Sapphire Means Eternity
"I saw everything."
"You saw?"
The moment I stepped into the room, there was Kim Seongchan. The second he laid eyes on me, he started muttering that he'd seen it all, wearing the grave expression of a man who'd just witnessed a secret he was never meant to see.
"I said I saw it!"
There was no need to get worked up about it. Not that it was something I could simply ignore, either. It was going to come out sooner or later anyway. Amelia had approached me in public, after all — and on top of that, he'd probably caught the whole fight with Kang Areum.
If there was anything I actually cared about, it was whether news of my breakup with Kang Areum had gotten around. I wasn't in any condition to deal with Kim Seongchan picking a fight over something this trivial. If I'd had that kind of energy, I'd have been better off mustering the courage to dive into the community boards — but I probably wouldn't be going near those for a while. Thousands of posts cursing my name over the news of my relationship with Amelia would be waiting for me.
"How... how the hell do you even walk around with that Rosemary?!"
The way Kim Seongchan came charging at me like he was about to grab me by the collar was painfully, wonderfully human. Not Kang Areum with that impossibly beautiful glare. Not Amelia, whose warmth was somehow too much to bear. Just a regular person. A human being.
"This... this is the kind of face I've been missing."
People need to be a little ugly to feel like people. Like this guy.
They say if someone's too pretty, they stop feeling human. Sure, they were easy on the eyes — but Kang Areum's glare was bad for my heart, and Amelia's intensity was bad for my heart. Everything was bad for my heart, honestly.
Those two gave me arrhythmia.
The second they popped into my head, my heart would skip. How did I even end up like this?
"What the fuck did you eat?!"
Even the way he recoiled with a look of pure disgust felt nostalgic. Once he'd calmed down a little, I looked at Kim Seongchan's face again. Yeah. This was a person.
"Fuck, that's creepy."
Sharp little shit.
But if he ever went through what I did, he might understand. Not that he ever would.
"Amelia doesn't feel like a person."
Of course, I was grateful for how considerate she was. It felt warm, even. But she was too pretty. Not even doll-pretty. More like something a god had sculpted by hand.
"Amelia...? Rosemary? You're calling her by her first name?!"
"Amelia is... she's too pretty. Way too pretty."
"Don't you fucking start!"
Kim Seongchan finally snapped, grabbing me and shaking me back and forth.
"Ah, this is nice."
Maybe even more comfortable than Amelia's lap pillow...
No. No, that's not right. That... that had felt good. Just good. Was that what heaven felt like? I didn't know. It had been incredible. No matter how overwhelming it had been, comparing anything to that — I'd take a lightning bolt from the heavens before I'd deny it.
That's a one-way ticket to divine punishment.
"Fuuuuck!"
Kim Seongchan exploded.
And a long while later, I'd come back to my senses, and Kim Seongchan had finally calmed down too.
"What the hell even happened..."
"I told you this morning."
"You said she confessed? That was real...?"
"That's why people say things. So you'll believe them."
"How the hell was I supposed to believe that..."
Honestly, I wouldn't have believed it either. I'd been turning it over in my head until I was sick of it, but we were polar opposites in a way that defied comparison. Even just looking at academy rankings, we were at opposite ends of the spectrum. If you factored in everything outside the academy, it was more like 0.001 percent versus 70 percent. Hell, maybe that first number needed another zero.
"What about Kang Areum? I saw her dump you, but that couldn't have been a real breakup, right?"
If that wasn't a real dump, then what the hell would a real one even look like. Was this guy always this weird with his wording? Anyway, I had no idea what he was talking about.
"That's just how it went."
"What do you mean that's how it went?! What are you gonna do about Kang Areum?!"
"I don't know..."
"You're a complete piece of shit, you know that?"
"Ugh, my head hurts."
And honestly, he wasn't wrong. I was a piece of shit.
"But what was I supposed to do... she confessed the second she saw me."
"I'm so fucking jealous... no, wait, if you hadn't accepted, none of this would be happening!"
"None of this?"
My head hurt, my conscience was screaming, and I was pretty sure I was going to get stabbed, so...
Ah. Yeah. This definitely qualifies as "this."
"So why'd you even accept..."
"Hey. Check this out."
"What, what is it? Just say it! With words!"
And so I showed him the allowance — my monthly salary. That wasn't actually why I'd gone along with it. The money had been one of the factors, sure, but the truth was I hadn't been able to refuse. I couldn't explain any of that, though, so I just told him I'd been bought.
"That's... an allowance...?"
I nodded. No further words were needed. Kim Seongchan's eyes held a dual meaning: You lucky son of a bitch and But you actually took it...?
"And I don't really know either. Areum got the wrong idea. Badly."
"What kind of misunderstanding?"
"She thinks I cheated."
"Holy shit."
Kim Seongchan realized this wasn't the situation he'd imagined at all.
"And she seems to have a possessive streak, too."
"That's a total yan—"
Yan-what? What even started with "yan"? I couldn't think of anything.
"Why'd you stop mid-sentence?"
People who cut themselves off like that always left you feeling unsettled.
"You're better off not knowing."
"Come on, what is it!"
"I warned you."
And then he bolted to his bed, pulled the blanket over himself, and pretended to sleep. If he didn't want to tell me that badly, I could just search it. What word could possibly be worth all this fuss?
Searching "yan" brought up Yandex and yandere.
"Yandex?"
Not a twitch. He kept pretending to sleep.
"Yandere?"
A flinch. Even under the blanket, he couldn't hide it. This guy was weirdly bad at hiding things.
"Yandere..."
A form of love taken to the extreme — at the mild end, stalking; at the severe end, kidnapping, rape, imprisonment, torture, murder... and...
"What the hell is this?!"
"That's your karma. I told you not to look it up."
"Telling someone not to look something up is the same as telling them to look it up!"
"Says who?"
"Uh, my dad?"
"You don't even have a dad!"
"He went to America. Probably."
"Stop with the shitty jokes!"
Right. No amount of terrible jokes was going to change how serious this was. Wait — but Kang Areum, a yandere? And before that — yanderes were that dangerous?
"Are you sure about this...?"
"I don't know. It's a character type, not a real thing."
"Oh, for— you actually had me going. Fuck."
He was uselessly good at scaring people. Comparing a real person to some character you'd only find in games, manga, or anime. Unbelievable. And Kang Areum wasn't like that. She wasn't. Probably.
"But there is a similar mental illness, apparently."
"Ha... fuck."
I wasn't usually the type to swear much, but whatever. Fuck it. I didn't understand a damn thing, so I figured I might as well just sleep.
"Future me can deal with it."
The moment I closed my eyes, I was out. No time needed.
"Ah. It's morning."
Morning came, and my eyes opened on their own.
I don't want to go to the academy.
Once I got there, the real harassment would start. I wasn't even curious what excuse they'd use this time. It'd be some bullshit that wouldn't hold up anyway. Even before, having Kang Areum as my girlfriend had meant plenty of unnecessary confrontations.
Kang Areum, ranked #3 on the Academy Times' Most Beautiful Female Students list. That meant third among every female student in the entire academy, every year included. The identity of whoever was ranked #2 was practically anonymous, which had caused some controversy, so you could basically treat her as #2.
And now #3 — effectively #2 — was my ex. #1 was my current girlfriend. Fake girlfriend. That was the situation. Who was going to leave me alone after that?
People who didn't care still wouldn't care, I figured — except that #1 was Amelia Rosemary. Even the guys who'd never given a damn were about to get dragged in. In other words.
"I'm dead."
God, I really don't want to go to the academy.
Still, I'd enjoyed last night's last supper as much as I possibly could. I'd never eaten anything that delicious in my life. Steeling myself, I finished my shower and stepped out of the dorm.
"Good morning."
"Ah — morning."
Just like yesterday, Amelia was waiting for me.
"You look rather drained. Is something the matter?"
"Does it show...?"
If Amelia was saying that the moment she saw me, my face must have looked as rotten as it felt.
"Yes. If something is troubling you, please tell me."
I hesitated over whether to tell her, but this was a matter of survival. This wasn't the usual harassment I'd dealt with. I might actually have to worry about assassination.
Why did I even accept this...
The more I thought about it, the less I understood why I'd agreed to this contract. But what was done was done.
"I keep thinking someone might try to assassinate me..."
"An assassination attempt... is that what you said?"
The way she tilted her head and repeated it was cu— no. Not the time.
"You're famous. Amelia Rosemary. But I've got nothing. Grades, connections... I just don't have any of that."
"You needn't worry about such things. I've already made the necessary preparations."
As she said this, Amelia took a box from one of her attendants. So that was the "preparation" she'd mentioned. What kind of preparation could possibly stop an assassination attempt? With something that wasn't quite anticipation, I stared at the box resting in Amelia's hands.
"Are you looking forward to it?"
"Not looking forward, exactly... more like wondering what it is."
I wasn't being entirely honest. I was a little curious. The box was wrapped so prettily.
"You're not being honest, you know."
Amelia had a strange way of seeing right through me. Was she just that good at reading people?
"Ta-da. It's a ring."
"A... ring?"
What came out of the unwrapped box was a ring. Gold, by the look of it, set with a blue gemstone.
"It's a sapphire."
A sapphire, she said. The moment I saw it, my eyes went to the ring finger of my left hand. The couple ring I'd matched with Kang Areum.
"Do you know what a sapphire means?"
Looking at Amelia's face, I could no longer tell what she was thinking. This wasn't simply her being considerate with me, either.
Just what, exactly, was she trying to do with me?