Chapter 5

“What on earth were you two doing all day? Every single teacher who came into our classroom today had something to say to me. I was so embarrassed I wanted to dig a hole and crawl right in!”

Headfirst into a mouse hole!

The homeroom teacher stomped her foot, pointing dramatically at the scuffed linoleum.

She was furious, but I just stared at her, completely dazed. Seeing my homeroom teacher for the first time in ten years felt surreal—she looked exactly as she had back then.

A fresh college graduate who had been thrust into a homeroom position the moment she joined our school this year, she was barely ten years older than us and still prone to missteps. I had lost count of how many times I had asked, “Teacher, aren’t you heading home?” only to watch her shoulders slump as she whimpered, “The vice principal told me I have to finish this before I leave…”

She knew less about the inner workings of the school than we did, having already spent a full year here ourselves, to the point where some of the boys outright disregarded her. Back then, though, she had still seemed like a proper adult in my eyes.

Looking at her now, she was practically a baby.

Teacher, do you go home after work, brew a bowl of fire chicken noodles, and rewatch old comedy shows, too?

At any rate, right now she was a furious adult woman seven years my senior, catching Jung Eun-sung and me by the collars as the other kids scrambled out for lunch.

“Why on earth did you two act like that today? Did you plot this together just to get me scolded?” she wailed. “The senior staff gave me such an earful!”

“Teacher, it wasn’t like that. Jung Eun-sung was—”

I didn’t want to act like that either! I’m twenty-nine years old, and I spent the entire day raising my hand to complain to a teacher! Honestly, some of the staff I whined to about punishing Jung Eun-sung today are actually younger than me! What is my life right now?

“Jung Eun-sung started it!”

“That’s not true. I was simply assisting the music teacher.”

“Both of you, quiet! If you pull another stunt like this, I’m making you stay after school and do cleaning duty together.”

“Ooh. Kang Da-hye, I am so jealous.”

“Teacher, I want to be trapped with Eun-sung, too!”

The student who piped up from the doorway immediately shrank back under the teacher’s razor-sharp glare.

“Please, give me a break. We already have so many tardy students in our class that the department head is keeping a close eye on us. If you keep this up, I’m really going to get chewed out.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Fine. Hurry up and go eat. They’re serving stir-fried octopus today.”

Warning us that there wouldn’t be any sauce left to mix with our rice if we lingered, the teacher vanished first, muttering with genuine anticipation, “I hope they put out seaweed flakes, too…”

My grand plan to live out this second chance as a picture-perfect model student was unraveling on day one.

I glared at Jung Eun-sung. Sensing my gaze, he looked down at me.

“What are you looking at?”

“…”

Ignore him. Just go eat. The octopus sauce waits for no one.

I shoved open the classroom door, noticing the room had emptied out while we were trapped.

And waiting right outside was the friend I used to eat lunch with every single day.

“Da-hye!”

Restrained by the strict <NO CLASSROOMS! ENTERING OTHER> notices posted on the door, my friend stood outside, smiling brightly as she reached her arms out to me.

“Han Ji-soo!”

I sprinted over and threw my arms around her.

“Ji-soo! Waaah!”

“Huh…? What’s wrong…?”

“Waaah… It’s really you, Ji-soo…”

It really was Ji-soo. My best friend, Han Ji-soo.

The same tears that had well-up when I saw my younger mother this morning filled my eyes all over again.

“Sniffle… sob…”

Han Ji-soo.

My dearest friend, whom I was seeing again for the first time in a decade. The most important person in my twenty-nine years of life.

We had shared a desk all three years of middle school, and we had been placed in the same class again during our first year of high school. We had been inseparable for six solid years, but after I ruined my college entrance exams, I cut her off.

To be precise, I vanished from her life entirely.

Out of pure, ugly inferiority.

While I had completely tanked my scores, Ji-soo had performed brilliantly as usual, securing a spot at Hankuk University—in the exact department I had dreamed of attending. Even after I pushed her away, Ji-soo had reached out consistently, but after a full year of total silence on my end, we drifted apart completely.

Throughout my adult life, whenever things got unbearable, I thought of Ji-soo. But I never had the courage to reach out again.

I lacked the nerve. And my life certainly wasn’t going well enough for me to face her with any pride. I had regretted that cowardice countless times.

So how could I not weep, holding her in my arms again?

“Sob…”

“What’s wrong? Did your homeroom teacher give you a hard time?”

“Han Ji-soo. I’m heading down first.”

Seo Jae-kyum, who had been chatting with Ji-soo while waiting for me to come out, glanced between me and Jung Eun-sung before waving at Ji-soo.

“Enjoy your lunch.”

“You too, Jae-kyum.”

Before turning on his heel, Jae-kyum’s gaze lingered on me for a fraction of a second, but I had eyes only for Ji-soo. Who cared about Seo Jae-kyum? Han Ji-soo was standing right in front of me.

“Da-hye, is everything really okay?”

“Yeah. I’m just hungry.”

“What? Come on, let’s go get food then.”

“Yeah.”

“Wipe your nose first.”

“Do I look awful?”

“Yep. Completely.”

“Sob.”

Leaving a giggling Ji-soo behind, I slipped into the restroom, pulled off a length of tissue, and cleaned my face. Wrapping my arm through Ji-soo’s—who didn’t utter a single word of complaint despite wasting precious lunch minutes—I walked beside my friend.

“Really?”

“Yeah. But you weren’t there.”

“Ah, I must have been at the snack bar when you stopped by.”

“Must have been.”

“Why? Did you have something to tell me?”

“Not really. I just wanted to see you.”

“What’s with you all of a sudden? You’re creeping me out…”

“Heh. I’m just going to treat you really well from now on, okay?”

Regression was a blessing.

It meant getting my best friend back. This time, I was never going to cut ties. We were going to stay friends for the rest of our lives.

God, Buddha, ancestors—whoever granted me this second chance, thank you. I promise I’ll live a good life.

As I playfully stuffed my dirty tissue into Ji-soo’s uniform pocket, Jung Eun-sung glided past us from behind. Looking at the back of his head—which somehow managed to look striking all on its own—Ji-soo leaned in and whispered:

“Is that Jung Eun-sung?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you two close?”

“No!”

What an insulting accusation.

“He’s a total lunatic!”

“Really? When I saw you two from outside earlier, it looked like you were having a pretty intimate conversation.”

“We were telling each other to drop dead.”

“For real?”

“Yeah. He and I aren’t on speaking terms. Mostly because he’s an arrogant jerk.”

“How can someone with a face like that be a jerk?”

“Right? Yet Jung Eun-sung manages the impossible.”

“Why? What did he do?”

“I’ll give you the full breakdown over food.”

Mostly because I was starving.

Thanks to our teacher’s lecture delaying us, the usual cafeteria line had completely cleared out. Swiping my student ID at the turnstile, I scanned the day’s printed menu posted by the door:

* Brown Rice

* Beef Radish Soup

* Stir-fried Octopus with Pickled Radish Wraps

* Napa Cabbage Kimchi

* Red Bean Butter Walnut Pastries

“Red bean butter pastries?!”

Are they insane?!

“That sounds incredible.”

Could life get any better than this?

Humming happily, I held out my tray. Instead of shredded seaweed, fresh chives were being served as a topping for the octopus. Since most kids bypassed the greens, there was a mountain left over, and the server heaped a massive portion onto my plate.

“Da-hye, since when do you like chives?”

“I didn’t use to… but I do now. They’re great for liver function.”

“…Liver function?”

“Yeah. After we eat, let’s walk a lap around the track. Post-meal blood sugar management is crucial.”

“Uhh…?”

“It doesn’t hit you when you’re a teenager, but trust me, you have to protect your health while you still have it.”

So you take some, too, Ji-soo. I ladled a heap of chives onto Ji-soo’s tray before turning toward the dining area.

Scanning the sprawling cafeteria for a table, my foot steps slowed.

…Why is it so quiet in here?

Despite the room being packed with students, an eerie quiet hung over the space—a thick, suffocating atmosphere filled with suppressed giggles and watchful eyes.

Puzzled, I looked around, and my eyes quickly found the epicenter.

A girl with a short bob was sitting by herself at an eight-person table right in the middle of the room, quietly eating her meal. The surrounding area was bursting with activity, but that single table remained completely deserted, as if isolated by an invisible barrier.

Everyone was pretending she didn’t exist, treating her like a ghost—yet every ounce of attention in the room was hyper-focused on her every move.

A group at an adjacent table broke into malicious giggles, raising their voices just enough for the sound to carry across the floor.

“Wow. How can someone swallow food sitting all by herself like that?”

“If it were me, I wouldn’t even come to the cafeteria. I’d just starve.”

“If it were me, I’d just drop out.”

“Well, you need skin that thick to lay down with the geography teacher.”

“Hey, it wasn’t just geography! She went around with the history teacher, too. Don’t leave him out or Do-yeon’s going to feel unfairly treated.”

As the trashy rumors echoed across the hall, targeted directly at h

er, the girl sat steadfastly in her seat, quietly continuing to chew her food.

Ah…

How could I have forgotten about this?