This is all we've got

Chapter three: I don't like this place

Sixteen didn't see Baek Kyung again in the next scene she was stuck in. Nor did she come across him in the spare time in which the writer didn't need her, leaving her to linger and exist as she wanted.

Ever since she'd met Thirteen, her fellow extra, the library had become her go to place simply because it had seemed to be his favourite place to linger aimlessly. She'd sit next to him as he peacefully flicked through books or stared out the window contemplatively, enjoying the sunlight streaming in like a cat seeking warmth. Sixteen herself wasn't the biggest fan of reading, especially fictional romances (maybe she's a little biased), but it had become her goal to find the ones with the most interesting pictures. She loved the photography books and any scientifical diagram she could find. She would pore over it and show Thirteen her favourite ones. He wouldn't say anything, and she didn't expect him to, but he would smile at her when she showed him one and would touch any he particularly liked.

There was one that she remembered as his favourite. It had been a book on gardening and had pictures of different kinds of flowers. One of them, a pretty sunset-coloured one called a trumpet creeper had caught her eye and so she'd shown it to Thirteen. The boy had stared at that picture for far longer than he had any other, with the same look he had when he stared out the window sometimes. It was a very far away one, one that looked impossibly sad for a background character like Thirteen, one that told her he was missing something, but she couldn't figure out what it could be.

Deciding the writer probably wouldn't mind all too much, Sixteen had carefully torn out the picture to give to Thirteen who'd given her the biggest and brightest smile she'd ever seen from him.

Now, she sat at Thirteen's old seat, the one place in the library that got the perfect amount of sunlight. It was usually vacant these days and so she tended to sit there by herself, feeling lonely like she hadn't since she'd met Thirteen.

Sixteen believed that she has been self-aware since the very start of this manhwa. She didn't know how or why, maybe she really was just that insignificant, but if she traced the funny little drama going on between the main characters, she would say that not long before it started, that was to say not long before Yeo Juda met Oh Namju, was the first time she could say with certainty that she had known.

Nameless student sixteen who's only role was to provide the backdrop for other characters in a story that wasn't for her. She hadn't even been all that unhappy with her role or lack thereof, but one small thing that had always made her sad had been the lack of name. Like the writer hadn't even given her enough thought to give her anything more than student sixteen. So she'd given herself one. Sixteen. Yes, it was a number. But the writer had given her that specific number and while she wasn't a fan of what the writer put them all through, they had still created her. So she'd stuck with what little she'd been given. Sixteen. It wasn't so bad a number, an even one that could be divided in half again and again and again and again. That's how she felt somehow, divided over and over by the writer until she was small enough to disappear.

She'd felt less small when she met Thirteen.

It had been near the entrance of their expensive academy, in a hallway where the A3 had been striding through arrogantly, aloofly receiving the attention and praise of the students who lined the walls, crying out their approval and love. Sixteen had been one among them, not quite screaming out, thankfully, but the writer had definitely made her grin and cheer just as lovestruck as any other.

Maybe she would have been more enthusiastic in appreciating their good looks if she hadn't been painfully aware of how set-up everything was, of how deliberate the scene was right down to the moment one poor girl tripped right onto the lap of the prince of the school with her lips accidentally falling on his cheek.