Second Place, and a Cold Cola
After first-period gym class, the atmosphere in the classroom was noticeably different from usual.
"What? Seol Jihyo came in second?"
"She was only one second behind Yujin?"
The students who had witnessed Seol Jihyo's run wouldn't stop chattering about it among themselves.
"Since when was Seol Jihyo any good at P.E.?"
"Did you forget middle school? She rolled during gym class and had to be carried to the nurse's office."
"I was in her class back then, and I've never seen her run like she did today. Not once."
"Maybe she was just feeling really good today?"
"Make some sense. You think feeling good suddenly turns a slowpoke into that?"
Amid all of it, one student sat alone at the very back of the classroom, quiet as if he belonged to a different world entirely.
Seol Jihyo's desk mate — Moon Yoojin.
He seemed to have no interest whatsoever in joining his classmates' chatter, silently preparing his textbook for the next period instead.
Then three girls from his class shuffled nervously toward him.
"Um, hey, Yujin."
"…What?"
Dry, ash-gray eyes that carried no trace of warmth whatsoever.
Meeting that gaze, the girls faltered for a moment, glancing at each other uncertainly.
"Well, you see, it's about the run today—"
You say it. No, you say it.
After poking each other in the ribs and whispering back and forth like that, they finally turned their eyes back to Yujin.
"Do you think you, like, went easy on her? Because Seol Jihyo got hurt and everything?"
"No."
"Th-then how did she get second place?"
…Is that a question?
Yujin's eyebrow rose slightly.
"Why are you asking me?"
"Huh?"
"If you're curious, ask her yourself."
"Oh……."
Before the frozen girls, Yujin lowered his gaze back to his textbook.
An unmistakable signal: the conversation was over.
And yet they showed no sign of leaving. No — if anything, they seemed to be trying to keep the conversation going, taking advantage of the moment.
"Oh, anyway! Yujin, how was studying abroad? We never really got the chance to ask you about it."
"You were in Germany, right? You came back sooner than I expected! Oh, and did you pick a club yet?"
"Yujin, weren't you in the kendo club back in elementary? Are you going to do kendo in high school too?"
Chatter, chatter, chatter…
A conversation that showed no signs of stopping.
Weren't they here to ask about Seol Jihyo? Did that simply not matter anymore?
…Forget it. I don't care about any of that.
He was just tired.
Yoojin, who had been stubbornly staring at his textbook, pulled out his earphones — plugged in since who knew when — with a sharp tug.
"Class is about to start."
"H-huh?"
"Next period is math. Did you do the homework?"
"……Oh no!"
The ashen-faced girls spiraled into full panic.
"You did it? Show me, please!"
"What do I do, I totally forgot too. How many minutes until class starts?"
"Hey! Anyone who did the math homework! I'll buy you something from the store, just let me copy it!"
They drained away like water out of a bathtub, scattering into the distance.
In the silence that had finally arrived, Yoojin let out a small sigh.
…So loud.
He put his earphones back in.
Not long after, the grating scrape of the back door being opened reached him through the music.
Seol Jihyo. Moon Yoojin's desk mate.
He rolled only his eyes to look at her.
Long, straight black hair and blue eyes.
Noticeably pale skin, and a face so still that no particular expression could be read on it.
Was she always this kind of person? He thought about it quietly for a moment.
But he couldn't quite remember.
He had never been particularly close with Seol Jihyo to begin with — and besides, Yoojin had left to study in Germany the moment he graduated from the elementary division.
He had only just returned to Korea, timing his arrival with the start of high school at Gaon Special Academy, after those three years that felt both short and long.
"Hmm, Yujin, your seat next to Jihyo… Jihyo was in an accident a while back, so she's been out of school. If you have any questions, ask the friend in front of you, dear."
Seol Jihyo. The girl who should have been his desk mate from the start.
Gaon was an escalator school, so Yoojin had known of Seol Jihyo's existence since elementary school.
Granddaughter of a famous pharmaceutical company. That was about the extent of it.
They weren't close, so he never asked anyone what kind of accident she'd had. He simply accepted it and moved on.
That same Seol Jihyo had come back today.
"……"
Seated beside him, Seol Jihyo checked the schedule posted at the back of the classroom, then rummaged through her bag and smoothly pulled out her writing tools and textbooks.
She looked so perfectly fine that it was hard to believe she'd been in an accident serious enough to keep her out of school.
She'd even chased right on Yoojin's heels during gym class just a while ago.
…Going by everyone else's reactions, she was never especially athletic before.
"Hey, Seol Jihyo's here."
Meanwhile, ever since Seol Jihyo had appeared in the classroom, the air — which had been buzzing over the math homework — was beginning to shift.
Come to think of it, the other kids had seemed reluctant to be in the same group as Seol Jihyo during gym class.
Was there some reason for that?
I don't see anything particularly off about her.
If he had to point out something strange, it was Seol Jihyo's attitude.
If this girl had even a shred of social awareness, she would surely have felt it — all those stares clinging to her.
And yet Seol Jihyo opened her textbook without so much as a twitch of an eyebrow, calm as anything.
…She's an odd one.
After staring at Seol Jihyo for a while, Yoojin seemed to lose interest and lowered his gaze back to his own textbook.
After school.
"Yujin!"
The moment final period ended, the back door of the classroom burst open with gusto.
Moon Yoojin, who was neatly stacking his textbooks into his bag, turned his head with a glance.
There, bright as sunlight, a pair of golden-yellow eyes were sparkling like glass marbles.
"Class is over, right? Let's head to the dorms together."
Had he just finished working out? His soft-looking light-brown hair was tousled like the fur of a dog fresh off a walk.
The oversized hoodie he wore instead of his uniform jacket fit his cheerful, sunny disposition like a tailored suit.
Bae Hankyul.
He'd been hanging around Moon Yoojin since their elementary days — a best friend, so to speak.
"Where's Jihyo? I heard she came back to school today."
"Yeah. She left right after class ended."
Yoojin, having finished packing, slipped out of the classroom, and Hankyul quickly fell into step behind him.
"How was Jihyo?"
The question he tossed out was an unexpected one.
"In what way?"
"Did she seem okay? She was hurt pretty badly, you know."
"Her Core's a Regeneration type, apparently. Probably all healed up."
"Still, isn't it awfully soon for her to be back at school?"
"If she skips out for months at a time back home under the banner of treatment without even graduating, she gets expelled."
"I know that, it's just…"
Hankyul trailed off, glancing back toward the classroom where Jihyo was not.
He looked terribly worried.
Despite not even being all that close to her.
As far as Yoojin knew, this guy had never once been in the same class as Seol Jihyo, from elementary school all the way until now.
And yet he worried this much. It was something Yoojin could hardly imitate.
Then again, that was also this guy's best quality.
Yoojin pulled a vocabulary notebook from his pocket and answered absently.
"She seemed fine, honestly."
Fine enough, at least, to finish a gym-class run just one second behind Yoojin himself.
As the incident replayed in his mind once more, Yoojin's lips parted of their own accord.
"By the way — was Seol Jihyo on bad terms with the rest of the class or something?"
"…Huh?"
"The mood around her seemed a little off. It definitely wasn't like that back in elementary school."
…Ah. Hankyul's mouth closed on its own.
The bullying had started in earnest in middle school.
Yoojin had spent all of middle school in Germany, so it made sense that he wouldn't know the story.
Still, for someone as indifferent to his surroundings as Yoojin to bring up Jihyo himself — that was genuinely surprising.
"I don't know the details either. Something happened, apparently, but Jihyo never really told me about it."
"I see."
"Yeah. But why do you—"
Why are you asking?
The moment he was about to say it, a familiar figure appeared at the end of Hankyul's gaze.
The corner of the hallway, far down at the very end.
Jihyo, sipping from a can of cola as she walked.
"Oh, that's Jihyo."
A look of delight spread across Hankyul's face. He was just about to dash over when—
"Hey, did you hear? Seol Jihyo's back at school?"
The sudden shift in the air around them stopped his feet in their tracks.
"Oh my god. There she is. Walking down at the end of the hall — that's Seol Jihyo, isn't it?"
"You've got to hand it to her nerve, right? Going through that vicious bullying and still making up her mind to come back."
"Agreed."
The murmuring around them grew steadily louder.
At this volume, Jihyo could no doubt hear every word.
Yet not a single person stopped.
"If it were me, I'd be too embarrassed to even lift my head. What is with that confident face of hers?"
"Her Core's a Regeneration type, remember. Guess she's insanely tough, body and mind."
"Pfft, at that point isn't she basically a cockroach?"
Hankyul's shoulders flinched.
"You guys——"
Unable to bear it any longer, Hankyul had just taken a stride toward them when—
"Eeek!!"
A scream rang out of nowhere.
Hankyul froze mid-motion.
—In an instant, the hallway was swallowed by silence.
Out of the frozen air, someone shrieked.
"Wh-what are you doing?!"
Glug, glug, glug…
There was a figure upending her half-finished can of cola, pouring it straight over someone's head.
A face without a hint of expression.
It was Seol Jihyo.