＊myungsoo's story

 may fourth twenty ten 

The next day I had to go to school early for a small club meeting with Sunggyu. I already knew what he wanted to ask me. Why he couldn't do it at a later time was beyond me. Sliding the doors open, I saw the older male seated in front of a black laptop, typing furiously, only to stop abruptly when he noticed me. He immediately stood up from his seat about to ask me something, when I decided to just answer it before he had the chance.

"I asked. And she declined." I stated blankly. 

Sunggyu's shoulder deflated and he fell back on his seat.

"She would've been a good addition to the club. We could all learn something from her writing." He muttered to himself and turned back to his laptop. 

I stood there, the feeling of annoyance coming over me once more. What was so great about her writing? Well, okay, it was pretty amazing, but still. Why did he want her in the club so badly? It made me feel inferior or unwanted, and that just pissed me off. Staring at the back of my hyung's head, I was about to leave until I remembered my short story.

"Hyung. Have you looked over my paper?" 

The older male turned around and nodded listlessly. "Oh yeah. Here you go." He replied, rummaging through the sheets of paper on the desk, and finally handing me my paper. From the front page, I could already see red ink sprawled out over my words. Ugh. I knew that being a writer meant that I had to accept criticism and pay attention to my mistakes, but seriously, it was tough. 

I walked out of the room and made my way to class. By the time I got there, it was already  loud and bustling. I saw Jieun, Sooji and Jinri separated, talking to different groups of people. It was pretty surprising to see them apart, but I didn't pay much attention to them. Making my way over to my seat, I whacked Sungyeol with my backpack as I placed it on the ground. Before I had the chance to really talk to him, Jieun walked over to us.

"Hey! We're going to be ignoring Jiyeon. Please go with it!" She asked cheerfully. For a girl that was supposed to be the class representative, her words surprised me. Asking us to participate in the ostracization of a person? Sungyeol and I exchanged glances but none of us said anything. Jieun took our silence as a "yes" and made her way to other groups. Well, for the past few months, no one had really spoken to Jiyeon anyway. Would ignoring her be any different?

I found the answer to my question later on in class when the teacher had asked Jieun to hand out a small booklet to the class. She, of course, had skipped over Jiyeon, leaving the girl booklet-less for the rest of the day. I half-expected Jiyeon to ask for a booklet herself, but she just stayed quiet at her desk. 

---

Finally, it was time for lunch. I lazily made my way out of the class, ready to grab some food from the cafeteria. Walking over to the stairs, I saw that a girl had fallen down. On the other side of her, Jinri and Jieun were giggling to themselves. Sooji on the other hand was rubbing her shoulders dramatically.

"Ahh, unnie! My shoulder really hurts. It's like I hit something..."

"Awhh Sooji! That may be serious. We should get you checked out of something~"

With that, the trio left, shooting looks of disgust at the girl on the floor. 

I wanted to help her, but before I even made it to the bottom, Jiyeon had already stood up and had begun to leave. Looking on the ground I saw specks of red blood. 

---

Once lunch ended, it was "self-study period". But for today it was used to discuss the plans for the upcoming school festival. Sungyeol had idiotically thrown in the idea of a maid cafe that was obviously rejected by the girls. Other generic suggestions included haunted houses and food stands. But by the end, Jieun had settled on doing a theatre production.

"Since I am class rep, I will be the director. Objections?" There was none.

"Now, on to the script."

This piqued my interest. Writing a play for my class actually sounded interesting. To be able to see one of my works being acted out? I suddenly felt excited. Sungyeol's eyes darted over to me as if he read my mind.

"Should I nominate you?" He asked.

I was about to nod when Sooji's hand flew up. "I nominate Park Jiyeon!"

"Seconded!" Jinri piped.

What happened to ignoring her?

Jieun smiled and nodded. "Right. Jiyeon-sshi won the short story contest right? With her story, our play will definitely be a success!" 

"Any objections?"

Sungyeol was about to raise his hand, but I stopped him. 

I remembered my paper with all the corrections made by Sunggyu. If I wrote something for the class, there would no doubt be problems with it. And as stingy and bratty as I sounded, I didn't really want to deal with it. 

"Don't you want to do it?" He asked.

"It's fine." I sighed.

No one else in the class spoke up. 

"Is this fine with you, Jiyeo-" Jieun suddenly stopped talking when she realized that Jiyeon had stopped staring at her book and was instead gazing straight at her, an expressionless look plastered on her face. 

"I-I'll take that as a yes." The girl stammered as she wrote down Jiyeon's name beside the position of script writer. 

I guess you could say that this was the beginning of everything.