Heaving a deep sigh, I mindlessly stirred at my tea, eyes focused on the painting next to the living room window.

Grandma mimicked my sigh and repeated it several times over. “You sound like an old car motor that no longer has any life,” she commented, following my line of sight.

“I feel like one, too,” I replied, sticking my stirring spoon in my mouth.

“Final exams usually tend to do that,” she agreed. “I almost moved to New York and became a stripper instead of taking my senior exams.”

I blinked a couple of times before turning to stare at the old lady next to me. She burst into giggles when she realized I was staring. I gave her a disgusted look.

“I’m just yanking your turkey, Hui. I passed with flying colors, one sock on, and hair fit for a family of dung beatles,” she teased, slapping my knee.

Shaking my head, I lifted my mug to my lips and sipped. For the past few days, I’d done nothing but practically sleep in books as I found it the best and most rewarding distraction I could come up with. After fighting with my mom, I used the excuse of studying for every time she tried to talk to me again. At school, I hid out in the empty bathrooms to fit in more studying.

Speaking of school . . . it was the same. Same old, same old, literally. People pointed, mocked, laughed, enjoyed my misery like so many times before and I simply got my things from my locker before disappearing. I saw Sehun, Jongin, Tao, Luhan, Baekhyun, and everyone else countless times but the chore of pretending they weren’t there didn’t even feel like a chore anymore. I pretended I was the only one in school anymore, plugged in my headphones whenever I found a chance, and settled into empty spaces to keep out of anyone’s way. My new mantra had become school’s almost over, just hang in there.

I had even come to terms with requesting a transfer to another high school. I hadn’t yet brought the subject up to my parents, in the hopes that the tension around me would cool down once school ended. My mom appeared to still want names and reasons while my dad just patiently eyeballed me. Jaeeun looked at me like I was a red-headed step-child. There was still unfinished business regarding basically everything and I was focusing on exams to escape it as long as I could.

The only person that really remained the same was my lovely, albeit crazy, grandmother. My safe haven, really. I had told her pretty much everything, since she seemed to know it all anyway.

“Are they all graduating?” she had asked. She really hadn’t asked all that much, just listened as she baked a cake and hummed in response at the right times.

I told her that pretty all of them were graduating but that wasn’t going to make anyone forget. She agreed that I should just bomb the school on exam day.

“It would really make sense, just get ’em all in one go,” she’d reasoned, wagging a cake knife around. “Their parents probably wouldn’t even miss their little demon children.” If only life were that simple, I would’ve blown up Wings High long before then.

Devastatingly, life was not that simple and all my terrorists still remained. My plan was to just bury myself in my studies and once they ended, everything would die down, melt into the ground, and leave me be peacefully. I didn’t want to explain everything to my parents; I didn’t want to give a recap of the past three years of my life and relive the haunting events I’d experienced, I just wanted to put everything behind me and move on.

That, of course, was hard to do with two plastic bags of curb store snacks sitting in the back of my locker and Huang Zi Tao breathing over my shoulder.

He approached me on Monday when I was waiting for Jongin to leave and give me a chance to take the snacks out and toss them.

“Are you coming to graduation?” he asked softly.

Both a little stunned and upset he asked such a thing, I feigned ignorance and annoyance.

“Why would I?”

Baffling even me, Tao looked pretty hurt when I asked him that and quickly shook his head and looked at his feet.

“I just thought . . .”

Closing my eyes for a moment to calm myself in the momentary darkness, I sighed and reopened them before closing my locker.

“We’re not friends, Tao, if that’s what you thought,” I told him as gently as I could manage before walking off. I hadn’t expected to feel so put out and chilly after saying those words aloud.

That day, I hung out in the girls’ bathroom after classes and deleted all their numbers and text messages from my phone just to say I had done it. When I was sure everyone had left, I went to clean my locker out. As I was throwing the snacks into the outside trash bin, it hit me that the amount of meals I had skipped in the past week was in no way healthy. For a moment there, it didn’t really bother me, but before I got to the bus stop I made a mental note to eat a hearty meal when I got home. I didn’t want an eating disorder on top of everything else—it would’ve just been something else to have my parents worry and consider sending me to some professional old guy with glasses tetering on his nose that had a mole on the tip of it.

I wanted to be healthy and happy, but those things were easier talked about than put into action. I had to make a conscious effort to go downstairs and eat; unlike how I used to always crave snacks just because I loved to eat, I had to remind myself to blink while studying even. I just seemed to zone out so completely sometimes and it scared me.

And some nights I couldn’t sleep because I was frightened for what dreamland might gift me with if I closed my eyes. On several nights, it was recaps of my past bullying events. I honestly didn’t get it—bullying was the trigger, but it wasn’t the gun that wounded me. It wasn’t what bothered me. I wasn’t not eating because I’d been called fat: I wasn’t eating because I had no appetite for the swirling clouds of worries in my stomach. I wasn’t hurt because someone leaked those photos: I was hurt because of who did it. I didn’t hate Oh Sehun . . . I hated what he had done.

With it being so near to final exams and graduation, my last week at school wasn’t as hellish as it could’ve been. Like me, everyone was mostly focused on studying. It was like that every year, so it wasn’t anything new to me when people slowly started to direct their attention on more important things than me. I savored it, really.

But nothing pleased me more than the moment I finished my exams and was told I was free to go by my teacher that resembled a prison guard in that particular moment. That was the most relieving part of my day because my parents were waiting when I got home.

“I’m really tired.” I tried to make an excuse, but they only beckoned me into a kitchen chair. It was my dad’s stern look and firm “sit down” that had me planting my in that chair.

“What’s really going on here, Eunhui?” Mom played the good version of bad cop while my dad sat with his arm crossed, being the silent good cop.

I sighed, trying to pick and choose my words wisely. “I just finished my exams and I am now free from all things Satan—at least, for a month I am,” I attempted to be a smart . Dad gave me a quick look with an eyebrow raised that told me none of that was going to be accepted. I straightened up.

“We call your grandmother to see if she had any idea what was going on,” Mom took the reigns again. I twiddled my thumbs under the table, not liking what I was hearing.

“And?”

Dad and I both watched as Mom sighed. “The old bat wouldn’t spill a single detail.”