Park So-yeon
Kim Seol-ah and I walked into the classroom a short distance apart, one of us a few steps ahead of the other.
Walking side by side felt awkward, yet deliberately putting space between us felt just as ridiculous, so we settled into this halfhearted middle ground that had formed on its own.
Seol-ah kept her eyes straight ahead as if nothing had happened. The swelling around them had already gone down so cleanly it was hard to believe she had been crying at all. The calm profile she wore now only made me feel a little sorrier for her.
In front of other people she could put on a face like that, yet back in the storage room she had sobbed so bitterly.
I could feel a few of the kids in class glancing our way. Someone looked at me, then at Seol-ah, then quietly checked the window seats. A faint stir of whispers rose behind us and settled again almost at once.
It made sense. No one in this classroom had ever seen me walking with anyone other than Woo Han-gyeol.
The room was restless ahead of fifth period. I cut through the noise toward my desk, and the gaze from the seat beside mine reached me first.
The girl who had been half slumped over her desk was looking back and forth between me and Seol-ah. On any other day she would have latched onto me at once and demanded to know where I had gone, but today she said nothing.
Her expression was not good.
I could not quite put a name to it—somewhere between sulky and dejected. When our eyes met she dropped her gaze with an awkward little flinch.
I had watched that face for twenty years. I knew the listless look she got the day before a fever, the puffy cheeks she wore when she was sulking. But the expression she wore now did not match any of them.
I pulled out my chair and sat down beside her. I felt like I ought to say something, yet I had no idea where to begin, and for a moment I simply hesitated.
That was when Woo Han-gyeol glanced at me and moved her lips.
"Ji-an. Listen, I…"
"Yeah. What is it."
"…Never mind. It's nothing."
She swallowed whatever she had been about to say and hung her head. Instead of answering she started flipping through her textbook—any page at all. The one she opened was nowhere near today's lesson.
Never mind. It's nothing.
Those were not words that sounded like her. Woo Han-gyeol was the sort of girl who poured out whatever she wanted to say right then and there. I'm hungry, Ji-an. I'm bored, Ji-an. A phrase like "never mind, it's nothing" had never even been in her dictionary.
The way she kept worrying the edge of her textbook with her fingertips was unfamiliar too. The hand that used to tug on my sleeve whenever she was bored had nowhere to go today and just drifted over her own desk.
…It was strange.
Today Han-gyeol had spent the entire lunch period with the person she liked. Alone with Ha Yu-jin. She had finally gotten the time she had been longing for, so why was she wearing a face like that?
She ought to still be floating, flushed and fluttering. She should have been too distracted even to notice me slipping away from lunch, much less call after me.
Come to think of it, she had called my name in the cafeteria earlier too—Ji-an, where are you going? I had let the voice slide past me at the time, but replaying it now I thought it had sounded almost urgent.
Yet there was no leftover warmth of excitement on her face now. She only looked dejected, like a child who had something taken from her.
She had been with the person she liked. So why?
No matter how I turned it over, I could not find an answer. She herself had been the one who first confided in me that she thought she might like Yu-jin. A day like today should have been nothing but good for her.
I had always believed I knew twenty years' worth of Woo Han-gyeol's heart, yet the expression she wore today was completely unreadable.
I half-opened my mouth, ready to ask. Is something wrong? The words rose as far as my throat.
But looking at the set line of her profile, I somehow felt I should not ask right now—just as I had asked Seol-ah nothing in the storage room earlier.
I was learning, these past few days, that there were times when not asking was the kinder thing.
Then the bell for fifth period rang.
Before I could get the question out, the teacher walked in, and Han-gyeol kept her head down as she opened her textbook. I could not press any further either, so I faced forward and sat properly.
From the seat beside me came the soft scratch of a pen. The sound would stop now and then, only to start up again after a long pause. Whenever it fell silent I would glance sideways, and every time the tip of her mechanical pencil was frozen in the exact same spot.
I kept getting distracted by that sound, and for the whole of fifth period the blackboard barely registered.
Fifth period ended and the break began.
I was about to fold my arms and rest my eyes when a familiar face poked in through the back door.
Park So-yeon. She was from another class, yet she strolled in as if it were her own room and planted her chin on my desk.
"Hey, Lee Ji-an."
"Yeah."
"Weren't you kind of awful earlier? You get up in the middle of lunch and leave, then you ditch the person who followed you out in the hallway and just vanish on your own."
So-yeon was grinning the way she always did. The laugh itself, though, never quite arrived.
"Sorry. Something came up."
"Something came up. Hmm."
She dragged the sound out. On any other day she would have ribbed me about whether the "something" was a girl and then let it go, but today that hmm just stretched on and on.
Then, still propping her chin, she stared straight at me.
"But at lunch you said you and Kim Seol-ah were just sort of acquaintances. You ditch your food and chase after someone you 'just sort of know'?"
I took a second to pick my answer. Saying we were classmates who had only started talking by chance felt thin after everything that had happened these past few days. Laying out the whole story was not an option either.
"Just… it kind of turned out that way."
"'It kind of turned out that way.' Real convenient line, that one."
So-yeon stuck out her lower lip and tapped my desk with her finger. I wondered what her problem was but did not think too hard about it.
She leaned in as if she meant to dig further.
That was when someone stepped up beside me.
It was Kim Seol-ah. Without looking at either me or So-yeon she set what she was holding down on my desk with a soft thump.
A cheap cream bun from the school store, and a can of coffee.
"…Here."
"What's this?"
"For earlier. I'm paying you back. Don't get the wrong idea. It doesn't mean anything else."
"Earlier" must have meant the handkerchief. Even after blowing her nose thoroughly into it, she had still meant to return the favor.
I picked up the can coffee without thinking. It was cold and solid in my hand.
Same as last time—can coffee again.
She probably had no idea what I liked and had just grabbed the safest thing. That bland, careful choice was so completely like her.
Truth was I did not especially care for can coffee.
I did not say so. Pointing out whether I would drink it or not after she had gone out of her way to choose the most neutral option seemed like the opposite of courtesy.
"Thanks. I'll enjoy it."
"…You don't have to thank me that much."
Seol-ah lingered a moment, lips parting as if she meant to add one more thing. In the end the words never came. She spun on her heel and went straight back to her seat. The tips of her ears might have been a little red, but it was over so fast I could not be sure.
Once she sat down she turned her face toward the window, as if nothing had happened. I watched her back for a second and then looked away.
Beside me, So-yeon narrowed her eyes at the whole exchange.
"…'It kind of turned out that way,' my ass. How come that 'kind of' never happens with me."
"What?"
"No. Nothing."
So-yeon glanced toward Seol-ah's seat, then back at me. Her mouth moved a couple of times, but nothing came out in the end. The Park So-yeon I knew was not usually someone who held her tongue like this.
She lifted her chin off my desk. For just a second the smile was completely gone from her face.
"I'm going. Gonna be late for class."
And just as casually as she had come in, she slipped out through the back door. On any other day she would have tossed one more pointless joke over her shoulder before leaving, but today she simply left. Her retreating figure somehow looked more hurried than usual.
I looked down at the can coffee and the bread in turn. Then at the back of Seol-ah's head where she sat pretending to mind her own business. Then at Woo Han-gyeol, still bowed over the desk right beside me.
Today, for some reason, everyone was swallowing the words they had meant to say.
Han-gyeol. Seol-ah. So-yeon.
Never mind, it's nothing. No, nothing. Don't get the wrong idea, it doesn't mean anything else. All three of them had let the ends of their sentences trail off and gone back to their own places.
What had Han-gyeol been about to say? What was the last line Seol-ah had almost added? Did that can of coffee she left behind while insisting it meant nothing really mean nothing at all? The question marks just kept stacking up.
If it was a matter of reading someone else's heart, I had always been fairly confident. I had spent twenty years living that way. If someone was sick I could tell where it hurt; if someone was hurt I could tell why, just by looking at their face. I had lived believing that reading other people's insides was my job.
Yet today I had not managed to read a single one of the words these three had swallowed.
Maybe I was so used to reading for others that I no longer knew how to see the things aimed at me.
The thought rose for a moment and I erased it just as quickly.
As if there could be any feelings aimed at me.
Feelings had always been something I handed over. Never something handed to me. It had been that way forever, so there was nothing new about it now.
I turned the bread bag over in my hands and tucked it into my desk drawer. The coffee, for some reason, I kept in my hand. Even I did not know why.
The cold the can of coffee had been holding slowly thinned away against my palm.