Finally, we arrived in City C after spending hours on the road.
The drop-off schedule for the female students would begin the next day, so we stayed at Grandma’s house for one night.
“I heard the school has a month-long vacation once a semester, right?” Grandma asked.
“Yeah, Mom. Sio can come back here if she wants. She can ask our relatives to drive her there and pick her up. The transportation costs won’t be a problem,” Mom replied.
The warm morning sunlight had pierced through the glass of my bedroom window.
I kept staring at my first smartphone, which had only recently become proof of my efforts to place first in my class.
“I’ve only had this phone for a little while. And now I have to leave it at Grandma’s house.” I muttered as I replayed the memory of choosing it. “Well... What can I do? This is the risk I took with my own decision.”
I looked through everything in my gallery again.
Slowly scrolling through each photo.
Staring at my friends’ expressions in every saved picture.
Then I went still for a moment, feeling a slight tightness in my chest.
A boy I liked.
Funny enough, I had once hoped that when we grew up, I would end up with him. If my teenage self ever met the adult version of me, I’d make sure to laugh at myself.
How ridiculous.
The latest time for dropping off the female students was 5:00 p.m. After that, parents and guardians were forbidden from remaining on school grounds because the gates would be locked.
We arrived at the dorm two hours before the deadline. All my luggage was unloaded and neatly arranged inside the wardrobe.
The available wardrobe was a fairly large metal cabinet with four equally sized doors—two on top and two on the bottom. Each door had a hole for attaching a padlock. Yes, a padlock like the kind usually used to lock the gate at home, not the kind of lock normally built into a wardrobe.
One metal cabinet with four doors. Inside, it had only one divider in the middle and a small drawer.
I put my underwear in the small drawer.
“Ugh, it smells so much like metal. Is my underwear going to absorb iron now?” My comment made the person beside my wardrobe laugh. I felt embarrassed and a little awkward because we hadn’t introduced ourselves yet.
“Oh, sorry. We haven’t introduced ourselves, have we? My name’s Hanna. Nice to meet you.”
“Ah... Yeah, I’m Siofra. Nice to meet you too.”
I still wasn’t used to relaxing whenever someone introduced themselves to me. My heart always pounded whenever someone I didn’t know started talking to me. It felt like... I was about to make some kind of mistake.
“Judging by how much stuff you brought, you must be from out of town, right? Where are you from?”
“I’m from City P. What makes my luggage look that way?”
Hanna let out a small laugh. “It’s because you brought so much stuff! You look like you’re moving into a new house.”
I was silent for a moment. “...Is that so? I was just doing what my mom told me and bringing all of it.”
I started breaking out in a cold sweat. Somebody, please save me from this situation! I felt so uncomfortable.
“Hanna! What are you doing over there? Hurry up and get out before the gates close! We won’t be able to go out and buy snacks later!” someone shouted from the dorm entrance. She was with a group of other girls—about seven of them.
“Yeah, yeah! I’m just grabbing some money. Wait for me!” Hanna turned toward me. “I’m heading out now, okay?”
I took a very deep breath, then exhaled hard. My sweat dried up in an instant.
“They must have gone to the same elementary school before this. They look really close,” I said to myself.