Are You Lonely?
"…I actually showed up."
It felt strange to say it myself, but it had been a long time since I'd set foot in school.
I dragged my heavy feet along without thinking, and before I knew it I was standing in front of my classroom door. I let out a quiet sigh under my breath.
A glance at my wristwatch told me it was 7:55. Homeroom started at eight, so I'd made it by the skin of my teeth.
Coming to school at all was rare enough. Arriving without being late was rarer still.
Even as the thought crossed my mind, another yawn slipped out—I'd long since lost count of how many that made. Figuring I'd just plant my face on the desk until lunch, I pushed the door open in a half-dazed fog.
…And in that instant a kick came flying at me like a gale. I sucked in a breath before I even knew what I was doing.
"Late!!"
"I'm on time, okay?!" The sleep vanished from me so fast I shouted it on pure reflex—but reality didn't budge an inch.
If my head hadn't ducked on instinct, I would have been a dead man right there.
Wondering whether checking the time before walking in had somehow been a mistake, I looked at my watch again. There was still time left before the bell. Definitely.
"Huh, you're right. Ahaha—well, you're always late when you show up, so it was just a conditioned reflex~"
I wanted to call her out on it. What kind of high school girl on this planet reflexively kicks people? But doing that would only earn me a repeat of what had just happened, so I swallowed the protest rising in my throat, pinched the bridge of my nose, and let out a sigh of pure defeat.
"What's the occasion, showing up on time? Is the sun gonna rise in the west tomorrow?"
Not a shred of apology—just more nonsense. This was Cheon Yu-rim. Class president. She pulled this every single time I was late, so whether I liked it or not, her name had burned itself into my memory.
"Shut up. None of your business."
We weren't on buddy-buddy chatting terms, and I sure as hell didn't owe her a conversation. I answered in a tone that made it clear I was done, then dropped my head straight onto the desk.
She didn't seem to care in the slightest. Around us, though, the whispering had already started.
"Listen to how he talks… God, that guy is so full of himself."
"The class president still looks out for a loser like that, and he can't even be grateful. What a piece of trash."
"No wonder he has no friends. Does he think he's cool or something? What's that called again—chuunibyou?"
"Ugh, so gross."
I had neither the words nor the will to deny any of it. It was all true.
That didn't mean I planned to change, either.
I just let it wash over me the way water flows—in one ear and out the other. That was all.
This is why I didn't want to come.
But even though I'd always managed to let it slide before… today, for some reason, it wouldn't go.
On top of that, I kept yawning and yet sleep stubbornly refused to come. Still face-down on the desk, I sighed again.
I was just shifting restlessly when my eyes met Seol-hwa's. She'd been glancing back at me from the seat in front.
She looked thoroughly flustered—turning her head this way and that, fidgeting as if she wanted to say something. Then she seemed to give up on words entirely. She offered an awkward little smile instead, and gave a small wave, like she was trying to show she was glad to see me.
What a fool.
She could have just pretended not to notice.
Clumsy, and yet somehow impossible to look away from… that was roughly the impression Yun Seol-hwa left on me these days.
Even my usual last-ditch measure—using the teachers' droning as a lullaby—wasn't working. So I half-pretended to listen to the lesson and quietly watched the back of the girl in front of me. Being behind her meant I was free to observe her one-sidedly.
It didn't take long to see it.
Yun Seol-hwa was thoroughly isolated in this classroom.
No one to talk to. No one who talked to her. In all the time I watched, she never once opened her mouth in that room.
School friends were that kind of thing, in the end.
Swallow the sweet, spit out the bitter—relationships dressed up in pretty words like "friendship," when really they were just self-satisfaction and entertainment in a nice wrapper.
Loneliness, I thought, was a shallow wave.
Even solid rock gets worn down by tiny drops of water, doesn't it?
That was what loneliness did—it ate away at the heart, little by little.
I already had my excuses lined up, the self-justifying kind that said I'd given up and washed my hands of everything. So I could endure whatever people said about me.
But Seol-hwa?
Those eyes I'd seen in the rain that day still wouldn't leave me.
Deep and dark as a night sea with nothing but despair in them.
Had she taken wave after wave with no breakwater at all, until her eyes became like that?
…No.
Something that small couldn't make eyes like those.
Eyes steeped in that kind of despair weren't made easily.
She—the existence called Yun Seol-hwa—had gotten under my skin.
How had she managed to keep living under the kind of life that could put that look in someone's eyes?
By the time I came back to myself, the lunch bell had already rung some time ago.
I'd thought sleep was impossible given how restless I'd been, but this body of mine had apparently settled into a firm pattern of sleeping through class.
Did she go get lunch?
I checked the classroom, the cafeteria, even the school store swarming with people like a nest of ants—but there was no sign of Seol-hwa anywhere.
This school was infamous for the quality of its cafeteria food. Most kids either ate out or hit the store instead. The store, unlike the cafeteria, sold decent stuff cheap, so it was always packed enough to look like a war zone.
Getting tangled up in that kind of hassle wasn't my thing, so I always just bought a convenience-store lunch box. Different world from theirs, really.
Anyway, if she's not even in places like that, finding her is going to be hard.
I gave up and headed for the stairs to the rooftop—not the cafeteria or classroom where everyone clustered in little groups.
Rooftops were usually off-limits for safety reasons, but someone still had to manage them. As the rooftop duty officer, I'd been given a key and could come and go legally.
The perks of having a wide, open rooftop all to yourself, in exchange for the occasional bit of cleaning—it was a sweet assignment, and competition for it had been fierce. For some reason, I'd been the one chosen.
I hadn't particularly cared, but the wind up high was cool, the view wasn't bad, and it was ideal for napping. It was pretty much the only part of school life I was actually satisfied with.
The looks from my classmates had gotten even uglier—why a guy like him?—but it wasn't a one- or two-day thing, so I didn't care.
Eat something, then sleep.
Thinking thoughts that had nothing student-like about them, I grabbed the doorknob. Even if I got chewed out, I'd already copied the key, so losing the duty post wouldn't be a big deal either way.
The iron door creaked open with a rusty, grating sound—and there, right in front of me, was the jet-black hair I'd been looking for all this time.
Yun Seol-hwa, crouched against the metal fence, quietly chewing on a piece of plain bread.
There were plenty of things I wanted to ask—starting with how she'd gotten onto a rooftop no one else could access—but what bothered me most was what she was eating.
The loser's set.
The store's stock never lasted, so the kids who lost the sprint that started the second the lunch bell rang ended up swallowing their frustration over a single small piece of plain bread and a carton of white milk. The spoils of the defeated.
Ask any high schooler—any person, really—whether that was enough to fill a stomach, and the answer was obviously no.
Even if it cost more, going to a nearby restaurant or convenience store was the normal move. Only kids short on cash ever touched that menu.
It was not the kind of thing a rich girl had any reason to put in her mouth.
Seol-hwa just kept chewing her bread, staring down at her own knees. She didn't seem to have noticed I'd arrived.
I deliberately let my footsteps sound as I walked over and sat down beside her. Only then did she seem to realize I was there, turning her head toward me.
"…Yu-seong?"
"How are you up here?"
I gave a light wave as I sat, opening the conversation. Sitting in silence through a heavy atmosphere while eating was the kind of awkward I could do without.
"A teacher gave me the key. She said I should get some air somewhere open… Come to think of it, you're the one in charge of the rooftop, aren't you? I forgot to tell you. I'm sorry."
"I don't really care, so you don't have to apologize."
She apologized a lot, this girl. I waved it off. It was a title-only position anyway—nothing worth receiving an apology over.
I pulled out my own lunch box, but… maybe it was the strangely stifling air between us. The food just wouldn't go down my throat.
"How are you feeling? Any better?"
The silence that had settled so naturally left me no choice but to speak first. Seol-hwa gave a small nod.
"Thanks to you… I'm very grateful."
"Well, that's good, then. By the way—you… you're not eating just that every day, are you?"
Had I hit the mark?
She couldn't answer, just turned her head away awkwardly. I sighed where she couldn't see and pulled a red-bean bun from my pocket—something I'd stashed as a snack—and tossed it to her.
"…Um, what's this?" Seol-hwa somehow managed to catch the bag as it arced gently through the air, then let out a soft breath and looked at me, puzzled.
"Can't you tell? I gave it to you to eat. Oh—is it because you don't have anything to drink? Want me to go buy something?"
"Th-that's not it! I'm asking why you're giving it to me… You've already done so much taking care of me when I was sick. Just the thought is more than enou—"
She tried to refuse and hand the bun back—then her stomach let out a loud growl. Both of us froze, as if time itself had stopped.
I just stared at her without a word. Seol-hwa ducked her head, face red as a tomato, and finally murmured, "Thank you for the food…" before she started nibbling on the bun.
"…It's sweet."
"Well, yeah. It's a red-bean bun. Of course it's sweeter than plain bread."
I watched her in silence as she ate the bun in tiny bites, like a hamster gnawing on sunflower seeds.
After a while, I couldn't hold it in anymore and carefully spoke up.
"Is something going on at home?"
A rich girl raised in luxury, sitting alone up here chewing plain bread—plus everything that had happened at the park… it still bothered me. I opened my mouth carefully.
Calling it payment for the bread felt wrong, but I figured I had enough reason to ask.
Seol-hwa flinched at my words, then eventually nodded, her expression turning gloomy.
"It's not so much that something's going on… I live alone."
"Live alone? You mean you moved out? Or did you fight with your family or something?"
I tried to keep my reply as casual as I could. It was well within the range of what I'd expected.
But the words that came after—those, I never saw coming, no matter how prepared I thought I was.
"…A fight. Maybe it would have been better if that's all it was."
She murmured it sadly, eyes fixed on something far away. I could only blink at her. I never would have expected the word "fight" to come out of that mouth.
In the meantime, Seol-hwa seemed to have finished the bun. She stood quietly, gripped the chain-link fence tight, and looked out over the athletic field.
Seeing that, I set down my half-eaten lunch and stood beside her without a word.
What filled my vision was the field below.
Kids running around, shouting loud enough that their voices carried all the way up here, having the time of their lives. Some sprinting full-tilt after a ball. Groups clustered together, snacking and chatting.
Looks different, voices different—everything different. But they all had one thing in common.
Every last one of them was laughing, genuinely happy.
The simple fact that they were living life fully, enjoying it as it came.
The chain-link fence between us and the field might as well have been the border between two different worlds. The temperature difference on either side was that stark.
Enough to make you feel pathetic—standing up here, able to do nothing but watch the people living life in real time down below.
Seol-hwa still said nothing. She just kept looking at the field.
Silence settled over us again. I'd long since lost count of how many times.
I quietly rolled my eyes to glance at her profile.
I didn't know what she was feeling, but the expression on her face made me certain of one thing: whatever it was, it wasn't good.
And through it all, the laughter of those idiots below kept pouring in without rest, somehow even louder and more grating than usual today.
Eventually I lost the will to keep standing. I let out a long, heavy sigh and stretched out flat on the concrete.
Blue sky. White clouds. A sun that was needlessly bright.
The sky, shining in the same colors it always did, was more than enough to make me feel like I was some impurity the world had no place for.
…Maybe it wasn't just a feeling.
"Hey."
I broke the silence with my arms folded behind my head. Seol-hwa didn't turn toward me, but she answered, "…What is it?"
"I'm not trying to dig into everything. But, well—think of it as me repaying the favor from last time… If you're okay with it, could you answer just one thing?"
After a few seconds of quiet, I saw her give a small nod. I opened my mouth.
"Are you lonely?"
It was the most fundamental question I wanted to ask the person called Yun Seol-hwa.
I'd thought I'd erased the word "caring about other people" from my life a long time ago.
But those eyes from that rainy day… I just couldn't forget them.
Eyes full of nothing but resignation—despair toward herself, toward others, toward the world—I simply could not forget them.
I couldn't see her face with her back turned, but the loneliness coming off her was unmistakable.
"And if… I said I was?"
Her answer came after a short pause.
"I don't know. I'd want to hear the reason first, then think about it."
Smoothing things over with empty, pleasant words would have been one way to handle it.
But after everything that morning… telling a careless lie would have pricked what little conscience I had left. So I answered honestly.
"If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine. I won't force you. It's probably a heavy story."
There was privacy to consider, and any story that could put that look in someone's eyes wasn't going to be a bright one.
I figured she wouldn't open up easily, and that turning me down would be the natural response. But to my surprise, Seol-hwa quietly came over and sat down, knees drawn up, right beside where I lay.
"You're right. A heavy story… I don't really know, but if it's all right with you—would you listen?"
At that, I answered without a word—just a nod of my head.