Chapter 123
Chapter 123
"Isn't this amazing?"
Ha-neul, pressed right against my side, asked me that.
The road we were walking down was a main street awash in cherry blossoms in full bloom.
Not that "full bloom" is quite the right phrase anymore, strictly speaking. The petals had already started falling. We were lucky: no spring rain had swept in the moment the blossoms opened to send uncountable petals fluttering away before they could properly show themselves. But seasonally, it was undeniably the tail end of cherry blossom time.
The roadside cherry trees were gradually putting out pale green new leaves, and now there was more green than pink.
Still, plenty of petals remained for the wind to carry.
The ones still clinging to the branches drifted lightly on every soft breeze. Fallen petals blanketed the pavement, transforming the whole street into a flower path. The sight drove the feeling home: ah, spring really is here.
We'd managed to get out to see the blossoms because I had, by some miracle, remembered what Ha-neul had said to me last month.
So much had happened during a friendship barely a month old that I hadn't really been able to keep track of that kind of promise.
......Though, thinking back on it, I suppose it was less a promise and more something we just tossed out in passing. But the view's beautiful, so who cares.
The clothes we had on were the same ones we'd bought that day.
In my case, I could honestly get away with just swapping the jacket for something thinner, but Ha-neul was a different story. She was wearing a dress.
A dress she'd bought back in March. Wouldn't she be a little warm in that now?
Well, she didn't seem to mind, so it wasn't my place to interfere.
Still, April passed much more gently than March had. So-hee was still sitting through transition briefings with In-su. Su-a was going home regularly. Ha-neul sometimes came over and slept at the mansion. Once we'd stopped doing mortifying things inside school, Disciplinary Committee Member Son A-reum had gone very quiet. The teachers, for their part, must have run out of things to criticize, because they'd stopped picking on us entirely.
It did make me a little uneasy, of course.
Choi Na-kyung made no significant moves at all, all the way through mid-April. I still didn't know whether that meant she'd given up her fixation on Sara or was quietly grinding her teeth and waiting for the right moment. I cautiously leaned toward the grinding-her-teeth theory.
At any rate... that was how things were.
Deeply peaceful.
.......
"......."
"......."
Though I seemed to be the only one who felt that way.
I'd once read that people can feel jealous in friendships, too. I'd never personally felt jealous over a guy, but in sex-ed class they'd told us situations like that could happen.
And, apparently, the girls around me were definitely feeling that emotion.
Right this very moment, Ha-neul was on one side of me and Su-a was on the other. Both of them were pressed tightly against me, unwilling to let go. So-hee, who'd been displaced during a brief separation, wore a look of pure indignation. And in the depths of my consciousness, Sara was radiating her signature displeasure.
Alright. This was jealousy. No question.
Up until very recently, I'd been firmly in denial about it. I'd never once been the center of female attention in my life. But after seriously thinking it over in light of the past month's experience, I could recognize that the feeling these kids had, with me at the center, was jealousy.
Oh, and I'm well aware that this is not the romantic kind. I'm not that self-deluded.
In my last life, I'd read plenty of those "I thought she was into me, but she obviously wasn't" posts. Just reading them made your skin crawl with secondhand embarrassment. So I'd thoroughly learned not to fall into the trap of thinking every girl who was nice to me had a crush on me.
But even so, we were all close friends.
When I thought about it, our entire friend group had formed with me at the center. I'd talked to Su-a. I'd become friends with Ha-neul. I'd flipped a skirt right onto So-hee's head... well, you know.
If you were to rank closeness, I was each person's closest friend among the three.
.......
Right. That went for Sara, too, obviously.
So whenever I got close to one person, the others ended up feeling jealous almost without meaning to.
I made an effort to balance things out as best I could... but it wasn't easy. Every time I tried to strike that balance, the jealousy seemed to get worse instead.
.......
I'll admit, it does sound pretty obnoxious when I put it like that.
Well, at least you know.
I had absolutely no way to argue with Sara on that one.
*
Once we'd finished our attention-magnet stroll, we decided to head home.
"Is Ha-neul staying the night today, too?"
"Yeah!"
Ha-neul answered my question brightly. She clung even tighter to the arm she'd been holding, pressing her cheek right against my shoulder.
......Maybe I should order a whole mountain of late-night snacks.
To be honest, I still couldn't eat much, even if I did order a ton of different things. Though I was considerably better off than when I'd first entered this body.
I'd put on a little weight since then. Nobody could reasonably describe me as likely to snap in half after a light tap anymore. I was still on the skinny side, though.
And on top of that, there'd been those bruises all over my back. It was no wonder the doctor and the police had reeled back in shock when they saw me back then.
Anyway, that was then. Still, we had a full house today, and when we all sat around talking, it often ran late into the night. Having something to nibble on during those hours was always better. And besides me, the other three could put away a lot more food than I could.
.......
...Come on, Sara. You and I eat together.
You're obviously not a separate headcount when we're talking about this stuff.
I was walking along, feelings slightly awkward under the weight of Sara's entirely unhidden displeasure—
"...Huh?"
Up ahead, near the mansion's main gate, someone appeared to be caught in a standoff with the security guard.
No—"someone" wasn't right. It wasn't a single person. There were three.
An older man, a younger man, and a young woman.
"Now, look here. If there really isn't a problem, just let us see the young lady's face. Once we've confirmed she's safe, we'll turn right around and leave."
"Like I keep saying, the young lady is currently out—"
"Say what you will, we came here knowing everything. We even have photographic evidence. Trying to cover things up will only make your situation worse."
As the older man and the young woman took turns bearing down on him, the security guard couldn't come up with a response.
...Which figured, since I actually was out.
And except for So-hee and Yang Hye-in, the household staff found interacting with me profoundly uncomfortable. I'd made sure they would. So none of them had probably even thought of calling me to ask.
Then again, no real harm in having them just hold the line here.
Apparently grasping the situation, Su-a and Ha-neul, who'd been stuck right to my sides, gently let me go. I let out a small sigh. Then I took the lead and walked toward where the three were standing.
"Huh, hold on. Sen, "
The younger man reacted first as he saw me approaching.
"Hm? What is it?"
The older man followed the younger man's gaze, turning his head... and froze solid the instant he saw me.
The young woman was the last to notice. Only after registering the state of the two men beside her did she turn toward me. The moment she saw me walking around outside, fully intact, her mouth dropped open.
...Yeah. I had a pretty good idea what the three of them had come for.
I couldn't specifically recall their faces, the police that day had crossed my path too briefly, but their attitude was similar.
Though I didn't remember that woman being there at the time.
"Uh...?"
The three of them looked at me, then at the security guard, then back at me.
The security guard wiped a hand down his face and heaved a long sigh.
*
"Oh, ah... thank you."
When Yang Hye-in silently served black tea to the young woman seated in the reception room, she spoke with a somewhat flustered expression.
"So then......."
I was the first to open my mouth.
"You're here because you received a domestic violence report?"
The three of them had introduced themselves before entering the mansion. Two were police officers from the Violent Crimes Division, and the young woman was a civil servant. I assumed she'd been dispatched in response to the domestic violence call.
All three of them had looked a bit overwhelmed after coming inside. Was this their first time in a place like this?
...To be fair, aside from me, how many people lived in a former department store converted into a personal residence, even a relatively small one in the middle of Seoul? And it actually had been a department store building. If I hadn't shut myself away in it, the place probably would've been used as some kind of Yujin Group special hall. Most of the mansion was still empty, anyway.
"Yes, that's right. Although the report actually came in quite a while ago......."
Apparently, they hadn't been dispatched the moment the report was filed.
...That tracked.
I didn't know who Yang Hye-in had called back then, but the police really had withdrawn on the orders of someone high up. They hadn't even been able to get a proper statement from me.
I'd been in no state at the time, either.
Anyway, the fact that they'd finally arrived suggested they'd somehow cleared all those obstacles. It must have taken time to smooth over all the problems.
Even so, this was late. Far too late.
They could try to gather evidence now, but nothing was left. The wounds on my back had healed completely. My general health kept steadily improving. The household staff were compliant. No one at school ignored me anymore.
What exactly was there left for the police to do here now?
"I see......."
But I let out a heavy sigh.
Because that wasn't really the problem. The issue was that I actually had plenty of things that could get me into trouble.
So-hee alone, standing right there in her maid uniform, was a minor. We'd gotten her parents' permission and Yang Hye-in had done a very clean job with the paperwork, but the process had involved greasing a truly impressive number of palms.
Su-a was a runaway. She'd been in regular contact with her family and she went back to visit sometimes, so you couldn't strictly call it running away, but... if someone wanted to hang her on a technicality, they could do it in a heartbeat.
The one friend out of the three who had zero legal exposure in this house was Ha-neul.
"So, I'd like to conduct an interview."
The civil servant from the district office spoke.
"Would that be possible?"
"......Yes. Let's do that."
Running away now would only multiply their suspicions.