“And so Korea was liberated from Japan,” Mrs. Song, the history teacher at school, droned on and on. She was a lecturer, often just standing at the front of the classroom and speaking to her class about whatever boring topic was on the day’s syllabus. Mostly the students just tuned her out.

Sora was particularly good at tuning Mrs. Song out. Her newfound enthusiasm for her studies had started to wane as she repaired her damaged friendship with Jongdae, and so she spent most of Mrs. Song’s lesson that day staring out the window at the sunny quad, wishing she was anywhere but there at the moment.

The queasiness came out of nowhere. She was lying draped across her desk, wrinkling the pages of her history textbook, when her whole body shuddered with nausea.

Krystal, who sat beside her in that class, gave her a quizzical look from beneath her perfectly-shaped eyebrows, but another shuddering heave had Sora throwing her hand in the air.

“Yes?” Mrs. Song sounded annoyed at having been interrupted.

“May I go to the bathroom?” Sora asked, one hand splayed over in a futile attempt to hold back another wave of nausea.

Mrs. Song sighed impatiently. “Come here, Ms. Kwon.”

The class oohed as Sora got unsteadily out of her chair and walked to the front of the classroom to stand in front of Mrs. Song.

The teacher gave her a stern and unforgiving look. “Don’t think I didn’t see you sleeping just a moment ago,” she said firmly. “This class is not a joke! If you don’t wish to take your schooling seriously, then you can-”

But she couldn’t finish her sentence before Sora threw up all over her shoes.

The class erupted at once. Several of the girls screamed and looked away, covering their faces with their books or sweaters. Some of the boys laughed loudly. Mrs. Song, for her part, turned a deep shade of green and looked like she might vomit too.

“Nurse’s office,” she said shortly. “Go. Now.”

Mortified, Sora thanked her quietly and left the classroom in a real hurry.

The nurse thought it was awfully funny that she’d thrown up on a teacher, but she let Sora lay down on one of the cots in her office and gave her some water to sip and some crackers to nibble while she called Dr. Cha. Sora couldn’t eat the cracker, but she sipped at the water and she didn’t throw up again.

“Your mother is on her way to pick you up,” the nurse said, getting out her thermometer to take Sora’s temperature. “It looks like you’ve got the flu. You may want to stay home from school for a few days. It’s awfully contagious.”

Dr. Cha was of course sympathetic when she picked her daughter up. “You poor thing,” she cooed. “I’ll make you some hot soup when we get home.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think I’d be able to eat it,” Sora admitted, one hand over her stomach and another over . The car ride was making the queasiness worse. “I don’t think I can eat much of anything.”

Dr. Cha frowned, but didn’t press the matter.

Sora went to bed and didn’t get up for the rest of the day, but the next morning she threw up three more times. The nausea came and went throughout the day, but by the end of it she was so bored she couldn’t stand staying home for another day. So on Thursday, when she woke up feeling fine, she insisted that she was okay to go back to school.

“How are you feeling?” Minseok asked sympathetically over lunch.

“I’m fine,” Sora answered confidently. “It must have just been a stomach bug or something. I feel great now.”

Krystal snickered. “You should’ve seen Mrs. Song after you left class on Tuesday,” she said. “I thought she was going to pass out. She left for about twenty minutes and when she came back she wasn’t wearing shoes or socks. I think she threw them away.”

Sora had apologized to Mrs. Song first thing when she’d come back to school that morning, but it was obvious that the teacher was going to harbor a grudge for that. Sora also noticed that Mrs. Song had bought new slippers to replace the ones she had thrown up on.

“Well, the important thing is that Sora is feeling better now,” Amber said, taking the lid off the container of curry she had brought for lunch.

And just like that Sora was racing for the nearest trash can, throwing up everything she had eaten that day and then some.

“I thought you said you were feeling better!” Krystal exclaimed, holding her nose and patting Sora on the back at the same time.

Sora wiped at , feeling suddenly quite miserable again even though she’d been just fine a few minutes before. “I was feeling better,” she insisted. “But then I just felt really nauseas again.”

Amber gave her a sympathetic look. “Go home, Sora,” she said sternly. “Don’t come to school if you’re not feeling well.” And, no matter how many times Sora explained that she had been feeling perfectly fine that morning, they insisted that she was still sick and recruited one of the teachers to help in getting her sent home.

“You do look really pale, and you haven’t eaten much of anything,” Dr. Cha said the next morning, when Sora had thrown up for an hour even though she hadn’t eaten. “You should go to the doctor. I wish I had time to take you myself, but I’m busy with appointments for the next fortnight.”

“It’s okay,” Sora assured her miserably, huddled up in her bed with a trashcan beside her in case she got sick again. “I can go by myself. I don’t want you to take time off work. I’ll make an appointment for next week if I’m not feeling better by then.”

But it didn’t look like Sora was going to be feeling better any time soon. She would be fine for a while, good enough to get up and move around. She even went to the park to play footie with her friends on Saturday, but then she would be sick again, throwing up anything she had managed to get down.

She gave in and called the doctor, making an appointment for the next Monday.