WHO IS THAT GIRL

Chapter 16: Accident

Friday arrived with a sky the color of polished steel.

The delivery entrance sat behind the auditorium where trucks bumped over a narrow curb and reversed into a short tunnel painted with yellow stripes. Clipboards lived here. So did coffee cups and duct tape and the specific brand of frustration that logistics people wielded like a badge.

Mirae tied her hair back, a rare concession, and pulled her hoodie up anyway. Yuna handed her a lanyard—STAFF, red.

“You’re in charge of checking passes and pointing them to the right door. If they argue, call me. If they flirt, call me. If they get lost, call me. If they cry, get them water and call me.”

Mirae smiled. “Got it.”

“And if anyone from the council shows up,” Yuna added dryly, “tell them to carry boxes.”

Vans arrived. Passes flashed. People asked the same three questions in different irritated tones. Mirae found she liked answering them, the simple satisfaction of “down that ramp and left.” The tunnel smelled like rubber tires and clean dust. It smelled like work.

Rihan appeared once, unannounced, like a shadow discovering its owner. He didn’t interrupt, just watched her direct a driver with the exact efficiency he admired in a schedule.

“You’re good at this,” he said when the van rolled on.

“It’s just pointing,” she replied.

“It’s clarity,” he corrected. “Don’t underestimate it.”

Before she could answer, a second van nosed into the lane and Rihan stepped back, his presence evaporating like fog.

Harim came next, carrying two boxes stacked to his chin. “They said volunteers,” he puffed. “So I volunteered my arms.”

“You’re going to drop those,” Mirae said, reaching for the top box.

“I won’t,” he said, wobbling. “Probably.”

She took half the weight and he flashed her a grateful grin. “See? Teamwork.”

They set the boxes down. For one quiet second, it felt like something ordinary: two people doing a job, no audience, no sharp edges. She almost forgot to be scared.

“Break?” Harim said. “There’s a vending machine with drinks that taste like regret.”

She smiled despite herself. “In five minutes.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

He jogged off, light-footed. She watched him go and, for the first time in days, didn’t look over her shoulder to see who was looking.

That was when the third van pulled into the lane—too fast, too close.

“Stop!” Mirae called, stepping forward, palm up. The driver, distracted by a phone, braked late. The bumper kissed the yellow stripe. Her pulse spiked. She moved to the window. “Pass, please.”

The driver kept the phone pressed to his ear and waved paper without looking. Wrong color. Wrong logo. She shook her head. “This isn’t ours. You need the east gate.”

“Same difference,” he said, voice bored.

“It isn’t,” she said, firmer. “Please turn around. You’re blocking scheduled deliveries.”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s five minutes.”

She stood her ground. “Please turn around.”

He muttered something and shifted into reverse. The van rolled back—too fast, too blind. A shout rose from the ramp—two underclassmen with a cart of framed posters, suddenly in the van’s path.

Mirae ran without thinking. “Watch out!”

She reached the cart and yanked it sideways, the wheels shrieking. The van’s mirror clipped where the frames had been a second before, smacked metal, kept rolling.

“Hey!” a voice snapped—Rihan’s, sharp as a dropped glass. He stepped into the lane, hand flat on the hood, expression colder than the sky. “Neutral. Off the phone. Now.”

The driver faltered. “Who are you?”

“Seo Rihan,” he said, not raising his voice. “Student council president. You’re on private property. Try again.”

The phone went down. The engine cut. For a second, silence roared.

Mirae’s hands shook on the cart handle. The underclassmen bowed at her in a rush, their thank-yous tumbling over each other. She nodded, breath uneven.

“Are you hurt?” Rihan asked, turning to her, eyes scanning quickly—wrists, knees, the tremble in her fingers.

“I’m fine,” she said, only half lying.

A shadow cut across the lane. Joonseo. He had come as he said—quiet, invisible until he was there. His gaze took in the scene—the van, the cart, Mirae’s hands—and settled on her with a focus that made the rest of the world dim.

“What happened?” he asked Rihan without looking away from Mirae.

“Driver. Wrong gate. Wrong attention span,” Rihan said. “She moved the cart.” He inclined his head, the barest nod—a rare, clean acknowledgment. “Fast.”

Joonseo’s jaw eased by a fraction. “Good,” he said softly, to her more than anyone.

Harim jogged back into view, two cans clutched victoriously. “I brought—” He stopped, eyes widening. “What did I miss?”

“Everything and nothing,” Taewoo said, appearing from the tunnel with a slow clap that wasn’t really applause. No one had seen him arrive. He tilted his head at the driver. “Congratulations, you almost made the day interesting.”

The driver, now very aware of the sudden congregation of frighteningly composed teenagers, mumbled apologies, put the van in gear, and crept away.

No one moved until the taillights dissolved into daylight.

Then Yuna popped out from behind a stack of crates like a jack-in-the-box with a clipboard. “No fatalities,” she announced briskly. “Excellent. Mirae, hydration. Harim, boxes. Rihan, stop freezing people. Taewoo—” she paused, assessed his grin, “—don’t touch anything.”

Taewoo placed a hand over his heart. “I am deeply wounded.”

“Good,” Yuna said. “We have gauze.”

It broke the moment. Breath returned. So did motion. Harim pressed a cold can into Mirae’s hand. She held it to her wrist. Rihan’s gaze lingered like a question. Joonseo stepped closer by an inch, that inch containing too much.

“Thank you,” Mirae said to no one in particular and all of them at once.

“Don’t thank me,” Yuna said, already corralling a dolly, “thank your reflexes.”

Taewoo leaned near enough for his words to be just for her. “See? This is why I like you. You make even boring doors dangerous.”

“Go away,” Mirae said, but gently this time.

He smirked and obeyed—for once—vanishing back into the tunnel’s stripe-lit mouth.

Rihan slid his hands into his pockets, returning to his preferred distance. “Keep checking passes,” he told her. “I’ll post someone at the turn.”

“Who?” she asked.

“Someone who doesn’t answer to rumor,” he said, and was gone.

Harim bumped her shoulder with his in a quiet, friendly nudge. “Vending machine still on the table?”

She nodded. “Ten minutes.”

“I’ll count.”

He left, whistling badly.

Joonseo didn’t move. The red STAFF tag on her lanyard had turned against her hoodie, bright as a wound.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.

“I am,” she said, and made herself meet his eyes.

He held her gaze, searching. Whatever he found there softened his mouth by a millimeter. “Good,” he said, and stepped back like stepping forward would have been fire.

He turned to go. She watched him walk to the end of the lane and take up a position where she could not see him unless she looked—but where she would know he was there if anything moved wrong.

It felt, for the first time, like protection that wasn’t choking.

When the next van pulled in, she lifted her hand, steady this time. “Pass, please.” The driver showed it. Correct logo. Correct color. She pointed him down the ramp, voice clear.

By noon, the tunnel had its rhythm. People arrived, argued, complied, carried. The world rearranged itself around simple instructions. For a few bright hours, Mirae was not a rumor or a question. She was a person with a job.

And still, beneath the ordinary movement, the fault lines formed.

Taewoo watched from shade as if he were learning the pattern of her gestures for later.

Harim hovered just close enough that his presence felt like a blanket you could borrow when the air turned cold.

Rihan ghosted in and out, smoothing bottlenecks, adjusting flows, ensuring his machine sang.

Joonseo stood at the mouth of the lane like a weather change, felt more than seen.

They didn’t touch. They didn’t need to. The space between them was the story now.

When the last truck came and went, Yuna exhaled like a prayer. “We survived,” she said, pen ticking a final box.

Mirae smiled, exhausted in the right way. “We did.”

Yuna’s eyes warmed. “You’re good at this,” she said again. “Come back tomorrow?”

Mirae nodded. “I will.”

She took a step toward the sunlight outside the tunnel and caught her reflection in the thin mirror of a stacked frame—hoodie and all, hair pulled back, lanyard bright. For the first time since she’d stepped into Cheongdam’s halls, she recognized the girl looking back.

Not beautiful. Not luminous. But steady.

The calm wouldn’t last. She knew that. There would be another rumor, another confrontation, another door with the wrong person behind it. But now, she also knew where to stand when it came—near the light, where people blink, where their certainty falters.

As she walked out, she felt their orbits shift again—closer, tighter, more dangerous.

Fault lines don’t announce themselves. They whisper.

And then, under the right weight, they move.

Today, they had moved.

Tomorrow, they would c***k.