Chapter 94
Chapter 94
It didn't even take a week to face reality.
Officially, it was unavoidable. She had to monitor any misdeeds, but Son A-reum had spent nearly the entire week tailing "those three." Not that she could watch them during class, and she hadn't followed them off campus either. Doing that would have been a whole other kind of crime.
She hadn't been entirely free of doubt, even so. Ye Sa-ra wasn't openly committing the kind of cruel acts Son A-reum had imagined. At a glance, she seemed less like someone deliberately going around committing evil and more like someone who simply didn't care what anyone thought.
The bizarre stunts from the beginning of the semester had mostly stopped. Over the past week, Ye Sa-ra seemed to have attended classes quietly. No new rumors about her public displays of affection with Yu Ha-neul were going around, and as time passed, the teachers had also grown comparatively calm again.
...But that didn't mean nothing had changed.
The longest gap came during lunch, and apparently, chasing after Ye Sa-ra's group at that time had looked to the other students like something completely different from what Son A-reum had intended.
They'd thought she'd really gotten close to Ye Sa-ra's group, not that she was gathering evidence of misdeeds.
She could see how it might have looked that way, Son A-reum thought.
No one said a word when she sat near Ye Sa-ra's clique. They didn't chase her away when she took an empty seat nearby; they'd only wonder why she'd chosen a spot a little farther away today.
That didn't mean they welcomed her with open arms, either. They didn't ignore her, but they didn't go out of their way to call her over. The four of them treated Son A-reum with a kind of neutral distance.
At first, she'd thought it was a ploy, something intended to confuse her, make her misread the situation, and shake her off. She'd believed that once she showed signs of actually starting to misread things, they'd drop the mask and try to coax her over.
But contrary to those suspicions, the ones who made a move first weren't Ye Sa-ra's group; they were the other kids.
No, in a sense, didn't move might be the more accurate way to put it.
Until now, Son A-reum had been ignored in class. But that "ignoring" had been the kind of ignoring you'd give something beneath your notice. She hadn't come from an ordinary family; she'd been born and raised in a household that, by financial standards, you could call poor, and the other "moneyed" kids in the class had openly snubbed her.
Even when there was something important to discuss, she'd had to speak several times just to get a reluctant reply. If she got angry at them, they'd often turn it around and act annoyed or sneer at her.
But the ignoring that started after she began following Ye Sa-ra's group was different in character.
As if she didn't exist at all, as if she were invisible, the kids began treating Son A-reum like she wasn't even there.
The ones who used to at least answer if she spoke to them several times now wouldn't reply no matter how many times she tried.
The ones who used to at least look annoyed when they bumped into her in the hallway now just kept walking as though the contact had never happened.
The teachers' reactions, at least, weren't any different from before, though whether those even qualified as "reactions" was debatable.
Even for someone as rigid as Son A-reum, it wasn't as if she had no friends at all.
Her relationship with the student council president and with the other scholarship students in her grade was fairly positive.
But even those kids, one by one, started ignoring her.
Granted, it looked a little different from the way the rich kids did it. They'd avoid her eyes but still wrinkle their faces slightly, as if they felt guilty. When no one else was around, they'd sometimes apologize in a small voice.
"I'm sorry. But I want to have a normal school life too...."
When she heard that from one of them, Son A-reum felt like she'd been struck in the back of the head with a hammer.
And those words cut deeper than any of the other ignoring she'd experienced so far.
She still couldn't quite say why.
So, a week.
In just a single week, Son A-reum had been isolated at terrifying speed.
And only then did she finally understand.
Even while that isolation was closing in, Sara's group had treated her the same as always when she inserted herself among them.
They didn't act as if she weren't there, and they didn't openly ignore her. If Son A-reum got prickly, they got prickly right back. If she spoke to them normally, they spoke to her normally.
Only after following them around did Son A-reum realize that what the student council president had told her was, word for word, the truth.
The kids were doing the exact same thing to Ye Sa-ra's group that they were doing to her.
They ignored whatever Ye Sa-ra did. At least, they tried to ignore it.
It wasn't that they were just letting things slide; it was, literally, an attempt to ignore the other person.
Ye Sa-ra was simply trying to break through that being-ignored situation. Son A-reum had merely watched that happen.
"......See? I told you."
The student council president, whom she met in the student council room, let out a heavy sigh.
Maybe it was because the two of them were alone that she even bothered to answer. Son A-reum sat with her head bowed low, unable to say anything.
"......."
The president scratched the back of her head with her fingers, then spoke as if sighing again.
"You might as well wash your hands of it now. If they think you've completely cut ties with that side, the others will treat you the same as before."
Maybe so.
But even if she went back to that old being-ignored period that way, what would actually change?
More than anything, Son A-reum was the one who'd shouted at Ye Sa-ra to "stop tormenting the other kids." For her to then join the other kids in tormenting Ye Sa-ra felt like it would make her the worst kind of hypocrite.
Son A-reum couldn't say a word to the president.
*
Lunchtime.
Day after day, Son A-reum had boldly inserted herself into Ye Sa-ra's group, but today she couldn't bring herself to do it.
Once suspicion became certainty, and certainty felt like fact, she no longer had any justification for standing beside them.
But at the same time, she couldn't go back to normal either. She'd arbitrarily labeled someone a villain, imagined a victim was an aggressor. Knowing that, she couldn't turn around and torment those kids.
She stopped trailing them during breaks.
And just like that, she really did end up completely alone.
No one spoke to her anymore, and even when she tried to speak, no one received it.
But this was her own doing. She had no one to complain to.
Son A-reum was stuck, unable to go forward or backward, and simply isolated.
Even so, that she was still hungry was a little funny.
She pushed herself up from her seat, trudged out of the classroom, and not a single person looked at her as she went.
She made it to the cafeteria and got her tray.
Moving automatically, she stopped in front of an empty table.
Ye Sa-ra's group hadn't arrived yet, it seemed.
"......."
She stared blankly at the empty table for a moment, then turned away and looked for another free spot.
She found a seat in the corner and sat down.
It was still early in the lunch period, so plenty of seats around her were empty.
But no matter how much time passed, the spaces nearby never filled in. As time went on and more students filled the cafeteria until it was crowded, the others still didn't come near Son A-reum. A few who hadn't yet grasped the situation started toward her, only to be led away by someone else's hand to another table.
So this is what it feels like.
Only now did Son A-reum feel she understood Ye Sa-ra's position, even a little.
Because you live ignored like that by everyone, you want to shout, to say that you're here.
And Ye Sa-ra had actually done that, and in the end had succeeded in making friends.
But Son A-reum herself couldn't do a thing.
"......."
Her hands, which had been picking at her food, sped up. She figured if she just hurried up and got out of the building, this feeling might ease a bit.
Just as she was moving her hands with that single-minded focus—
She heard a clack from the seat beside her.
Startled, she looked up and found a tray with food, a modest portion, set down next to her.
"Why are you eating alone?"
A voice asked as if it were nothing. Eyes that, for some reason, were narrowed, looking at her.
The girl sat down next to Son A-reum without a care. Then, one by one, others gathered beside her, and beside her, and beside her.
"Uh, ah, your usual seats are...."
"Since when does the cafeteria have assigned seats?"
Ye Sa-ra said it while sweeping her gaze over Son A-reum as if studying her.
"If there's somewhere you want to sit, you come and sit."
Somewhere you want to sit.
At those words, Son A-reum swallowed her breath.
"......."
The hand holding her fork trembled slightly.
For a moment, her vision blurred.
"......I'm sorry."
"......Huh?"
Ye Sa-ra had been lifting her fork as if to start eating, but when she heard Son A-reum's watery voice, she turned her head, looking flustered.
And when she saw Son A-reum, she looked even more taken aback.
"......Are you crying?"
Son A-reum sniffled once, then,
"I'm sorry. I had the wrong idea. I'm so sorry...."
Having said that, she burst into tears in earnest.
*
Uh, what.
What's with her?
Son A-reum was eating alone in a corner, unusual for her, and her face had been giving off that strange glow, so I came over. But out of nowhere, she started apologizing, and then she burst into tears.
"......."
Well... I don't know her that well, so suddenly hugging her didn't feel right. I handed her a handkerchief instead. She buried her face in it and sobbed even harder.
What is this—did I do something wrong?
No, more importantly, why is her face glowing again? For the others, I at least have some rough idea of the trigger, but I genuinely don't understand what causes the glow on her face.
There seems to be some trigger, but since this ability is something the original Ye Sa-ra had, I can't figure it out on my own.
...Anyway. I need to pay close attention to my relationship with her going forward. And not just Son A-reum, the very possibility that the number of people whose faces glow might increase is hopeful in itself. Retracing my interactions with her and figuring out how I reached this point could be a key approach.
And, separate from all that, it looks like she got herself isolated chasing after me. Honestly, I can hardly call that my fault.
...The teachers have more or less settled down over the past week. So maybe it's about time I really shook things up.
Plus, I still need to find the real Ye Sa-ra.
There's so much to do.
Well, it's exactly what I was hoping for.