Did you know?
The homeroom teacher of the class I share with Yoo Ha-neul is bald.
He used to be a famous teacher at some academy, but honestly, to me, who’s never listened to any online lectures in this world, he just looked like a lazy man with a big belly and no hair.
He was also the teacher who made Yoo Ha-neul solve math problems several times during the first period.
And there was a small ladder in the school’s storage.
Surprisingly, the storage room was unlocked.
Did they think there was no reason for rich students to steal something from there?
Well, since there were several CCTV cameras around the storage room, they probably didn’t feel the need to lock the door.
Would I also be treated as invisible in the CCTV footage?
I assume so.
So, I confidently walked into the storage room and stole the ladder.
Well, it wasn’t really stealing.
I just took it out in plain sight.
Originally, I went there thinking there might be an extra chair, but this was even better.
School chairs can’t be folded.
Plus, carrying it around with Ye Sara’s body would’ve been a bit heavy.
On the other hand, this ladder was foldable, so it was manageable to carry around.
Though it was still heavy, it wasn’t as awkward to carry as a chair.
After finding the small ladder, I wandered around the classroom, looking for the homeroom teacher during the lesson.
And before long, I could see a shiny, gleaming bald head reflecting the sunlight coming through the window.
After wasting time during the last two periods doing all sorts of silly things, I realized that nobody reacted to me.
I confidently flung open the classroom door.
The teacher, who had been writing something on the blackboard, flinched and looked at me.
His face turned pale.
Well, after what happened in the first period, he has every reason to make that expression.
But what can he do?
The fall of his authority still has a long way to go.
Or should I say his dignity?
Ignoring someone is a denial of their character.
And yet, an adult—someone who’s supposed to be a teacher—is doing such a thing to a student.
Does someone like that really deserve any authority or dignity?
I walked confidently, setting up the ladder near the teacher’s desk.
Then I climbed up the ladder.
Ye Sara may be short compared to the average male height, but being on the ladder allowed me to look directly at the shiny bald head.
The teacher, looking up at me with an expression wondering what kind of stunt I was going to pull next, saw what I had brought from the storage room.
It was a spray bottle.
The kind used for watering plants or spraying cleaning solutions.
Of course, since I was going to spray it on a person, I had filled it with plain tap water, not any detergent.
And I sprayed it right on the teacher’s head.
“Grow, grow~”
I sang in a completely offbeat and out-of-tune melody.
!!!!!!
Above the heads of all the students in the classroom, I could see an invisible, giant exclamation mark floating.
At least, that’s what it seemed like to me.
Even though most students don’t pay much attention during class, spraying water on a teacher’s head and mocking their baldness is something that would never be imagined in a Confucian society.
No matter how indifferent these students might be, the teachers here still grade their tests and assign their scores.
If they want to maintain even the minimum scores to enter a university, they need to at least show some basic respect.
Of course, I don’t need to do that.
After all, I’m invisible.
But that doesn’t mean I can just ignore the ladder sitting here.
Ignoring me is one thing, but harassing or hurting me is another matter entirely.
I realized something after reading Ye Sara’s will.
No matter what Ye Sara did, the people around her always responded by ignoring her.
There was no description of anyone physically restraining or overpowering her.
That means there must have been some kind of directive.
It’s easy to physically subdue an elementary schooler, but no one did that to Ye Sara.
The Chairwoman was extremely wary of anyone showing interest in Ye Sara, but she was also equally averse to her getting hurt.
So, as long as I’m on this ladder, and there’s no way to move both the ladder and me without causing me to fall and get hurt, no one in this classroom can remove it.
Some students in the front row were trembling, trying to hold back their laughter.
Their heads were bent down, clearly suppressing their amusement.
Surprisingly, the teacher, even with his face flushed red, continued with the lesson.
Truly an astounding sense of professionalism.
…Or maybe not.
Considering how he’s been ignoring students, it doesn’t seem much like professionalism at all.
Even now, he’s ignoring me.
Well, let’s see how long he can maintain that act.
*
In the end, the teacher demonstrated remarkable patience and managed to ignore me until the very end.
But the students were different.
No one outright burst out laughing, but there was one student holding their stomach, suppressing giggles.
I had been careful not to let the water splash on the students while I was spraying it.
I didn’t intend to make any friends, but I also didn’t want to earn complete hostility.
In the original story, Ye Sara wreaked havoc on everything and became a public enemy without a single ally.
But I’m different in this world.
I will make it so that they can never ignore me, but also can’t easily torment me.
To do that, I need at least a few allies.
I need someone who can view me ‘positively’.
Even though it didn’t sit well with me to try and get along with those who had joined in abusing Ye Sara for years, if I followed that logic, I’d have to give up on Lee Soo-ah as well.
Even Lee Soo-ah, in the end, changed her mind and became my ally.
If someone is capable of acknowledging and repenting their sins, I’m willing to bring them over to my side.
Whether they realize it or just want to escape me, the teacher moved between the students.
Of course, I couldn’t spray water in between the students.
Besides, since I was on a ladder, it wasn’t easy to maintain the height and follow him.
But I had anticipated his attempt to escape.
I quickly pulled out a handkerchief from my pocket, came down from the ladder, and chased after the teacher.
There was a height difference between the teacher and me, but if I reached up, I could just barely touch his head.
As soon as I caught up to him, I started wiping his head with the handkerchief, saying,
“You need to wipe it nice and clean!”
!!!!!!
Once again, invisible exclamation marks floated above the students’ heads.
I could even see some students clenching their stomachs, trying to hold in their laughter.
Everyone was making an effort to ignore me.
The teacher hurriedly tried to escape from me, but it was still within the classroom.
I quickly followed him.
Honestly, though…
Even if the teacher had ignored me throughout the lesson, can we really call that ignoring?
After all, he was running away from me the whole time.
At this point, I can say it was a perfect success for the first day.
Leaving behind the drenched teacher who now looked like a soaked rat and the ladder next to the teacher’s desk, I left the classroom.
The lesson was almost over anyway.
It was time to return to Yoo Ha-neul.
As for cleaning up the classroom…
Well…
Wouldn’t the ‘visible’ people handle that?
*
So, the third period ended.
“Are you going again?”
Yoo Ha-neul asked when I, who had just barely returned to the classroom before the end of the lesson, stood up as soon as break time ended.
Since it was already the fourth period, if I skipped this class too, I would’ve skipped all my morning classes.
Of course, my attendance would be marked, but Yoo Ha-neul was likely more concerned about my grades.
No, more than my grades, perhaps she was worried about my duty as a student.
Yoo Ha-neul was always a diligent protagonist.
“Yeah. There’s still something I need to do.”
That’s right.
I still had something to do.
I needed to go to Lee Soo-ah’s class to make them laugh, and in the process, interrupt their lesson too.
This morning, I had embarrassed the teacher who had indirectly bullied Yoo Ha-neul during class.
But even after all that, I still had one more thing left to do.
“I’ll be back before class ends, so don’t worry.”
“It’s not that I’m worried about that…”
But Yoo Ha-neul didn’t stop me any further.
She probably realized that I had made up my mind.
I smiled slightly at Yoo Ha-neul as the next teacher entered the classroom, looking tense.
Then I stepped out of the room.
*
This time, I wasn’t heading to another class.
I was looking for something I had originally set my mind on finding.
Someone outside who had been helping Ye Sara.
Of course, I didn’t expect that person to be at the school right away.
But I thought there might at least be a way to contact them.
Though the middle school and high school locations were different, I didn’t know how to contact them directly, so there was little chance I would actually find them.
Still, if we hadn’t been in contact for a long time, wouldn’t they try to find a way to reach me?
If they knew I was alone, wouldn’t they approach me first?
I held onto that somewhat futile hope.
Well, if Ye Sara had contacted someone within the school before I arrived, wouldn’t they have given her a direct line or something?
And that thought of mine—
“Miss Ye Sara?”
—seemed to have hit the mark.
After wandering around the school grounds, not inside the building but outside, I reached a park within the school grounds, where I found an adult woman sitting on a park bench.
And when she saw my face, she brightened up, stood up, and spoke to me.
It was a young woman in a business suit with a light coat draped over it.
Her hair was neatly tied back in a bun.
Her look, which practically screamed “I’m a company employee”, felt a bit out of place in the school.
…No, before that, how did someone who clearly looked like an outsider even get into the school?
The woman placed her hand on her chest and let out an exaggerated sigh of relief, saying,
“Hah, I really thought something terrible had happened. I was worried you had completely cut ties with us.”
“…”
It seems like this person is indeed the ‘outsider’ I was looking for.
It seems that way, but…
…
Isn’t this all a bit too easy and unnatural?