Kim Yeonwoo’s eyes widened. Im Hangyeol quietly observed his pupils trembling in apparent confusion before continuing.
“Because of that, the teacher was grabbing his neck in frustration, and the drama club members were gossiping about how he couldn’t participate in some important performance or whatever.”
“……”
“What do you think?”
“…Huh?”
“Do you really think Kim Doha is the one who pushed Lee Jaeyoon?”
“I, I don’t really know…”
“Yeonwoo, you’re closest with Kim Doha. You’re childhood friends who’ve known each other since you were little…”
“But, but!”
As Kim Yeonwoo suddenly shouted, Im Hangyeol calmly looked at him.
“Just because we’ve known each other a long time doesn’t mean I know everything about Doha…”
“Then what do you think? Do you think Kim Doha is the culprit?”
“I, I…”
Kim Yeonwoo’s eyes darted back and forth rapidly. His wandering pupils eventually settled after he closed his eyes tightly and reopened them.
“D-Doha wouldn’t, do something like…”
Trailing off mid-sentence, Kim Yeonwoo bit his lip slightly and closed his mouth before carefully continuing.
“Isn’t it, isn’t it Lee Jaeyoon’s fault…?”
“……”
“D-Doha being the culprit, I don’t know why such a rumor suddenly spread, but the teachers said it, right? That it was just an accident, so this whole thing is just Lee Jaeyoon falling on his own by mistake, and Doha is being falsely accused.”
Watching Kim Yeonwoo looking at him with a forced smile, Im Hangyeol tightened his interlaced fingers.
“If it was just an accident, I don’t think that Jung Jinhoo sunbae… that sunbae would crush Kim Doha over it.”
“What… what do you mean? Why is Jung Jinhoo sunbae’s name suddenly coming up?”
Seeing Kim Yeonwoo’s visibly flustered reaction, Im Hangyeol lowered his gaze.
“I happened to run into Kim Doha earlier, and I’ve never seen that expression on his face before.”
“……”
“He looked like someone driven to the edge of a cliff.”
“……”
Crunch, crunch.
Kim Yeonwoo kept biting his thumb. It was something he did when anxious or stressed. Since he sometimes bit until his finger bled, Im Hangyeol raised his hand quickly to stop him but then lowered it limply. His expression grew increasingly dark.
‘Why are you so anxious?’
Im Hangyeol clenched his fist tightly. Not caring that his nails were digging into his flesh, he barely managed to open his mouth.
“If we leave things as they are, that sunbae will go after Kim Doha until the end. He’ll completely crush him. Because he believes Doha is the culprit who did that to Lee Jaeyoon.”
“!!…, N-no! Doha didn’t do anything wrong, that kind of…”
With eyes that looked ready to spill tears at any moment, Kim Yeonwoo desperately grabbed Im Hangyeol’s hand and pleaded.
“Hangyeol, please help. You know too that Doha didn’t do anything wrong, right? Doha isn’t the type who would do something like that. Somehow such a strange rumor started…!!”
“There’s only one way to solve this.”
“W-what is it?”
A glimmer of hope appeared on Kim Yeonwoo’s face. Im Hangyeol quietly observed him as he looked up with a brightened expression, then spoke.
“We need to catch the real culprit.”
“…What?”
“If that sunbae is acting that way, it means Lee Jaeyoon’s incident wasn’t just an accident, right? So, shouldn’t we catch the real culprit and present them to that sunbae? Then Kim Doha can clear his name.”
“That’s…”
“It’s okay, don’t worry. You know I’m good at fighting, right? I’ll take down the culprit with one hit.”
“No, wait, hold on…”
“There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll catch whoever did that to Lee Jaeyoon with my own hands. Then everything will be solved! Right, Yeonwoo?”
Im Hangyeol smiled proudly. As Im Hangyeol pounded his chest with his fist, suggesting he should handle this, Kim Yeonwoo’s lips quivered with a confused expression before his face scrunched up and he shouted.
“That won’t solve anything!!”
“……”
“I told you there’s no culprit! What real culprit? Lee Jaeyoon fell by himself! He lost his balance while flailing after pulling someone up and fell down on his own! Why do you keep saying nonsense about there being a culprit?! There is no culprit! None!”
“…Who did he pull up?”
“Huh…?”
Kim Yeonwoo looked up with a dumbfounded expression and met Im Hangyeol’s eyes, who was looking down at him with an expressionless face. In that moment, the words he had just blurted out flashed through his mind.
“Ah!”
As Kim Yeonwoo covered his mouth in panic, Im Hangyeol clenched his fist tighter.
“How do you know so much?”
“N-no, it’s not like that. Somehow I, I just heard such rumors…”
That’s right, I think a classmate said something like that! That Lee Jaeyoon fell on his own like that, so it wasn’t Doha’s fault. Yes, that’s what they said. Hangyeol, do you believe me? This is all because of Lee Jaeyoon…
Im Hangyeol just silently stared at Kim Yeonwoo, who was rambling incoherently in front of him. Growing more anxious, Kim Yeonwoo started spewing words non-stop. About how a classmate from the next class said this, how a sunbae he knew said that. And the conclusion to all these contextless stories was invariably the same: This is all because of Lee Jaeyoon.
“Yeonwoo…”
“Y-yes, Hangyeol!”
As Kim Yeonwoo moved closer to him, Im Hangyeol grabbed both his arms. “Hangyeol?” When he met Kim Yeonwoo’s gaze directly as he called his name in a startled voice, the brown eyes trembled anxiously from side to side.
“Why were you at school on Saturday?”
“Huh…?”
The brown eyes blinked slowly as if not understanding. Im Hangyeol’s expression contorted. Kim Yeonwoo’s eyes grew wider as Im Hangyeol looked down at him with a face mixed with emotions that seemed both angry and sad.
“!!!”
As Yeonwoo’s eyes widened to their limit, Im Hangyeol bit his lip hard. A metallic taste filled his mouth. That day, after parting with Jaeyoon, he realized he had left his phone in the library while heading back to the dormitory. ‘Ah, how annoying…’ Grumbling under his breath, he had no choice but to retrace his steps when he spotted Kim Yeonwoo rushing out of the school. Just as he was about to greet him happily, he felt a strange sense of déjà vu seeing Kim Yeonwoo’s pale expression.
As he blankly watched Kim Yeonwoo’s back running in the opposite direction, he heard the sound of sirens in the distance. He quickly realized that the ambulance was headed for the school. Blending in with the other students to see what was happening, he witnessed Jaeyoon being carried out on a stretcher, covered in blood. In that moment, his mind went blank, and he felt as if all the blood had drained from his body.
How did the person who had been laughing and chatting with him just a little while ago end up in such a state? He was so shocked that his brain wasn’t working properly. All he could do was watch as the ambulance drove away. He was in such a daze that he didn’t even remember how he got back to the dormitory. Sitting blankly on his bed, blinking slowly as if his mind was elsewhere, Im Hangyeol took out his phone and let out a small sigh.
‘I didn’t bring my phone…’
After laughing dejectedly like an idiot, Im Hangyeol covered his face with both hands. His head was spinning. He felt like he was going crazy with the image of Jaeyoon being carried away bleeding constantly appearing in his mind. He wanted to know what had happened and if Jaeyoon was okay, but he had nowhere to ask. Unlike in middle school, he and Lee Jaeyoon were no longer friends.
Im Hangyeol found out about what happened to Jaeyoon on Monday morning. During homeroom, when the teacher mentioned that a student had fallen down the stairs and was seriously injured on Saturday, warning everyone not to run or play on the stairs, his expression immediately crumpled.
-Lee Jaeyoon was playing around on the stairs and got hurt? What nonsense is that?
If anything, when other kids were playing on the stairs, he was the one who would say, ‘Want to crack your skull and die? Just stay still.’ How could someone like that do this?
Worried about Jaeyoon’s condition, he called him, but only heard a message saying the phone was turned off. He felt like he was going crazy with frustration. Reluctantly, though he really didn’t want to, he went to see Lee Minho. He was momentarily speechless at the sight of Lee Minho’s face, which looked like half of it had collapsed. When he asked about Jaeyoon’s condition, he was told he was in a coma. For a moment, it felt as if his heart had dropped to the floor and returned.
-Is it true that he fell down the stairs?
-Yes…
-He fell by himself?
-…
Seeing Lee Minho’s darkening expression, an uneasy feeling crept up his spine. What is this feeling? In that moment of wondering, his eyes met Kim Yeonwoo’s, who was passing through the hallway. The moment he saw Kim Yeonwoo’s startled reaction and his eyes darting back and forth, the events of Saturday came flooding back to his mind. The image of Kim Yeonwoo rushing out of the school…
“I wanted to believe you had nothing to do with what happened to Lee Jaeyoon. But the more I thought about it, the more suspicious I became.”
“Hangyeol, what are you saying? Are you suspecting me?”
“You know as well as I do that there’s only one person who would go so far as to take the blame for Kim Doha when it’s not even his fault.”
“No, no! I don’t know anything about this. I wasn’t at school on Saturday. You must have confused me with someone else…”
“I saw you with my own eyes.”
“!!!”
His mouth, which had been rambling on loudly, fell open without making a sound.
“I was going back to the library to get my phone, and I saw you rushing out.”
“……”
“Your expression was so bad that I couldn’t even bring myself to call out to you…”
“……”
As Kim Yeonwoo backed away, Im Hangyeol tightened his grip on his arm.
“I thought, ‘No way,’ I believed it was just a coincidence…”
“I, I…”
Im Hangyeol bit his lip hard. Droplets of blood formed on his light pink lips.
“Did you do it?”
“No, no…”
“Why did you do it? Why? Why on earth?!”
“No! I didn’t do anything! Lee Jaeyoon fell by himself! I really didn’t…”
“You didn’t do anything?”
“I didn’t. I really didn’t do anything…!!”
“Why didn’t you do anything?”
“What…?”
“How could you do nothing when Lee Jaeyoon fell down the stairs trying to save you?!”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
