chapter 11
11 – Middle School Students
After that day, Jina didn’t talk to me.
Have you done your homework?
I’m preparing well for the exam, what are you doing after school today? What did you do on the weekend, do you have plans to do something together…?
Even those short conversations we had occasionally had become disconnected. Originally, we were silent, but now it seems that an invisible wall is blocking us.
I… I’m just lying on her desk, whether or not Jina is next to me. As for Jina… She didn’t touch me.
In the past, when her class started, she would gently … Tap her side with her finger to wake her up, but now there is no such thing.
“… Jean Aya, is her body okay…?”
“Ugh…”
“It’s a shame… I was not feeling well that day… I wanted to go on a field trip with Jin…”
“I see…”
…Anyway, if you’re just going to sleep on your desk all day. You don’t have to sit next to Jina.
I pack my bag and go to the back seat.
“Hey, Jung A-yeon. Let’s change seats.”
“Uh…? Huh…?? With me…?”
“You talk a lot with Jin-ah anyway, so you change?”
“No… But wouldn’t the teacher be angry if he found out about this?”
“…Then hey, Kim Dae-hyeon. You say you have bad eyesight… Don’t you want to sit in the front seat?”
“No… I…”
“You always change seats with the kids. I’m changing seats..?”
“Uh… So…”
“I’m going to do it or not. I want you to decide quickly.”
“…Okay. I’ll change it…”
When I was bored, I always sat here or there. While changing her seat every day, Narang tries not to change her seat.
Isn’t the seat next to Jin-ah quite popular? You guys like Jina..?
“Hey… Did something happen with Jina…?”
“No”
That… Something happened, but I don’t want to say it over and over again.
Yeah, actually I wanted to sit in a different seat. To be honest, sitting next to Jina is very uncomfortable.
I am always compared to my teachers. It’s also burdensome when there are so many children.
Because Jina is cute though, because Jinah Lee is popular with everyone. I could easily swap seats with her classmates.
When I switched seats with the other kids, she turned her head to see Jin-ah, but… Behind her, Jin-ah was lying face down on her desk, probably tired.
Well… Roughly like that… I think the second year of middle school went roughly like that.
Not much has changed. I still go to school by myself, eat, sleep quietly on my desk, or scribble in my textbook.
Perhaps the homeroom teacher didn’t want me to have an accident, he pretended not to know me when he saw me.
To be honest, it was a little… Comfortable.
Chatter, it’s nice not to hear what Jinah is talking about with her friends next to her.
No more waking her up with her fingers, so it was comfortable to sleep through.
What Hermès is, what Serge Luten is… How expensive this is, and how valuable that is… I was happy not to have to know those things anymore.
I am me.
Jinah is Jinah.
We went our separate ways, and for the rest of the semester, like parallel lines, we were able to become 3rd year middle school students without getting involved.
When I went from second grade to third grade in middle school, I was able to check the class list. This time, I was in the same class as Jina.
Same class for 1st, 2nd and 3rd year.
In a way, it’s amazing. And in a way, it’s not that great either. That… It happens often.
I naturally took a seat in the back seat by the window. I opened the classroom door and Jina came in… And looked at me once.
Then… Sit in the front row.
Children naturally gather around Jin-ah, and the story begins with Jin-ah at the center.
…Obviously, I did not intervene.
2)
There was not a single quiet day in the life of the nursery school. Always, when someone had an accident, the teacher or the director would come and fix the accident.
It’s always happened, but today was an exceptionally bad day. That… From what I’ve heard at first glance, one of the students from here has gone down the wrong path.
I got caught up in it and eventually lost my life. I heard such a story. With no parents, no friends so capable and loyal enough to hold a funeral,
The corpse was taken from the ward office, and the director said that we should hold a funeral. I visited… So, just- I was diligently following the related procedures.
This time it was a person I knew… So I was shocked.
Was his name Jang Hyeon-soo…?
He was one of the older brothers who played with my ball before I even entered elementary school.
It was a little rough while playing together a few times, but there were some good parts, and I saw the director worry a few times because I hadn’t contacted him since I left the nursery school.
I never thought I’d find a cold, stabbed corpse in a back alley like this…
“…Seonah Yoo”
“…Ugh”
Today, I eat with Yoojung and pass the time by going to the pond behind the nursery school.
First of all, everyone calls it a pond, but it’s hard to call it a pond. Rainwater flowed into the ground where the ground was dug and became a small puddle, and in the summer, a foul stench emanated from it.
There were swarms of mosquitoes and garbage floating on the water, so the smell was very bad.
When I first discovered this place, the more I think about the situation I find myself in…
The more I got to know where I stood compared to the other kids, the more I began to think that this dirty pond and I resembled each other.
A disgustingly foul-smelling pond, and… Me from a nursery school with nothing. If there’s one thing this pond and I have in common… It’s that.
It is still.
How should I live in the future? After graduating from middle school, where should I go to high school…?
Without any plans for the future, I was vaguely passing each day… I felt like I too would one day deviate from a bad road like Hyeon-soo-hyung… And be found as a cold corpse on the street.
Obviously, Hyeonsu hyung wasn’t the kind of person to die there- he wasn’t a person with a bad mind enough to walk down this wrong path, but he ended up going down that path.
…From this nursery school, there is no one I can rely on in the world…
This identity.
This is from.
Birth.
Like a magnet, he attracted Hyeonsu-hyung to an evil path, and in the end he must have made an irreversible… Choice.
“…Look over there, there’s a frog..?”
“Huh..? Huh..? Is that so..?”
Yoo-jung will not know that I am thinking this way.
So, maybe that’s why… Yoojung kept sticking by my side and talking about this and that.
One of them is that there are frogs living in this pond as well.
I followed Yu-jeong’s fingertips and saw a frog crawling out of the pond and eating flies with its tongue.
It was a strange sight.
“…Yoo Seon-ah…? I’m going to fall out after that..”
“It’s okay…”
The ground near the puddle was soft and my shoes were dirty with mud, but I could see what was living in it.
Frogs were living and tadpoles were roaming about in that filthy expanse that smelled a lot and was dark in color.
“…….”
When I saw that, I felt like I had been hit on the head hard.
A lifetime.
I really thought that only strange worms would live in a puddle like this for the rest of my life, but frogs live there.
Obviously, I don’t know, but I don’t know. These tadpoles will later turn into frogs and seize the opportunity to roam around in ponds with clear water and green grass.
Even if you don’t, you will definitely get the freedom to roam around the wider world… Not just this pond.
“…But I have to live”
“…Uh…?”
Still alive.
There will always be tadpoles struggling to get out of this stinky pond, and I’m sure some of them will turn into nice green frogs and escape to the wide mountains.
If you become pessimistic and helpless in despair just because you are living this miserable life like now, you may really have to live in this pond for the rest of your life.
I don’t want to live like that. They said that heaven helps those who help themselves. Even in the darkness of despair, the light of hope breaks through the darkness.
“…Let’s go back”
No matter how hard and painful life is, we still have to live.
3)
High school admissions guide.
In the third year, something like this was placed at the back of the classroom.
First of all, what high school would be good for me to go to before I start studying blindly. I think it would be better to know a specific goal and then put it into practice.
I read all of the admissions pamphlets distributed by the school.
In high school, there are humanities, vocational, and foreign language courses, and what is a specialized high school..? Well, there were a lot of things like that.
First of all, I didn’t know anything about that part, so I brought everything.
“…So I did jungle then…”
“Have you seen the album this time…? The first stage today was very cool~”
That… It’s been less than a week since the first semester started.
I didn’t say anything even after I swept it all away. So I was able to see them slowly one by one – one high school caught my eye.
– Future Meister High School.
It’s called Meister High School, and when I read the explanation in the pamphlet, it just blended the strengths of the vocational world and the humanities world…? It seemed like such a school.
If you graduate with a certain grade, you can work at Mirae Group after graduating from high school, and maybe it’s because it’s just a short time ago, and the country supports you very much, so tuition, meals, and school uniforms are all free, and overseas training trips are free. Give.
Again… They say it’s a practice fee, so if you practice, the country again – it’s a high school that sprinkles money to students in the form of a salary.
Slowly reading the explanation in the pamphlet, I… I looked around to find out what grades one must have to apply to that school, how to take the entrance exam–and find out how to apply.
My class didn’t know I was reading this.
I… Put everything back in place except for the meister high school pamphlet.
-Thumping…
My heart is pounding.
Would Columbus feel like this when he discovered the New World…?
At this moment, this place called Future Meister High School is like a high school made for me… It seemed like a rosy life would be drawn when I entered it.
So. So it’s wrong, but I don’t want other kids to know about this school… I hid the pamphlet.