.

Yeo Ryung and I uttered at the same time, “Strange.”

“Then it’s a date.”

I quickly lifted my head. What did she just say?

With wide open eyes, Yeo Ryung continued, “It’s the first rainy day ever since you guys have been together, so he’s asking you for a date.”

Wondering for a moment, I replied, “Come on, why would he want to have a date in this kind of weather?”

“But in TV dramas, couples run together in the rain while sharing the same clothes to cover their heads, don’t they?”

‘Geez, that’s literally a TV drama; besides, why would you take off your clothes and cover your head with it when you have an umbrella?’ Thinking that way, I was bewildered at what Yeo Ryung blurted out afterward.

“Ah, anyway, I’m leaving ahead then.”

“Eh?”

“I want to disturb you guys but I don’t want to!”

‘What does that even mean?’ I thought. Inside Yeo Ryung’s head, there might be a battle between Yeo Ryung, who wanted to interrupt our date as usual, and her other ego, who didn’t want to see us being together.

While I was out of my mind, Ban Yeo Ryung shouted, ‘Bye!’ sonorously and dashed to the front door. She was even holding two umbrellas that she borrowed from her followers, one for her and the other for me.

That was when I shouted desperately, “Hold on! Wait, Yeo Ryung!”

“Why?” she asked while stepping backward for a moment on her way out.

I said in a serious tone, “After thinking about it, I guess this isn’t from Yeo Dan oppa.”

“Excuse me?”

“As I mentioned earlier, why would Yeo Dan oppa reach out only to me instead of you? That doesn’t make sense.” Once I dropped that remark, there was a possibility flashing through my head.

Actually, wouldn’t it be the stalker who stole Yeo Dan oppa’s phone and sent me the message? If that person deleted the text from the outgoing messages and put Yeo Dan oppa’s phone back into his backpack, oppa would never know that his stalker had sent me such a message! And that stalker would come to this empty school to see me, at last…

Yikes! I trembled at the savage sequences following my thoughts. Was the person, who locked me up in the PE storage room, indeed Yeo Dan oppa’s stalker instead of Ban Hwee Hyul’s rival? Having those thoughts in my mind for a moment, I soon raised my head at Ban Yeo Ryung’s apathetic response.

“Why doesn’t it make sense? You and oppa are in a relationship, aren’t you?”

Um, so that’s… I wondered for a second. Should I reveal the truth of our relationship now right here? No, if I attempted to do that, keeping it a secret until now would really become useless.

Besides, now I had come to think of it, this might be a chance to see the face of oppa’s stalker in person. The reason why oppa and I had become a fake couple… If I got to identify who the stalker was this time, wouldn’t oppa be able to settle things up clearly?

While I was lost in thought for quite a long time, Yeo Ryung slowly tilted her head.

“What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“Ah, nothing…” I waved my hand in the air, then I rubbed my chin and asked her, “Would you lend me an umbrella?”

Ban Yeo Ryung didn’t ask why. Handing out one of the umbrellas she had in her hand, Yeo Ryung asked, ‘Is that all?’ and headed outside the classroom again.

Hmm, so she really hated to see me together with Yeo Dan oppa. Would she be thinking that it was already enough for her to see us together on our way to school? Rambling those thoughts in my head, I looked at the door she just stepped out.

I was finally left alone in the empty classroom like that. The only thing beside me was just an umbrella. Holding it firmly, I swung it in the air. SWOOSH! It sounded quite threatening. As if I was demonstrating fencing, I did some finishing actions and put the umbrella down.

“I’ll deal with whoever comes,” I murmured then thought for a moment, ‘Is the genre of this novel slightly changed?’ Perching on the desk, I said to myself again, “Well, no one here keeps their genre though…”

I soon laughed loudly while feeling dumbfounded. Going through so many things, I seemed to have grown up a lot. It would be indeed a tense situation to confront my (fake) boyfriend’s stalker, but how could I behave so chill swinging an umbrella in the air?

Thinking that way, I poked the floor with the tip of the umbrella. Suddenly, a clear plastic nametag on the handle came into view. Pulling it close to my eyes, I soon furrowed my forehead. Without any names, there was only a phone number written on it, which looked strangely familiar.

“Does it belong to someone I know?” Murmuring that way, I took out my phone and entered the number without a second thought. Before I had even put in two digits, a name popped on the screen, which made me exclaim in a low voice, “Ah…”

Eun Jiho

Being frozen for a second, I put my phone back into my pocket and opened the umbrella. It was entirely black, which resembled Eun Jiho’s obsessively clean and neat freak personality.

Swinging the umbrella with one hand, I murmured in a low voice, “If he was about to lend me this thing, he should have not behaved that way…”

It was like kissing and stabbing at the same time. How could he talk so mean but let me use his umbrella? What the heck was he doing? I shook my head, however. ‘No, Eun Jiho didn’t lend me this thing. He just let Ban Yeo Ryung use it, and she just handed me in the end. That’s it.’

However, wouldn’t that clever Eun Jiho already thought about the possibility of the umbrella coming over to me when he let Ban Yeo Ryung use it? Wondering about it for a second, I soon shook my head again.

‘Ah, I don’t know,’ I uttered and touched my forehead. ‘I must return this to him, but what should I say to him again? Did he lend me this umbrella on purpose to come find him, or did it just happen to become this way while he didn’t expect this situation?’

If it wasn’t intentional, that would be thankful; however, if he did, that was a little despicable. He could have told me something in person or, at least, sent me a text message. That was when I muttered those things in my head.

The entire school was deadly quiet since all the kids, who had to go through Sports Day in the morning and take classes in the afternoon, stormed out of the building like a bull in a china shop as soon as all the classes were all over.

Inside the quiet space, a sound of someone climbing up the stairs from across the hallway pierced through the heavy silence. Shrinking my shoulders with fear, I grabbed the umbrella tightly and murmured, ‘I thought I’ve become quite fearless so far, but it’s still so scary.’ Amid the situation, I felt a little funny that Eun Jiho’s umbrella was my one and only weapon. I had been cursing him until just now!

Wondering how hilarious I was, I let out a giggle, but once the footstep halted in front of the door, I soon turned stiff. The door opened with a sliding noise, at last.

As soon as the person, who just stepped in through the door, came into my sight, I became bewildered for a second. The moment when he came inside, there was a clap of thunder outside of all occasions. Throwing a glance at the hallway window behind him, I quickly switched my gaze onto the person in perplexity.

“Yeo Dan oppa?”

As expected, the person who stepped inside through the open door, was, none other than, Yeo Dan oppa.

I squinted my eyes. According to the suspicious typo and the fact that I was the only one, who received his message, not Yeo Ryung, I thought that Yeo Dan oppa was definitely not the person who sent me the text. Therefore, the only person I could think of, who was able to steal his phone and send me the message, was his stalker. That was what I had in mind until now.

I stared at Yeo Dan oppa’s face coming closer to me. The rain began to pour right after Yeo Ryung and I went inside the school building, so Yeo Dan oppa, who would have still been on his way to school at that time, might have suddenly encountered a mishap.

As if he was proving my assumption, Yeo Dan oppa was wearing purple workout clothes that had three stripes on the shoulder line and sleeves. He would have changed into that outfit after getting wet in the rain, but other than that, he looked the same as usual.