Episode 9.
Crash.
Sena, her eyes wide open, clenched the hand she had raised to open the door. Her gaze wavered aimlessly.
Hesitating for a moment, and hearing no further sound from inside, Sena slowly opened the door.
The moment the door opened, Sena came face to face with something in the shape of ‘Sean Frost’. But the being Sena encountered was hard to call ‘Sean’…
“…Ah…”
The source of the explosive sound was a shattered laboratory beaker that had hit the wall. Sean, leaning over with one hand gripping the edge of the table, held a shard of the beaker in his other hand.
No, to be precise, he was clutching it.
His blue-green eyes were bitterly cold. Enough to make Sena’s words stick in her throat.
“…You again?”
“Your hand… Is it okay? That shard, if you hold it like that…”
Unless he had thrown the beaker, could it even break in that location like that?
But there was no time to think further. Sean, holding the largest fragment, walked towards the door.
Sena froze, horrified. But the moment Sean tried to pass her and exit the door, her feet moved on their own, stepping sideways to block the doorway.
“…Move.”
“Sean… Your hand… Blood… It’s…”
“I know. Move.”
Once again, Sena’s hand moved faster than her thoughts. She grabbed the wrist of the hand clutching the glass shard. The skin under her palm was cold as ice.
“Why… are you angry?”
In the silence born from Sean’s lack of answer, the voice Sena had tried hard to forget resurfaced.
“Sean is… my son is currently… I can only call him a psychopath…”
Was this what that meant? When he gets angry, he becomes this scary…
Sean quietly watched Sena tremble slowly. Then, he abruptly threw the glass shard he was holding in the direction opposite to where Sena stood.
The fairly large fragment hit the hard floor and split in two.
“You… have a bad habit of trying to see me as a much better person than I am, unnecessarily.”
“……”
“But there’s no reason for me to play along with that, actually.”
It felt like her voice would tremble if she spoke now, but Sena had to speak.
“E-earlier… I ran into Nathan Stewart. Did Nathan do something to you?”
Sena moved her thumb, tightening her grip on Sean’s wrist.
“You’ve been investigating me within 18 hours. And—”
Sean stared at Sena sideways from a distance of less than a hand’s span.
“—you found out my nickname is ‘half-breed’.”
“……In New York… do people use that word for others?”
“Not openly. In my maternal family’s social circles, to be precise, that’s what I was called behind my back.”
In the world Sean lived in, Santa Claus existed only on TV or inside posters. He wasn’t real. Even though New York undoubtedly had winters ten times colder than California’s, with endless snowfall.
He always received books as Christmas presents. Not a single year was an exception.
Shame and despair, when chewed over by oneself, become depression, but when held in another’s hand, they become a dagger. Nathan had come prepared with the sharpest weapon of all.
“He said even your mother was ashamed of you.”
What was so difficult about saying ‘that’s not true’? Why couldn’t he say it?
“And despite having run all the way to California because of that, why are you making such a scene here?”
But he had never run away. If he had, he would have blended in and settled for mediocrity from the moment he arrived here.
Sean clenched the hand that had held the glass shard tightly. Droplets of blood, reaching his fingers, dripped philip, philip onto the floor.
That made it 1:1. But Sean had absolutely no intention of ending the game with Nathan Stewart in a draw.
“Sena Cruz, I’m telling you for the last time. Don’t talk to me anymore.”
To do that, he first had to detach this naive orange from himself. Yesterday it was getting hit by a volleyball on the arm, but no one knew what might come next.
“Why…?”
How many times did they have to repeat this conversation? Sean swept his hair back irritably with his non-bloodied hand.
“You’re too annoying. You’re much more oblivious than you think. You arbitrarily do things others don’t even want, and to me, it’s all interference, not help.”
It’s not my fault I have to talk like this.
It’s only natural that words get sharper the more you repeat them.
And I have to be this harsh for you to get it, so it can’t be helped. Reaching that thought, Sean finally looked at Sena. And then he fell silent.
“……”
“……”
Her blue eyes, resembling the deep sea, were just looking at him. That was all.
Yet, Sean couldn’t say anything more. Sena wasn’t even crying.
Sena silently gazed into Sean’s eyes with her sea-submerged pupils. Eventually, Sena turned away first and left the classroom.
Only then did Sean realize he had been holding his breath the entire time.
‘Where is he?’
Ben went up to the 3rd floor. He was looking for Nathan right now.
But the moment he turned the corner, something bumped thud against his chest, pushing him back.
Ben, with the reflexes of an aspiring football player, immediately grabbed the other person’s arm to prevent them from falling.
“Oof.”
Recognizing the identity of the person pressing their forehead with the back of their hand, Ben’s expression naturally soured. It was Sena Cruz.
As he was about to say something, the moment his eyes met Sena’s, he involuntarily tilted his head slightly.
‘What, is she crying?’
Upon closer inspection, Ben realized it was his misconception. It just looked that way because her blue irises were shimmering.
Similarly realizing who the other person was, Sena shook off his grip and passed by him without a word.
‘If you headbutt someone, shouldn’t you apologize?’
Of course, it was mutual fault, so Sena wasn’t the only one who needed to apologize.
His scowl lasted only a moment. As Ben tried to go on his way, he glanced back once, then again.
Ben, Nathan, Lucas, and Daniel were resting on the bleacher seats after finishing a basketball game in P.E. class.
Except for Ben, the other three thought Ben would be furious about the essay posted during lunch, but surprisingly, Ben didn’t harp on it.
Of course, it was also because Lucas had immediately disposed of it before Ben could see it. Lucas, drinking a sports drink, followed Ben’s gaze.
The 4th graders were doing forward and backward rolls on mats in pairs.
“So, you really got Sean Frost good?”
“Landed perfectly.”
At Daniel’s question, Nathan lifted one corner of his mouth and wiggled his clenched fist only at the wrist. It was a motion that would have been an uppercut if he’d moved his arm.
“With what?”
“Sean Frost’s maternal family is Von Eisenberg. Direct lineage, to be precise.”
The trio’s gazes instantly focused on Nathan. Their faces were surprised, but Nathan himself let out a soundless snort.
“So what? He’s a half-breed with Asian blood, not even acknowledged within his own family. Just a leftover.”
The value of the ‘Frost’ surname that Philip had built through Arta was certainly not insignificant. But in the eyes of an old-money family descended from German nobility with accumulated vast wealth, he could only be ‘just an Asian half-breed’.
“Anyway, you guys stay out of it now. I’m going to crush that half-breed bastard myself.”
Nathan, with both hands in his track suit pockets and legs crossed, wore a sneer on his lips. It was the first time he had stepped forward like this.
“Well, whatever… By the way, the one who’s always sticking to Sean Frost—”
Ben’s gaze returned to the 4th graders in front of him.
They were all doing forward rolls on the mat like a bowling game with oranges, but among them, Sena kept rolling weakly in strange directions, like a bowling ball veering off the lane.
“Spring! What’s with you today? You have to go forward, forward!”
Sena’s best friend, Leila, shouted as if frustrated.
“Doesn’t she kinda look like this?”
Ben took his phone out of his pocket and searched for something on the web. Everyone’s eyes gathered on the phone screen Ben held out.
It was a picture of a pure white Samoyed puppy smiling brightly.
“……”
“……”
“What?”
Under their gazes that seemed to ask ‘why are you asking when you don’t even know that?’, Ben scrunched up one side of his face and mimed grabbing his own neck.
“Isn’t he… cute?
