"WHEN THE WORLD AROUND YOU IS BURNING, LOOK AT THE STARS."
Transfer student Minni Lee has a premonition. Not all is right at Newhurst University. Between a hateful blog post and the strange death of campus mean girl, Somin, exists a tangled mystery...
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JUSTICE WAS A FUNNY THING.
The odd thing about justice was that it was always a matter of perspective. In Min's eyes, everyone was guilty. The wealthy were violent and everyone else let it happen in silence. Justice did not exist.
If it did, the students would have put Somin's killer behind bars the moment it happened. They would have asked more questions about that night. They'd have mourned her.
They'd have done anything but this.
The early morning light winded through the trees across the near-empty quad. On the other side of the stretch, the Nameless General statue stood still in unvoiced horror. Its base was tainted with speckles of blood-red spray paint. The flowers, a gift for a dead girl, had all been disemboweled and replaced with random bits of trash. Devil horns and a mustache had been drawn over Somin's portrait. Thick lettering stretched across the pavement in front of her smiling face-
A slut even in hell, it said.
Min gagged and ran for the nearest bathroom. Jisoo was kind enough to hold back her hair in the stall as she lost what little breakfast they had eaten together just thirty minutes prior.
The thick of tears stole her voice, but she managed a weak rasp. "This place is sick. I can't."
"I know, Min." Jisoo just softly tucked a free curl behind her ear, voice whispered and full of pity. Her affection made Min sob harder. Jisoo sounded so defeated.Numb. For as many parties she went to, the things she must have seen, she had to be.
"How are you so used to this?"
"Don't know." Jisoo let out a deep, twitching exhale as if the thought alone was heavy to bear. "It's been like this for years. We just live with it."
Jisoo's gentle stroking of her hair paused and her hand retracted in favor of handing Min a tissue to wipe her mouth with. The ballerina took it eagerly and tried to steady herself.
She looked every bit as miserable as she felt, her arms tucked around herself tightly, blood cold and curdled. Everywhere she looked, she was haunted by the ghost of Somin. The glitz of her sequins and the shimmer of her lip gloss. Her runny mascara as the light left her eyes. The look of betrayal in them had built a home in Minni's mind no matter how hard she tried to get rid of it.
The pain of that memory was raw, seething.
Min came from a world in which she had never looked evil in the face until now. Cruelty, back in the salted air of the cape, was haphazard and clumsy. It was human more often than not. Something born of anger and extinguished just as quickly. She was accustomed to the shuffle of divorce papers and muffled arguments, not anonymous blogs and murder conspiracies.
