By the time the sun started to sink behind the trees, the whole school had drifted into the cafeteria.
Nobody had called a meeting. It just happened. People were hungry, and the kitchen smelled like garlic and broth, and after everything that had happened in the last day, nobody really wanted to be alone. So one by one they came in, filled their bowls, and found a seat at the long tables, until all nineteen of them were packed into the room shoulder to shoulder.
It was louder than it had been in weeks. Byung-ho was showing Taesung the exact grip he'd used to crack Jin's arm, and Taesung was pretending to be horrified. Do-yun had cornered Mina and was asking her, for the fourth time, whether the hammer guy had actually hurt. Haneul sat at the end of a bench with his broken staff laid across his knees, eating one-handed and saying nothing, while Areum kept sneaking extra pieces of meat into his bowl when she thought he wasn't looking.
