Chapter 88- Ungrateful
Jin-woo placed the hand he was holding the phone with into his jacket pocket, and after fixing his glasses with the other he put it into the other pocket. He then made no further movements under the gazes of the students and teachers, only remaining silent.
Everyone seeing this had their expressions change. From the looks of it, Jin-woo seemed to know what they had been talking about, but rather than giving an explanation he just remained silent. What did this mean?
Murmurs echoed in the crowd as people angrily discussed this sudden revelation under their breaths.
Jin-woo lowered his head and his fists clenched in his jacket pockets. Even though a bout of nervousness was rising in his heart, he remained relatively calm on the outside as he had known this would happen. However, he suddenly heard a voice cut through the murmurs, which almost made his calm exposure falter.
"Jin, is it true? Did you bring the virus into the school?"
Jin-woo lifted his head to look at Ah-yong who was staring at him with a complex expression. He slowly nodded, only to see tears well up in her eyes.
Jin-woo's fists clenched even harder, and he had to look down to avoid her gaze.
"I can't believe this, it's actually true!"
"He was the one who brought the virus to the school, if it weren't for him my Min-hee wouldn't have died…*sobs*"
"My brother died because of him..."
"He's the cause of all of this, it wasn't some terrorist attack."
Jin-woo's silent admittance of guilt immediately caused the students to erupt in a cacophony of either sobs or angry curses.
"Why did you do it?! You did it on purpose, didn't you?!"
One especially emotional girl yelled at Jin-woo with tears in her eyes.
However, Ah-yong wiped her tears and quickly retorted.
"How can that be? There's no way Jin-woo did this on purpose, it must be an accident."
"Yeah, I don't think this was on purpose, after all, he's the one who saved us."
"Exactly, why would he curse us all to hell like this only to then sacrifice himself to save us?"
After Ah-yong came to Jin-woo's defense a few students, boys primarily, spoke up. However, dissenting voices to their claims rose as well.
"He was probably feeling guilty after what he did, so he decided to help."
"Yeah, or worse, it was all an act so he could escape when those people came for him and Mai-sun."
"No way."
"That's possible, and his motive could have been because he was being bullied."
"Wait, you might be right about that!"
Suddenly, the accusations took a strange turn, the teachers who had been silent tried to step in to calm everyone down, but it only seemed to agitate the students even more.
At this moment, a voice was suddenly heard among the crowd.
"Jin-woo did it on purpose, and I have proof!"
Upon hearing this, everyone turned to look at the male student who spoke. The students in the crowd, who were on Jin-woo's side, furrowed their brows at this male student. This was because the male student was none other than Ye-jun.
Ye-jun fixed his glasses after getting everyone's attention, then calmly explained.
"When we were at the tennis court, Jin-woo kept saying that if we left, we would die. This was before he saw or knew anything about the zombies. At the time we thought he was just having an episode, but thinking back on it now, he obviously knew about the virus."n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om
The students of Class 1A had their faces change as they recalled something like that had indeed happened.
"Is that even true? How do we know you're not just lying like before?"
"No, it's true, we all saw it happen."
One male student from Class 1A spoke up to confirm Ye-jun's words. Following this more students from Class 1A spoke up to testify.
"Jin-woo even locked someone from our class outside the tennis court when the person wanted to enter."
"Yeah, this is all his fault, we shouldn't have trusted him in the first place."
As more of these statements echoed out, one could see that a majority of them, no, all of them were coming from the students of Class 1A.
All of the regrets they felt from upsetting Jin-woo were dashed aside, and the grievances from being ostracized fueled their dagger-like words and their equally sharp glares aimed at Jin-woo.
However, even though Jin-woo could hear their words he remained silent. As for their glares, he did not see them. Not only because he had his head down, but also because Seong was standing in front of him, glaring back at the students of Class 1A in the crowd.
But at that moment, a voice suddenly cut through the noise once again.
"He's not at fault."
After this voice fell, Seo-joon hobbled out of the crowd with his crouch and stood directly in front of Jin-woo. Well, in front of Seong.
Looking at the crowd, Seo-joon calmly admitted.
"I was the one who took the pill from Jin-woo when we were fighting and threw it into an open water valve behind the gymnasium. If anyone should be blamed for this, it's me, leave him out of it."
Upon hearing this, the students in the cafeteria momentarily became silent. But that silence was broken by Ye-jun.
"Both of you are at fault. You might even be in on it together."
Seo-joon immediately shot Ye-jun a disgusted look, but the students from Class 1A spoke up.
"That's right, the both of you could have planned the entire thing."
"Both of you are at fault."
"We should just kick them out."
"Yeah, who is to say that Jin-woo doesn't have another one of those pills? We would turn into zombies without knowing how!"
As the students from Class 1A spoke up after Ye-jun one after the other, a voice suddenly erupted from the crowd.
"EVERYONE ENOUGH!!"
The person then stepped forward out of the crowd. Even though Jin-woo couldn't see the person's appearance, he recognized the voice to be from the youth who had told him about Micah.
After stepping forward, the youth sharply spun around and fiercely pointed at his classmates and angrily yelled.
"Ungrateful bastards! If it wasn't for Jin-woo warning us of the zombie virus you all would have been eaten at the tennis courts! If it wasn't for him leading the zombies away from us so we could escape to the gymnasium, we would have become zombies! If it weren't for him sacrificing himself to trap the zombies in the auditorium and gymnasium, would any of you be here to spout all this nonsense?!
Ungrateful bastards the lot of you! Why did I even try to speak on your behalf? And this bastard…"
The youth pointed at Ye-jun.
"…Why are you following his lead? Have you forgotten he left Yoon-min and Micah to die? If anyone is the villain here, he is, he can't be trusted with any kind of power or else he'll get everyone killed!"
"But didn't Jin-woo also leave Soo-ha and Ho-jin to die at the tennis court? How is that any different from what Ye-jun did?"
"That's true, the only reason why Ye-jun even closed the door was that Micah wanted to enter with Yoon-min who had already been bitten. It was either closing the door, or becoming zombies, and Ye-jun chose to close the door. And yet, Jin-woo is the one getting all the praise, while we get criticized."
"Right, and besides, with everything said and done, his mother was the one involved in stealing that virus and he was the one who brought it to school, so it's still partly his fault the virus is here, and his mother's fault this apocalypse started."
"You-!"
The youth was so angered by the fact that they were still sticking up for Ye-jun that he momentarily became speechless, not knowing which swear word to use from his vocabulary for these people.