.  The noise around the classroom suddenly shushed. The girl’s voice was that much peculiar compared to the loud noises that everyone was making at the time. Besides, there embodied a frightening rage within her.

  Watching a fight is the next interesting thing to watch after a fire…… as if it were true, those who perceived the prelude of a conflict paid attention to that direction. I returned, as well.

  She was a girl I saw before, whom I bumped into in the hallway of the retreat building. She had short brown hair and a pair of brown eyes, which strangely resembled how I looked and the atmosphere I exude. Her pure brown eyes on her pale face directed towards me. Surprisingly, a feeling of anger was waving in her eyes.

  ‘What the heck? Why is she calling me to stop here of all places?’ With that thought in mind, I tried to tell her to go outside and talk. She then continued in a voice that sounded like a burst of fury.

  “You know.”


  “What?”


  “I tried to stay still, but I can’t while I was looking at you eating like that. Such a great eater!”


  ‘I’m about to get rid of my stress by eating my meals. Mind your own business, bitch!’ I was so fed up that I almost erupted those words out of my mind. I seldom swear at strangers even in my head, but when I heard what she just said, that meant, ‘Why are you so chill when you did something wrong?’ I just couldn’t keep it in, and my emotions got the better of me.

  I, who looked up at her with a fuming gaze, however, became speechless. She looked even more tearful and upset than me. I heard kids talking noisily around us, saying, ‘Hey, is she crying? What’s going on?’ Meanwhile, the girl opened her mouth with a reddened face.

  “Hey…… how can you eat so well when you did something like that to Yeo Ryung?”


  “Hold on.”


  That was when Shin Suh Hyun tried to stop her. The girl, Choi Yuri, suddenly lifted her eyes before shouting in a voice intermixed with tears.

  “Hey, how can you act like that behind Yeo Ryung but pretend to be her friend until now? You’re the most two-faced person I’ve ever seen.”


  “What did you just say?”


  “Hey, hold on.”


  Kim Hye Hill and Yoon Jung In tried to put in a word for me; however, Choi Yuri didn’t stop pouring her minds out. The noise from the kids grew bigger. The attention I was receiving was mostly from people who were assessing the situation; if not, they were frigid.

  My body seemed to get stone-cold from head to toe. Ridiculously, it was Ban Yeo Ryung’s voice that crossed my mind at the moment. Whenever she went through something like this, she always spat out these words like a prayer in a tearful voice.

  ‘One day, everyone will get me right.’


  ‘No, Ban Yeo Ryung,’ I muttered to myself unconsciously. Shrugging her shoulders, Choi Yuri shouted with her eyes full of tears.

  “Whenever Yeo Ryung got along with new friends, you always told them something bad about her as much as you can! Why did you do that? Because you want to monopolize her? So that you can keep a close distance with the Four Heavenly Kings?”


  As if the pendulum stopped, the whole space was enveloped by utter silence. No one said anything. Choi Yuri and the girls beside her just scowled at me frigidly, and I was at a loss of words in perplexity. So were the other kids.

  After a moment, a familiar voice from behind broke the ice.

  “Hey! What do you know about her to say something like that?!”


  It was none other than Lee Mina. ‘Oh, god. She might have been listening,’ as soon as I thought that, there poured out voices of agreement. They were from my classmates in Class 1-8. Among them, Kim Hye Hill and Yoon Jung In threw in helping words with a dumbfounded look on their faces.

  “Hey, what’s wrong with you in the cafeteria?”


  “Wow, I never saw someone as ridiculous as her.”


  Lowering his head, Shin Suh Hyun spoke to me in a calm face.

  “Donnie, let’s just go. Don’t mind them.”


  With that said, he stretched out his arm hesitantly before wrapping it around my shoulders. A warm air touched my dampened shoulders inside the wet air, and soon, someone blocked my sight while consoling me again.

  That person then urged me to return to our classroom ASAP in a weak voice. I also heard someone saying, ‘Fighting here with her will just look like a stupid dogfight in front of the entire school,’ but at the same time, there was another remark surging into my ears.

  ‘Holy shit, that’s so cruel. Do girls usually act like that? It’s freaking me out. Why are they so obsessive?’


  I was on people’s lips. Some, who gossiped about me, were strangers, and some were acquaintances. My head throbbed. Surrounded by my friends in our class, I walked with short and quick paces toward our classroom.

  I was so out of my mind that I forgot to have my umbrella with me; however, someone put it into my hand, and another person shared their umbrella to me, shading my already shaking body against the elements. We moved our steps toward the classroom in a clump like that.

  Still, someone’s arm wrapped around my shoulders. As I raised my head while wondering, ‘Who would it be this time?’ there stood Yi Ruda.

  Her bright blond hair still shone radiantly under the cloudy sky. Sho was also the one who sheltered me within the confines of her own umbrella. She then looked at me. When our eyes met, she carefully spoke while furrowing her gold lashes.

  “.…… Don’t mind.”


  “.……”


  “Later, they’ll know that you did nothing wrong. The truth shall prevail, so……”


  Pausing her words, she looked at me with her big round eyes. ‘Donnie……’ When she called my name with a trembling voice, a few kids who were walking ahead of us turned back to check on us. They soon turned pale while staring at me.

  A few girls came toward me with nothing but sheer sympathy on their beautiful faces.

  “Donnie, don’t cry.”


  “Donnie……”


  They stretched out their hands to pat my shoulder and back. Meanwhile, I felt a streak of a tear running down my cheek. I felt an acute pain around my eyes as if they were burning. I raised my hands and covered my face to prevent myself from shedding another tear; however, I couldn’t stop the downpour coming out of my eyes. ‘Oh, why…… gosh, I really hate crying in front of other people. It seems like I’m in big trouble……’


  Ban Yeo Ryung went through something like this almost every month or, at least, every year. When she suffered from such things, I always tried to console her with retarded-sounding comments. Now that I got to thinking about it myself, I realized how much of a pathetic jerk of a friend I truly was.

  I felt stuffy as if my throat was burning. Being at a loss of words, I could finally feel my lips drying. Others assumed that the reason why I couldn’t stop crying was because of Choi Yuri; thus, they said something brutal and abusive towards her. I was, however, thinking of Ban Yeo Ryung.

  When we returned to our classroom, the kids said something nice to me while surrounding me for a while.

  ‘Hey, don’t mind me. It’s just some bullshit from a stranger. Ban Yeo Ryung would definitely believe you.’


  Yoon Jung In even said something hilarious.

  “Was it Choi Yuri? She should be broken like glass like her name, so she could gather her senses.”


  Shin Suh Hyun then stared at him as if he had gone crazy, so I stopped crying and burst into laughter. ‘Gosh, why is he so funny?’ I thought. Although it was a stupid joke, his comical reaction was humorous enough to make me laugh. When I giggled, the kids then patted my back and shoulders in relief and returned to their seats.

  For the next class, I took out my English textbook while rubbing my aching eyes; however, I couldn’t concentrate on the teacher’s words in the entirety of his lesson. I didn’t even think about Choi Yuri at all. The only thing that morosely came into my mind was the face of Ban Yeo Ryung crying. She might have already heard about the incident in the cafeteria. However, I didn’t receive any of her texts yet.

  Those who never saw me, never talked to me, never knew who I was, never cared about how I lived, and never bothered with me was befalling their own judgment towards me. Just because they learned or roughly heard something irrelevant from a shady source, they began to measure and disparage my value and my personality along with it. I felt terrible.

  Why? What did they know about me for them to talk like that? Why didn’t they mind their own businesses? I tried to consider and understand the rumors and the people who spread them. I tried to ignore it and move on. I mean, what else could I do against them?