Abandoned
Abandoned.
Life at the academy began to shift, little by little.
Every day at lunch, I used to meet Noel, Sage, and Erika in front of the school cafeteria, and we would all eat together. Unless something unusual came up, waiting for one another before heading inside was an unspoken promise between us.
Lately, the days I ate alone had been piling up. Whether I stood at the cafeteria entrance waiting for them, or they walked past waiting for me, unfriendly stares clung to my back either way.
Then one day, after class, Sage called me aside.
"Um... there's something I wanted to ask you."
She was watching my expression more anxiously than ever.
"Would it be all right if... if we didn't act like we know each other at school, for a while?"
There was no need to ask why. It was because hanging around me meant having ugly rumors attach themselves to you, obviously.
I already knew she was a shy girl by nature. Pressing her to say the reason out loud somehow felt like another form of tormenting her.
"I'm sorry. It's just... I get scared when people keep staring at me. It's never because I don't like you."
Sage hurried to add that, as if she couldn't bear the thought of being misunderstood.
"Just for a little while. Only until things get better..."
"Okay."
"Really?"
She must have braced herself for me to refuse, because the darkness on her face lightened a little.
"Because I understand."
"I'm sorry I can't be there for you."
And so Sage and I agreed to pretend we didn't know each other at school.
Next came Noel.
"Yooseong. Can we talk for a minute?"
A face that should have been full of its usual smile carried an awkward, troubled look instead. The moment I saw that expression, I had a feeling I knew what was coming. Please, I prayed, let it be anything but that.
My hope was shattered, utterly and mercilessly.
"My mom and dad have been worrying a lot lately."
Even raising the topic with me seemed to discomfort him; Noel kept glancing at my face the whole time. Did he even realize how stiff his own expression had become?
"I told them you're fine, obviously! You're not that kind of person, and nothing's been proven about your dad's case yet, right? You know my parents too, don't you?"
"......"
"Yooseong? Hey, are you listening?"
"Yeah."
"But still, from a parent's point of view, I guess it's scary. They're really worried their own son's name might get dragged into the rumors for no reason."
I could already predict what would come next.
"...Could we maybe pretend not to know each other at school for a bit? Only at school, I swear."
Seeming embarrassed even as the words left his own mouth, he immediately piled on more.
"Texting is fine—it doesn't stand out, so no one will notice. After school's no problem either. And outside of school we can still hang out on weekends like always, so..."
I don't remember a single word he said after that.
After Sage, Noel was gone too.
Of course, the promise was supposed to apply only inside school. But this was a boarding academy where every student lived on campus. Eating, resting, living—the overwhelming majority of our days unfolded within these walls. So "pretending not to know each other at school" really meant pretending not to know each other through most of everyday life.
All that remained beside me now was Erika.
The least honest of the three, the one staying at my side—that was the last thing I expected. But even that turned out to be my mistake, and it took less than a few days for me to realize it.
It happened one afternoon after class.
I had gathered my things and was heading to the swordsmanship training ground, the same routine I had repeated every single day that week. Erika was the one who had first recommended swordsmanship to me, insisting that when your heart was in chaos, swinging a blade was the best medicine. I'd been skeptical at first, but it was true that when I swung the sword mindlessly and let the sweat pour out, my head grew a little lighter.
Erika blocked my path.
"Erika...?"
"Come with me."
Without waiting for an answer, she strode ahead. She led me to the back yard of an annex, a place where hardly anyone's footsteps ever reached.
"There's nothing here. Why did you bring me all the way out to this place?"
"There is something I must say."
Erika couldn't look at me for a moment. Then, abruptly, she bowed her head.
"I am sorry."
"Why? What's wrong?"
"I would prefer that you not come to the training ground for a while."
"You mean... from me?"
"The upperclassmen in the swordsmanship club of late... they are not pleased when you appear."
"But the training ground doesn't belong to them."
"Of course it does not. But... people are saying a great deal behind closed doors. If you went and got tangled in some quarrel for no reason, that would only weigh on you, no?"
In the end, all I could do—once again—was agree. Just like with Sage. Just like with Noel. Erika saying all this was, in the end, her own way of worrying about me. It didn't sit well with me that she'd started minding the club members' eyes because of me, but I couldn't very well throw a tantrum over it.
"Is that everything you wanted to say? Then let's go. You're headed to the training ground, right? I'll walk you there."
"One thing remains."
Erika shifted her feet, hesitating, before continuing.
"The swordsmanship tournament is being held before long. You know this. So... I was thinking—could you not pretend not to know me until it is over?"
"......"
I kept my mouth shut, but inside, something twisted.
So even you, of all people, are saying this.
The words climbed all the way up my throat before I managed to force them back down.
"You understand that if trouble catches up to me now for no reason, it could affect my entry in the tournament, yes?"
Erika!
And the trouble is being around me? Is that it? Am I the problem?
But what actually came out of my mouth, despite the fury boiling inside, was perfectly, eerily calm.
"Okay."
At my answer, the stiffness drained from Erika's face.
"...Thank you."
As if she'd said all she needed to say, she turned away.
"Then I shall see you next time."
Next time?
And when exactly is that?
1.
Pretend not to know each other only at school—that was the promise. As I said, this was a full boarding academy, and the only time I could be truly alone was when I retreated to my single-occupancy dorm room. We spent the entire day apart; did anyone seriously think affection would suddenly surge back the moment we were behind separate doors?
The drifting apart happened in the blink of an eye. And the first one to make me understand that was Sage.
In the beginning, it really was only at school. If we passed each other in the corridor, she would walk by as if I were a stranger—but every evening, a message would arrive from her.
She must have felt guilty about it herself, because she reached out more often than usual at first. But then the frequency dropped, sharply and visibly—no one could have called it imagination. She stopped messaging first. Replies to the texts I sent took longer and longer. And then one day, a whole day passed without any reply at all.
That was why I'd felt so uneasy when Noel made the same request of me. He emphasized it again and again: only at school. We could keep texting, after school was no problem, and on weekends we could go out together like we always had.
But Noel began walking the very same road Sage had.
Replies that used to arrive within minutes started coming hours later. At some point, my own messages were all that sat stacked in the chat window, one beneath another. So when Erika too asked me to pretend I didn't exist, the anxiety was different this time. If she left as well, I would be truly, completely alone at school.
About a month later, the swordsmanship tournament Erika had prepared for so tirelessly came to an end. The moment I heard the news, I sent a message.
A day passed. Then two.
Days went by, and beside the message the little marker stayed exactly where it was: not read.
Only then was I forced to admit it. The bond between us had already shattered. I was the one who had known it all along and looked away.
Their school lives flowed on without me as if nothing had happened. We attended the same academy, so our paths crossed often—sometimes just the two of us on a staircase or in a hallway. And whenever I tried to speak, they would slip away with the same awkward, apologetic air.
"We... promised, remember?"
Promise. That word left me with a strange feeling every time I heard it. The promise to pretend not to know each other only at school. The promise to keep texting no matter what. The promise to meet on weekends like before. One by one, all of those promises had evaporated—yet the single promise not to speak to me was the only one that lasted to the very end.
It took far less time than I'd imagined for a bond of ten years to decay into something worse than what we'd share with a stranger.
One day, a message came from Noel.
I felt nothing, really.
A few days later, I saw Erika clinging to the side of a certain boy. He was tall, well-built. The two of them walked to the training ground together nearly every day—anyone could see how well matched they were, and there was an air between them that went beyond friendship.
So she can make that kind of face in front of someone else.
She was the girl who did nothing but furrow her brows and shout whenever she faced me. Seeing that same Erika smiling beside another person like any ordinary girl was, somehow, an uncanny sight.
Sage was no different. She had begun spending her time with the boy everyone called the top student in the school. Whether the two of them were dating, I didn't know. I didn't want to know. Honestly, at this point, it didn't matter to me either way.
When everyone abandons you, I'd thought I would die—but it hurt less than I expected. Why was that? Maybe months of torment had simply numbed me. Maybe something in me had broken. Or maybe it was because, deep down, I had always seen this coming.
'There's no way all three of them would abandon me.'
Soothing myself with that thought, anxiously, was itself proof of how acutely conscious I was of the possibility. I could not fall apart. My father was in custody, and back in our northern hometown my mother was alone. If I collapsed over something like this, she would truly be left by herself.
That night, lying in my dorm bed staring at the ceiling, an old memory surfaced—a passage my mother used to recite to me long ago.
Consider it well: this world is no place to remain forever.
More fleeting still than the dew that gathers on a blade of grass,
than the moon's reflection trembling on the water.
A passage from Atsumori—a warrior dance passed down in Japan since ancient times, a tale that sang of the transience of the world and of human lives. When I was small, my mother would sometimes close her eyes and recite it. Back then I wondered why she sang something so sorrowful. Now, I thought I understood a little.
We had been together like that, once. Even relationships that felt as if they would last forever broke apart, far too easily. As I turned the passage over and over in my mind, strangely enough, my heart grew a little lighter. If someone was going to leave me anyway, then I could simply let them go. Clinging to what was gone would only torment me.
Once I began thinking that way, even the feelings I'd held toward them cooled, little by little. At some point, an uglier thought occurred to me as well: perhaps they had approached me in the first place because I was a brigadier general's son, angling for the status and prestige that came with me. The more I entertained that idea, the easier it became to cut the ties loose.
That night, for the first time in a long while, I called my mother. The Imperial Capital, where I attended school, and our hometown in the north were separated by a vast distance. The connecting tone rang several times before I heard her familiar voice.
"Yooseong? Is that you?"
"Yes... I just wanted to hear your voice."
The line went quiet for a moment.
"I see. It is not good to call so late, you know. At this hour, you should be asleep."
It might have sounded stiff to anyone else, but that was simply who my mother was. After a brief silence, I spoke first.
"...Why aren't you asking me anything?"
"Asking you what?"
"Whether something's happened to me."
"If you wish to speak of it, you will speak of it yourself."
"......"
"Pressing you will not make your heart any lighter, either."
So she had known all along. Pretending nothing was wrong might fool everyone else, but it was never going to get past her.
"Everything's just... complicated. More importantly—how are things going with Father's case?"
"That matter is not yours to worry about."
"But it's been months and nothing has—"
"Han Yooseong. You are a student."
One firm sentence, and I had no choice but to fall silent.
"If you are a student, then devote yourself to a student's work. Do not let your eyes wander to other things. Do properly, now, what must be done by you."
"How am I supposed to do nothing while Father is in that state?"
"I did not say do nothing."
Her voice did not waver.
"Is throwing yourself into something beyond what you can bear, and collapsing alongside it, going to help your father?"
"......"
"It is not, is it."
I had nothing to say in rebuttal.
"So, for now, do what is within your power. If you are a student, then live diligently, as a student should. That is what this mother wishes for you."
When the call ended, my heart felt lighter. In the end, she was telling me to do the best I could with what was in front of me.
It was then that my eyes fell on the paper flyer sitting on my desk.
The Imperial Festival.
A martial arts tournament held across the entire Empire. Its victor earned an audience with the Emperor—and with that audience, the privilege of granting one petition.
If I asked for a reinvestigation into my father's case...
Asking for his release outright was out of the question—that would be no different from acknowledging him as a criminal myself. But a reinvestigation was different. It would carry the Emperor's authority; they would have to tear the case apart, piece by piece, down to the last thread.
Me, winning the whole thing? A laughable fantasy. Even so, it was a far sight better than sitting still and doing nothing.
From that day on, I began training for the Imperial Festival.