Little Star

Chapter Sixteen

This is Mae, Aramina's best friend from kindergarten. She has made appearances in Chapters One, Four, Five, Thirteen and Fourteen. In fact, in Chapters Five and Fourteen, it turns out that she is a very loving and supportive friend to Aramina. So if you don't remember her, shame on you :)

Mae's POV

I glanced at the seat next to me and sighed. Aramina had been gone for nearly two months now, which was starting to make me feel really worried. Neither of us even had phones or contact numbers, meaning I couldn't even use my dad's phone to contact her. All I could do was ask our kindergarten teacher to call her residence through the school phone since our school had the contacts of everyone's residences, and our kindergarten teacher had been kind enough to let me do so. Sadly though, it hadn't made much of a difference. Our teacher said that the people in the front office had called Aramina's house when she had been absent for more than three days. At that time, her dad had apparently said that there was a big family emergency due to which Aramina would not be able to attend school for a while. I had felt worried when I'd heard that itself because a few days before Aramina vanished, she had already been feeling sad about some problems going on in her family; so sad that she had completely changed from the cheerful and silly clown I once knew. Our other two friends, Taesik and Seo-Jun, constantly told me not to worry too much and that Aramina would return when her big family emergency was over. But that was it. Taesik and Seo-Jun had never noticed Aramina's odd behaviour before she left. I had.

And it scared me.

When more than a month passed with still no news from my best friend or her family members, I'd requested our teacher to let me use the school phone to contact her as I had no other alternative. And I had been doing that everyday since then. But everyday I received the same result of an unanswered call. The sound of the school bell ringing echoed through the air and all the kids madly rushed around to pack their bags, excited to go home. I took some time though, and then quietly walked down to the front office. My teacher was already waiting there for me and dialed the number for me. I waited patiently, listening to that familiar ringing of the phone which I'd grown so accustomed to, and sighed for the second time today when the call went unanswered.

As always.

"Mae?"

I looked up at our teacher who was staring at me with a pitiful gaze.

"Instead of going through this everyday, why don't you try paying a visit to Ye Ran High School? Aramina's father is the chairman there, you know? You could directly talk to him in person."

Of course I knew that, but I figured that if the family emergency was so big that Aramina wasn't able to attend school, then it was very likely that nobody else in her house was able to go out much either.

"But you could try, no?"

Our teacher suggested again and I thought about, realizing that she was right. There was no harm in trying. Yes, there was no harm in trying at all! Quickly thanking our teacher for the helpful tip, I ran out to board the waiting bus outside and remained fidgety in my seat until I reached home. Home was this really tall skyscraper in the richer part of the city; a building full of so many floors that I hadn't even seen all of them, not to mention that some of the floors were also off limits to me. But I also had two floors entirely to myself, so that was cool. Today though, I didn't stop on either of my floors nor did I even say hi to my dad's employee who had been waiting at the entrance of the building to greet me, and used the elevator to go right up to the first floor. My father usually stayed on the top floor, which was his working floor, and when I saw two more of his employees standing by the door to this office, I knew he was in his office.