𝖷1 𝖨𝗆𝖺𝗀𝗂𝗇𝖾𝗌 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝖲𝗁𝗈𝗋𝗍 𝖲𝗍𝗈𝗋𝗂𝖾𝗌

23. I Got You

Things only got worse. Not only were there even more whispers, but also Minhee refused to meet my concern gaze.

It worried me how unbothered he was about the whole thing. He was in the middle of a fairly serious scandal and he was acting like it was a normal day.

This is a serious allegation. For both him and Mrs. Choi.

I thought for a little bit that maybe he didn't know, but I was pretty sure that he did.

One of us is not that clueless.

I so badly wanted to say something to him. I couldn't get myself to do it. He wasn't even paying attention to me anymore.

So I held my tongue.

If Minhee was going to stay collected so was I.

My calm demeanor fell apart at lunchtime. Papers posted on some lockers. I didn't pay close attention until I reached my locker. I stared at the paper dumbfounded.

It was a screenshot from the video.

The 'evidence' video.

I snatch the photo off the metal door of my locker. It crumples up in my hand.

A few feet away a couple of younger girls were talking about the pictures. "Who would go through the trouble of printing and posting all these pictures?"

'I know exactly who', I thought chucking the paper to the floor.

I walked to the cafeteria with more determination than I ever had. All my thoughts went to Minhee. About how he doesn't deserve this. Not in the slightest.

Minhee's annoying and a know-it-all, and can drive any individual insane. But he's good. Through and through.

The lunchroom was abuzz, chaos concentrated in one particular table. The one I was heading towards.

Minhee sat in the center with most of the school's popular guys standing around him. They're the types to use power in numbers.

They were saying things to Minhee and pushing him around. He just had an uneasy look to him. He was trying not to fight back.

I made my way over to the table. After a couple seconds they notice my presence. The popular guys stop what they are doing, to my surprise.

Minhee looks up at me with his big brown eyes. They weren't pleading for help, maybe more so an escape. Like if I sat down, everything would go back to being fine.

Sorry, Minhee. I'm not here for a chat. At least not now.

My eyes scan the room before they finally land on the person I wanted to find. I marched my way over to her.

"You are such a bitch," I tell Kyungmi right off the bat.

Her whole table of friends goes silent. In fact most of the cafeteria went quiet. People usually don't have random outbursts during lunch time.

"What did I do?" She asks defensively. She seemed shocked but there also was an amused smile on her face.

"You couldn't handle the fact that someone might actually be better than you, could you?" Kyungmi raises an inquiring eyebrow. "So you made up a rumor because that's all you ever do."

"If you're implying that I took the video of Minhee and/or put up the photos you're wrong. I had nothing to do with that," she definitively says. The rest of her friends were confused, causing me to believe that she might be telling the truth.

"Though I'm not surprised that someone like him," her eyes flicker over towards Minhee's table for a second, "would do something like that."

"Of course you would," I spit out. Even if she didn't have anything to do with this she was still a bitch.

A soft expression came to her face.
"C'mon, Jiah, aren't you sick and tired of the east siders always getting what they want? Even just a little?"

I did and maybe I still do in a way. But resenting them isn't going to get me anywhere. There will always be people like Minhee, people who are better than you.

It doesn't matter.

What matters is who you are.

"You know what I'm sick and tired of?" I yell out. Some more people listened into the conversation. I didn't care if I got in trouble. "I'm tired of people treating east siders like they're some villain. What have they ever done to you?

"Minhee is a great guy. He really is. He's kind to everyone. I don't understand how you all could be so cruel to him."

Kyungmi looked away sheepishly. Her friends do the same.

"You know you can hurt him and ruin his reputation, but he will always be a good person. And that's something you'll never take away from him."

Most of the cafeteria had stopped listening, lost interest, but I got my message across to those who needed to receive it.

Satisfied with my little speech I turn on my heel to make direct eye contact with Minhee. It was like everything else could disappear into the background. His grateful expression filled me with some kind of feeling. It's hard to explain.

But as I dragged him out of the crowded room and told him we were going home, a sudden discomforting though came to me:

Maybe I am in love with Kang Minhee.