Chapter 134

Maru headed home after stepping out of Miso’s car. He thought he’d opened the door quietly, but he could see his mom coming out of her room.“You’re home.”“Yeah. Why did you wake up? You must be tired.”“No mother would sleep soundly with her son being out late. Go take a shower before you go to sleep.”His mom sounded cool in the message, but she really must’ve been worried. She stepped back into her room with a small sigh. Maru silently bowed towards her before going to the bathroom for a shower. By the time he came back, it was 1am. He considered going to sleep just like that before sitting down at his desk.‘The auditorium, huh.’He took out his script and grabbed his pen. He could still see Miso’s frustrated expression in his head. She probably couldn’t accept the fact that the tower she built with her friends was about to crumble so easily, her words were filled with rage and frustration back in the car. Hearing emotions like that honestly made Maru feel like he was partly responsible. Humans always walk towards the future, but their motivations often stem from memories. If Miso didn’t get so mad in the car, Maru would’ve just accepted the situation as a fact of life and moved on. After all, the club could always practice in their club room instead of the auditorium. But Miso did get mad. In fact, she even took out a part of this anger on the club members. Maybe this was her way of asking them to help her. After all, she wasn’t the type that could simply tell people to do well. She really needed to whip them into a shape that she knew they’d do well. To be honest, Maru was touched from the side of Miso he saw today. It was difficult to see people who not only truly cared about the work they did, but also had the conviction to take the harder route regardless of easier ones. Miso wasn’t even a member of the Blue Sky club anymore. Despite that, she was putting in more work into the club than anyone else.Not even pros did this. Pros proved their worth to people and received compensation for it. The money the school paid Miso was pitifully little, especially considering her value. No pro worked in a place that refused to pay them for their worth. Plus, working as an instructor for a school really wasn’t particularly good for Miso’s resume either. Not only that, she was putting a considerable amount of work into this club as well. In the end, she was only here for personal reasons.The club was very precious to her. That’s what made Maru feel sorry for her. Maru spun the pen in his hand as he focused on the script. There wasn’t much else he could do right now other than this. He needed to breathe life into his character, so that his character could be as real as real could be on stage. “I need to work hard now that I saw how serious she’s going on about this.”He wouldn’t be a proper human if he didn’t reciprocate even a little bit to her emotions. Maru spent the next few minutes analyzing his lines and imagining himself on the stage. As he was going about it, his phone vibrated. It was a message from Daemyung.[You asleep?]Maru responded with a ‘no.’[Instructor Miso seemed really disappointed, didn’t she? I keep thinking about her telling us we were being lazy.]Maru could almost see Daemyung drooping dejectedly from the other side of the screen. The boy probably became even moodier than usual as more of the night passed. Maru thought for a second before sending him a small briefing of what Miso told him. Daemyung was good at keeping secrets, so he should be fine even if Maru told him about what was happening.[Really? So if we fail here, we’ll get pushed away by the baseball club?][Probably.][What do we do?][We just do the best we can.]Maru didn’t get a response after that. Daemyung was probably reading his script.“Do the… best we can.”It was a promise Maru was making with himself. Often, people say that they don’t know what to do, but most of the people asking this question already knew the answer deep in their hearts. That was because the answer was simple. If you want something, chase it. Just modifying that sentence was enough to bring about a satisfying answer.In the end, the method wasn’t what’s important. All that mattered was how much focus you were putting into your work. Scritch scratch. Maru’s pen moved across his script. This was going to be a long night. He was sure of it.

* * *It seemed that Maru wasn’t the only one who decided he needed practice last night, he realized such when he noticed the dark circles hanging around Dojin’s eyes. “Didn’t get any sleep?”“Not like I could get any.”Dojin raised his worn out script with a grin.“Morning… yawn.”Daemyung stepped into the class next with his eyes half-closed.“When the hell did you sleep?”“...Like four?”“How did you wake up?”“Alarm clocks, man. I feel like I’m gonna collapse.”Daemyung put his bag on his desk with wobbly legs. The trio looked at each other before grinning.“What was our first class today?”“Math.”“So if we sleep, we’re dead.”“Just tape your eyes open, dude.”Maru gave the two of them a piece of gum. He always carried some in his pocket, which was a habit he picked up after spending many night shifts driving a bus. “Work hard until lunch.”“I’m gonna sleep till first class first.”“Me too.”Maru flopped down onto his desk along with his friends. This situation reminded him of a friend he had back in school that always slept through classes. He couldn’t remember the boy’s name or face, but he did remember that the boy showed up to their high school reunion in a Benz. Everyone wondered at the time how the boy managed to get so successful despite sleeping so much, but Maru felt like he knew why this was the case now.‘What you see isn’t everything, huh.’Maru closed his eyes.