Emi was flabbergasted. "You think I'm at fault here?" She held out her arms. "I can't even look at other people now? How will I cleanse my eyes? Don't you think it's pitiful how we, aesthetically sensitive people have to live like this? Just let my eyes rot? What's so bad about looking…"
Emi flapped her mouth, tipping the conversation further from its main point. "Listen, I didn't hurt anyone, okay. I was happy to fill my eyes with something pretty. Is that a crime now? And if I lose interest in studying and mess up all my exams because my eyes can't be stimulated anymore, what then? You think God planted beautiful people in visually otherwise deteriorating places in vain? They are to be appreciated!"
Sae knew Emi underplayed things. The little girl was so shameless that it made him chuckle. When he really smiled, his eyes curved into tiny crescents. It made his whole face fill with warmth.
“Why is the question what I did?” Emi went on with her bullshit. “Who even attacks others for looking at people? Is he her possession?”
When Emi got into one of her moods, she became too chaotic to deal with. Sae tried to remain calm. “That’s why I’m asking, what else you’ve done. Also, didn’t you say you don’t know who that girl was talking about?”
“I guessed.” Emi kept mumbling, “Because as a teenage girl, the only goal in my life is to get myself a boyfriend." Here, she made air quotation marks with her fingers, followed by a terrible eye roll. Sae gave her a baleful look.
"Okay, fine." Emi cleared her throat. "I only told her my opinion about her assumptions. Maybe... That may have hurt a little? I’m not sure."
How many times did it take one to make trouble for themselves out of little nothings to finally learn from it?
Sae breathed out, and studied Emi’s current state. The little girl looked like she wanted to camouflage herself for bird-watching activities.
He asked, "What year is she in?"
Emi tried to comb her fingers over her nest of hair in an irked manner. "She's in the same year as me. Don't worry I won't let her off this easy next time."
"I hope there's no next time." Sae was silent for a few minutes, deep in thought. "You should be thankful no teachers were close by. What would you do if this got out? Your mother would get called in. You really don't need that."
Emi gave a drawn-out sigh. Sae reached out. He helped rearrange the stray strands of hair covering her forehead. Two students passed them by, whispering.
Emi glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. "There was no need for you to come. I got the situation under control."
"I could see that," Sae scoffed. "What if that girl went to a teacher?"
"She can't be that stupid!” Emi said with the same exasperation, “That'd be so embarrassing. She's the one who started it!"
"Don't be so self-assured. You said so yourself, you went to her classroom. Her friends were around too. When things came down to it, and without a doubt, that girl would get all the support." Emi tutted, so she didn’t hear Sae murmur under his breath. "...so let's hope things won't come down to it."
There were still more than three lessons remaining for the day. If anything got out and into the teachers' ears, it had to happen this afternoon before school let out. If Emi got off scot-free, and the other girl remained indifferent – no one would have a reason to call for her. Even if the teachers heard the kids talk, or saw compromising recordings of the incident... Both girls could play dumb and naturally nothing would come out of it.
The only thing they had to do was to stay out of trouble. As the saying went, out of sight, out of mind.
The bell rang,
and Sae urged Emi to hurry to class. "Don't stir any more trouble and wait
for me after classes."
Huffing and puffing, the little girl turned to go.
On the way back, someone passed Sae on the stairs, then stopped and took three steps back so their eyes were in line with each other.
Sae raised a brow as if asking, What?
A few seconds, and Shum Deil inclined his head to the side. He looked a little lazy.
The classroom
was a mess, as usual, but it didn’t have anything to do with Sae.
“Sae... Saering,” Minke waved him down first thing after getting inside from the hallway. “Since when has Emi become your girlfriend?”
“Since never,” said Sae. He sent Teo a pointed look.
The boy pulled
Minke away by the arm.
“Girl, how can you ask that out of the blue?” Teo knit his brows. “Since how
long have we known Emi? Since how long have we known Sae, for goodness’ sake?!”
The girl tore her elbow out of Teo’s grasp with distaste. “Don’t give me that. Would I have to ask if you’ve answered any of my questions?”
Teo cupped a hand behind his neck, leaning into it. “Yeah, I wasn’t in the mood for even one of the three hundred of them.”
Minke left him standing there without another word, her long hair swishing left and right as she went.
Their next lesson was art. As a universally known fact known by everyone, the art teacher was late at least five minutes to every single class he held. Minke felt bold upon this knowledge and stole up on Sae. Leaning closer, she asked in a semi whisper, “Why was Emi fighting?”
Sae’s deskmate eyed them with interest. The boy had not been at his place earlier, so did not know why Sae had left. He let Sae pass to take the inner seat, all the while picking up his ears.
Minke shot the boy a look, and inquired, "Tomo, can we swap seats until class starts?"
Tomo hemmed and hawed, quite flustered. His expression made it seem as though he couldn’t decide whether he got caught snooping or not. A reply lodged in his throat, dozens of words vying to come out and save him. Right then, someone called out to him, putting an end to his deep curiosity about this strangeness in the air.
As soon as Tomo ambled away, Teo sidled up to the empty seat, trying to listen in on the news.
Sae felt too lazy to indulge these two birds, so he trailed his eyes outside the window pane. Voice lacking any interest, he said, “The girl picked on her.” Following that one sentence, he plopped down on the desk’s surface and lowered his eyes.
The other two shared a look. “Sae,” Teo said, “You know this won’t stay under wraps.”
Thought as much.
Sae showed no reaction whatsoever.
“There’s already a thread about it on the school’s forum. It’s good our class doesn’t care about the forum but the lower years...” Teo did not follow up.
Rationally speaking, the younger the students were, the more curious they got about what went on in school. It could be said that they still had a gentle kind of innocence. They wanted to uncover what’s worth knowing about and what’s empty background noise. In the first year, no one knew all that much about school, its teachers, or what upper classes or students to look out for. Thus, they consistently checked the forum once a day, at least for a term’s duration.
Later, that time got diluted to once every two days, then a week, then only if someone recommended or spammed a fresh and buzzing thread. By the time second year started, all classes had their own private groups to discuss anything worthwhile. Slowly, it reached a point where they remembered such a thing as a school forum existed only in their memories.
“Everyone will think Emi’s fight with that girl got something to do with you. Here,” Minke thrust her phone before Sae’s face. “Look at the pictures. It certainly looks like that going by these.”
Sae opened his eyes a crack but otherwise did not move. The desk under him was smooth, emanating the faint scent of tempera; sunlit by a ray of light coming from the windows. A while later, he sounded, “Hmm." It didn’t seem like he cared.
“Hmm?” Minke repeated. “That’s it? Are you sure?” Her glance turned to Teo.
Teo shared a look with her, then repeated after Sae, “Hmm.”
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