Will Spring Come with the New Semester? (2)
February semester is nothing but a parade of empty, pointless classes.
The school year is already over. The students have no drive left to prep for next year, and the weather is too chilly for gym or outdoor activities—so the teachers aren't keen either.
So what do they do instead?
Self-study, of course.
And not just any self-study—the kind with almost zero teacher interference, closer to the free-for-all seniors get after the college entrance exam.
Some teachers put on a movie. Some force everyone to sleep. Some simply abandon the kids entirely, so long as they don't make too much noise.
Kim Seongyeong—homeroom teacher of Class 1-8, and next year's Class 2 homeroom teacher—belonged firmly to that last category.
"Alright, this is a bit out of nowhere, but we've got transfer students. Let's do a quick intro, everyone. You'll all be sophomores soon anyway, so just try not to make things awkward for each other."
Most of the class was sprawled out asleep, so the response was lukewarm at best.
The boys who were awake, though, had stars in their eyes. Hard not to, with a sparkling girl standing right in front of them.
"Hi there~ I'm Han Yeo-reum!"
An open, friendly face and a freshness that radiated off her without even trying. True to her name, she was the spitting image of summer sunshine.
"Hello. I'm Cha Ga-eul. I went to the same school as Yeo-reum."
And then there was Cha Ga-eul's greeting—the complete opposite, flat and blunt. Everyone who heard it understood immediately: getting close to Han Yeo-reum would be easy, but Cha Ga-eul was going to be a different story. Above all, the rigid aura rolling off those black horn-rimmed glasses of hers was formidable.
"You two can sit in the back, next to Jin Gyeo-wool. I already set seats aside for you."
Every pair of eyes in the room followed Kim Seongyeong's pointing finger.
At the very back of the classroom, by the window, the space to Jin Gyeo-wool's right had always been empty. Sit next to her and you risked getting your hair ripped out.
But now, two vacant desks and chairs occupied the spot that should have been bare. The handiwork of a few classmates who'd come in early that morning and gotten snagged by Kim Seongyeong.
Everyone was baffled. Why on earth plant the new transfers right next to Jin Gyeo-wool? No one could figure out Kim Seongyeong's angle.
What stunned them even more was Han Yeo-reum bolting the second she spotted Jin Gyeo-wool—
"Gyeo-wool~!"
—and Jin Gyeo-wool's reaction to her.
"Uh…? Who?"
The temperature in the classroom plummeted. Sensing the bad omen, Kim Seongyeong muttered something about self-study and fled the room.
Cha Ga-eul, trailing Yeo-reum toward the back seats, tilted her head in confusion.
…Don't tell me she forgot our faces?
It was possible. According to what Gyeo-wool's mother, Min Cheong-ha, had told them, Gyeo-wool had gone through one traumatic shock after another this year and lost every memory connected to Lee Bom.
So if her elementary school memories had gone with them, it stood to reason the two of them—who'd played together back then—might have been wiped out too.
I'll talk her through it calmly and help her accept it…
Cha Ga-eul finished her quick assessment and moved to mediate between the two—only for Han Yeo-reum to charge Gyeo-wool on her own terms.
"Whoa, what? Jin Gyeo-wool. Don't tell me you forgot my face? Hmm?"
"Uh. Uh? Huh?"
Yeo-reum barreled into the seated Gyeo-wool and threw her arms around her in a crushing hug. Panic flooded Gyeo-wool's face, and her eyebrows started twitching at the sheer unexpectedness of it all.
The whole class tensed up. The way this was going did not look good.
"Hey, Han Yeo-reum. Hold on—!"
"We were that close and you already forgot?"
"We were?"
Gyeo-wool genuinely didn't know, and that single reply sent a wave of unease rippling through every classmate's stare.
Just as the collective thought Why is she acting like she knows someone she doesn't…! gathered over the classroom like a storm cloud, Yeo-reum tossed out another line—her very tactile body still glued to Gyeo-wool.
"Back in the neighborhood, if just the two of us showed up, everyone knew who we were. And you already forgot? How could you? It's only been four years~!"
Only the sharp-minded Cha Ga-eul could parse the situation at speed. Jin Gyeo-wool: currently the craziest girl in this entire school. The two transfers, Han Yeo-reum and Cha Ga-eul: people who knew her, and who'd been the neighborhood's infamous little maniacs since elementary school.
That last part was a misunderstanding—but what did it matter? Gyeo-wool's image was already the connecting link, and it had stamped itself onto the whole class.
This is a mess.
Cha Ga-eul pushed her horn-rims up with one finger and pressed hard at the bridge of her nose.
No—Gyeo-wool doesn't remember, so if she just says she doesn't know—
While Lee Yeong-bin and everyone else in the room dreaded the reunion of these three, Gyeo-wool's mouth—which had briefly stopped—started moving again.
"Ah. Right. Yeah. That happened."
"You remember? You remember now?"
"Yeah. Not super clearly, but…"
Dear god. Cha Ga-eul was appalled. All she had to do was say she didn't know. Instead she'd fallen right into Yeo-reum's rhythm and casually agreed.
"I really hope I end up in a different class next year…"
"I'm going science track, so different class. Good luck."
Already, at the front of the room behind Cha Ga-eul, public opinion was crystallizing around one desperate wish: please do not put us in the same class as those three. Classmates were whispering among themselves.
Han Yeo-reum, who'd been cheerful and friends with half her old school before transferring, had just successfully joined Hwasong High's premier pack of lunatics.
And Cha Ga-eul—formerly the model student of the class—had overnight become the crazy girl who just hid it better. In reality she was a slave chained to cram school the second the final bell rang, but a few lines of conversation between Yeo-reum and Gyeo-wool had dumped her straight into the school's worst problem-child clique.
"Ga-eul, what are you doing? Hurry up. We haven't seen each other in forever—why are you standing so far away?"
"…Coming."
Not much choice. Now that things had gone this far, the only option was to ride the wave.
Cha Ga-eul had always hated getting dragged into noisy incidents, and if the people around her sorted themselves out like this, she could live with it.
No—actually, this was better. Her sharp eyes had always had a habit of picking fights with people she never wanted trouble from.
If they became an untouchable group at school, wasn't that more than fine?
Two years left until graduation. All she had to do was manage the atmosphere just enough to keep anything major from blowing up.
"Long time no see, Gyeo-wool. You've been well?"
The question was a calculated move designed to pull an answer out of her. Gyeo-wool had already gone along with Yeo-reum's full-frontal assault without thinking. If memory loss made a firm answer hard, she'd still give some vague reply—that much was certain.
"Yeah. I've been fine. You?"
Unfortunately, the only one who'd been fine was Jin Gyeo-wool. Her classmates most certainly had not. Naturally, the thought-clouds gathered again. Crazy girl!
"I've been fine."
The two transfer students had thrown Jin Gyeo-wool into complete disarray the moment first period started.
The second break hit, the two girls forcibly dragged her off to the school store.
"Gyeo-wool, is there anything you want to eat?"
"Huh? Right now?"
"Yeah. Aren't you hungry?"
With Han Yeo-reum shoving those enormous high-school-girl breasts right at her, Gyeo-wool's head was already a mess. Why did she have to link arms and press in so close? This royal pudding rush was nothing like touching her own chest—desire started boiling up hard.
But she had to hold it in. Friend. Minor. Good thoughts. Good thoughts.
Right—better to think about food instead. That'd help. Pizza bread instead of chest pudding. That should do it.
"Pizza bread for me. Whatever's fine."
"Okay~ pizza bread~. Auntie, what's the tastiest one?"
While Yeo-reum cheerfully took the order without a second thought, Cha Ga-eul was already analyzing Gyeo-wool's tastes in the middle of it all.
She'd be stuck on close-watch duty for the next two years. Checking how Gyeo-wool's preferences had changed over the four years they hadn't seen each other was only sensible.
"Thirty seconds in the microwave and you're set. Eat it while it's warm!"
"Ah. Okay."
"What do you want to drink? Soda? Sports drink? Water? Juice?"
Yeo-reum's assault kept coming. Gyeo-wool had been trying to think a little before answering, but there was no defending against a continuous barrage. In the end she had no choice but to blurt out her old preference straight away.
"Cola. Cola!"
"Cola is good~! Auntie, one cola too!"
Pizza bread—or a cheap hamburger—and a cola. That had been one of Bae Do-hyun's most-eaten meals before he died.
Stopping by the convenience store on the way home from a part-time shift and grabbing it as a meal replacement had become such a habit that the familiar clerk would sometimes just hand him a bag already packed the second he walked in.
Truth was, since becoming Jin Gyeo-wool he'd barely touched the stuff. He'd been living in gratitude for the home-cooked meals the housekeeper prepared every day.
No real reason to hit a convenience store, and no desire to spend the time getting there either. He had to keep raising the Memory Erosion rate and pour every spare minute into practice.
The sharp crack of a cola can tab, the fizzing rush of carbonation bursting free, the sweet-sharp scent of it—
Ah. This smell…
It was a smell he'd missed. After he'd started living alone, there hadn't been a single day without cola. Even on the rare nights he splurged on pizza or fried chicken, cola came with it.
If he had beer money, he bought cola instead. There were ways to bulk-buy cheap through coupon apps, but stick a cola in the goshiwon's shared fridge and someone always stole it. Leave it on the floor and drink it warm, and unless it was winter it just tasted bad.
In the end, nothing beat that one ice-cold cola from the fridge after clocking out.
Gyeo-wool started guzzling the cola before she'd even touched the pizza bread. The sharp carbonation stabbed cool and clean down her throat.
"Kahhh!"
Yeah. That was the stuff.
Pulling off a reaction cool enough to star in a cola commercial, Gyeo-wool called out to the store auntie.
"Auntie, one more can!"
A small can was never enough. Big cans were where it was at.
After that, Jin Gyeo-wool kept getting hauled around by Han Yeo-reum and Cha Ga-eul. It should have been annoying, but she didn't bother shaking them off.
From what she'd heard, they'd known each other since elementary school. Acting friendly was fair enough, then.
So starting from the second-period break, Gyeo-wool casually threw an arm around each of their shoulders. When else was she going to get to walk around with cute girls tucked under both arms?
Truly—Yeo-reum on the left, Ga-eul on the right.
But third period brought a crisis. This time their destination was the bathroom. People said girls bonded by going to the bathroom together, and apparently that was actually true.
Why did they have to go together? Was listening to water sounds some kind of hobby?!
"Gyeo-wool, you done yet?"
"Uh, uh! Just a second!"
But knowing two girls were doing their business in the stalls on either side made it impossible to focus on her own.
Even after the two of them had gone out and started washing their hands, still nothing. The nerves had her feeling like she couldn't squeeze out a single drop.
After sitting on the toilet forever, Gyeo-wool had no choice but to pull everything back up and bolt out of the stall.
Fine—she'd just go at home! There was no other answer!
"What took you so long?"
"Ah… just thinking about something!"
I couldn't concentrate because of you two, damn it. Gyeo-wool let out a short sigh and tried to walk out like nothing had happened. Cha Ga-eul caught her by the back of the neck.
"Wash your hands before you leave."
"Ah. Right."
Wash her hands when she hadn't even done anything? But dwelling on that was pointless. If your friends said to do it, you did it.
She'd been headed for a lonely, solitary school life—and then these two friends had popped up like saviors to rescue her.
As long as they weren't doing anything that caused her actual problems, Gyeo-wool had no reason to turn down the offers coming her way.
She gave her hands a quick, halfhearted scrub under the water, then followed the two girls waiting at the entrance.
It was chaotic, but time passed just fine. Sleep through self-study, get dragged around by friends during breaks—and before she knew it, fourth period was over.
The discomfort of wearing a girls' school uniform had only lasted a moment. Except when she was walking around, there wasn't much reason to think about it.
And then came closing homeroom.
"No closing announcements today. Head straight home."
"Yes!" "Oyasu!"
Kim Seongyeong didn't even come into the classroom. Busy prepping for the new-semester faculty meeting, she cracked the front door, poked her head in, dropped the single line about going home, and vanished.
Gyeo-wool muttered to herself with a baffled look.
"What? What about lunch?"
Yeo-reum, overhearing, chimed in.
"Lunch? Want to go get lunch, Gyeo-wool?"
That wasn't what she'd meant. Didn't the school serve lunch?
But while Gyeo-wool was still floundering, refusing to accept reality, the boy who'd invited her to lunch a few hours earlier appeared in front of her again.
"Jin Gyeo-wool. Lunch—we said we'd eat together earlier, right?"
Only then did it hit her. That offhand line she'd tossed out thinking it just meant eating school cafeteria food together had somehow turned into plans to meet up separately.
Of course, she had no idea that the boy standing tall in front of her was buzzing with anticipation at the thought of sharing lunch.