But she didn’t even glance at me. She simply passed the cup to Arden instead.
I became like a stranger standing in that room.
After some time, I walked out of her house. From that moment, we entered our first silent fight.
When classes resumed, I quietly switched my seat, no longer beside Arden.
The looks classmates gave me turned even more unusual.
Arden told others I picked on him because of Calliope, making himself seem like the wronged one.
Anywhere I appeared, the room swarmed with low voices about me.
“See? I told you he isn’t good enough for the class beauty. Yet he still kept hanging around.”
“Only the school hunk still bothers hanging around him. If that were me, I’d have gotten tired long ago. Yet he acts like he’s above everyone. What is he putting on a show for?”
In a blink, I turned into a pest everyone wanted to step on, even though I never did anything wrong.
Even Calliope stopped giving me the smallest look.
At that age, barely grown, how could I handle that shame?
In the end, I couldn’t hold myself anymore. After studying one evening, I went to speak with Calliope.
She was still marking Arden’s wrong answers on his papers. When she noticed I had come, a light shock flashed across her eyes.
We walked back together, and I told her everything on my mind, asking why she treated me like that.
But when I mentioned that Arden purposely tricked me into going to the amusement park and set me up with the umbrella, Calliope’s face tightened.
She quickly cut off my words, saying, “I don’t get why you’re always so against Arden. He isn’t the person you think he is.”
“Since knowing Arden, I found you to be so jealous. He treats you nicely, yet you point fingers at him again and again, just because he is better than you?”
“Do you even know how high his fever was that day? Even after you left, he kept blaming himself, wondering if he said something wrong.”
I froze.
I never thought that after all our years together, Calliope wouldn’t even believe me a little.
“Rayne, this is the first time you made me feel so sickened. Are you so average that you can’t stand someone more capable?”
I couldn’t accept that those sentences came from her.
Maybe she sensed she spoke too harshly, because she stretched her hand out to pull my sleeve.
“Sorry… that wasn’t what I meant.”
But I already had no hope left.
I ran back home as fast as I could and shut myself in my room for the entire day.