The Small Bruise Jeong Ayeong Raised (2)
The day passed without incident.
The next morning.
Thursday dawned.
As always, I prepared breakfast for Han Seyeon. After seeing her off with a careful "Be safe," school time approached. Dishes, a quick clean, a shower—by then it was half past seven. The walk took a good forty minutes, so I left earlier than most.
I had been walking maybe twenty minutes when I spotted a woman fidgeting in the distance. A Daiso bag dangled from one hand. The way she kept swiveling her head this way and that made her look exactly like a meerkat. She couldn't stay still, and every so often she lifted her phone to check the time.
"What are you doing over there?"
"Ah—ahaha! Good morning…"
"Yeah. But…"
Jeong Ayeong's eyes spun in circles. She must have known how ridiculous she sounded, because the words that spilled out of her mouth came in a frantic rap.
"I-it's a coincidence! Dad told me to r-run an errand. I could go after school, but… you know you can only get it here, right? It's a p-pain. I might forget… B-but Daiso's this way, so while I was passing… just in case… W-wow, crazy, right?!"
"……."
Trembling lips. Cautious eyes. The face looking down at me was full of worry. The distance between our houses was nothing to sneeze at—thirty or forty minutes on foot. Still, she wasn't wrong about Daiso being on this side of town. I didn't bother picking at the holes in her story. The real reason she had come all this way was written all over her.
"That so? Let's go together."
"Okay!"
The anxiety vanished. Ayeong's face lit up at once. Whatever pleasure rose to fill the space left by her earlier nerves seemed even larger; the corners of her mouth kept twitching with a quiet, private joy.
"Something good happen?"
"Ah—no?! But I feel good."
"I see."
She flustered, yet the smile stayed. Twenty minutes left to school. Before long even Ayeong, who had been barely containing her happiness, started talking. It was a short walk, but a happy one.
Jeong Ayeong stepped into the classroom. Once, cold stares and deliberate indifference would have met her. Ever since she grew close to Han Sein, that had changed. They still refused to look this way or acknowledge her, yet—
Glance. Glance.
A woman's instinct. No one stared openly or threw obvious looks, but in the swirl of restless eyes, for the briefest of moments, they caught Han Sein.
Those fucking bitches.
Ayeong muttered the curse inside her head. They were scared of Kim Hyeongmin, sure—but they knew Sein was handsome, didn't they? Word had come down, so they had to pretend he didn't exist. A woman's instinct toward him, though, was something else entirely. Whether they meant to or not, their fleeting glances kept finding him. And that never looked pretty.
"Oh, right."
"Huh?"
"It hurt so much yesterday."
"R-really?"
The classroom went dead silent in an instant. Every sound funneled toward the very back seats where Sein and Ayeong sat. The sentence had no subject, but it was a conversation between a boy and a girl, and the words that left her mouth were stimulating enough that attention had nowhere else to go.
"Sorry… I went too hard, right?"
"Look. I even got a bruise."
"Hey—hey…!"
Ayeong's voice rose. With every eye already on them, Sein's movements were impossible to miss. Countless gazes locked onto his body as he rolled up the hem of his uniform. The pure white dress shirt and undershirt lifted, bare abdomen fully exposed.
Ayeong's hands fluttered in panic. Did I hit him too hard yesterday? Guilt and fluster tangled together. Sein himself seemed oblivious, but a woman's senses were razor-sharp—especially when rival eyes were fixed on the boy she cared about. Those glances hit her even harder.
Ayeong's eyes narrowed. The usual dazed, hesitant look was gone; something steely had taken its place.
"What? What's wrong?"
"H-hurry and put it down. We're in the classroom."
Even so, she still fidgeted. The sudden firmness felt so alien that she didn't know what to do with herself. She grabbed his collar in a fluster and yanked the fabric back down.
"Is it that bad…?"
"I-it's not that it's bad…"
Her thoughts grew more and more muddled. Their focuses were completely different. When Sein looked dejected like that—Does it look that ugly?—Ayeong only grew more helpless. Confusion piled on confusion. He had told her to hit him, yes, but she was the one who had struck hard. Guilt flooded in. Jealousy flooded in right behind it.
Other girls looking at Sein's stomach?
No. Absolutely not.
Ayeong began acting as if she were already his girlfriend.
"A guy can't just do that… You can't show that outside."
"Is that so?"
Sein tilted his head. Ayeong's sigh came out even deeper. His sense of gender norms really was strange—more accurately, he was completely defenseless. He didn't seem to have the faintest idea how attractive he looked.
"Class is starting."
"Th… hah. Never mind."
"Huh?"
What was the point of saying it out loud? With the moment over, Ayeong watched the other girls settle into their own business. The rumors painted Sein as a slut, someone no one should get involved with—but she knew better. He was more innocent and kind than anyone, nothing like the usual boys. A devoted husband type, through and through.
And so a small, quiet superiority bloomed deep in her chest. Those girls who did nothing because they were terrified of Kim Hyeongmin—compared to them, she was special. She talked with him, played with him, sat in a place they could only envy.
Be that as it may, time kept moving even while Ayeong savored that twisted little happiness. Before she knew it, lunch arrived—and with it, the hour she had to suffer again.
That was how it always went. Happiness and unhappiness came as a pair. Would today be the same as always?
While Ayeong trembled with anxiety and watched every face, Kang Hyeona moved.
Kim Hyeongmin's group's hangout. Fourth-floor hallway. She walked toward Han Sein, cornered against the far wall.
Hyeona's eyes were calmer than yesterday. People adapt; that was the saying. The guilt still stabbed at her chest, but she had finished rationalizing it. Sein's moans, the pained expression, the unsteady breathing—the reactions had been clear. Yet she knew she had put as little force as possible into every blow and done everything she could to keep from truly hurting him.
The sad part was that even so, he must have been in pain, and the fact that she was the one who hurt him never changed. Because she knew that, her pupils sank deeper and deeper. The sharp, lively eyes she once had were dying by degrees, aching.
Nothing different from yesterday. The only difference was that today she hadn't done anything wrong yet. That wasn't a problem either. Whatever the reason, she could always invent one.
"……."
Hyeona looked down at Sein. The gaze that met his fled almost at once. The faint, trembling breath that slipped from him was full of fear. Of course it was. Cornered like this, being bullied—who could stand there calm and unbothered? Even knowing that, Hyeona squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again.
She still had to hurt him. That fact remained. She steeled herself further. She was the perpetrator. She hit; she never got hit. And yet Hyeona hurt more than she ever had.
Please. Please don't look at me.
Don't look at me with those eyes.
I'm the one who hurts you and makes everything harder.
Why do you meet my gaze like that?
You should be too scared and too busy trying to escape to even see me properly.
Why are you holding me in your eyes?
Her body moved fast. The longer she hesitated, the more he would thrash in pain. To satisfy Kim Hyeongmin she had to act eventually.
But—
"Aaaah…!"
She hit lightly. Exactly like yesterday, force deliberately drained away. Her fist struck Sein's abdomen.
Hyeona's pupils began to shake. The reaction was beyond anything she had imagined—far more extreme than yesterday. As proof, Sein's body was already collapsing. He crumpled as if sitting down, then started to topple backward. His face, twisted with pain, looked pitiful past the point of bearing. The moan that forced its way past his lips slid straight into the space between her ribs.
Why? Why?
It was the same as yesterday…
Hyeona reeled. The sight of him trembling on the floor looked so fragile she found herself swimming between worry and doubt.
Only for a moment. Then the clothes of the boy lying there began to ride up. Whether from the way he had fallen or not, pale skin showed through—and with it, a bruise.
Hyeona's eyes trembled harder.
This… weak?
No. If she thought about it, she already knew. Even after sprinting that short distance he had needed a long time just to catch his breath. Those thin arms and legs looked barely strong enough to hold up his own body, never mind anything heavy. And was there any guarantee he wouldn't suffer from even the smallest stimulus? There wasn't.
She had driven a fist into that fragile body and told herself, I hit lightly, so it should be fine. Where had that mindset even come from?
Hyeona began to eat herself alive. Disgusting. Resentful. More than the situation itself, she found herself horrible.
Her head slowly dropped—like a sinner offering an apology. She hung it low, yet all she could see was Sein's pained form.
"Se—Sein. Sein…!!"
And there was Jeong Ayeong, held fast by Park Hyorin, able only to cry out in a pitiful voice.
Is this… right?
For the first time, Kang Hyeona questioned her own actions. More than ten years of loyalty. Repeated lessons, things she had always believed she simply had to do. A great pain might not overturn a firm person's convictions—but it was more than enough to open a very small crack. It might not bring everything down today. Still, it was the kind of tiny fracture that would someday shatter an entire dam.