Lookism: What Am I Even Doing?

Chapter Forty-Nine

Navigating school had become simple without the constant worry that I'd be judged from those I actually care about. If anything, their direct involvement with things has made it that much easier to be protected. The Baking Department wouldn't leave me alone, even when I went to the restroom a couple of the girls along with Sookie would follow and we would end up chatting away by the sinks.

Then during free, study, or lunch periods they would make sure to look down on anyone who gave me the dirty eye. Which, if I'm being honest, wasn't that many people. I think I may have overestimated the damage that had been done. I'm not sure how I feel about it though.

If they aren't treating me like I'm insane it's probably because they already knew that I was. And I'm actually starting to realize what was posted was a lot less intense than some of the rumors that went around when I was a freshman. So this was actually pretty tame.

People have a way of twisting the truth too. All of the things that came out on the posts came to make me look better. Seems impossible right?

At the warehouse with Aru, I was protecting her from evil men trying to take advantage of her. No one really questioned how a really zoomed in face of me appeared in a place where an idol was supposed to be. But in their eyes, I protected a beloved idol from being exploited.

Sookie was the first to step up about my parent's gym. She released the full video of me being attacked first and how they were trespassing on private property. My private property and that I was simply getting rid of 'pathetic trash' as she put it.

With Eun...well, I couldn't really do much about that but people cared about it much less than I thought.

My fight with Jake? I simply went to go get back at the people that had scammed Jiho. Whether I won or lost...well, it was obvious that I had lost but that made people sympathetic for some reason. That sympathy pissed me off. Seeing people give me sad smiles at a failed attempt to avenge a classmate reminded me of how big my loss was.

I also couldn't do much about the pill situation. Though Sookie did tell a couple people that they were medically prescribed. That much could be told from the bottle itself in the picture. You could even see a Doctor's signature at the bottom.

All of this washed away anyway with the news of what happened at the pool hall. It took exactly two days for me to exit the halls and be replaced with curses towards Jiho and how he was found guilty of pushing two people out the window from a three or four level building.

Everyone was going around talking shit about him and praying that Big Daniel made a full recovery. As much as I wanted to reach out to the girls and Vasco to help comfort them about the news I held back as much as I could. The only thing I offered was Vasco a gentle squeeze on the shoulder during lunch one day as he began sobbing. And I mean sobbing.

This idiot thought that Big Daniel had died and was worried about Little Daniel because they were best friends. It took Jace along with some of the other members to convince him that Big Daniel had not in fact died, but was in a deep sleep in the hospital. And not to worry because they had the best doctors looking after him.

I will confess that I passed by the convenience store a couple nights ago to check up on Little Daniel but he wasn't there. What could this fucker had been doing? It's been a few weeks since Zoe has been visiting after work to make sure he's okay. These few days that he hasn't been here, seems to have destroyed her.

I pretended not to notice the clear puffiness of her eyes one morning as I passed her by at the school gate. Just walking away from her while she was clearly in pain made me feel so guilty. She was my friend before anything else and I'm avoiding her because I decided to play hypocrite. This would've been so much simpler if I just kept to myself this whole time and watched from the sidelines.