Hyejeong’s POV

I grasped the book firmly in my hands, and kept it hidden in my suit jacket pocket.

It would be saved for later reading, probably immediately after the 3 hours of consecutive lessons I have after this.

Turns out that I was invigilating a test today so I read it far earlier than expected

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Entry 1

Dear Diary,

What should I call you? Your previous iterations, for my previous schools, have all been named “Diary”. But perhaps I should change it now? It would certainly reflect my bullying situation here, given that it took twice as long as usual to start. I bought this book a few months ago expecting to have its pages adorned with painful reminisces by now.

But starting late didn’t translate to starting bad; on the contrary its magnitude seemed to be amplified, as if the savage, waiting to release its power, has spent its time growing instead of dissipating.

Today for art class I was probably conclusively outed as a financially poor outcast. The teacher, thinking that this being a crony prestigious institution, assumed that everyone must have purchased the crazily expensive “painting set” (200 bucks. Really?) on the list of things to buy for school. Naturally I didn’t (going hungry and doing odd jobs only gets you so far), and so when the teacher went around announcing the need for the painting set I was outed.

You think it is only this bad?

The teacher then went on some bloody -fest about how “I disrupted his plans” even though I had to justify to him numerously my financial woes. Eventually all I did was to accentuate my poverty (and thus difference-ness) in front of all the rich snobs and pissed them off as well for “missing out” on this “interesting” activity.

The teacher then decided to initiate a banner designing competition, splitting the class into half. At first I was stuck at the back, not even getting a look in at the banner, nor have a say. Soon enough though, I jostled my way in (or as far in as possible to actually see the banner) only for everyone else to, slowly, walk away and disappear off to the other group, leaving just me alone with the banner (which wasn’t even half done by the way). I gave the teacher one last desperate glance, which was returned with the most condescendingly arrogant expression possible.

It doesn’t stop there. The banner that everyone minus me eventually created depicted the class “collatively” lynching a supposed “enemy”, though anyone with two eyes (one eye works too actually) could tell through their stupidly bad drawing who the enemy was. Me.

It was physical education afterwards, where I was picked last in Frisbee and never had it passed to me, which was followed by lunch which was bloody humiliating. Taking my tray I sat where a few of my classmates were, only to be met with a chorus of jeers and exclamations of disgust before they all “evacuated”. For those who have never sat alone for lunch before, you can never understand how bloody humiliating it is. Even Bomi, who seemed to be a half-friend if nothing else before this art class exposure joined in.

That’s about as bad as first days get.

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It feels inexplicably sad reading something like this. Never mind that my suspicions were confirmed; I have never felt so sad having guessed something right before. Having someone having to go through all this hell, and go through it so often that it became so natural for her tore at my heart.

More importantly, looking back, incidents resembling this, but lower in magnitude, did start around 2 months ago in my class, which corroborated with the timing as stated in her “diary”. I felt guilty—but why? It was not like I could have done anything anyway. And her scars—marks of evil that stained her pure beauty—surely I should have noticed earlier. Surely I should have done something about it. Surely—

No, there’s no point. Seolhyun’s just a girl that you slept with, and if you get close to her as a result of this rumour might spread of your tryst with her. You need to be selfish (realistic) here.

And yet I feel this inexplicable obligation to help her.

Screw that. Let’s read on.

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Entry 2

They say it gets better after the rain, right? Well, either whoever said it is a complete liar, or that my rain will never end.

It has been a month since this whole fest started, but most of what has occurred has been regular and mundane—a pen taken here, a leg inserted to trip you over there. But nothing remarkable. Until today, of course.

It was after Latin, where on