Halfie
The next morning, I found myself heading back to the school once more.
It wasn't that I'd gotten so hooked on the high-school-boy cosplay that going a single day without the uniform left me feeling like I had thorns in my mouth. If anything, I wanted to wrap up this whole lifestyle as soon as possible, burn the uniform, and reduce it to white ash.
But yesterday's school visit had yielded its own harvest.
Even if the process had come with the risk of making two unnecessary new acquaintances, Kim Hyeonji's one-sided claim that Harin had a guy had turned out not to be so one-sided after all.
Harin had only moved to Seoul four months ago, and the time she'd actually spent attending school was far shorter—measured in mere days. If a girl like that already had a guy she hung around with outside of school, they had to be pretty close.
My aunt would probably mock me for this, calling it an inferiority complex or saying my obsession was off the charts. But I wasn't just fretting that Harin might star in some High School Mom and Dad Season 2.
That single pack of Marlboro Red discovered on her bed. I'd suspected it belonged to Kim Hyeonji, but the girl I'd briefly met hadn't looked short enough on pocket money to be scrounging cigarettes.
Now a new suspect had been added to the list. If Harin's boyfriend happened to be a heavy smoker with the exact same taste as Kim Hyeonji, everything would make sense.
So for now, both of them stayed on the list of persons of interest while the investigation continued.
Quiet...
The school ahead of lunchtime was so still that even the chirping of a small bird wouldn't have carried. So why had I shown up before lunch had even started?
Because I was the sort of person who actually reflected on things. The reason I'd come to school twice already without catching so much as a glimpse of one of Harin's eyebrows was that my approach had been wrong.
Lunchtime meant a thousand students stampeding around like unbroken colts with the reins cut. Trying to find a needle in a haystack under those conditions? Of course it hadn't worked.
So today I would reverse it—I would insert myself into Harin's path. After carefully studying the mini-map on the school website last night, I'd figured out the shortest route from the second-year building to the cafeteria.
All I had to do was hide along that route, confirm Harin heading to the cafeteria, and then reverse-track her. I checked the clock tower with a bright little smile.
12:10
"..."
That still didn't explain why I'd arrived a full twenty minutes early for lunch. Or why, instead of heading for my original destination—the second-year building—I was walking toward the shade of a tree in the back courtyard.
Sigh...
Only when I was nearly under that tree did my unconscious finally reveal why it had led me here. Someone greeted me with a deep sigh, as if deliberately reminding me of my first day on these grounds.
It was Ms. Eunju.
Rustle...
I immediately ducked into the bushes and observed her. Shoulders hunched, letting out a sigh—my true love, like a single snow flower blooming precariously on a snow-covered cliff...
Shake it off!
What the hell was I thinking? I was a thorough man; I'd simply arrived earlier than expected and decided to look around.
Of course, just watching Ms. Eunju sigh so wistfully from a distance was enough to make my heart tremble as if I'd returned to childhood.
But as she herself always said, she was the homeroom teacher and I was a parent. This relationship could never be allowed...
"...?"
So why was she sighing? It wasn't something I'd planned, but with Eunju having filed her candidacy for vice president, shouldn't that have taken a load off her mind?
"Teacher?"
"Ah! Y-you—how long have you been there?"
I couldn't hold back my curiosity and spoke first. I knew it was dangerous, but as a parent I still needed to check whether any new information had been updated.
"Just now. I was at the hospital and I'm on my way back."
"I see... Wait, what part of you is so sick that you keep going? Didn't you go last week too?"
"I catch a lot of little illnesses. But you don't really need to worry."
Just the fact that Ms. Eunju remembered me was enough to make life's nutrients overflow. She had plenty of her own worries, yet here she was fretting over me like it was her own business.
"Ah... Come to think of it, thank you! Thanks to you, it seems Eunju changed her mind."
"Huh? What do you mean... I didn't do anything?"
Of course I had. I hadn't meant to, but while trying to play the adult for once I'd ended up interfering in a kid's life.
"But Eunju definitely said so. She suddenly came and said she wanted to run, and when I asked why, she said she'd talked it over with some senior and decided that even if she failed, it would be good to try. That was you, wasn't it?"
"Uh... You can't really say it was definitely me, right? You didn't happen to mention me to Eunju, did you? Then she'd figure out you put her up to it from behind the scenes."
"Not at all! Eunju doesn't even know you and I know each other."
Whew... Thank goodness. Ms. Eunju would keep quiet about me if only to cover her own embarrassment.
Truth was, even if she wanted to talk, she barely knew anything about me. And having my existence keep getting mentioned among people wouldn't do me any good.
"Then I'll head inside now."
I didn't actually want to go in. If I had my way I'd set Harin aside and spend a little more time getting to know Ms. Eunju.
The school would still be here if I came back later...
"R-right. Go on in and attend class. Sigh...."
"...?"
Apparently Ms. Eunju had been thinking the same thing. She told me to go inside, yet she looked at me with the eyes of an abandoned dog that already sensed it was about to be left behind, leaving a lingering sigh of regret.
"Is something else wrong?"
"Hm? Ah, actually... N-no! You're a student and I'm a teacher!"
"..."
Here we go again. After hitting me with those wistful eyes, why the sudden clash of values?
"Come on, just tell me. There's nothing you can't say to me, right? It's not like I'm the type to go around talking about this stuff."
"Hm? I-is that so? Ugh... It's about the student council election."
"Huh? Didn't Eunju running solve everything?"
"It did, but now a problem's cropped up somewhere else. Do you know a girl in our class named Thuy?"
"Of course not. More like, this school has way too many people with weird naming sense. Who names their kid Thuy?"
Same with Su Mokhwa yesterday—had all the parents at this school made a group pact to give their kids bizarre names? Ms. Eunju supplied the answer.
"Ah... She's from a multicultural family. Her mother's Vietnamese, so that's probably why."
"If she's Vietnamese, shouldn't it be something like Nguyen?"
"Th-that... I'm not a Vietnamese teacher, so I don't really know."
"Anyway, what's the problem with her?"
"Haa... It's a long story. Originally there was a girl named Jihye who was going to be Eunju's running mate. But Eunju suddenly refused to run, and because of that Jihye seems to have decided to find a new running mate. And that new one is Thuy from our class."
"...?"
That didn't match what Eunju had told me. She'd said her running mate had stabbed her in the back, so she'd had no choice but to drop out.
Of course, from Ms. Eunju's perspective—not knowing the full story—the cause and effect could easily get mixed up. It wasn't that Jihye had rejected Eunju and gone to Thuy; it was that Eunju had rejected Jihye, so Jihye had no choice but to team up with Thuy.
Or Eunju had lied to me.
"Sigh... So now our class alone has two candidates for vice president. There was no problem until registration closed, but once the official notice went up, how do I put it..."
"The class atmosphere got really awkward, right? Split into Team Eunju and Team Thuy, quietly sparring for dominance, leaving the teacher stuck in the middle?"
I'd seen plenty of that. On deep-sea fishing boats, most of the crew besides a few navigators were foreigners.
And unless they all came from the same country, those crew members usually came from all different places.
In those cases the two largest groups would snarl at each other fighting for control.
"Ah... Yeah? Actually you can't even call them two factions. Because most of the students support Eunju."
"...?"
A little different. It wasn't that Team Thuy was merely smaller than Team Eunju—she was basically tanking the entire rest of the class one-versus-all.
Thinking about it, the reason was simple.
"Because Thuy's a bit different from the other kids, right? I mean, being the only 'halfie'..."
"Ha-halfie?! You can't use that word! You were taught to say multicultural!"
"S-sorry... Anyway, the kids aren't used to that 'multicultural' thing, huh?"
"Yeah..."
An old-fashioned word had slipped out without me noticing. Back in my hometown mixed kids had become common enough that you could easily find four or five in a single class.
But this was downtown Seoul. Cases like Thuy were rare, so everyone was bound to feel a sense of otherness.
And that otherness quietly surfaced as a tendency to exclude.
"That must be hard on you, Teacher. But what can you do? If you at least look after Thuy behind the scenes..."
"But Thuy doesn't really want to talk to me, so sigh..."
"..."
Don't tell me it was that again? Because Thuy didn't trust a first-year teacher enough to open up about her worries, she wanted me—a fellow student—to approach her instead and figure out how she was feeling?
I had to refuse. I'd already made unnecessary acquaintances with three of Harin's classmates, making it even harder to come to school.
And now she wanted me to add one more?
"Don't worry. I'll figure something out."
But she was too pretty to refuse. Those wistful eyes that looked ready to spill tears at any moment had disarmed me long ago.
"Really? Ah, no! You're a student and I'm a teacher! If a teacher foists her own work onto a student..."
"But if a teacher could handle everything, why elect class presidents and form student councils? Different people with slightly different roles meshing together like gears to keep a small society running. Isn't that the whole reason schools exist?"
"I-is that so? But you're not even our class president."
"Then call me a kind of shadow power. I've never received any official title or role, but I hide behind the curtain and protect the balance of the class like a puppet master."
"..."
Even for Ms. Eunju, that level of nonsense had apparently crossed the line of what she could tolerate. Fortunately, the lunch bell rang right then.
Ding-dong-ding-dong...
Wait a second? Didn't that mean my plan to tail Harin from behind had gone off the rails again?
Oblivious to my urgency, Ms. Eunju leisurely bid me farewell.
"Ah... Lunchtime, huh? Shouldn't you go eat now?"
"You just trust me and enjoy your meal in peace, Teacher. I should be heading off now."
Back to square one. Looks like I had no choice but to hunt for that needle in the haystack again.
And with the added penalty of not running into Eunju's friends in the process?
"You called for us?"
But I didn't need to worry about that penalty. Because right there, Eunju and her friends appeared.
"Huh?! Wh-why are you guys here?"
"Senior... you were here?"
In my fluster I acknowledged them before Ms. Eunju could even return the greeting. Watching us, Ms. Eunju asked,
"You know each other?"
"Ah... This is that senior. The one who convinced me it would be good to run."
"Hup! Really? That was you?!"
Ms. Eunju pretended not to know me at all with acting so bad even a little kid wouldn't fall for it. But we'd been sitting face-to-face having a counseling session until just a moment ago—wasn't that a little too transparent?
"A-anyway, I'll be going, Teacher."
"Huh? Teacher, didn't you call me because you had something to say?"
"Ah, that? I-it can wait until the end-of-day meeting, Eunju. Enjoy your lunch!"
Ms. Eunju, please—she bolted in a flustered dash. Wasn't that a little too irresponsible? In the end I was the one left cornered by Eunju's group again.
"What were you talking about with the homeroom teacher?"
Eunju asked. She wasn't stupid; of course she'd be suspicious of a connection between me and Ms. Eunju that shouldn't exist at all.
"I just got back from the hospital and was wandering around because I didn't feel like going into the classroom. Then she grabbed me and gave me a lecture about why I wasn't going inside."
"I see... So are you heading to eat now?"
"Guess so?"
I managed to smooth it over somehow. But I'd forgotten Wonhui was there.
"Perfect! Let's go eat together, oppa!"
"T-together? We don't really have to—"
"But you were going to eat anyway, right?"
"..."
She had a point. At this hour every student's destination was the same single place.
Whether I liked it or not I had to head toward the cafeteria, and there was zero reason to refuse their offer to come along.
But. That. Didn't. Make. Sense. I wasn't actually a student here.
The second I stepped into the cafeteria my fake identity would be exposed. Then wee-woo wee-woo! Five patrol cars would roll up to catch the pervert who'd trespassed on school grounds in a high-school-boy cosplay.
"Uh... Sorry, you guys go ahead. I wasn't planning on eating the school lunch today anyway."
"Then what were you going to eat?"
"I'll eat outside. But don't worry too much. Hopping the school wall isn't exactly a new thing for me..."
Poke-poke...
That was when it happened. Mokhwa, who hadn't said a word the whole time, launched her signature side-poke again. Eunju gave an awkward smile and answered like this:
"Okay. Then we'll eat out today too."
"...?"
How the two of them communicated didn't matter. What did you just say, Eunju?
We were allowed to eat out? The words had barely left her mouth when Wonhui clapped her hands and declared,
"Buy us tteokbokki, oppa!"
"..."
There was nowhere left to run. With no other choice, I abandoned my duties once again and headed for the school gate with Eunju's group of four to have lunch.
Ah, strictly speaking, not four but five.