it was scheduled for the afternoon.
Yeoncheong, changed into her PE uniform, had been about to put on her jacket before simply draping it over her shoulders instead.
"What do you think we're doing today?"
Between the postponed fitness assessment for her and Nayun and the BMI measuring session in the infirmary that had been full of shrieks, this gym class was a total mystery.
Hasol, who had finished changing up front, looked out the window.
"Who knows..."
Nayun, likewise forgoing her jacket and tying it around her waist, joined the conversation.
"They said to head to the field if it's not raining. We'll find out when we get there."
Such a clear-cut solution. Yeoncheong and Hasol both nodded along.
"Then shall we head out— AAK!"
A scream cut her off mid-word, and Yeoncheong's sentence never reached its end. Hasol and Nayun stared, bewildered, at Yeoncheong — and at Suyeon and Seoha, who had seized both her arms and were dragging her away.
"What did Yeoncheong do... again?"
"Beats me. Must've been something."
You have to see situations like this occasionally to be surprised by them; see them often enough and they just become routine. Even watching Yeoncheong kick and flail, crying that she hadn't put her shoes on yet and wailing their names in desperate pleas for help, Hasol and Nayun carried on this conversation with perfect composure.
Their classmates, for whom such scenes were far from ordinary, did seem rather startled, though.
"Let's hurry and head out too."
"Yeah. We can ask her what's going on out there."
As if nothing at all had happened, Hasol and Nayun calmly put on their shoes and made their way to the field.
"I'm sorry. I don't know for what exactly, but I'm sorry for whatever it was."
Apparently even having both arms forcibly seized now triggered her forehead-flick trauma, because Yeoncheong immediately began firing off apologies.
Suyeon and Seoha, stopped short, stared straight into her blue eyes.
"Hm? What did you do wrong?"
Yeoncheong dug through her memory, mouth working furiously.
"...Wiping my wet hands on my uniform and running off? Blocking the bathroom door with my body?"
Then, turning toward Seoha:
"Or was it sneaking that one cut of the cafeteria tonkatsu?"
Yeoncheong's blue eyes darted this way and that, scanning her two friends' faces. No matter how I think about it, nothing I've done is worse than any of that...
But at this full, unbidden confession, her friends' expressions only darkened.
"Oh, right. I'd completely forgotten about that."
"So that's why... I thought it was weird when you gave me your tonkatsu back then."
Truly, there had been no ill intent whatsoever. Yeoncheong had simply been laughing it up with Hasol and Nayun and nothing else, so the two of them had grabbed her and hauled her off to the field a little roughly, that was all.
It wasn't jealousy toward Hasol and Nayun, who by pure luck happened to sit nearby, nor any grudge against Yeoncheong herself. That was what they both told themselves as they rationalized their behavior—
And the grip on her arms tightened. When Suyeon and Seoha's atmosphere shifted at Yeoncheong's confession, she knew she'd made a terrible mistake.
"Is there any chance I can take back what I just said?"
"You think that's happening?"
Yeoncheong shook her head slowly.
"...No."
"Good girl."
Gripping her tight so she couldn't run, the two friends continued on their way.
"You didn't know! You didn't know any of it until I said it just now!"
Only Yeoncheong's mournful wail rang down the stairwell.
The one genuine blessing was that Hayeong, the PE teacher, had gone out to the field well ahead of the class. Having once again narrowly avoided opening a crimson highway across her forehead, Yeoncheong gave Teacher Hayeong a thumbs-up.
"What's this? All of a sudden?"
"You just saved my life, Miss."
"Then hurry and get the class lined up for warm-ups. I'm going to go grab some soccer balls."
"Yes, ma'am! ...Wait, what?"
Having nodded along, Yeoncheong turned back to the PE teacher with round eyes.
"Don't tell me... we're playing soccer today?"
"Of course we are. What, you think I'd bring soccer balls so you can play volleyball?"
She laughed lightly, as if to say, why would you even ask something so obvious? As Teacher Hayeong walked away, Yeoncheong — now facing the single greatest crisis of her PE career — trailed the teacher's retreating figure with a look of utter despair.
By the time Teacher Hayeong returned with the balls, Yeoncheong — half in a daze — had at least gotten through warm-ups with the rest of the class, and she slipped back into the crowd of students. Right on cue, the bell rang.
The PE teacher asked Yeoncheong if she was finally with them, then began the explanation.
"Alright. You can see what we've got here? Soccer today, and yes, there will be an assessment. Dribbling, passing, shooting."
The teacher tossed a ball up and let it settle on the top of her foot. As the students oohed and aahed, Teacher Hayeong smiled and continued.
"Well, all you have to do is kick it well, so it's easier than basketball."
After a quick demonstration, she announced that a few balls had gone flat so they'd have to take turns practicing, and sent the students scattering across the wide field.
Naturally, Yeoncheong drifted toward Nayun, who had snatched up a ball first — and there too were Hasol, along with Seoha and Suyeon, who had deliberately kept their distance from her.
Yeoncheong and her friends gathered near the goal. Perhaps she'd played soccer before; after knocking the ball around a few times, Nayun blasted a shot into the net and spoke up.
"Been a while since I kicked one around. Not bad."
"You've played soccer?"
At the sparkle in Yeoncheong's eyes, Nayun rubbed her nose.
"A little. It wasn't really my thing, so I switched to basketball pretty quick."
"Teach me sometime."
"You can't play soccer?"
"It's beyond anything my words could explain."
As Yeoncheong jogged over to the goal to fetch the ball, Seoha waved a hand at her.
"Yeoncheong, roll me the ball~"
"Huh?"
"I want to try kicking too."
Not that she wasn't a little uneasy, but Yeoncheong rolled the ball slowly over to Seoha. Naturally, she assumed Seoha would step away from the goal and take a gentle touch.
"Ah. Uh-uhh...!"
Just like during that kickball game not long ago. Seoha sprinted at the rolling ball and extended her leg in one clean, powerful strike.
"HYAAAH!"
The ball shot off like a bolt of lightning, grazed the frozen Yeoncheong by a hair's breadth, and bulged the net.
Blue strands of hair swayed gently in the wake of air the ball had carved through its flight. Only then did the strength leave Yeoncheong's legs, and she landed hard on her backside. Her eyes, ready to pop out of her head, swung toward Seoha.
The red gleam in Seoha's eyes softened into something warm.
"Consider that payback for the tonkatsu you stole."
How hard must she have kicked it? The ball that had shaken the net rolled all the way back to Yeoncheong. If the teacher hadn't come out during the break, would her forehead have survived intact — bluster aside?
Gratitude, and more gratitude, poured out of Yeoncheong toward Hayeong, the PE teacher. Still not quite recovered, chest heaving up and down, she stammered out a question.
"What if it had hit me?"
"It wouldn't. I will never do anything that hurts you. Ever."
It was a voice brimming with absolute conviction.
"What about the forehead flick, then?"
"..."
Arms crossed, Seoha's red eyes slid away from Yeoncheong's gaze.
"That's an exception... Strictly speaking, you didn't get hurt. You just turned red, that's all."
Her voice shrank a little this time. Apparently, she did have some awareness of just how hard she'd flicked.
"Me too! I want to kick one too!"
And bounding around, insisting she had her own vengeance to exact, came Suyeon — the cherry on top.
