Tears sprang to my eyes.
I clenched my teeth against the pain, hard enough that I nearly bit through the inside of my cheek. Grabbing his wrist with both hands, I tried desperately to pry him off me.
First Yoo Si-eon, now Han Tae-ryeong.
They were both the same. They cornered me, demanded answers, and refused to back down until I gave them one that satisfied them—yet they never even gave me the chance to speak. It was as if they shared some old wound, some painful memory that made them act this way.
Then, all at once, someone seized Han Tae-ryeong’s hand and wrenched it away from me.
“Don’t grab a kid like that, Han Tae-ryeong.”
Lee Soo-hyeon shoved Tae-ryeong’s hand aside as though it were something dirty after pulling me completely out of his reach. Tae-ryeong rubbed his wrist absentmindedly. The skin there was red where Soo-hyeon had gripped him.
“Who are you calling a kid? You saw him trying to run away on his own two feet.”
“That’s because you keep threatening him like this.”
“Hah.”
My body swayed, and I struggled to focus. I was not crying, but the bridge of my nose stung. The pressure on my jaw had vanished in an instant, yet the ache remained, pulsing deep beneath the skin.
It was definitely going to leave a mark.
A careful hand reached out to steady me, and my blurred gaze drifted sideways.
“Are you okay? Does it hurt a lot?”
Yoo Si-eon cupped my cheeks gently and tilted my face this way and that. His hands were awkward, but his touch was careful.
“You didn’t break anything, did you? That bastard is all muscle and no brains.”
“Yoo Si-eon!”
Han Tae-ryeong’s furious shout rang down the hall.
Yoo Si-eon released me with a scowl and raised his voice just as fiercely.
“How dare you yell when you’re the one who screwed up?”
“You saw it too. He tried to run.”
“Damn it, Han Tae-ryeong.”
Unable to contain his anger, Yoo Si-eon raked a hand through his hair.
“How long are you going to keep acting like this?!”
“I’m sorry.”
All three of them turned to me at once.
[No, Seong Yu-un! Why are you apologizing?!]
Min Yu-un’s indignant cry rang inside my head, but the unspoken questions hanging in the air felt even louder.
I lifted a hand and touched my sore jaw. It hurt, but compared to all the pain I had endured before, this was nothing.
More than anything, I did not want to stand in the hallway listening to three main characters bark at each other any longer. Ideally, they would go fight somewhere else. Which meant I had to end this situation as quickly as possible.
“I’m the one who promised to have lunch with you and then ran away, so it’s my fault.”
A cold silence fell.
A strange sense of urgency crept over me.
“Come to think of it, Tae-ryeong grabbing me was basically self-defense, right? Since he was trying to catch me?”
My voice wavered.
Even as I said it, I had no idea what I was talking about. The hallway stayed deathly still. All three of them continued staring at me, the air thick with hostility.
I had barely managed to stop the fight.
No, rather than stopping it, I had cut it off. But at least the momentum had shifted. Still, I was afraid the embers of the argument I had just smothered might flare back up at any moment.
“I… I was going to the snack shop. Today’s lunch didn’t look very good.”
Lee Soo-hyeon’s expression darkened even further.
Now what? Did I say something wrong again?
I was too dizzy to keep talking, so I simply stood there in a daze.
*****
I walked slowly, careful not to drop the mountain of bread and snacks piled in my arms.
I had been forced to carry everything Yoo Si-eon and Lee Soo-hyeon had bought at the snack shop. When I asked why they were buying so much, they had shamelessly answered that I was going to eat all of it. Even when I insisted I could not possibly manage that, neither of them seemed to care.
Meanwhile, Han Tae-ryeong had simply stood beside us, watching in silence.
At some point, he had ended up buying four bottles of banana milk.
[Since when did my body become a bread shuttle? Seong Yu-un, just throw it all away!]
Bread shuttle. That’s a good one.
Taking a cue from Min Yu-un’s grumbling, I shifted the pile of bread in my arms. Instead of overthinking it, I decided to treat myself as their personal bread shuttle. The food had been loaded onto me anyway, so at this point, I was no different from a pack mule.
But that mindset did not last long.
The moment we reached our destination, Yoo Si-eon and Lee Soo-hyeon immediately took the bread from me.
If they were going to take it back, why had they made me carry it in the first place?
Now I was empty-handed, trailing after them.
I was better off holding the bread.
I had used the excuse of being a bread shuttle to simplify this complicated, undefined relationship. But because of their unnecessary consideration, I was left feeling awkward again.
The door creaked open.
The sound of old metal scraping against metal filled the air. Only then did I snap out of my thoughts and lift my head.
“Yu-un, come inside.”
Lee Soo-hyeon had sent Han Tae-ryeong and Yoo Si-eon ahead. Now he held the door open with his body to keep it from falling shut, then jerked his chin toward the other side.
As I crossed the threshold, a warm breeze brushed against my cheeks.
I walked forward slowly, taking in the view.
An endless blue sky stretched overhead. Down on the field, students smiled and shouted as they played sports. The flowerbeds were crowded with bright blooms, and several buildings rose in the distance.
The entire scene could be taken in at a glance.
This was the rooftop.
It seemed to be rarely visited, with no real trace of students coming and going, yet somehow it was meticulously maintained. Unlike the rooftops in Japanese shoujo manga, there were no tall metal fences enclosing the area. Only a waist-high ledge marked the boundary.
Han Tae-ryeong and Yoo Si-eon had already dropped down in the center.
As I looked around, Lee Soo-hyeon watched me with a faint smile before guiding me forward.
Herded along by him, I ended up seated between Lee Soo-hyeon and Yoo Si-eon, forming a small circle with the others. Their intention to keep me away from Han Tae-ryeong was obvious, but Tae-ryeong did not seem to care. He simply unwrapped a piece of bread.
“What kind of bread do you want?”
Lee Soo-hyeon asked me.
“Anything.”
At my answer, Lee Soo-hyeon began carefully sorting through the pile, but Yoo Si-eon was faster. He pressed a strawberry cream bun into my hands.
“Eat this. It’s good.”
Since I genuinely did not mind, I nodded and accepted it. The wrapper was already open, so all I had to do was take a bite.
I chewed quietly for a moment before finally asking the question that had been bothering me.
“But isn’t the rooftop off-limits?”
“Si-eon is pretty popular with the teachers.”
Lee Soo-hyeon answered as if it were nothing.
Judging from how relaxed they were, they must have come here often. Maybe it was because of the rare, gentle atmosphere surrounding them, but before I knew it, I had started to relax too.
Yoo Si-eon stared at my face for a moment, then began rummaging through his pocket.
“Does anyone have a tissue?”
“A tissue?”
Lee Soo-hyeon glanced at my face in confusion, then let out a small, “Ah.”
Did I get something on my face?
There was no mirror, so I could not check. I did not feel anything strange either. I raised my sleeve to wipe my mouth, but Lee Soo-hyeon quickly stopped me.
“Yu-un, you’ll ruin your clothes.”
What was this?
A vague suspicion began to rise in me.
Are they messing with me?
Maybe there was nothing on my face, and they just wanted to watch me get flustered. Or maybe, for no reason at all, they had decided to make me their entertainment.
After a whole day of unexpected disasters, I felt half out of my mind.
My thoughts kept spiraling.
“I have a handkerchief.”
[A handkerchief?]
It was not any of the three of them, but Min Yu-un’s grumbling voice that snapped me out of it.
Han Tae-ryeong pulled a pale blue handkerchief from his pocket.
It was the same one he had used to wipe my nosebleed last week. Apparently, he carried it with him all the time.
[Damn it, why does he keep using that handkerchief on you?]
It’s not like he’s happy about it.
I muttered inwardly as I studied Han Tae-ryeong’s expression.
Last time too, he had pulled out that handkerchief to wipe away my blood, only to glare at me like he wanted to kill me afterward, toss out some sarcastic remark, and storm off.
Not that it had particularly hurt my feelings.
Why does he keep using something so precious to him on me?
If it was going to annoy him so much afterward, he could simply not use it in the first place. No one would blame him for not lending me anything.
“Min Yu-un.”
My unfocused gaze settled on Han Tae-ryeong.
“Lean forward. I’ll wipe the cream off your mouth.”