Teacher's pet

𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 28

TAEHYUNG

Having to tell my whole family what had happened was its own special little slice of hell. I did it fast, like ripping off a Band-Aid.

Their reactions were all exactly what I'd expected and still it was a blow. My mother was shocked. My father was deeply disappointed. My siblings were as judgmental as I knew they'd be. I told them all myself, figuring it was the better option than having it come from someone else, as it inevitably would.

I knew it was the better option, but that didn't mean it didn't send me into an even darker spiral of depression.

Days went by. Then weeks. I slept a lot, watched a lot of nonsense television in my room.

I knew Nova graduated. She approached me briefly to tell me she'd passed all her classes. I was relieved, but my reaction was an absent-mended, "Oh, that's good." I knew time passed, knew there were things I needed to do, but I felt a little anesthetized to life, and eventually I realized I was depressed.

At some point Nova told me, "I found out who made the video and released it." Her voice was dead. Gaze flinty. It was troubling to see her eyes go hard like that. I was only used to them soft, but I realized then, in a disjointed sort of way, that her soft side was all for me.

I was sitting at the desk in my office, and she hovered in the doorway as though even walking in the room was off-limits to her now. I studied her, tried to see for a moment what she was going through, but her face was closed off to me by that point, utterly stoic.

"Who?" I eventually asked, only mildly curious about it.

"It was Ryunjin. She confessed to me, said she was sorry, that she only did it out of jealousy." I just stared at her.

"Jealousy?"

"She always had a crush on you, too. She said she'd called dibs. She said I violated girl code." I didn't even know who the fuck Ryunjin was aside from Nova's worst friend.

"That's insane," I said, but there was no heat in it. I was barely in the conversation, as significant as it was.

Nova nodded and I realized tears were running down her face, though her expression was still holding. "I told her I would never forgive her," she said emotionally, a break in her composure. "I'm never speaking to her again. I can take when she does awful things to me, but what she did to you . . . that I can't take, can't forget."

"That's good," I said, not so much feeling that way as knowing if I were in my normal mindset that I would. "You shouldn't be friends with people that don't treat you well. You gave her enough chances." She was sniffling now, barely keeping herself from openly sobbing.

I should have gotten up to comfort her, but I just . . . didn't.

"I should have listened to you the first time you said that. Taehyung , I'm so sorry."

"Don't apologize," I said automatically. "None of this is your fault."

"Of course it is. It's completely my fault. All of it was my idea."

With that she practically ran out of the room, sobbing.
I was troubled by her pain, but it was like there was a wall between me and that feeling. Between me and any feeling.

I didn't follow her. I would come to regret that deeply.
When I found the note on the counter, I wasn't sure how long she'd been gone.
With the realization of her absence, the fog of numbness lifted for a time replaced by pain and more than a touch of anger.

She couldn't do this. I'd bring her back. I could talk her out of this. I knew it.

But what right did I have? She'd said in the note that she didn't even want me to contact her. There was no way to twist or misinterpret that. She Wanted a clean break. She wanted to move on. And she was so young. She had her whole life ahead of her. Who was I to decide what she should do with it? To make her spend it with me?