Responsibility
**Aju SIDE.**
The broadcast, which had been shocking in so many ways, ended with Riha oppa’s furious shout. That cry felt like it was speaking for all the emotions I’d been holding back.
“Hey, Aju.”
“...Yeah?”
The classroom atmosphere right now made it hard for anyone to approach me—they were all keeping their distance, just watching. Even in that situation, the only person who casually spoke to me was Jihee.
“Don’t you have anything you want to say? To these kids?”
“Ah…”
At Jihee’s words, I looked around the room. Some of the faces belonged to kids who used to be close to me. But the moment our eyes met… they started staring at me with this expectant look.
Maybe they thought I would forgive them.
“I don’t. Nothing at all.”
“Figures. That’s the right call.”
But I had no intention of forgiving them. Honestly, I wasn’t even angry.
I was disappointed in them, not mad. And forgiving someone when you’re not even angry… that just feels weird.
“Still, I’m kinda jealous. For real…”
“Jealous?”
“Yeah. Extremely.”
Jihee nodded with a genuine, envious smile. She glanced around the classroom for a moment.
“Honestly, I bet most of the girls here feel the same way.”
“…Why?”
Our conversation was definitely being overheard by the others. But I ignored them completely—just like they had ignored me all this time—and focused only on talking to Jihee.
“Because… having a guy who’d go this far for you? It’s insanely enviable.”
“Ah…”
Hearing Jihee’s words, I… understood. In this world, was there really anyone who would do something like this for another person?
No. At least, not anyone I knew. Except for Riha oppa.
“Jihee.”
“Yeah?”
“I… I want to go to Riha oppa.”
“…Pfft. Yeah, I guess now’s not the time to be dealing with these kids.”
“Right.”
“Then let’s go together. Being around that oppa seems like it’d be fun.”
“…Before that.”
I grabbed the sleeve of Jihee’s uniform as she naturally tried to follow me to see Riha oppa. And then—
“…How exactly do you know Riha oppa?”
I finally voiced the question I’d been suppressing the whole time. This part… I really wanted to get a clear answer on.
“Uh… Aju? Why are your eyes suddenly so scary?”
“…I’m just curious. Answer me.”
“Okay, sure.”
Jihee told me everything that had happened between her and Riha oppa. During her explanation, I could hear some kind of commotion coming from the broadcast, but—
I had to hear this first…
“…And that’s how it went.”
So he really did go to meet a girl yesterday… And it was even Eunhye unnie.
…Ugh.
* * *
**Riha SIDE.**
I’d said everything I wanted to say—everything I needed to say. After causing this much chaos, the ones who’d end up being looked down on from now on would be that girl and her little gang.
“Whew… This part’s taken care of, at least…”
The plan had succeeded, so now it should be a happy ending… or so I wanted to say.
But as I stared at the door of the broadcast room where Eunhye and I were standing, I had a feeling a happy ending wasn’t in the cards.
**THUD THUD THUD!!!**
“Open the door right now! Before I call the police!!”
Some guy with an impressively loud voice was pounding on the broadcast room door and yelling. For now, the iron bar we’d wedged between the handles was keeping it firmly shut.
Well, that was about to end too.
“…It’s over, right?”
“Yeah. You can open it now.”
“…Got it.”
I wasn’t some terrorist. There was no way I was going to shout something like “Guarantee my safety!” in a situation like this. The only reason I’d locked the door was so I wouldn’t be interrupted while handling my business.
Eunhye knew that too, so after hearing me, she pulled the iron bar out from the door handle.
**CLANG!**
“Ugh!!”
The bar that had been blocking the door the whole time was finally removed. A man who had been slamming his whole body against it burst through as the door flew open and collapsed onto the floor.
Just in case, since the door had opened more violently than expected and Eunhye might have gotten hurt, I had already pulled her over to my side beforehand.
“...” / “...”
So of course the atmosphere got awkward… I should let go now.
“Haa… Haa… It’s finally open… Huh!? You bastard! How dare you touch Eunhye!”
“…Huh?”
“Are you taking her hostage or something!?”
“…Huh~?”
The man seemed to have completely misunderstood the situation. I tilted my head. Let me sort this out…
Someone had hijacked the school-wide broadcast from the broadcast room and even locked the door. When they finally forced it open, they found an unfamiliar man… holding the arm of one of the school’s teachers.
…Ah.
“This is pretty understandable.”
Not wanting any more misunderstandings, I immediately let go of Eunhye’s arm. She flinched for a second but quickly returned to her usual expression, as if nothing had happened.
“Eunhye! No… Teacher An Eunhye. Come over here! I’ll handle this guy!”
“It’s fine.”
“…Pardon?”
“I said it’s fine. It’s not what you’re thinking, Teacher.”
Eunhye crossed her arms, glanced at me briefly, then looked at the man who had just burst in, along with the other teachers and students watching from behind him.
Then, in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear clearly, she said:
“I’m here because I wanted to be.”
The crowd began murmuring.
At Eunhye’s words, the people who still couldn’t make sense of the situation started whispering among themselves. I figured that if I said anything right now, it would only cause more trouble for Eunhye, so I kept my mouth shut for the moment.
“Um… Teacher An Eunhye? What exactly…”
“It’s exactly as I said. What just happened… I was an accomplice.”
“Excuse me?”
The man who had fallen to the floor staggered to his feet with a face full of confusion. He looked back and forth between me and Eunhye, his expression gradually twisting into clear displeasure as he glared at me.
“What are you looking at?”
Someone might ask if I really needed to say that.
But a man who runs away from a threat like that the moment it appears has already lost. And I had no intention of becoming that kind of loser.
“Ugh…”
See?
In the end, the loser is the one who looks away first.
“There must be a lot you want to say about what just happened. A lot of questions too. But there’s one thing we all need to know about this incident.”
By now, an uncountable number of people had gathered around the broadcast room. With all those eyes focused on her, Eunhye walked confidently toward them.
“Thanks to what happened today, everyone in this school now knows. That there was a student… suffering in a place none of us teachers knew about.”
At Eunhye’s words, the students began looking toward the teachers. After all, the people who were supposed to resolve situations like this before they exploded were the so-called “teachers.”
But they had failed, and this was the result.
The teachers knew that too, so they accepted the students’ gazes with visible discomfort.
“So you’re saying what you did was right?”
Among them, the only female teacher who didn’t shrink under the students’ stares pushed her way through the crowd.
“Head Teacher.”
“Teacher An Eunhye. For whatever reason, you have just participated in an act that sacrifices the well-being of other students for the sake of just one. Are you even aware of what you’ve done?”
“…”
The strict-looking woman called the head teacher wasn’t wrong. As a teacher whose job was to protect students, harming other students to protect one was never a good thing.
But.
“Then… what exactly were we supposed to do?”
“You should have talked to them. And made sure it never happened again.”
“Talk… Who exactly is saying that with whose mouth?”
Eunhye cut off the head teacher and took a step forward. Her eyes were locked on a single target, just like the time she had fought me.
Ah, this looks dangerous…
“Let me ask you one thing. When I first came to you to discuss Aju’s situation, did you solve it with that ‘talk’ you mentioned?”
“Didn’t we talk? I clearly called Choi Seung-a in and we had a conversation together. Don’t you remember?”
“…I remember.”
That happened?
I had thought Eunhye hadn’t done anything for Aju until now, so I looked at her with slight surprise.
“But in the end, nothing changed. No—in the first place, that so-called conversation was meaningless.”
“Conversation only has meaning when it’s continuous. In fact, I still walk around the school talking with students even now.”
**Tap.**
At the head teacher’s words, Eunhye stomped her heel hard against the floor in clear irritation.
Eunhye was already tall and had an intimidating presence, so when she did that… the charisma was no joke.
“The problem is that you only ever talk.”
“…Teachers must set an example for students. No matter what happens, we must show them the right way—solving things through dialogue.”
“In the end, all you’re showing them is that you won’t take any real action!!!”
It finally burst out.
Yeah, no matter how old she got, that personality of hers wasn’t going anywhere.
She was the kind of person who would throw a real punch at a middle schooler if they pissed her off. That’s just who you are.
“I used to think that was right too. That if a teacher used their authority to solve something here, the students would eventually think that was the correct approach.”
“Moreover, the student I was trying to protect is my own cousin, Aju. In that case, it could create even worse perceptions toward Aju. However…”
“The one suffering from your leisurely attitude and my own stupid, pathetic hesitation where I just worried alone… is Aju!!!”
…Wow. She really went off.
In the end, Eunhye even dropped the polite speech. Her eyes were shining with that familiar fierce light as she glared at the head teacher.
“Ah, ah…”
No matter how strict the head teacher was, she was still just a person. When someone she thought was human suddenly shed that skin and threatened her like a beast… of course it was terrifying.
“And the same goes for all of you here!”
Having crushed the head teacher with her gaze, Eunhye now turned her target toward the students. They could only stand frozen, flinching at the glow still burning in her eyes.
“Some of you here may truly know nothing about Aju’s current situation. But… at least half of you knew. That there was a student suffering because of the selfish feelings of a few others.”
At Eunhye’s shout, only a very small number of students looked around with faces that said “Who?” Those few were probably the only ones who genuinely hadn’t known about Aju’s situation.
As for the rest of the students… Tsk.
“School isn’t just a place that teaches you how to study. What you’re supposed to learn here includes how to live in the society you’ll enter in the future.”
“But look at yourselves right now. ‘It’s not my problem,’ ‘Other kids are doing it too.’ Because of those excuses, everyone turned a blind eye to one person’s suffering. Some even took part in it.”
**Tap!**
This time Eunhye stomped the floor even harder. The students listening flinched at the pressure, and she didn’t miss the opening.
“Do you really think that was the right thing to do?”
However, the words that came from Eunhye’s mouth no longer carried the oppressive weight from before. What could be felt in her voice instead was…
Something close to sadness.
“Is there really anyone here who thinks it’s right to ignore someone who’s suffering? To participate in causing that suffering?”
“…Why are you yelling at us for that?”
At that moment, one brave student spoke up in a slightly trembling voice, voicing their complaint.
Hmm. That kid has potential. They’ll go far.
“That’s right. It’s not something I should be yelling at you for. In the first place, all of this… is the fault of us teachers. But don’t forget.”
“That you all haven’t done a single thing right either.”
Instead of simply getting angry, Eunhye was scolding them as a teacher.
A different kind of pressure now wrapped around the students.
Because of it, none of them could offer any rebuttal. Even the student who had just spoken to her could only lower their head.
Eunhye looked once more at the head teacher inside the broadcast room.
Of course, she had put the human mask back on.
“I’m not saying everything that happened today was right. There might have been better ways. However…”
“At least for the first time, I feel satisfied. Even though I caused this ridiculous incident, I have no regrets about doing it.”
“Because there was someone who said the things I couldn’t say… in my place.”
As she said that, Eunhye glanced at me, and our eyes met.
That gaze… held so many emotions that it didn’t even feel like she was looking at me.
This was a first.
“We must certainly be role models for the students. And I wanted to teach them… that sometimes, if necessary, you have to take direct action.”
“Even if it means I get hurt. That sometimes, for the sake of something precious, this kind of thing is necessary… I hope the students understand that.”
“And that someone has to take responsibility for it too.”
Those last words were directed at the students.
That final sentence… carried the atmosphere of a farewell.
Well, that made sense. Not only had she failed to stop this kind of incident—she had even helped cause it. It would be hard for Eunhye to stay at this school after that.
Sigh. This is exactly why I wanted to do it alone.
“Eunhye un… Teacher!”
At that moment, a familiar, clear voice rang out from among the students.
Well, after causing this much of a scene, I figured she would show up…
“Aju.”
“…Teacher Eunhye. And…”
Why am I so nervous?
“Riha oppa.”
Whoa, what do I do?
My heart… is pounding like crazy.