They could still talk during their break times, of course, but that was not working out. Eunsook was not one for making words when they were not coming to her naturally, so they just sat at their desks, twisting their pens between their fingers, in each other's side vision.
It didn't take the other girls, the hawks they were, a long time to notice that something was wrong between the two, so they never missed opportunities to make vapid, witless jokes and scathing remarks about it. Taeyeon and Eunsook ignored them completely, and nothing in their expressions betrayed any discomfort that could be caused by the spiteful words. It made their bullies look rather ridiculous, to be fair, but since they were the majority, no one could really appreciate it, apart from the two outcasts. Eunsook still got the worst bits, undoubtedly.
A number of people were preoccupied with their useless gloating (in their narrow minds, the whole situation was blown far out of proportion), but no one was nearly as ecstatic as Yuri was being. And she thought she had a very good reason to, their visiting English teacher having sent Eunsook's composition to that literary competition and not hers, again. Thus, she sometimes went too far in her insults, and even her friends thought she embarrassed herself, frankly.
Once, when Tae was away for the break, Yuri walked into the classroom, smirking poisonously at Eunsook, who was sitting at her desk and doodling.
“Who would've thought that Taeyeon likes after all,” she said loudly, and everyone in the room went silent.
Eunsook didn't raise her eyes from her copybook, but the pencil in her hand did falter.
“Looks like you'll have to find yourself a new ,” Yuri continued. “Right, Eunsook?”
The girl she was thus addressing put her pencil away patiently and rose to her feet. Everybody watched as she walked up to Yuri and smiled. There was no menace in her expression and she looked like her usual self, except that her eyes did not turn into slits like they usually did when she smiled genuinely.
She stopped, their noses almost touching. Slowly, she raised her hand and wrapped her fingers around the back of the girl's neck.
“Would you like to take her place, then?” she asked softly.
Yuri gulped.
“Take your hands off me,” she hissed.
Eunsook complied and left the room with a smile on her face, knowing that her job was done. It was arguably the first time a person was actually scared of Lee Eunsook.

Once she walked out into the hall, her artificial smile faded away. Her heart felt so heavy and numb inside her chest, she doubted all of the decisions she had made recently. She had wanted a peace of mind, and now she was losing her best friend, the one she loved. Just how peaceful was her mind now, when she was hurrying to hide away from other people's eyes, suffocating in the loneliness she had brought upon herself? She wanted to see Taeyeon. And she would, once the next class started. But it wouldn't be real, it wouldn't be what she wanted and longed for – the feeling of still belonging to somebody else's world.
But Tae was with Jinki, most certainly. She shared her world with him now.
Eunsook knew where she would go. Their secret place. Taeyeon would not be there, but the feeling of safety would.
The ‘secret’ place was merely a usually deserted room where old school theatre props were kept. Once they found out that the door could be opened with a hair pin, they began a tradition of sneaking there now and then, whenever one of them needed to cry on the other's shoulder or they just wanted privacy. And nobody ever caught them.
Eunsook found that the door wasn't locked this time. She already had some sort of premonition when she closed her fingers around the handle, so she opened the door slowly. She was right. Somebody was already in the room.
Taeyeon and Jinki.
Kissing.
The position they were in was not that comfortable for the boy, him sitting on the wooden box were Joseon style shoes were stored, his face turned upwards, and Taeyeon standing between his legs and cupping his blushing cheeks. She must have caught him by surprise, from the look of his skewed glasses and his hands: one was lying on the box, supporting him, and the other was kind of hanging midair, unsure were to rest. He either didn't feel secure wrapping his arms around his girlfriend yet or was too dumbfounded to do so.
Everything was okay. Nothing that Eunsook should not have expected.
She closed the door quietly and leaned her back against the wall, unwanted tears sliding down her nose and cheeks, and getting into . She couldn't tell exactly what was tearing her apart: the jealousy, the loneliness, or the fact that Tae had told somebody else about their secret shelter. And she didn't care. All was pain.
She wiped her tears with her fingers and climbed the stairs to go back to the room where people who hated her were.

All of those minutes and even hours Jinki spent waiting for Taeyeon here and there took their toll on him finally. He caught a flu and passed it on to her through their kissing. He was a strong boy, and recovered quickly, but Tae was a delicate flower, and any kind of illness sent her right to bed. Eunsook felt for her and worried, but a selfish part of her was aware of the good side effects too. Talking via messages was emotionally easier.
Tae was not attending school when the big trouble happened. It began one afternoon, when Eunsook was walking down the stairs with a bun in her teeth, finishing a game on her phone. She heard two teachers gossiping about Choi Minjung's father's company, something about one of the main investors going bankrupt. Being just a kid and knowing nothing about business, she didn't think it a big deal.
Soon she would learn how wrong she had been.
Eunsook got accepted to that school thanks to her excellent marks. Others were kids of rich parents – company executives, members of the government, and occasionally small business owners. Even if they were, too, just kids, they did take after their parents a lot, particularly when it came to greed for power and disdain for those who either lacked it or didn't crave it whatsoever. Once blood was spilled in their waters, they were unstoppable.
Minjung stopped wearing expensive jewelry to classes. Her make up became more modest, too. By the time everybody knew that her father's company was on the verge of downfall, she even stopped tinting her lips at all. She was afraid of all the people that had used to be pretending to be her friends, and were now openly shunning her. They didn't even want to share the same table with her in the canteen. She became quiet and focused on studying, hoping perhaps that the storm would pass on its own. Her father might find a new investor soon, after all.
The storm was not going to pass that easily.
That morning Eunsook felt more cheerful than she had in days, because Taeyeon had invited her to her house, and she was missing her terribly. But, as she approached the school's main entrance, she could feel with her skin that something was amiss.
A bunch of students were standing in front of the stairs, looking at something and whispering. Eunsook pushed her way through the crowd, annoyed by the jam it created, and then stopped in her tracks. She must have caught the very beginning of the ‘show’.
Minjung was sitting on the ground in front of the doors in an awkward position, as if she had fallen and was still unable to get up on her feet because of the shock. Her bag was opened, and her belongings lay scattered beside it, along with the cup of iced coffee that she must have been holding. Its contents had spilt not only on the ground, but on her textbooks as well. There was a rip and a fresh bruise on her knee.
No one was helping.
But Yoona had the audacity to say, sarcastically:
“I'm so clumsy these days. I'm sorry!”
“Don't worry, Choi,” another girl said, “you can't possibly fall lower than your daddy's stock right now.”
“Shame about your tights, though. Better learn to sew, 'cause you might not afford buying new ones soon,” a third girl taunted.
“Oh, come on. Daddy Choi has enough mistresses to do that for her,” her friend argued, and a few people laughed.
Eunsook felt hot as the blood rushed into her head.
“Why don't ya'll look at yourself though?” she cried, stepping up to the defeated girl. Minjung, who had been sitting there wordlessly, her face pale with quiet suffering, raised her head slowly. Eunsook turned to the first girl. “Didn't she take you under her wing when your daddy was accused of bribery? And what about you, Yoona? Didn't you stalk her and beg her to accept you as her friend when you were the new girl? How dare you all insult her now when all you've been doing for months was trying to up to her? Say her father gets his stuff together, and what are you gonna do then? I bet you're gonna crawl back to her on your knees, because you're nothing but pathetic, cowardly vermin.”
Yuri clapped slowly when she finished her speech.
“What do you have to do with this, though?” Yoona asked. “You're not her friend, and she would never defend you if she were in your shoes.”
“I'm doing what any decent human would do.”
“She is Minjung's dyke lover, though, did you forget?” Yuri said, triumphantly. “Rumor has it, you had a nice time at the camp, huh? ”
Eunsook tensed. It's not that she hadn't expected something like that to be brought up, but right now she had a really bad feeling about this. Her gut instinct was telling her to flee, but, like always, she was determined to stand her ground.
“You can spread your gossip about me all you want, because I don't care. But leave Minjung alone.”
“It's not gossip though,” Yuri argued. “We have facts from a person who saw you.”
“Oh really? Well, their ‘facts’ must be a lie, because we didn't do anything. You are just haters making up.”
Despite sounding confident, a part of Eunsook's mind was trembling with fear. This was going in a bad, bad direction. She saw a couple teachers in the crowd. It was outrageous how they weren't helping, she thought. They were so scared of these kids' influential parents they couldn't say a word.
“Are you sure, Eunsook? So, making out in the forest doesn't count? Seoheyon saw you.” Yuri smiled, and her countenance was that of a winner who had just drawn out their secret weapon. “It's over, ,” her look said.
Indeed, Eunsook was shocked. Seoheyon? The quiet girl with whom she sometimes did homework together? The one who had never said a mean word to her? The one who had hurt her leg in the woods and whom she had actually carried to the camp doctor on her back?!
She was there, too. Blushing in her eyeglasses and looking away now that attention was drawn to her. Eunsook didn't know what secret grudges she bosomed, and she never would.
“Seohyeon,” she whispered in disappointment.
“And she also told us how pathetic Minjung was trying to get your attention. Who would've thought – the rich, famous Minjung humiliating herself for trash like you!”
Much fewer people laughed this time, many of them being too young and totally oblivious to what was being referred to. Why would one girl chase another for attention? And why would she make out with her?
Eunsook glanced at Minjung out of the corner of her eye. She thought she saw her shaking.
“We did make out in the forest,” she admitted in an altered voice. She was no longer fighting. It was useless. “I don't know what Seohyeon wanted to get out of this and what are the reasons behind her lying, but the rest of her story is not how it was. Minjung never chased me. It was I who initiated the whole thing, and she wasn't experienced enough to know what she was doing.”
“Eunsook,” Minjung whispered behind her. “You don't have to...”
Eunsook waved at her dismissively. She knew pretty well that she had just hammered the last nail into her own coffin. Is it what Jonghyun had to go through each time he couldn't stay away from what he saw as injustice? She had been foolish to interfere. She knew.
Yuri knew all that, too, it seemed. She hadn't smiled this much for days. Her enemy had basically defeated herself.
Apparently the situation had gotten too ugly for the teachers to stay away, because they climbed the stairs with stern faces and told everyone except Eunsook and Minjung to hurry to class. Those two, being the main offenders in their eyes, were to go to Headmaster's office and accept their punishments. The bullies and the weak-hearted onlookers all trotted past them to have another normal school day.
Minjung made a move to pick her stuff up and protect it from being trampled on, but gasped – her knee was hurting. As Eunsook knelt beside her to help, she heard Yuri whisper in her ear:
“Hope you have enough money to take the bus home.”
“ my ,” Eunsook said calmly, without even sparing her a glance.
She saw Jinki. He must have just caught the final scene of today's drama, because she hadn't noticed him before. He gave Minjung a handkerchief so that she could wipe the coffee off her arm.
“Thank you,” she said, and he shook his head.
Without saying a word, he joined Eunsook and helped her collect Minjung's stuff. Then he offered his arm for her to lean on as she rose to her feet.
“I can go to the doctor with you, if you need help.”
“No, thanks. Eunsook can walk me there after we see Headmaster,” Minjung said. She gave him an apologetic look. “I don't think I know your name, sorry. ”
“Lee Jinki.”
The girl looked at him and then at Eunsook.
“Are you Eunsook's brother?”
“No,” the two said simultaneously. “Why?”
Minjung shrugged.
“Just... Never mind. Anyway, thanks for your help... I think all of us had better get going now.”
Before Jinki left, Eunsook asked him for a favor.
“Could you please... not tell her before I do?”
“I wasn't going to,” Jinki answered. “Will you be alright?”
“I don't know,” she said earnestly.
He patted her shoulder and walked away, and Eunsook couldn't help thinking that he probably wasn't the worst person her friend had kissed.

They held hands as they waited together to be summoned to headmaster's office.
“You didn't have to lie for me,” Minjung said bitterly. “They won't kick me out anyway. Not while mom is a committee member.”
“I know,” Eunsook replied, tears glistening in her eyes. “I'm a fool... ”
Minjung gave her hand a squeeze. “I should have been your friend instead.”
“No, you shouldn't. There's nothing cool about being an outcast.”
Minjung shrugged.
“I am one now, I guess. It's fine if you're not alone.”
She was the first to go inside. With an exhausted hand wave she disappeared behind the formidable door, leaving Eunsook alone with her misery and regret.
When it was her turn to have her share of scolding and preaching, she barely listened to what the old angry man was accusing her of. She had enough stuff to think about anyway.
They gave her two weeks to transfer. Minjung was sentenced to perform classroom duties for a month.
Minjung's mother was sending a driver for her, and Eunsook agreed to wait together to spare her the intimidation of meeting their classmates during the break alone. They sat on the stairs where everything had happened that morning.
“Things change quickly,” Minjung observed, and Eunsook nodded.
Indeed, on that bright sunny afternoon, it was hard to believe a catastrophe like theirs had happened. Everything was too peaceful, too ordinary. It was also hard to realize that the hardest part was yet ahead.
“Will your mom be very angry?”
“Sure. But she knows already... What about yours?”
“It's gonna kill her,” Eunsook answered mournfully. “She knows nothing.”
Minjung her hand gently.
“It's going to be a big blow for Taeyeon, too.”
Eunsook frowned. Taeyeon. Taeyeon. Her heart ached desperately at the sound of that name, and the intensity of the feeling surprised her. That was not how she had wanted her to find out.
They were never going to be together.
“Yes.”
“Are you two… dating?”
She shook her head slowly.
“No. She is my best friend.”
Minjung's car came and the girls stood up to say their goodbyes.
“I was really crazy about you at the camp, you know. And after we returned back to school, too,” Minjung confessed, her cheeks turning a faint hue of pink.
“I know,” Eunsook said and kissed her face lightly.
They held each other's hands a bit more before they parted.
The car whizzed away and Eunsook watched it a little until it took a turn. She sighed as deeply as she had never sighed before and, having fixed the strap of her bag, walked away from the place that had brought so much suffering on her.