Part 1 - Fake Leash(10)
Part 1 - Fake Leash(10)
The spring campus was as dazzling and energetic as ever.
Just a few days ago, the sunlight felt like it was about to crush me and tear me to shreds, but today, it felt like a brilliant, magnificent spotlight pouring down upon me.
The intense terror and sense of defeat I had felt in the lecture hall just a couple of days ago had long since vanished from my mind completely.
My steps were light as I walked toward the lecture building.
The person walking right beside me.
Do-hee-sunbae was matching my pace with a smile on her face.
Her neat white blouse was buttoned all the way up to her neck, concealing the red bite marks I had left on her yesterday.
Outwardly, she was the very definition of the perfect female college student—intelligent, beautiful, and without a single flaw.
"Yeon-woo-ya, was your bag heavy? You're not feeling well, so I'll carry it for you, just walk comfortably."
Sunbae said to me in a gentle voice.
But I know what lies behind that mask. The truth that she is just a bitch panting for pleasure under me, Jung Yeon-woo's personal whore.
"Just carry it properly. If you drop it and break my laptop... you know what happens, right?"
I snapped at her in an arrogant voice.
I could hear murmurs from all around. The gazes of my peers, seniors, and juniors were stinging as they glanced at me and whispered.
Until yesterday, their gazes had been like terrible germs eating away at me. 'Look at that crazy bitch, she's walking by again.' 'It gives me the creeps.' The mocking voices that sounded like auditory hallucinations back then had felt like they were tearing my eardrums, making it hard to even breathe.
But now, it was different.
'Hey, isn't that Cha Do-hee-sunbae? Why is she carrying Jung Yeon-woo's bag instead?'
'Crazy, look at how Jung Yeon-woo talks. Is that any way to talk to Do-hee-sunbae?'
'Do-hee-sunbae is so kind. There are rumors that Yeon-woo has been weird lately, maybe she's just taking care of her because she feels sorry for her. Isn't she an angel?'
My peers' whispers drifted into my ears.
Stupid idiots. Do you think that Cha Do-hee is doing this out of pure sympathy? A whore who knows how to do nothing but cry under me?
It was incredibly delightful that I was leading their idol around on a leash.
I arrived in front of the department office on the 3rd floor of the lecture building and kicked the closed door open with a bang.
As I entered the office with a loud noise, the gazes of the department assistants and a few student workers who had been chatting in front of the copier all turned toward the door at once.
The noisy air of the office froze instantly, as if cold water had been splashed on it.
They were stunned to see the combination of my disheveled appearance, with dark circles deeply sunken under my eyes, and Cha Do-hee following behind me, carefully carrying my bag.
As if to mock their bewilderment, I walked with a relaxed gait, sat down on the plush sofa in the middle of the office, and crossed my legs as if claiming the seat of honor.
"Ah, I'm tired. Sunbae, put the bag on the table there. Be careful not to get any dust on it."
Ignoring the glares from the assistant and my peers, Do-hee-sunbae smiled with an incredibly benevolent and gentle expression as she placed the bag silently on the table in front of me.
"Sure, Yeon-woo-ya. You had a bad fever yesterday, you must be very tired from coming out despite that, right? Lean here and rest a little."
"Forget it. I'm thirsty. Go to the pantry and make me some coffee. Make it sweet."
At my shameless demand, the department assistant stood up, unable to hold back any longer.
"Student Yeon-woo! What are you doing to student Do-hee right now? If you're not feeling well, you should be resting at home! Does it make sense to make your senior carry your bag and run coffee errands? And student Do-hee, why are you spoiling your junior so badly!"
The assistant's sharp criticism rang out through the office.
If it were any other time, I would have turned pale and bowed my head in apology, but I scoffed, trying to mock the assistant.
But before I could even open my mouth, Do-hee-sunbae bowed her head toward the assistant with a polite attitude and interrupted.
"I'm sorry, Assistant-nim. Yeon-woo has been under so much stress preparing for her major assignments lately that she's become very weak both physically and mentally. She's a junior I cherish, so I'm doing this voluntarily because I want to take care of her, so please don't scold her too much. Making a cup of coffee is nothing, really."
The assistant was left speechless by Do-hee-sunbae's altruistic response.
The peers in the office looked at her with eyes full of respect, as expected of Do-hee-sunbae, and poured out looks of disgust toward me, the mental patient who was bossing around such an angelic senior.
A moment later, Do-hee-sunbae approached the table in front of me, holding a paper cup.
As the coffee was placed on the table with a clatter, I picked up the paper cup, took a sip, and deliberately frowned.
"Damn it, I told you to make it sweet, why is it so bland? Can't you even get this one thing right?"
I slammed the paper cup down on the table with a loud noise, throwing a tantrum. A few drops of hot coffee splashed and reddened the back of her hand, but she didn't even let out a scream.
"I'm sorry, Yeon-woo-ya. I thought your stomach might feel worse if you had too much sugar, so I intentionally put less syrup in. I'll go make you another one right away, so don't be angry, okay?"
She soothed me and headed back to the pantry with the paper cup.
Watching her benevolent back, the peers in the office looked at me as if I were a terrible monster, made excuses, and slipped out of the room. It was my perfect victory.
It was just as I was leaning back deep into the sofa, closing my eyes while basking in a sense of superiority.
The office door swung open, and a familiar voice struck my ears.
"Jung Yeon-woo... what the hell are you doing here?"
It was Ji-min.
My closest peer, who had drawn a line with cold eyes, treating me like a germ ever since the group project presentation failure a couple of days ago.
As the vice-class representative, she stood frozen in the middle of the office, holding a stack of documents to submit to the assistant.
Her eyes were filled with bewilderment as she looked back and forth between Do-hee-sunbae, who was quietly making coffee in the pantry, and me, sitting on the sofa with my legs crossed.
For a moment, I stiffened as the expression Ji-min had shown me yesterday flashed through my mind, but I reminded myself that I had Cha Do-hee as a shield behind me and tried to act nonchalant.
"What am I doing? Can't you tell by looking? I'm thirsty, so I asked Sunbae to make me some coffee."
I retorted in an arrogant voice.
Ji-min furrowed her brows as if she were dumbfounded by my confident attitude. Her expression was a complex mix of deep annoyance, absurdity, and an incomprehensible worry for me.
"Are you actually insane? You screwed up the group presentation the other day, skipped afternoon classes yesterday, and now you show up at the department office and act like a boss to Do-hee-sunbae? Do you have any idea how crazy the group chat was talking about you last night?"
Group chat?
My heart sank at the words that came out of Ji-min's mouth.
When I turned on my phone this morning, the group chat was silent as the dead, and there wasn't a single text mentioning me. Yet Ji-min was saying the kids were going crazy talking about me last night.
"What nonsense. The group chat was quiet."
I retorted, trying to hide my trembling voice.
"Huh... you're really out of your mind. Quiet? What do you mean quiet! The kids were talking all night long about how you were suddenly talking to yourself and acting creepy, and that you've really gone weird! Why are you like this lately? I tried to contact you separately, but you wouldn't even answer, driving me crazy. Scroll up the group chat right now!"
They talked about me in the group chat? There was no such trace on my phone?
My vision spun. My heart started thumping.
It felt as if the whole world had been cursing and mocking me, but I was the only one left in this empty world without realizing it. No, perhaps Ji-min was lying to scare me.
I lost my composure, pulled my smartphone out of my pocket, and opened the peer group chat. No matter how much I scrolled up, the conversation history from last night that Ji-min spoke of did not exist.
"Don't lie! There was nothing like that on my phone! You're the one who's been openly ostracizing me just because I made one mistake on the group project, it's disgusting and makes me want to puke!"
I lost my reason, jumped up from the sofa, and screamed. My voice cracked, mixed with a sense of injustice.
Ji-min stared intently at my phone screen, then pulled out her own in a panic.
"What? Look here! It's all here, the kids talking about you last night! Why is yesterday's chat history completely wiped from your phone? What on earth is wrong with you!"
Ji-min held out her phone screen to me, looking as if she were the one being wronged.
On her screen, the countless messages from my peers last night, which I hadn't seen, were clearly there.
Why was there a record on Ji-min's phone, but my phone was empty, without even a notification?
Has my brain really gone wrong? Did I get so stressed that I wiped the conversation history unconsciously like a sleepwalker?
Panic rushed in like a giant tidal wave, tightening its grip on my throat. The fear that the whole world was deceiving me and painting me as a crazy bitch threatened to paralyze my reason.
"You, you... you manipulated this, didn't you? You used two phones to fake this!"
I took a step back, making unreasonable accusations with a trembling voice.
Ji-min let out a deep sigh, as if she were dumbfounded by my absurd reaction.
"Jung Yeon-woo, don't you really need to go to a hospital? Why would I be crazy enough to manipulate something like this? I'm only saying this because I'm worried about you. Everyone else is scared and avoiding you."
The word 'hospital' that came out of Ji-min's mouth pierced my heart like a dagger.
Ji-min is trying to give up on me. No, she hasn't completely abandoned me yet, but she is trying to push me away, treating me as a hopeless mental patient.
I was scared. I couldn't control my trembling fingertips. I was terrified to the point of madness, feeling like I would be left all alone in this world just like this.
That was when it happened.
"Ji-min-hubae, aren't you being too harsh on Yeon-woo right now?"
Do-hee-sunbae, who had come out of the pantry with a new cup of steaming coffee, approached between us.
Instead of blocking my front, she stood by my side and placed the coffee on the table.
"Ah, Do-hee-sunbae. No... Yeon-woo skipped all her classes yesterday and suddenly showed up today, acting so rudely to you, aren't you even angry? She's really weird right now. She's insisting that I manipulated her phone just because the records are deleted from hers."
Ji-min snapped at Sunbae, as if questioning the situation in frustration.
"Group chat records? Oh, I deleted those."
At the one, incredibly calm, bombshell statement from Sunbae's lips, not only Ji-min but even I stopped breathing.
"What...? You deleted them?" Ji-min asked back with a shocked face.
Do-hee-sunbae glanced at me and said.
"Yeon-woo was so full of self-reproach and fatigue from the assignment the other day that I let her sleep at my place. But the group chat notifications kept going off. When I checked, it was full of people bashing her and saying hurtful things... I was afraid that if Yeon-woo woke up and saw that, she would be too shocked and break down, so I deleted the chat room contents from last night on Yeon-woo's phone. I forgot to tell Yeon-woo later. Yeon-woo-ya, I'm really sorry I touched your phone without asking."
Sunbae's natural-sounding explanation rang out through the office.
Ah. I wasn't crazy. I hadn't been hallucinating.
It was true that the peers were bashing me in the group chat, but Sunbae had deleted the dirty traces by daring to touch my phone because she wanted to protect me, because she was so afraid that I would get hurt.
Outwardly, she was making such noble and altruistic excuses, but in reality, it was a maid's presumptuous loyalty to crawl on her own to avoid displeasing me.
"Ah... you deleted it because you were worried about Yeon-woo? Ha...."
In front of Sunbae's explanation, Ji-min couldn't get angry anymore and was left speechless.
"Sunbae, aren't you truly an angel? Even if you're worried about Yeon-woo... Yeon-woo is treating you like a complete maid and acting rudely, yet you even touched someone else's phone to take care of her. You're truly amazing, Sunbae."
Ji-min was now perfectly distinguishing between good and evil. The unconditionally self-sacrificing angel Cha Do-hee, and the hopeless mental patient Jung Yeon-woo who was eating away at that angel.
"It's nothing amazing. Yeon-woo has been very sick lately, so I'm taking care of her voluntarily. Ji-min-hubae, knowing that Yeon-woo is sensitive, I think it's a bit much for a friend to be talking about mental hospitals in a place where everyone can hear."
Do-hee-sunbae gently pushed Ji-min away. In the face of Sunbae's perfect response, Ji-min had no choice but to let out a deep sigh.
"Ha... okay. Since Do-hee-sunbae is covering for you like that, I have nothing more to say. Jung Yeon-woo, you really should treat your senior well. Don't regret it later."
Ji-min snapped at me, as if she were frustrated. A lingering trace of regret and worry, not having completely given up on me yet, remained in her eyes.
"I won't send you any personal messages for a while. Let's talk again when you've cooled your head and can speak properly. I'll send today's meeting minutes by email."
Ji-min turned around and left the office.