The Clique
After the report cards came out, talk of college applications had been in full swing, but the Cheongram Gallery was slowly settling back into its old self.
Not that its old self amounted to much. Nothing but worthless shitposts and fights.
Lately, though, one kind of post had started to catch the eye.
I tacked one more reply under the last comment.
"Ugh..."
I had no comeback. Leaving Discord open while I browsed the Cheongram Gallery had long since stopped being a once-in-a-while thing. I quietly hit back.
A little farther down, another post in the same vein turned up.
Sayu, Limit, and Star. Seeing the three nicknames stuck together didn't feel as strange as I'd expected.
Come to think of it, the three of us really had been spending a lot of time together lately. It was the same when we played Apex, and we'd looked over where to send our applications side by side. Even when we weren't gaming, the chat room just for us three was constantly trading remarks that didn't mean anything at all.
So that was how it looked from the outside, too. It put me in a slightly good mood—not enough to say so in the comments, though.
I closed the post and opened Discord. Two people were already in the voice channel: Limit and ☆. I joined without a second thought.
"I'm telling you, Juyeon really said it like that that day."
☆'s voice came through first.
"Even so, that was too much."
"What did I even do."
☆ stopped at once.
"Oh—Sayu, you're here?"
"Ah."
☆ hesitated a moment.
"There's a kid Limit and I both know."
That was the end of it. I could have asked who Juyeon was, but there was no real need. Just someone the two of them knew.
A little later, their conversation picked up again.
"Hey, what was the name of that café we went to?"
"You're the one who took me there."
"How is your memory actually that bad."
"Yeah. We had something to take care of a few days ago, so we went together."
I already knew the two of them met offline. Listening in, though, it seemed they'd been seeing each other far more often than I'd imagined.
Where they'd eaten last week. Who had spilled a drink at the café that day. Who'd shown up late, and who else they'd met while they were out. One story I'd never heard kept following another.
I typed into the chat here and there, until at some point I was only listening. There was never a gap wide enough to step into. It was nothing but people I didn't know and places I'd never been.
That didn't make it dull. ☆ told a story well, and a few parts were enough to pull a laugh out of me.
"So then Limit just up and left."
"You could have waited."
"See? Sayu's the only one."
"Heh..."
We'd been idly chatting for a while when ☆ spoke up out of nowhere.
"Oh, right. Limit."
"Did you see what I sent in DMs earlier?"
"What'd you think?"
The hand I'd been using to scroll the Cheongram Gallery stopped for a second.
"Oh, just a picture of some clothes."
"There's something I'm thinking about buying, so I showed it."
I turned my eyes back to the gallery.
...It's nothing.
Of course the two of them messaged each other in private. I'd had plenty of separate conversations with Limit, and I traded DMs with ☆ all the time.
A little later, though, another thought occurred to me. If it was only a picture of clothes, wasn't that something she could have shown me, too?
"......"
Why?
It wasn't as if I knew the first thing about clothes. Not long ago I couldn't even settle on a single claw clip without asking Limit. Thinking about it, there was no reason she had to show me at all.
"Want to do Apex?"
Once the game started, the thought from a moment ago vanished. If ☆ died first, Limit and I teased her; if I died first, the two of them teased me.
The first match, we were wiped the moment we dropped. The next, we survived almost to the end. Nothing different from usual.
Partway through the third game, ☆ found a gun and pinged my side.
"Sayu, want the R-301?"
"Take it."
Limit snatched the gun up first from right beside me.
"Hey, give it back already."
"I gave that to Sayu."
A few seconds later, the gun hit the ground.
I could barely remember what I'd been thinking a minute ago.
We ran a few more matches, and during a break the talk turned to regulars meeting up in real life.
"Oh, right. I'm meeting Caffeine next week."
"Yeah. Nammisae might come too."
"The entrance exam's over, after all. We used to meet a lot up through September, but we haven't since, so we're getting everyone together for the first time in a while."
☆ added it like it was nothing.
"You should come sometime too, Sayu."
My hand stopped for a second.
...What do I even say?
I thought it over, then typed.
"Why?"
"Embarrassed about what."
"Aren't we pretty close by now?"
I stared at the chat for a moment.
"That's so mean. So cold."
Only after I sent it did I realize what I'd said. It read exactly like I was taking issue with how close the two of them were.
...Now what. I can't even delete it.
☆ laughed, soft.
"That's only because we've known each other a long time."
"Later, let's actually hang out."
"You have to."
After that, it was nothing but talk about the game. We played a few more rounds, and when I got tired I left the voice channel first.
I'd only meant to lie down for a minute. When I opened my eyes, more than an hour had passed. Out of habit, I checked the Cheongram Gallery first.
Freezing out anons... I'd never really ignored anyone just for being an anon. If someone said they wanted into the server, there was no particular reason to stop them. It was only people who'd gotten close, playing games together. They'll slap clique on anything.
I closed the post and went back to Discord.
The voice channel from earlier still had two people in it. Limit and ☆. Still there.
I moved the cursor over the channel. One click, and I could join. It was the same room I'd been in until a little while ago.
But my hand stopped. Were the two of them in the middle of talking? Now that I thought about it, earlier they'd been on about people I didn't know, and there'd been things they'd sent each other in private, too. If I walked in and cut them off, would that look a little tactless?
"...What am I saying."
We'd been together until just now. Even so, I didn't click into the voice channel. I could go in a little later. Whatever.
I opened YouTube and played one of the recommended videos. Around the time it ended, I checked Discord again without really meaning to. It was the same.
"They've been in there a while..."
They'd always been close, so of course they had plenty to talk about. I moved my hand and hit the next video.
I didn't go into the voice channel after that, either. From the headset that had been so loud just a little while ago, only the voice of someone I didn't know came spilling through.