Chap 18 : Who is that Peasant?
“Who was that?” I asked.
I very deliberately did not say peasant out loud.
This was due to a prior incident.
Earlier this morning, Mum had dragged me into what I had come to recognize as the kitchen now instead of food chamber and, in a voice that carried the same quiet menace I had previously associated with battlefield executions at the hospital, informed me that if any of the scholars—lecturers, as humans insisted on calling them—contacted her to report that I had once again used the word peasant in a public setting…
My life would become significantly more difficult.
The kind doctor had, unfortunately, forbidden her from using footwear as a disciplinary tool.
So she had promised to explore… alternatives.
Then she had looked me directly in the eyes and said:
“Try me.”
I did not know what that meant.
But it sounded like a threat.
So I stared at her.
As one does when faced with danger.
Jiyoung and Haejin exchanged a look.
It was a deeply complicated look.
The kind of look that contained:
- history
- poor decisions
- and emotional damage
“He is not a peasant,” Jiyoung said carefully. “That’s Minjae. He’s in your economics class. You know him.”
“I do not.”
“You’ve known him since freshman year,” she said. “You had a—” She stopped, visibly reconsidering her life choices, and turned to Haejin. “Help.”
“A thing,” Haejin said immediately. “You had a thing.”
“What kind of thing?”
“A thing thing,” Haejin clarified, making a series of aggressive hand gestures that looked less like communication and more like she was trying to summon something.
I stared at her.
“I do not understand what your hands are doing.”
“She’s saying you were into each other,” Jiyoung said. “But like… not officially.”
“Yes,” Haejin added. “Very unofficial. Extremely unofficial. Painfully unofficial.”
“A situationship,” Jiyoung concluded.
“A what.”
“A deeply confusing romantic arrangement,” she said, “where two people clearly like each other but refuse to acknowledge it, communicate about it, or behave like functioning members of society.”
I stared at her.
“That sounds inefficient.”
“It is.”
“Why would anyone willingly participate in that?”
Jiyoung shrugged. “Emotional damage.”
“That is not a sufficient explanation.”
She shrugged. "I'm a sociology major. We have words for everything."
I looked back toward the gate, but Minjae was already gone, swallowed by the crowd of students moving through the courtyard. The crowd that I was now, apparently, a part of.
"Sera," Haejin said, and her voice was softer now, "do you really not remember him?"
I thought about the message on my phone. The one from an unknown number. I look forward to you giving me an answer.
"I don't remember anything," I said.
Jiyoung and Haejin exchanged another look. This one was not complicated. It was simple. It was the look of two people who had made a decision.
"That's okay," Jiyoung said, linking her arm through mine. "That's what we're here for."
"Yeah," Haejin said, taking my other arm. "Your mum had also warned us about your weird behaviours and memory lose. So, we'll just tell you everything. And when you get your memory back, you can tell us all the embarrassing things we did and we can pretend we don't remember."
"That's not how memory works," I said.
"Shut up, Sera, we're being supportive."
I allowed myself to be led through the gates.
The courtyard spread out before me, wide and bright, filled with students and buildings and a thousand small details that the human Sera had probably known by heart. I did not know them. I did not know the shortcuts or the secrets or the best places to sit when you wanted to be alone.
But I had two girls on either side of me, their voices filling the silence with stories about people I didn't remember and events I hadn't experienced.
"—and then Jiyoung tried to ask Professor Park for an extension and she was so nervous she called him 'Dad'—"
"I did NOT—"
"You absolutely did. I have witnesses."
"I was STRESSED."
"—and then Haejin laughed so hard she choked on her water and had to be escorted to the nurse's office—"
"The water was carbonated. It was a factor."
"—and through all of it, you just sat there with this look on your face like you were watching a nature documentary about very confused animals—"
"That sounds correct," I said.
Jiyoung and Haejin both stopped talking. They looked at me. Then they looked at each other.
And then, together, they laughed.
It was not a complicated laugh. It was not a laugh with hidden meanings or unspoken worries. It was just a laugh. Two girls, laughing with their friend, walking through the gates of a school that was, for now, a mystery to me.
But not forever.
I did not know what answer the unknown number was waiting for. I did not know what a "situationship" was or why anyone would willingly enter one. I did not know how to be the Sera who had caught fish and earned scholarships and climbed out windows to go to concerts.
But I knew that I had walked through the gate. I knew that my foot had crossed the line.
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