.

However, no one came forward. While I rolled my eyes nervously, other kids also turned around to look at each other and began to wonder.

“Come on, isn’t there anyone who met Yi Ruda? I thought he was hanging around with you guys.”

“Yi Ruda seldom answered the phone. I heard he was staying in the library all day.”

“Oh, yeah, we also saw him once in the library.”

Looking at a group of kids––who were enthusiastic learners––suddenly raising their hands to respond like that, I felt somewhat anxious. I also went to the library a few times while hoping to meet Yi Ruda there; however, it was all a vain attempt.

When the entire class was, once again, wrapped in a mystery, our homeroom teacher, who was tilting his head in wonder, then finished the day-end assembly.

As soon as the meeting was over, the rest of the class crowded around Yoon Jung In and my place instead of scattering away. No matter what was happening with the new student in school, Yi Ruda’s sudden transfer seemed to be a serious issue in our class anyway.

Yoon Jung In then initiated a conversation while looking a little blanked out.

“Wow, Shin Suh Hyun, this is like the intro of your favorite mystery novel.”

Shin Suh Hyun replied with a furrow.

“How can you compare this situation to a mystery book when one of our classmates vanished away without a trace? Don’t you feel responsible to do something as a class president?”

Yoon Jung In then answered back with a shrug. His voice sounded nonchalant as usual.

“Yes, I do feel quite sorry upon his sudden disappearance, but what could I do when he returned to his home country because of his family circumstances?”

Rubbing his chin, he continued, “It’s definitely unexpected that he left without telling anyone. Perhaps he went back in a hurry since he didn’t know he had to leave; however, he could have sent a text to us. If he left any message to me, I could have delivered his words to others as a class president. In this situation, however, there’s nothing we can do…”

When Yoon Jung In spoke to that extent, I, who was inside the crowd, raised my hand furtively. While every eye was bent on me, I smiled awkwardly.

“Um…”

“Why? What’s up?”

“Yi Ruda’s cell phone… is with me. I have it right now.”

When I made the response, a moment of silence came by. Everyone soon began to say a word to me at once, ‘What? Why are you bringing it up so late? Why do you have his phone?’ Amid the pouring questions, I took out the phone with an awkward grin, thinking, ‘Well, but I couldn’t tell them everything…’

“Actually, I met Yi Ruda at the party during the break…”

When I started to talk about what had happened before, I found Yoon Jung In and the Kim twin’s eyes opening roundly, which made me click my tongue. Yikes!

Yoon Jung In then quickly asked me, “What? Yi Ruda was there too? Then we could have not missed him. His appearance is also too outstanding to disregard.”

‘Haha,’ I laughed clumsily. ‘Of course, she is, but it only happens when Yi Ruda dresses up in her usual look!’ I thought about the precondition for spotting Yi Ruda at the party.

Frankly speaking, even I, the only person to know that Yi Ruda was actually a female crossdresser, had a hard time to be assured of the lady turning out to be Yi Ruda. In this regard, no matter how much Yoon Jung In and the Kim twins went around the party hall, they would have never noticed Yi Ruda there. Not to mention the Four Heavenly Kings and Ban Yeo Ryung were bad at recognizing other’s faces.

Barely recovering the calm attitude, I pulled my hair behind my ear and continued to speak.

“Um, Yi Ruda just stopped by almost at the end of the party, so I also encountered him in the hallway with many rooms. When I borrowed his phone for a second, something urgent happened to him, so…”

Hmm, that was when Yoon Jung In, whose face returned to his usual look, leaned against the back of his chair. He then stretched out his finger and pointed toward me.

“So, you had his phone since then, huh?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did he ever reach out to you?”

“Not at all.”

With that said, I shook my head. Wondering if Yi Ruda might miss an important call or keep in touch with me by using someone else’s phone, I checked her phone several times every day; however, most of the messages were from my classmates. There wasn’t any contact other than those.

Every night, when staring at Yi Ruda’s un-ringing phone that was placed at my bedside, I thought hazily that Yi Ruda also confined herself to such a narrow circle of friends.

The other kids and I grew up in this country, so we had friends from elementary school and middle school anyway. For example, Ban Yeo Ryung and I went to the same nursery school, elementary school, middle school, and were even attending the same high school. So to speak, we had been friends since our childhood, and therefore, we didn’t have time to feel being left alone. Oh, even though I didn’t have any memories about nursery school or elementary school in this world…

Of course, there were times that I felt a little lonely; however, even those times were derived utterly from myself.

However, Yi Ruda’s case might be different. ‘What would have made Yi Ruda, who seemed that someone should be next to her no matter what, leave behind all the people she knew?’ Spending a lot of time with her phone, I often had that thought in mind.

Now I came to think of it, I didn’t check the phone yesterday since I was too busy preparing for school after a long time. ‘It was just a day that I missed it, so would it be a big deal?’ Although I thought that way, I opened the flip phone unconsciously. My eyes then widened for a second.

“What?”

Yoon Jung In leaned himself to me out of the blue, asking, “What happened?”

“There’s a message from an unknown number.”

As soon as I replied, questions poured from beside me. Listening to such words, ‘What? Where? Who?’ I sent a penetrating gaze at the phone screen.

The phone number consisted some weirdly combined numbers, which didn’t belong to a payphone or even foreign calls. What was going on here?

Suddenly, the possibility of hacking flashed through my mind, so I just shook my head, wondering, ‘Come on, there won’t be many people like Jooin out there…’

Then I checked the message.

Sent by: 51338426&?

Content: Miss me?

That was all.

Someone grumbled, ‘What the heck? It’s in English.’ Another person then suggested a possible guess that made me raise my eyes.

“Isn’t this person a friend from abroad? You know, Yi Ruda lived overseas until middle school.”

“But why does it have to be now? Didn’t Yi Ruda go back abroad?”

Listening to other’s conversation, I diverted my gaze back onto the phone screen.

Miss me… it meant literally, ‘Did you miss me?’

I thought I had seen that line from a random movie on TV recently.

The line wasn’t in a very good context because it was written horrifyingly red on a mirror with lipstick. Looking at the same words right now through the phone still felt like reading a message from a villain instead of it sent from a friend; however, before having that eerie feeling, I felt like I had forgotten something important.

‘What is it?’ I thought while rubbing my chin, ‘I think I’m missing something…’ Anyway, that was the end of our unofficial class meeting about Yi Ruda.

The most significant outcome we had on the table was that Yi Ruda wasn’t able to leave any message to the class upon her sudden transfer because her phone was with me; therefore, what she did to us was inevitable. This was enough to say that she avoided any misunderstanding.

When I stepped outside through the backdoor, the Four Heavenly Kings and Ban Yeo Ryung were all waiting for me as they usually did when the school ended earlier. They were still drawing other’s attention even though they were going to this school over half a year.

Feeling some kind of déjà vu, I just squinted my eyes. Ban Yeo Ryung then came running to me and flung a question.

“Donnie, did you hear that?”

“Oh, you mean the guy with sky-blue hair this morning didn’t transfer to any of the classes?”

Ban Yeo Ryung nodded enthusiastically while clenching her fist.

“Yeah, don’t you think it’s really strange?”

‘Well…’ I looked back and forth between Eun Jiho’s platinum blond hair and the rest of the Four Heavenly King’s hair colors. Compared to that Korean kid with natural-born silver hair, nothing in this school seemed weird or enigmatic.

As soon as I thought that way, Eun Jiho’s voice flew over from behind me.

“Hey, Ham Donnie! What did you think again? You had some strange thoughts, huh? Especially, about me…?!”