The clock showed a little past four in the afternoon.
The sunlight that had been baking the school yard since midday now began to subside, like a runner finally slowing down after crossing the farthest line they could reach.
The hot air that had been clinging to the skin slowly peeled away, making room for the evening breeze that brought with it a faint coolness, as if the world was finally taking a sigh of relief.
In the western horizon, the sky began to change color. Soft orange slowly faded, resembling watercolor spreading across wet paper.
The colors moved calmly, as if a giant paintbrush was working quietly beyond the horizon, tracing subtle strokes that could only be seen by those who cared to notice.
The remnants of the light scattered, drawing long lines on the ground like the final sweep of light before twilight took over the entire stage.
The elongated shadows crept behind the three girls who were walking side-by-side—Adelia, Margaret, and Rachel.
Their silhouettes moved in a balanced rhythm, yet strangely they felt untouched by the wind, like a row of figures in an old painting given just enough life to step forward.
Since leaving their respective classrooms, silence had governed their pace, wrapping their bodies in a stillness thicker than any words they might have spoken. Their heads were held straight forward, without a glance right or left, merely following the straight line towards the school gate that was drawing nearer.
All around them, the world was joyously ticking.
Other students scattered like flocks of birds newly freed from their cages. Some ran while shouting excitedly, their steps seemingly impatient to touch the world outside the school grounds. Others dragged laughter everywhere, so loud that it bounced off the corridor walls.
That joyful sound fractured the air, becoming a song that only emerged on special days—days when the burden of lessons was finally dropped, and tomorrow marked the start of the first weekend after a long, exhausting week.
Yet amidst that wave of commotion, the steps of the three girls remained like a silent line cutting through turbulent water: quiet, steady, and controlled.
After several minutes of walking in silence and with their steps nearing the school gate, which now seemed closer, Adelia finally moved first.
She turned to Margaret, who remained quiet, holding her face deliberately flat, yet the lines around her eyes and mouth betrayed something else—the annoyance was still there, hidden beneath the carefully crafted mask of composure.
Adelia swallowed before uttering her words.
"Are you still angry with us, Margaret?"
"At least… say something. It feels so strange if the three of us part ways to celebrate our respective weekends without a single word on the last day of school."
That soft tone implied anxiety, and occasionally, Adelia glanced away, as if afraid to look directly at Margaret's face for too long.
Her eyes darted away even though her head remained turned—a sign that she, too, was overwhelmed by this silence.
"Aren't you usually the one who starts first?"
Once again, Adelia took a deep breath, trying to compose her voice to sound sincere.
"Usually you're the one who asks how we finished all the subjects today, how the teachers taught—whether their methods helped us understand or not, whether they explained the material completely and clearly, whether we had difficulties or not, and so on."
"You're usually the most talkative when we walk home together, asking things that are actually already obvious. Even if we say a teacher's method isn't good, you'll definitely argue the opposite."
This time, her tone was softer, more careful, as if every word spoken aimed to penetrate the wall that prevented Margaret from hearing her.
However, even though she tried hard to restrain the tension, a subtle urgency still slipped into that tone—an impatience she couldn't completely hide. She desperately wanted to finish this conversation, wanted to immediately open up the space between them.
Rachel also turned towards Margaret, but her gaze immediately shifted to Adelia's face.
"Of course she's still angry."
"It's all your fault. Without any warning, you rushed into Margaret's classroom, slammed your hand on her desk, and shouted her name. Obviously, that embarrassed her half to death earlier."
"Don't you remember the reaction of Margaret's classmates and how the whole room immediately fell silent, with all eyes fixed on Margaret's desk?"
The memory flashed again: the room instantly freezing, the air ceasing to flow, and the focused gazes centering like spotlights piercing the stage. Margaret sat rigidly, like a porcelain doll suddenly thrown into a crowd.
"I, too, would be annoyed if someone did that to me without warning, surprising me like that. Especially Margaret—we aren't the type of people who like to draw attention and we really dislike being the center of attention just because of a trivial matter."
Rachel spoke all of that without considering how her words would land on Adelia's ears—there was no adjustment in tone, no attempt to soften the dagger. Only honesty flowed out, completely unvarnished, delivered like someone roughly pulling a thorn from their friend's skin.
Adelia's ears instantly twitched upon hearing Rachel's words.
It felt like small needles pricking her from within, causing her consciousness and emotions to instantly unite in a single blast of feeling: offense and indignation.
Her expression crumpled, her eyebrows dropped, her lips tightened—signs that her body instinctively refused the statement, although deep down, she knew the truth of it was undeniable.
"What did you say?!"
Her voice slightly rose.
Adelia's gaze crashed into Rachel's—two straight lines that chose not to yield.
"My fault?! This is all my fault?!"
Her tone swelled, not quite bursting, but like a wave forcing itself to reach the shore even though the sand refused to accept it.
"Yes, this is my fault, I admit it."
"But the reason I acted like that, wasn't it because you were the one who told me that the five members from the idol survival program "Next Star: Catch Your Five" would be doing a live stream on YouTube tonight to announce the group's name and their fandom's name?"
"And you should have known too, I'm a crazy fangirl who will act crazier than anyone when I get that kind of information. Of course, I immediately told Margaret, because she's often late in realizing important news."
"That's why you're also involved in this incident. You started it, I took the impact, and in the end, we're both at fault."
It was obvious that Adelia was defending herself.
Her fervent tone sounded fast, hurried, as if every word had to escape before time could restrain its meaning.
Her lips moved with an almost unnatural rhythm, indicating how much she wanted to perfectly express every thought flowing through her head, so that nothing would be misunderstood.
Both of her hands, which had been resting on her hips since the beginning, now seemed to affirm her stance—the posture was like a teacher scolding a student for misunderstanding an instruction, and here, that student was Rachel.
Rachel raised one eyebrow.
There was something discordant in Adelia's statement—a small, missed note, like a guitar string that hadn't been perfectly tightened.
"That still doesn't justify the fact that you are the one most at fault here, Adelia."
Her tone, at a glance, sounded light—like someone speaking in a casual, ordinary manner, without any burden.
However, the subtle wrinkle in her forehead betrayed her flat, almost colorless expression, like a blank canvas deliberately left untouched. Because beneath that expressionless face, she was clearly annoyed. Annoyed in a way that couldn't be completely hidden, even though she tried desperately.
"I only told you because I was sure you were about to miss the information—either because you forgot, or because you didn't have time to check notifications."
"Besides, aren't you the type of person who prefers hearing news from others rather than checking it yourself?"
"That's why I took the initiative to tell you. I already knew your reaction would be like the most excited human on Earth."
"And, yes… I'm the same as you. The difference is, I'll just smile all day because finally there's something I can do after school. Tomorrow is the start of the weekend, and I'm not as hysterical as you are."
All those explanations were uttered without the slightest change in her expression. It was flat from start to finish—flat like a horizon line stretching without a single curve. Her voice, too, leveled out, neither rising nor plunging, merely gliding smoothly.
Adelia blinked repeatedly.
Her gaze bounced between doubt and astonishment, as if her mind had just crashed into a wall of awareness that she had passed by all this time without ever looking.
Her expression shifted into a blend of confusion and astonishment, the face of someone who had just found a bright crack behind a long-closed door.
"Wait a minute."
She held her breath for a split second before the next sentence came out.
"Hey, Rachel. Did you really say that?"
"I mean... I just realized something. You're talking so much today. Usually, you only answer questions with 'yes' or 'no'. You also usually never care about other people's business—or even their feelings."
She then glanced towards Margaret—just a quick look—and without actually moving her head, her gaze returned to Rachel.
There was a small pause there, as if her brain was putting together the pieces that had previously been scattered. And within that pause, something on her face slowly changed.
The corner of her mouth lifted slightly. A smirk appeared, slowly, like someone who had just found the answer to a riddle that had previously annoyed them.
"Is it because we're both friends with Margaret, whose personality is almost like yours? She was initially quiet and flat-faced, but turns out she's very friendly and talkative—just like you, huh?"
Her tone changed, flowing with a mischievous rhythm, full of teasing like someone who had just discovered a sweet little secret to poke fun at.
Rachel simply sighed—a sigh that sounded like a sheet of wind yielding to the weight of the day, whether out of resignation or merely reluctance to add noise to a conversation that was becoming exhausting to her.
Her gaze shifted, gliding forward; there, the school gate loomed a few meters away.
"Are quiet people forbidden from speaking at length?"
"Are quiet people supposed to just stay silent if they are disturbed or provoked?"
Her statement glided out in a flat tone, but the delivery felt more like a muttered thought slipped from her inner space.
"This isn't because I'm friends with Margaret. I'm just bored of being surrounded by people who talk as they please, without thinking about who they are talking to, in what tone, and with what attitude."
Although her voice remained flat, a quiet shard of firmness flowed underneath it.
Adelia merely raised both her shoulders—a light, dismissive shrug, as if whatever came out of Rachel's mouth was just stale wind passing by and not worth keeping.
"But... this is still your fault!"
"If you hadn't told me about that information, I wouldn't have been able to surprise Margaret... and embarrass her!"
Her tone climbed higher. Her index finger shot out toward Rachel.
Rachel, who had been trying to hold back the wave of her emotions, snapped like a string finally breaking after being pulled too tight.
Her head whipped around quickly, the movement implying that something inside her had shifted out of place—the composure she had been carefully nurturing was now disturbed. Her face tightened, both eyebrows plummeting, carving new lines that no longer belonged to her flat expression.
"If I hadn't told you and pretended not to know... and then when you finally found out on your own, I told you that I already knew... would you have thought of me as someone disloyal, huh?!"
Her tone soared, no longer the flat whisper that usually came from her.
And of course, Adelia did not stay silent; her words bounced back, just as heated, just as fast. In an instant, their conversation transformed into a shouting match—two waves crashing into each other, forming a vortex that brought their steps to a halt in the middle of the path.
They stood face-to-face, pointing fingers at each other, exchanging piercing glares—exasperated, annoyed, tinged with heat. Until the air around them seemed to shrink, solidifying with tension that grew too quickly.
Margaret, who was a few steps ahead, also stopped. She watched the two with a small sigh that slowly descended from her chest, then gently shook her head—a movement akin to a weary gust of wind passing over two flames consuming each other.
She wanted to move closer to the two of them—to grasp their shoulders, to quell the embers that were beginning to spread and were now drawing the eyes of those around.
However, before her first step could even land, a sudden clamor snatched their attention from the side.
"Give me back my sandwich, you ugly dog!"