Chapter 4
Chapter 4
Graduation ceremonies are rarely as romantic or moving as movies and dramas make them out to be, especially when graduating mostly just means you're still going to be a student anyway.
At a typical school, plenty of graduates head off to different places, and the ones going their separate ways sometimes feel wistful or genuinely sad about it. But for Hwayeong Academy students, that sort of thing simply didn't happen.
There was no reason to covet another school's facilities when you already attended this one.
And it wasn't just the facilities. The academic environment, the neighborhood around campus, even the faculty, all of it was so lavishly appointed that deliberately leaving this school for another was basically the same as announcing, "I can no longer afford the tuition here."
And that was something the students, no, their parents' pride, could not tolerate.
As a result, most of the kids sitting through the graduation ceremony, which fell relatively late compared to other schools, didn't look particularly excited.
Still, a school is a school, and the students and parents here are human.
They might rarely feel the wistfulness or regret that ordinary people at other schools feel, but that didn't mean no one felt a sense of pride at having graduated middle school or looked forward to high school life ahead.
The campus might be nearly the same place, but their status and uniforms would change.
Today was the last day in the middle school uniform. With that in mind, it wasn't odd at all to see students gathering in small groups and taking pictures together.
...Though there wasn't a single person around me.
Fortunately, the notice I'd received before the ceremony listed the class Ye Sa-ra had attended, so I was able to go to her classroom after it ended.
The homeroom teacher gave an unremarkable little speech, and once it was over, the students began clustering together for final photos with their friends, but not one of them came near me.
Hm.
Isn't there usually a cliché where a villainess at least has a couple of hangers-on flanking her on either side?
Two of them sticking with her since middle school, causing trouble together, something like that felt almost standard.
"..."
But among all the students chattering around me and around the homeroom teacher, no one tried to talk to me.
Complete invisible-person treatment.
Could it be that the only daughter of the country's top-ranked business conglomerate was actually being bullied in her own class?
Well, it wasn't exactly bad for me. If someone I didn't remember had come up and spoken to me, I'd only have been at a loss for how to answer.
"..."
I stayed seated a while longer, then eventually stood up. There was nothing to gain by sitting here any longer. I gathered my diploma and left the classroom.
"Let's go."
I said it to Yang Hye-in, who had been waiting at the back of the classroom in a black coat.
"Yes, Miss."
As if she'd already guessed what was on my mind, Yang Hye-in merely nodded and fell in behind me.
When I slid the door open, a few glances in the classroom briefly turned my way. But the moment I looked back, everyone hurriedly averted their eyes. Even if I'd asked what the problem was, I doubt I'd have gotten a proper answer.
I stepped out of the classroom without a word.
The hallway outside was more of the same.
Students who'd come with their parents were milling around, busily taking pictures, while others chatted about whether to go somewhere since today had ended early.
I'll just go home.
"..."
Still, much as I might feel that way, not taking a single photo at graduation felt a little off. I decided I'd ask Yang Hye-in to take one for me in front of the school gate.
*
I pushed through the crowd and reached the area near the gate. Not a single person had spoken to me the whole way. By this point, it was genuinely puzzling. Could Ye Sa-ra really not have had a single friend at this school?
...Or was it possible people were thinking Ye Sa-ra wouldn't end up inheriting Yujin Group?
I was walking along, turning these thoughts over in my head—
"Ah, um, excuse me!"
Someone called out to me.
Before I could even turn toward the voice, black suits had already materialized from who-knew-where and thrown up a wall between me and the girl who'd spoken.
"..."
Ah. Now I had an idea why she had no friends.
If this happened every time someone tried to speak to her, it was no wonder she ended up friendless.
"Would you mind stepping aside?"
I tried asking politely, but—
"We act to ensure the young lady's personal safety."
The absurd answer that came back.
"..."
...Were they doing this on purpose?
If Ye Sa-ra made friends at school, word about the household might leak outside. And as a stepmother, keeping Ye Sa-ra's social connections extremely narrow was certainly more advantageous than letting them broaden. Given that she'd originally kept her shut up inside the house anyway, it was entirely possible she loathed Ye Sa-ra's very existence.
For all I knew, she might have spread money around to the kids in the same class, or their parents, and told them to act like Ye Sa-ra didn't exist.
That would be absurd in reality, but wasn't this the game that had boasted the sort of makjang drama storylines you'd find in a Korean morning drama, with high schoolers killing and being killed? This world was inside that game. If something bizarre happened, it wouldn't actually be strange at all.
I have no intention of becoming a villainess. Getting on the wrong side of the female protagonist means that depending on the characters connected to her, you end up dead, on the verge of death, or in a state that's effectively the same thing.
But that only applies to the protagonist.
It's not a rule that applies to some nameless extra.
"Maid."
I gave up on asking the black suit a second time and called for Yang Hye-in behind me. At my summons, she took a step forward, placed both hands at her navel, and inclined her head slightly.
"As I understand it, I hold the authority over staffing for the residence where I live."
"Yes, that is correct. The mistress of the estate is you, Miss."
"What is your name?"
At my question, the black suit who'd been showing me only his back flinched, his shoulders twitching.
"I don't know what errand the Chairwoman assigned you, but I doubt the world will turn upside down just because I exchange a few words with someone I'm meeting for the first time at a graduation ceremony."
I said that, then added, staring straight at the back of his head:
"Then again, I suppose the world also wouldn't turn upside down if some wealthy person's security detail happened to lose one of its personnel."
I saw a bead of cold sweat trickle down the back of his neck.
The silence stretched a moment. Then the wall blocking my way parted. Good. That's how it should be. Keep poking at someone's nerves and this is how you turn them into a villain. I've been on edge lately as it is; I was half tempted to actually cut someone loose.
I swept my gaze over the faces of the bodyguards who'd turned aside, then shifted my eyes to the girl who'd called out to me.
She'd frozen stiff with her smartphone in hand, perhaps a little intimidated by the bodyguards who had blocked her path earlier, and her face was glowing.
...No, I don't mean she was so pretty she seemed to shine, or so bright in personality you could use her as a flashlight. Her face was literally emitting light.
Was that physically possible? Did this world have cosmetics that made your face glow when you applied them...? I was busy wondering things like that before my thoughts even reached the fact that I still didn't know what my own "sixth sense" was.
...So, in other words, the reason the girl's face looked like it was shining was probably because my sixth sense had activated toward her.
Not that I had the slightest idea what that actually meant.
Blonde hair tied in twin tails, big pretty eyes, and a demeanor that seemed a little timid.
I thought I knew who she was. Whatever else I might not know, the blonde twin tails were the hairstyle a certain female character from If You Wish wore.
I didn't actually remember her name, honestly. It was because the streamer had called that character "Human Capybara" that it had stuck in my memory so vividly.
The viewers had all called her Human Capybara rather than her actual name too.
With her absurdly high approachability, she was a kid who had every scrap of information in the school memorized, the sort of "same-sex character who feeds you information" that commonly appears in dating sims.
She was the one who would overhear things like the main characters' favorite foods, hobbies, and preferences and pass them along as tips in the game. But in this game, she was also a romance target herself. Actually, I seemed to recall the wiki saying she was difficult to pursue precisely because she knew other people's preferences inside out but rarely talked about her own.
I don't know what made her call out to me. Maybe those capybara instincts of hers had kicked in again. Maybe she'd made it her goal to befriend every last person in the school before graduating middle school.
There was no downside to getting close to her. First of all, she was a talent who would later become the female protagonist's closest confidante, and given how much information she picked up all over campus, she'd be an easy person for me to get information from as well.
"What's up?"
When I looked at the girl, still looking a little frightened, and asked, she blinked as if the question had pulled her back to reality from wherever she'd been stuck.
"Ah, um, well..."
Conscious of what had just happened, she kept shooting glances at the bodyguards who'd stepped aside.
"You don't need to worry about them. If you have something to say to me, you can say it directly to me."
When I said that with my hands still in my coat pockets, the blonde twin-tailed girl audibly gulped.
"C-could we, c-c-could we..."
C...?
"Could we take just one picture together?!"
She must have been extremely nervous, because her voice cracked.
Yeah, I figured it was something like that.
"A picture?"
Still, as far as she was concerned, today was the first time she was meeting me. Springing "let's take one together" out of nowhere was naturally a little much. Even if I could guess the reason, pretending not to know was the more natural response.
"Y-yeah. During school, I'd sometimes see you from a distance and you looked so cool... I thought it'd be nice if we could take just one picture together before graduating..."
Watching her, the straightforward honesty of it almost made me smile.
I could see why people liked her.
Admittedly, I couldn't say what Ye Sa-ra's actual personality had been like, but if she kept her mouth shut and stayed still, she certainly cut the figure of a strikingly cold-looking beauty. She had the aura of someone unmistakably a young lady, so it wasn't strange at all that someone might admire her like this.
While I was struggling to hold back a laugh, the girl, maybe misinterpreting my silence, rolled her blue eyes this way and that and spoke.
"I-is it, y'know, a bit weird after all? A total stranger coming up and asking to take a picture together—"
"Sure."
"—is kind of..."
"I said sure."
I walked over to her, step by step, while she was still busy jumping to conclusions on her own. When the bodyguards saw me getting close to another student, they twitched a little, but whether my earlier threat had been fairly effective, they didn't actually block me.
"Where should we take it?"
When I came right up to her and asked, the girl made a sound like "Ah—uh—ek—" that was exactly the same noise I'd made when Yang Hye-in caught me trying to shout for the Status Window.
Since I was already up close, I glanced toward the pocket area of her uniform. Thanks to the prominent curve there, far more than mine, the name tag wasn't so much pinned to the pocket as it was propped atop her chest. The streamer had agonized so much over which heroine route to take. Even though the art was drawn in MS Paint, the character's chest contour had been unmistakable even there.
The best graphics card is the imagination, they say.
The name tag read "Lee Su-a." Right, that was her name, I was pretty sure.
I held out my hand toward her and said,
"Your smartphone."
At my words, the girl hastily placed her smartphone into my hand, then immediately realized she hadn't unlocked it yet, snatched it back in a hurry, typed in her password, and placed it onto my palm again. Then she realized, this time, that the camera app wasn't open yet, so she took it back once more and launched the camera app.
Depending on the person, that whole sequence could come across as off-putting. If it were someone with a normally bad attitude or someone I didn't get along with, I might've said something, but either because I could feel genuine fluster in her demeanor, or simply because of her easy-on-the-eyes looks, the whole thing struck me as incredibly cute.
So that's why she was so popular.
"All done?"
When I asked, her face colored crimson and she nodded.
I handed my smartphone to Yang Hye-in, who had been standing behind me.
"Oh, right."
Before we positioned ourselves for the photo, I looked at Lee Su-a again and asked,
"So, where do you want to take it?"
She ducked her head shyly, then,
"H-here is fine. The school shows up well from this spot..."
She twisted her body as she answered.
Anyone watching would think I was taking a picture with my crush.
This world was a dating sim where you could romance both guys and girls. Girls dating girls, or on the flip side, guys dating guys, was accepted without batting an eye, at least, that's what I'd heard the streamer say during the brief intro before the game started.
Of course, given that my fiancé was a guy, I wasn't entirely sure if that was considered "normal" in the same way.
"Alright, fine."
I shrugged, hands still in the pockets of my coat, and moved to stand beside Lee Su-a.
Naturally, it wasn't a very natural pose. I wasn't exactly someone who took a lot of photos in the first place, and I'd definitely never done a photo session with a girl I'd just met.
And from the looks of it, Lee Su-a wasn't much different. For someone who'd asked to take a picture, she seemed pretty awkward.
She had her hands clasped behind her back and was twisting herself into knots. Her face was still flushed a bright, embarrassed red.
"Alright, both of you, please look this way."
Yang Hye-in raised the smartphone toward us.
"Taking the picture. One, two, three."
Click. A shutter sound came from the smartphone.
Yang Hye-in immediately walked over and handed the phone back. I studied the screen.
The two of us stood side by side, a little awkward. I had something like a faint smile on my face, but it was practically expressionless, and Lee Su-a had her head slightly lowered, so her face wasn't fully visible. Even accounting for her lowered head, I seemed to be the taller one. Then again, Ye Sa-ra was lacking in the figure department, but she wasn't short.
I handed the smartphone back to Lee Su-a.
"How is it?"
"Y-yeah. It came out well..."
Lee Su-a replied, still avoiding my eyes.
...Maybe I'd been a little too familiar for a first meeting.
I gave a slight shrug and said,
"I thought I wouldn't get a single photo today, but thanks to you I did. Thanks."
When I said that, Lee Su-a's already red face flushed even more. It was so red you could've said it was fully ripe.
"Well then..."
Hmm, how should I finish this off?
I thought for a moment, then shrugged again to myself. Eh, there was no real need to ask for her number. We'd both be going to the same high school anyway.
"I have some things to do, so I'll head off first."
"O-oh, okay."
Lee Su-a nodded at my words.
I didn't actually have any pressing schedule. It was just the only way to leave without coming off as rude.
As I turned and walked away, I suddenly heard a voice calling out from behind: "U-um, hey!"
I glanced back. Lee Su-a was looking at me.
"S-see you in high school!"
Lee Su-a shouted when I turned around.
"Yeah."
I answered and faced forward again.
My mood, which had been pretty sour just moments before, lifted a little. Not just because I'd chatted with a pretty girl and taken a photo with her, but more than that, it felt like I'd taken one step further toward a future where I wouldn't be the villainess.
As I walked with slightly lighter steps, Yang Hye-in was looking at me like I was some creature she'd never seen before.
*
Lee Su-a was mixed-race.
Her father was a Korean entrepreneur, her mother a model from the United States. She'd heard they met while her father was doing business in America.
Having inherited her mother's blond hair and blue eyes, Lee Su-a was treated as an outsider both in the U.S. and in Korea. She'd been discriminated against for being Asian, and on the flip side, she'd been bullied in Korea for her hair and eye color.
But Lee Su-a tried to overcome it. Over a long time, she studied her own methods and eventually figured out how to beat it.
The most important thing, after all, was to have a lot of friends.
Bullying happened because more people hated you than liked you. So at the start of every semester, Lee Su-a would be the first to find someone to befriend.
She'd pick out people in the class who might be good to get along with, go up and talk to them, butter them up, and make them her friends. She'd also keep in touch steadily with the friends she'd made before. To do that, Lee Su-a learned how to use her looks. Her appearance as a mixed-race white girl was fairly rare in Korea, so she had the right conditions to satisfy the vanity of a certain set of kids.
Once she diligently circulated and made as many friends as possible in the class, the people who tried to exclude her vanished at some point. If they tried anything, they'd only bring a backlash on themselves.
And to be honest, maintaining that kind of life was exhausting.
Relationships are fluid. Sometimes two friends would fight, and she'd have to pick a side. Sometimes a new transfer student would come, or someone would transfer out... Managing all those relationships meant she could never take a single day off. On top of that, she had to keep her grades up, so honestly, each day was so frantic she could barely see straight.
One day, while she was living that hectic life, in her first year of middle school, she saw a girl.
No, 'saw' might be the wrong word. She'd never actually spoken to her. More accurately, it would be right to say she 'noticed' her.
"You'd better not mess with her."
All the other kids in the class said the same thing. Not a single person talked to the girl with black hair and red eyes, who looked as pretty as a doll.
"Why?"
When Lee Su-a asked, the kids put on serious faces, pulled Lee Su-a far away from that girl, and spoke in low voices.
"Her mom is..."
"The Yujin Group succession is all tangled up, so..."
"You'll probably hear about it soon, too..."
They gave all sorts of reasons, but it was hard to understand. Before long, however, Lee Su-a had no choice but to agree that she shouldn't talk to that girl.
"It would be best not to get close to Miss Ye Sa-ra of the Yujin Group."
One day, her father called her in and said that.
"...Why not?"
Lee Su-a, who still couldn't accept it, asked her father that question.
"I'm sorry. It's hard to explain the reason in detail. All I can say is that it's connected to the Yujin Group. If we're not careful, even we could get tangled up in it."
Her father made her promise several times, and in the end, Lee Su-a had no choice but to obey.
...No, was it right to say she had no choice?
How could she ever justify excluding someone, deliberately refusing to speak to them, treating them like a ghost? That in itself was already a horrible wrong. Having been bullied as a child, she knew that all too well.
But in the end, she did as her father said.
Because she didn't want to throw away the life she had now.
Because she had learned all too painfully what happened when you went from being part of the "majority" to being the "minority."
So during the year she was in the same class as that girl, Ye Sa-ra, she felt like she was constantly sitting on pins and needles.
At least from the next year on, they were in different classes, so she could breathe a little easier. At the very least, she could put some distance between herself and the guilt of directly tormenting her.
Even after they were in different classes, she still ran into her from time to time. The girl named Ye Sa-ra sometimes walked down the hallway without any expression, sometimes sat silently on the bleachers during joint PE classes, and sometimes was visible through the window when she passed by the classroom.
And every time she saw her, pretending not to care, she felt a sharp prick somewhere in her chest.
There was no rule that said she couldn't talk to her just because they were in different classes. If someone, anyone, just went up and talked to her, maybe the girl would laugh and break through that icy wall she'd built around herself.
...But being the one to reach out like that was, at the same time, terrifying.
And so, two more years passed.
The last day as a student at Hwayeong Middle School.
Lee Su-a, who had no shortage of friends, was busy running around taking pictures with everyone. Most of the kids here were people she'd keep seeing in high school. If she got her face in the photos properly, it would surely be easier to stay friends in high school.
And while she was bustling around the school grounds like that, she spotted Ye Sa-ra heading home.
Following her was something she hadn't planned at all.
On impulse, she simply followed the girl she hadn't spoken a single word to in three years. Maybe, swept up by the atmosphere around her, she'd wanted to apologize to that girl at least once.
An apology. Now, of all times.
Even she thought it was ridiculous, but she'd passed up taking pictures with other friends to follow her. Maybe she should at least try to say something.
"Oh, u-um, excuse me!"
And just before Ye Sa-ra stepped through the school gate, she somehow managed to call out to her.
*
"I want to apologize."
The words never came out.
Because she'd personally sent off those men who blocked her path, and the way that girl, the one she hadn't spoken to in three years, was now talking to her was so refreshingly straightforward.
As if she didn't care at all about everything that had happened up until now.
"Couldn't we just take one picture together?!"
In the end, what came out of Lee Su-a's mouth was a pathetic line like that.
...But Ye Sa-ra went along with it.
Once again, as if nothing had ever happened.
As a result, a single photo now lived on Lee Su-a's smartphone.
With the school she'd attended for three years as a backdrop, the photo showed Lee Su-a, clearly mortified, her head hung low and barely managing to look at the camera, and beside her, Ye Sa-ra, standing tall and looking straight into the lens.
...In a way, it was a deeply symbolic picture.
A girl who had loads of friends and had spent a popular school life, but was endlessly ashamed.
And a girl who had been treated as practically invisible by everyone, but who had overcome it effortlessly and stood with such composure.
She should never, ever delete this photo.
And when she got to high school, she would be the first to talk to this girl. And then she would give the apology she'd never managed to say.
At least for the next three years, she would live in remorse for the three years of mistakes.
Whether she ended up in the majority or the minority.
No matter what anyone said.
Lee Su-a thought she wanted to become someone as confident as Ye Sa-ra.