.

Sometimes, his different side made me wonder about something else about him. Would there be another persona, hardly seen from the outside, hid behind his cute innocent face?

As I remained silent, Jooin, who looked beside me hesitantly, opened his mouth again. He spoke with a smile.

“Mama.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t feel good about Yi Ruda…”

With my eyes wide open, I stayed quiet for a while. Touching his skinny fingers with big knuckles, Jooin dropped his gaze and kept on his words.

“Since he is mama’s new friend in the new class and you like him so much, I wanted to remain silent but I couldn’t help. Some men in black are chasing him and… what I’ve heard from Chun Young, Ruda seems to be raised in a family with great fighting skills. Well, not sure if he’s from a mafia family or so.”

After that remark, Jooin lifted his eyes to look at me. He still had those outlandishly sharp glares in his gold eyes. His words continued tranquilly.

“I just wanted to say that you could be in danger.”

“…”

Ban Yeo Ryung and Woo Jooin differed from this aspect too. I nodded without saying anything.

After Eun Jiho and Jooin left the house, I sat down on the computer chair for quite a while. Staring at the monitor, I frowned my eyes then. The club banner looked simple. Except for the title, ‘Anti-Fan Club of Ban Yeo Ryung,’ there were neither texts nor photos. Forty-five people, who gathered and created this club to hurt and offend Ban Yeo Ryung maliciously, were in front of me. I rested my chin on my hand while sitting still.

The sound of the rain went on. I sat down for a moment like that, then slowly got up to open the window. The cloudy cityscape over the rain dripping screen window seemed as if it got sunk down in the wet. After looking at the scenery, I came back to my chair again. With my chin resting on my hand, I looked outside the window then fell into thought.

The calendar that I wrote unevenly, ‘the day when the web novel began,’ as soon as I entered middle school in 2004, didn’t exist anymore. Instead, there was a big, the year 2007 calendar on the wall. Three years… yes, three years already passed since then. It would be one of my biggest lies if I never got jealous of Ban Yeo Ryung for the last three years. I envied her quite a lot.

I was jealous of her and wanted to stay away from her; however, we became friends again at the end. She was such a nice and good also a funny girl. No… I wasn’t trying to repeat those meaningless words in a row.

Wouldn’t we still become friends regardless of her sweet personality? When a person likes or becomes friends with someone, it was no use to ramble on all kinds of reasons for that; however, that wasn’t what I wanted to say.

Ban Yeo Ryung couldn’t live without me. I could perceive that from her attitude, words, tone, and eyes toward me. I was her last bastion. Even after three years, it didn’t change at all. Ban Yeo Ryung will collapse without me. I knew this very well.

I carefully raised my hand to grab around my forehead. Still, the heavy rain rang my ears.

I felt miserable for Ban Yeo Ryung to consider myself as her last bastion. She was the target of my jealousy, but at the same time, the one whom I felt miserable for. And in the meantime, she and I became friends. I had no idea how this happened… how it became possible.

From that day three years ago, we had been in a hilarious relationship. I felt jealous of and miserable for my friend, Ban Yeo Ryung. How could this be possible?

Jealousy was useless. Although a fish envied a two-legged human being, it could never walk with two legs one day; therefore, feeling jealous about someone, impossible to even catch up, was useless. It was indeed better not to envy anything.

Many people, however, grudged Ban Yeo Ryung, who had everything that they didn’t have and craved for. So did I, sometimes… The reason why I promised myself to never fall in love with anyone was that I was afraid of losing control of myself. If I fell into one of the four boys but noticed that his eyes got fixed to Ban Yeo Ryung forever… I would die out of heart burning jealousy.

I was afraid if I, the last bastion of Ban Yeo Ryung, would turn my back on her, and therefore, she would collapse eventually.

Although we felt ourselves like a nobody against someone, we weren’t entitled to curse, criticize, and gossip about someone better than us. Some people, however, behaved that way unapologetically as if they had the right to hurt her. Ban Yeo Ryung couldn’t trust anyone, therefore.

She couldn’t even trust herself while thinking it was, in the end, her who had some negative sides for the people to hate her. Though she tried to hide those thoughts, it was still visible and obvious, at least, to me, as I knew her for many years.

I felt dizzy. The sound of the rain kept hitting my ears. Heaving a quiet sigh, I turned on the desk lamp. The room got a little brighter. ‘Let’s just study for the upcoming mock exam. I’ve been going through such thoughts and incidents like these before. It’s just that I saw some anti-fan club of Ban Yeo Ryung and the owner seemed like a close friend to her. Those were what complicated me for now…’

Moving around my pencil on the desk, I came across that Woo Jooin and Eun Jiho were hanging around in his house regardless of the upcoming exam within a week. It was quite unfair.

On rainy days, my body felt particularly stiff. Maybe I dozed off while solving a math problem. The inked page seemed to stain my cheek. ‘Uh-oh…’ I sat straight then rubbed my cheek.

A heavy silence prevailed the space. Except for where the desk lamp was, the whole space was dark. My parents seemed to be not home yet. Stretching myself with a yawn, my phone bell rang. I frowned my brows.

There were two missed calls. One was from Ban Yeo Ryung, and the other that just got disconnected was from… Yoo Chun Young. Soon as I grasped that, my phone began to ring again. Being surprised, I nearly dropped the phone. I opened my flip phone in a flurry. There was no word on the other side of the phone until I brought it close to my ear.

‘Did he call the wrong number?’ As soon as I opened my mouth, a voice came over from the other side.

“Hey.”

What’s up?

I remained silent for a while. As he also stayed at a loss of words for a moment, he would’ve been abashed that we tried to speak at the same time. Holding my phone in anxiety, I later recognized how funny I was that I leaned on the back of my chair comfortably.

A calm and flat voice, as usual, broke the ice.

Were you sleeping?

“Yeah.”

Wanna go back to sleep?

“No, I’m about to study.”

‘Why did you call me?’ I tried to ask like that but paused my mouth. Instead, I had my knees inside my arms and sat like that for quite a while.

It was a phone call after 2 weeks and his voice was so good to hear; therefore, I just wanted to chitchat rather than asking why he called me. As we usually did, for now, that was what I longed for on the phone. Many people knew him in school and gave attention to him, so it had been quite a while for me to see his face.

While my eyes were on the ceiling, something unexpected came over from the other side of the phone.

I couldn’t remember… your face.

“…?”

‘What?’ I was struck dumb by his sudden remark. We saw each other’s faces almost every day for over the last three years; therefore, how could you forget my face from not seeing me for only two weeks?

‘Is he asking me to smash him or volunteering to apologize first?’ While I seriously considered what he meant through his words, Yoo Chun Young continued.

I’m in front of your apartment.

I held my breath for a second.