The Law of Webnovels - Chapter 194

Chapter 194: Chapter 194

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His last question struck my ears sharply. I closed my eyes and opened them back. The fluorescent light above my head seemed to fade and brighten again.

‘Weird,’ I said to myself. When I heard Jooin speak, it made me feel like the things that had happened clearly got rearranged one after another and went by my sight. My heart throbbed at the same time.

Frankly speaking, I, of course, wasn’t okay yet at all.

Just by a few weeks, the happening wouldn’t be forgotten like nothing had happened. The wounds that they engraved were left like pale scars on my heart.

Ignoring those bruises, I raised my head to look at Jooin.

“Are you mad at me?” I asked him.

Jooin then looked as if he was smashed on the back of his head. Regardless of his reaction, I continued my words nonchalantly.

“I wasn’t trying to toss the question to you. It’s just that… I want to know how you feel right now.”

“…”

“Are you mad at me, or are you mad at them? Tell me whose side you’re on. I’m just curious… that’s all.”

I wanted to hear Jooin’s response so that I could get more familiar with his character right now. He was, however, still dropping his blank gaze at me at a loss of words. He then showed a faint smile. His dry flat reply went after.

“Which side? Well, yeah… I’m angry and annoyed at them, and if I could, I would love to get rid of them and throw them somewhere else, and you…”

With a pause, Jooin heaved a short sigh.

“Mama… you scare me when you’re like that.”

I lifted my eyes and directed them at him. Jooin continued his remark with a feeble smile.

“For real, it’s scary. Back then, when you forgave Choi Yuri as well as this time too. If you were out of strength that you decided to endure what happened, I would not have been this frightened. Those who are frail would, instead, turn the guilt arrow to themselves and persuade themselves that they deserve the pain. You, mama, however, aren’t something like that either.”

“…”

“If you asked, at least, either Jiho or me… no, not even us. If you asked Yeo Ryung or Eun Hyung, they could have easily changed the public opinion into something positive to you. You knew that the Choi Yuri incident wasn’t a difficult thing for us to resolve. Mama, it’s been over three years. You’ve seen everything that we can do and will do for you. Three years is enough time for you to realize that, isn’t it?”

Biting my lips tightly but not avoiding his gaze, I listened to Jooin’s words in silence.

He finally finished his remark and heaved a deep sigh. He then stepped toward me, which was close enough for his body to cast a shadow over my face. His murmur clearly reached my ears.

“Mama wouldn’t understand a person like me, who doesn’t know what forgiveness is.”

“…”

“I tried to spread rumors about Choi Yuri to the school she transferred to, but I refused to do so because you would hate that.”

Until now, I just heard what he said with nonchalance; however, my eyes opened wide when he talked about spreading rumors about Choi Yuri. I looked up at him in surprise, and at the same time, he revealed a crooked smile on his face.

Our eyes met in the air. A deafening silence swept the space. None of us tried to avoid each other’s gaze. The fluorescent lamp above our heads still shed sharp light on us. Everything remained still except for the speckle of dust fluttering around.

I slowly released the tension on my face. I furrowed my brows, closed my eyes, opened them, and averted my gaze back into Jooin, who had a straight face until then.

A tranquil, bare look… what Jooin was displaying on his appearance would be the closest to his true nature. That was when I set my stare up at him.

A sound then suddenly rang around our ears. Jooin, at the same time, pulled my wrist. Hiding me behind him, Jooin placed his index finger on his lips. I quietly nodded.

I could read his mind. If someone broke into this place, a shut-down school for over three years, then we could have thought about the person trying to test out his or her courage; however, we weren’t inside of just another regular closed-down school.

A strange place that coincided with the boundary between reality and fiction… while I had that thought, Jooin gave a sign with his eyes. This time, he pointed at the large lecture desk in front of the classroom. A sound of a soft footstep was getting closer from the hallway in the distance.

Dragging me quickly, Jooin walked through the desks that were scattered around out of order. While he opened the janitorial cabinet, he switched his gaze to me. Thankfully, it was empty inside. As soon as I entered, Jooin also strode inside and stood beside me. He then closed the door.

The janitorial cabinet was all the way back in the corner of the classroom. Thus, it had a wide range of views. Jooin was too tall to fully close the cabinet from inside that we could clearly see the overall scenery of the classroom through the gap.

Messy desks, collapsed chairs, and dusty blackboard with random students’ names written in uneven handwriting… That was the moment when we had those in our sights.

From a far distance, the light that we opened in the class next door suddenly disappeared.

Someone turned the lights off. Cold sweat ran down my neck. Who on earth was turning off all the lights with a quiet footstep in this surreal place?

Would it even be a person? When I rambled those thoughts, someone stepped inside the classroom. Jooin, who was beside me, grasped my hand tightly. I looked down at his hand, involuntarily, before grabbing it more firmly. My heart seemed to have jumped inside my rib cage. My vision turned so blurry that I felt like vomiting.

The person was a man in a black suit; however, there was only a gray circle on the area where his face should be. It was a sight so unnerving that I knew from one glance that we were seeing something far beyond what we could describe as “human.” His pale hand moved to touch the wall. Devoid of any means to see, God knows what he was even looking at.

His hand then moved to press the switch, and at the same time, the space was swallowed within an eternal vacuum of pure darkness. We could hardly see anything inside of the classroom now. His silhouette gleamed through the bluish moonlight.

The faceless man didn’t look in this direction. As if turning the lights off was his only intention, he left the classroom just like that.

Clomp, clomp, clomp… the sound of his footsteps receded, signaling that he had decided to return from whence he came. His footsteps sounded as if he was jumping up the staircase, which made me gasp deeply.

‘Originally, he might be wandering around the second floor,’ I thought. What I just saw earlier still felt so unreal to me.

When I turned my head, I saw Jooin, who was beside me, glowing a dim light in his eyes through the bluish moonlight. I quietly pushed the cabinet door and stepped outside. Jooin did the same as he walked out after me. Sweeping his hair back, he heaved a sigh.

“Did you just see that?” I flung the question like a whisper.

“He was faceless.”

“Yeah.”

After hearing my response, he, at last, smiled as if asking me what he saw wasn’t a trick of the moonlight. He then almost collapsed on the chair and heaved another sigh. I, at the same time, perched on the desk and drew a long breath.

Oh, it was… it was so surprising! Breathing in and out for quite a while, I finally realized that I was still alive. That was when I turned my head to look at Jooin. Unlike earlier, he didn’t display any malice on his face. He, right now, had his usual, kind, and everyone’s-sweetheart-like look similar to what he would show in the classroom during a bright afternoon.

Jooin then suddenly glanced at me, which shocked me for a second. He waved his hand in the air with a smile. What he said afterward made my jaw drop in perplexity.

“No, never mind. Forget what I said earlier. It was bullshit.”

“Huh?”

How could he say that it was just bullshit when he spoke those words in a grave, earnest, and sincere face without any veil of bright glow that he always had?