TBBS 28

Chaapter 28….

But Olivia just shook her head with a resigned air.

“My tuition is overdue. That’s why the teacher called me yesterday.”

Tears streamed down her beautiful golden eyes.

“The truth is, my parents recently got divorced. My dad wants to take both me and my little sibling with him, but I don’t want to go. I’m not going to inherit any title like my sibling will.”

Her wet eyelashes made her look utterly pitiful.

“But when I refused to go with him, my dad didn’t pay the tuition. And my grandmother wouldn’t listen to me either…!”

Olivia said that much, then stepped out of my arms and wiped her tears with the back of her hand.

“My dad just abandoned my mom! Because of that, my mom suddenly had to take on all sorts of business risks, and I can never…!”

“It’s unlikely that the parent who deliberately refuses to pay tuition in a divorce situation would win custody.”

I held Olivia’s hand tightly and spoke.

“In Sweden, when parents divorce, children usually get to choose who they want to live with. What your dad is doing is probably just a pointless threat.”

“Y-Yeah… probably?”

Olivia controlled her tears and let out a deep sigh.

I picked up Olivia’s bag, which had fallen by the door, and gripped the handle firmly.

“Calm down, and let’s go to my room and think about this properly. I’m sorry I didn’t ask sooner. I… I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.”

Olivia shook her head.

“Of course I didn’t want to talk. But as you know, rumors spread fast in Branel.”

Only then did I understand what had happened in the cafeteria earlier.

That damn anonymous board!

How hard it must have been for Olivia to endure all those persistent rumors alone over the past few days.

As I led her to my room, I decided to reinstall the WG app.

I wasn’t going to let people who didn’t even know us pick apart me or my friends anymore.

The next day was Sunday, but Olivia and I went to meet the Savious family’s legal advisor.

The day before, after putting our heads together, we discovered that she had trust funds she could use as an adult, and that in the case of urgent reasons like high school tuition, it might be possible to access part of it a couple of years early.

We dressed neatly in our school uniforms to look like model students, and the insane Stockholm taxi fare, close to 900 kronor (about 130,000 won), was thankfully covered by the lawyer.

Being a legal advisor must be quite generous…

After hearing our story, the kind lawyer said,

“You have a point, Olivia.”

Yes!

We took a deep breath, glanced at each other, and pricked up our ears to hear more.

“Since you’ve already started the IB curriculum in high school, being unable to pay tuition and having to stop studying would be considered a case of contractual non-performance. Especially for educational purposes, I think an exception can be made to access the trust fund.”

Under the table, our hands pressed tightly together.

The lawyer would now contact her legal guardian, her father, and Olivia would be able to access the trust or receive her father’s support.

After leaving the lawyer’s office, Olivia wanted to buy me coffee to celebrate solving the money problem.

“No way.”

I shook my head as we sat in a café.

“You have to remember—you haven’t received a single penny yet.”

Then I tried to persuade her again.

If her father convinced the lawyer to create a third outcome, it could complicate things, so we needed to put pressure on him first.

But Olivia hesitated.

“I can’t do it, Vivi. If we tell the media that my dad left mom because he was having an affair with a same-sex partner, the person who gets hurt the most will be mom. My poor mom’s heart is already torn…”

I held Olivia’s hand and said,

“We’re not actually going to do that. It’s just a bluff. Like how your dad tried to scare you by not paying your tuition.”

I waited patiently for Olivia to gather her courage.

Finally, when she called her father, I was confident of victory just by hearing the ring, and it turned out exactly as I expected.

“Hey, my house is really close from here. Want to stop by and hang out for a bit?”

After hearing her father agree to pay the overdue tuition, Olivia excitedly suggested.

“Mom’s busy handling work stuff and isn’t home, and my sibling is studying abroad. It’s the weekend, so probably no one’s home! And it’s perfect weather for swimming too!”

I laughed a little in disbelief.

The friend who had cried as if the world was ending the previous evening over unpaid tuition was actually a princess living in a mansion with a pool.

If her mother’s business faced a serious crisis, things might change in the future.

Thinking that, I went along with Olivia’s brighter mood.

“Really? Sounds great to me! We still have plenty of time.”

So we swam in the biggest and nicest house I’d ever been to, made sandwiches together, and lay on the huge bed looking through Olivia’s photo albums.

She had traveled all over the world. Pointing to photos of women in saris holding hands with her, Olivia said,

“India was really beautiful. I want to become a diplomat and visit even more countries.”

Anyway, seeing her talk about the future with more energy than the day before was reassuring.

Since Olivia wanted to look at my photos too, we spent a long time going through them together before it was time to return to school.

We needed to finish math class with Erik in the evening, and since no one would pay for our taxi home, we had to take public transportation, so we needed extra time.

Olivia giggled.

“We’re probably the only ones who’ve ever gone to school by public transport.”

It wasn’t a particularly princess-like thought.

Our school was so remote that even I thought I’d never go home without my parents picking me up.

However, after our victory with the lawyer, we were armed with positivity. We walked to the nearest bus stop and boldly boarded the bus we had checked in advance.

The bus took a much longer route than a taxi, but it didn’t dampen our spirits.

However, the first problem arose at the transfer stop.

The small electronic board showing the bus schedule displayed a very ominous message.

606 Service Canceled

Olivia looked at me with worry.

“What do you mean canceled…? Why would the bus cancel?”

But unlike Olivia, as someone familiar with public transportation, I knew “service canceled” was extremely bad news.

We were already far from the city, and bus 606 was the only route to our school. We still had more than an hour of walking left.

I hurriedly took out my phone.

The battery was low from spending too much time at Olivia’s house, but I ignored it and quickly opened the SL (*Storstockholms Lokaltrafik: Stockholm public transport) app.

A small warning icon appeared next to the 606 bus.

⚠ Service suspended due to strike

I shouted in disbelief.

“What the heck! This wasn’t there when I checked yesterday!”

Looking at the notice, I found that not only bus 606, but several other lines operated by the same company would be on strike starting today at 4 p.m. for a week.

Even the bus line we had taken to get here was affected, so no bus would come to this stop for the next several days.

“Can they even strike like this all of a sudden?”

Olivia looked astonished, but this probably happened because we didn’t usually check the SL app. The notice must have gone up about a week ago…

Of course, since we normally didn’t take the bus, we didn’t need to check the SL app.

I regretted not checking the app more carefully the day before, but it was too late now.

“What do we do?”