Veil || Lee Donghyuck

Chapter 9: The Art Club

Baek Dani would be lying if she said her mental state was okay.

The random, threatening text message got her on edge and she had running thoughts of whether becoming friends with Geurim was a mistake. She knew damn well that Geurim was close to the Dream Four. She told herself plenty of times before that it would be bad to get mixed with those popular boys. Now she's paying for it.

It made her heart ache because she liked her time with all of them.

Honestly and genuinely.

However, her ultimate goal was still the same. She was going to study abroad and live a life much different from now. What was the point to staying friends if she'll be gone in a few months?

Speaking of...

The time for student-teacher conference meetings for the third year students have come; the day Dani has been waiting for since the semester had started. With the day going by as normal (well, as normal as it can be while Dani tried to avoid every kind of social interaction possible), after school hours was when the meetings began. With Dani's name so high on the class roster, she was one of the first people called.

Dani popped into the small conference room that Teacher Do reserved for the meetings. She gave the older man a curt nod before taking the empty seat across from him. Just before she could bring out her specifically printed college brochures from her backpack, her teacher chimed in, "How are you today, Dani?"

The question caught Dani by surprise. She let out a hum before softly replying, "I'm fine..."

"Are you sure?" Okay, so, he knows something is off. Dani frowned, leading her teacher to dismissively wave it off. "Sorry, I don't mean to intrude but it just seems like you're down today. If there's anything bothering you, Dani, you can always bring it up to me."

Dani thought about it. Wouldn't this be the perfect time to bring up Geurim's bullying situation? She opened her mouth, ready for the words to leave... but they got caught in her throat. She clasped her lips together. It was so frustrating to not bring up this dire situation, but it wasn't hers to tell in the first place.

Let's use this meeting to distract myself from this.

"I'm fine, Teacher Do, I promise."

"Okay, Dani..."  His expression seemed unsure. Of course her comment wasn't believable at all when her whole heart wasn't in it. At least, he was moving on from it. "Anyway, you're prepared for today's meeting?" Dani got the cue to go ahead and take out the brochures she printed specifically for this. Each brochure had the basic information for the colleges she wished to attend. The homeroom teacher smiled. "Ah, Baek Dani, you seem to know more on what you want to do after you graduate, hmm?"

Dani nodded. "Yes, and these are some of the colleges I looked up that have great art programs." She slid over each page to her teacher so he can get a look of them himself. Teacher Do picked up some one by one and skimmed through them. He bobbed his head along, obviously impressed with the research Dani done for herself. "There are more but these are my top 5."

"They're all quite top notch colleges," Teacher Do replied. He peeked up at her through his thick glasses. "Either in France or The Netherlands?" He hummed, processing Dani's choices. "Well, you did mention you dabbled in learning some French, and your English is stable enough. You'll do just fine studying abroad. These colleges alone are super expensive to attend, but I do see there are scholarships available."