Chapter Text
It's Nakyoung's first day, and on your first day you have to do everything in your power to stay at an equilibrium. Because there's just an inconvenient amount of eyes on your every little move and they're all placing you in their unique, judgy catalogues. So she makes sure to not wear a smile or a frown, but arch her eyebrows just a touch, look a mild amount surprised and curious. Don't look scared. Don't look happy. Since she's had so many first days, Nakyoung's gotten decent at it; it's been a lengthy game of trial and error.
After introducing herself briefly and waving to her new classmates, who are still squinting and chomping flavorless gum with their mouths wide open, Nakyoung is told to sit next to Sohyun. A bored looking girl with a blotchy red imprint on her cheek from smushing her face against her hand raises her arm. Her eyes are uncharted caverns, very serious and wise, and her flowing hair seems to try and obscure them. She looks and smells like a shampoo advertisement. When Nakyoung pulls out the chair beside her she doesn't greet her, only nods.
As of yet, Nakyoung doesn't own any textbooks, only a sporadically used planner from her last few travels. Her half of the desk looks glum and empty because Sohyun has made hers into home; she has a pile of dog-eared books and an overspilling Chiikawa pencil case, marked with colored ink stains, and some Snoopy figurines tangled up between her wired earphones. Nakyoung decorates her desk with that planner and her bundle of ballpoint pens wrapped in a hair tie. It still looks unnatural. Customizing desk-space seems to be in vogue around here. As she swivels her gaze across the classroom, she also notes rolling your blazer sleeves up to your elbows is. Maybe later. For now she places down a good-luck charm her mother insisted she always carry — a tubby, clear quartz cat. Her backpack is a trinket jungle but she doesn't yet know how appreciative Sohyun is of lavender scents and dried flowers so she'll pretend to be a minimalist.
"Are you into tarot and things like that?" Sohyun asks when Nakyoung is scribbling down her new timetable into her planner. The lead of her pencil has already snapped a few times so her notes are simply a charcoal smudge. Sohyun's voice is smooth and low, rocks eroded by a waterfall, lips set straight.
"Kinda," Nakyoung replies. Her hands are grayed and dusty and each desk duo is whispering into their partner's ears, fingers cupped, no one is allowed to lipread.
"Cool," Sohyun nods, and plunges her wired headphones deep into her ears. Minutes later, Nakyoung catches angsty pop rock reverberating through the barrier of her thick hair. At least Sohyun doesn't want to whisper-gossip.
── ⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──
After first period Nakyoung is told by her disinterested homeroom tutor to find the student support office where they can help her settle in, and she's ready to embark on such a meandering and aimless journey solo. But as soon as she has stepped out of her classroom, last in a long dawdling line of twittering teenage girls, someone grabs her by the wrist. They both startle, Nakyoung and her attacker, because they probably didn't expect to grasp onto a bumpy barrier of stones beneath her blazer sleeve.
"Excuse me?" Nakyoung feigns her politeness. It tends to throw school-girl roughness off course. The girl is short and round-faced but somehow still quite stern. Her hair has been wrangled into a neat bun and her thick-rimmed glasses are circular, everything about her is smooth and spherical, though her demeanor tells a different story. Nakyoung still feels angry dents in her wrist bone.
"You're the new kid," This girl barks at her. Nakyoung nods, not sure if her gormless wandering gave it away or the girl just has every face in the school memorized. "I'm Yoon Seoyeon, the student inclusions ambassador. I can give you a tour of the school then take you to the support office."
"Sure," Nakyoung agrees even if the last thing Seoyeon seems to want is to give said tour. She can do it. Doesn't everyone like bunking off second period? Seoyeon puffs out her pudgy cheeks and then turns on her heel, diving into the crowded hallways. "I'm Kim Nakyoung, by the way."
Seoyeon is marching a considerable few paces ahead and she weaves through the posse-lined halls like she assembled them herself. She gave no indication telling Nakyoung to follow but she's doing it nonetheless, even if Seoyeon hasn't acknowledged her introduction. Maybe the tour was forced courtesy and Nakyoung should have read through the scripted lines and realized her proposition was fake. Propelling herself forward, digging her mary jane toes into jammy school linoleum, Nakyoung catches up so she can bump shoulders with her 'tour guide'.
"I don't know if you heard. My name is Kim Na—"
"Heard you loud and clear. I already know, I've read your notes. Four transfers in one year. You're trouble," She breezily keeps her gaze ahead, not once sparing a glance at Nakyoung. Before Seoyeon quickens her speed once again, Nakyoung manages to steal a glimpse of the badge pinned to her blazer breast. Perhaps once upon a time she wore the silver 'student inclusions ambassador' brooch with pride, shoulders square and smile sympathetic, but the metal has weathered. Much like her interest in giving dopey new students a tour.
And Nakyoung's eyebrows furrow, because Seoyeon's throwing such cutting accusations from the get-go. They're made of dust and speculation, so they break apart like brittle pebbles when they hit Nakyoung's skin. It isn't fair, though. It very much is not inclusive.
"My parents move a lot for work," She reprimands. Seoyeon doesn't look back.
── ⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──
Touring the school grounds is boring enough that Nakyoung comes to understand why Seoyeon has become so jaded by the duty. There is nothing impressive about the recently refurbished tennis courts, Nakyoung will not be spending any longer than the mandatory hour of her week in there. Chlorine clogs her nostrils when they pass by the pool and a chemical headache works its way through her sinuses. Seoyeon rattles off every extracurricular that she'd be a fool to join so late, all in a weary monotone. The drama studio is extravagant and dim, walls lined with pale portraits of once-upon-a-time graduated actresses, but Seoyeon avoids spending longer than her twenty-second script in there because, as she later notes after Nakyoung's questioning, 'it gives everyone the creeps'.
The library, the other place Nakyoung's curiosity piqued at, is a lifeless void. The shelves are made of steel and the library officer got suspended a week ago so nothing's in order plus the return pile has spilled out of the designated box and onto the carpet beside it. Nakyoung usually likes finding library corners to make her home, where she can fiddle with chains and beads and read sloppy romances but this place is a fishbowl of little inspiration. The air is sterile, every table is rounded. She'll find somewhere else; she always does. She hears a laugh to her left, and startles at the first indication of… positive emotion that Seoyeon has produced. It lights up the air, a rush of daisies blooming at late spring.
"You don't seem so charmed by the library," When Seoyeon's constant aura of exasperation fades, she appears far more down-to-earth. One of her socks is wrinkled down by her ankle while the other remains straight, and her glasses' thick lenses disguise a slight lazy eye.
"It's not much of a library," Nakyoung confesses. She doesn't really want to offend Seoyeon but Seoyeon hasn't seemed too worried about offending her. And it's always very important to stay at an equilibrium. Never tip the scales on your first day. To her relief, Seoyeon snorts, beckoning Nakyoung out of the fishbowl and back into a narrow hall tinged with a stale scent. The carpets appear textureless — they probably haven't been vacuumed in a decade. At the end of the hall, there's an unremarkable trophy cabinet with duct tape following a fracture in the glass.
"That library is another victim of the mass gentrification of this place. They donated all the fiction books to charity because apparently they were distracting us from study, and people say that Miss Yoo, the head of the art department, pawned all the old furniture to an antique place to make a quick buck,"
"Why do people say that?" Nakyoung can't help it, her curiosity always leads her down untrodden paths that leave people quirking their heads at her and usually — laughing. Seoyeon doesn't laugh. Instead she shrugs, her carefree grin rearranging back into that uncomfortable grimace.
"I dunno. Maybe she did. People talk," Remembering herself, Seoyeon gestures to the cracked cabinet. "Sports awards. Hasn't been updated since 2022, no one really comes down here."
The staleness in the corridor has deepened like mold, a dampness soaking through the peeling walls. Eyeing Seoyeon cautiously, Nakyoung notices she has dimmed, retreated into a spiked shell deeper than when she first seized Nakyoung by the wrist. She really doesn't want to get on Seoyeon's bad side.
"Was the library nice, before?" Seoyeon stops, and she doesn't splutter or bite back. She folds her arms over her crisply ironed blazer, sleeves turned up to her elbows, and avoids Nakyoung's stare. Too intense? Maybe.
"It used to be a real school," She talks bitterly, pointed at the ground. Loud enough for anyone passing by to hear each spat syllable. Nakyoung now realizes that her badge is not only dulled by time, but by change. There's a fire somewhere in Seoyeon, and it's fighting to stay alight. "Now it's just a dumping ground for snotty sort-of rich kids and rejects who have been booted from every other school in the area. A clashing demographic, I know."
Nakyoung's eyes widen. Seoyeon's too.
"No offense,"
"My parents move a lot for work," Nakyoung insists again, and Seoyeon huffs before rolling her eyes. She definitely thinks Nakyoung is strange, which she can work with, and luckily doesn't dislike her yet. By the time they make it back into the main classroom hallways, the break period has dawned. Meaning Nakyoung and Seoyeon spent nearly hour strolling the underwhelming grounds and avoiding small talk. Seoyeon is, in reality, just like all the other kids who delight in skipping second period.
The hallways are bustling even though a teacher in heeled boots carrying a fake-looking clipboard squawks at the girls to stop congregating, and Seoyeon mutters to ignore Miss Lee because she has no real authority, just tall shoes and a grating voice. This time Nakyoung knows not to question why the schoolgirls chide their teachers so ruthlessly and instead receives the gossip with a smirk.
As they're advancing to their final destination, a fast-moving body collides with Seoyeon's and she lets out a startled whimper before launching into the expected expletives. Nakyoung's blood runs with a peculiar chill and she cranes her neck back so fast that she hears a click. Some girl had shoulder-barged Seoyeon so fiercely it felt premeditated, and then dashed. Maybe Seoyeon's not so well liked around here. She's quite coarse and fiery and that usually tends not to mesh well with air-headed socialites.
The offender glances back, and her eyes are blown wide, her lips apart. This is a face you don't forget. Even a freeze frame glimpse etches itself into the back of your eyelids. Nakyoung finds herself perplexingly entranced as the face disappears in a swish, and a sheet of perfectly tousled black hair replaces it.
"Who's that?" She asks, gawping as the rumpled blazer and raven waves blur into the gaggles of students behind, shrinking into a fuzzy black dot. "You know her?"
"Oh god," Seoyeon huffs, and it's so bitter and charged that Nakyoung's doesn't need to peel her eyes from the distant inky splodge to envision her tour guide's disdainful grimace. Touchy spot, like the tender skin on Seoyeon's shoulder she has begun massaging. "Just Kim Yooyeon. Everyone knows her."
"Oh. Why does everyone know her?" Nakyoung loses sight of the black speck. Seoyeon is eyeing her with an exaggeratedly incredulous frown that almost looks exhausted. She probably really, really hates delivering the tours and becoming a gossip guru to googly eyed new girls with no manners, but anything is a worthy excuse to get out of class. She's supposed to wear her inclusion officer badge like a saint's symbol, but rust has gathered so heavily on top of of what was once an amiable soul. Nakyoung knows Seoyeon's just worn down, so she shouldn't be bothered by her curt manner. Especially after she got shoulder-barged so hard by Kim Yooyeon.
"You ask a lot of fucking questions." Seoyeon mutters, and tugs Nakyoung sharply by her arm, higher this time. They have become somewhat of an obstacle, frozen in the middle of the hallway, but Seoyeon doesn't need to slam her into the wall so harshly. She had been perhaps thinking of offering a gift to Seoyeon for the kindness of upholding her 'inclusive' duties, but now it sits weightily in Nakyoung's blazer pocket, like a dog petulantly anchoring its heels into the ground when it doesn't want to move.
"I need to use the bathroom," She says, staring blankly into Seoyeon's flickering rage. If she stokes that fire just enough, maybe she can wrangle free. Seoyeon has been left to drag her around for long enough. The girl's jaw sets heavily and she relents her vice grip on Nakyoung's wrist so that she can delve around in her blazer pocket, purposefully vigorous and rushed, making a point. After a few seconds of angry muttering that Nakyoung doesn't tune into, Seoyeon reaches for her wrist again — this time, her grip hovers above the skin. When Nakyoung obliges, lifting and unfurling her palm, Seoyeon pushes a small laminated card into it.
"Just go to class straight after. The student support worker is useless and probably hasn't even read your file. And if you need anything else, talk to your class president. Not me."
Nakyoung nods, watching Seoyeon spin off in a flounce and thunder down the hallway with her arms stiff at her sides, ducking into her own classroom. She turns over the strange card in her palm, hoping for something akin to a business card, a ticket to companionship with this volatile, aloof girl. Despite her pointed disinterest in anything and everything to do with bonding, her refusal to press the subject about why Nakyoung has ended up here, Nakyoung clings onto hope.
Well. It's just a toilet pass, like a hotel keycard, clearly another symbol of whatever 'gentrification' Seoyeon was earlier seething about.
She's already lost track of where she's standing on the equilibrium. Perhaps here, the scale isn't the same as what she's used to.
── ⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──
Nakyoung doesn't go to the bathrooms, or to class. She wasn't really planning on it. She wasn't getting anywhere with Seoyeon with how easily her fire was stoked, and again, didn't really want to get on her bad side. Just felt like getting out of her way. Her feet have a mind of their own, they wander the school grounds she is sort-of acquainted with after her tour. It's nicer when it's empty, when the fountain donated by a rich sponsor and the birds nesting in the thicket of surrounding trees produce the only sounds heard for miles.
She perches on the edge of the fountain and leans back, rolling off the chemical headache and stiffness of school-desks. Hardly an hour had been spent hunched over her mottled planner but Nakyoung's over it, over the heavy blazer clamping down on her shoulders, telling her what to do and where to go. She understands why the other students roll up the stifling fabric to free themselves of at least a smidge of that pressure. As she copies the trendy half-sleeve look, Nakyoung just hopes jewelry isn't going to get her dress-coded, because if so she'll have to leave.
It's only her first day, so Nakyoung knows she can't lounge around under the sun and listen to the constant pattering of water forever. She kicks the gravel around mindlessly as she approaches the hefty armored school doors again, climbing the ominous decor of steep chiseled steps to reach them. The doors are twice her height and the handles look like marble pillars, and so she prematurely bestows most of her strength into trying to prise the doors open, but they don't give.
Her eyes skim the surrounding yard, but school doors shouldn't be locked during the day, the gates are already guarded by hawkish CCTV cameras. She yanks on the handle again, squeezing her eyes shut and muttering under her breath, but nothing happens other than her bracelets bleeding warmth against her skin.
Then she remembers Seoyeon's short rant about gentrification and her eyes scavenge for a lock, an buzzer or something, she's very good at making up pitiful lies about why she may have gotten stuck outside during class time. It's only her first day. There is no buzzer but there is a keycard pad, and Nakyoung's shoulders droop.
Another thing Seoyeon had fussed about was making sure to pick up her student ID from the office, otherwise she would be trapped. She had flashed her own ID against nearly every door they passed through, the corridors as alarmed and locked as a prison. Letting the hopeful air dissipate from her lungs, Nakyoung fishes the toilet pass from her pocket and at least gives it a try. It's all she's got, after all. She whacks it against the keypad an array of times at an array of speeds and an array of angles. The button above still glows a determined red.
They're not going to be very happy at home if she returns by midday on her first day but Nakyoung's at a loss of ethical solutions to get back into the building. Her wrists still flare with dull pain from her angered bracelets and even the patch of fabric buried beneath her shirt is starting to throb with warning.
Defeated, she sinks down on the top stair before the door, drawing flowers with her index finger in the chalky debris where students' hasty footsteps have worn down the stone. To anyone actually monitoring the front cameras she'll look like a lazy skipper, which may be what she is. She ought to be disappointed in herself. What happened to the equilibrium?
After indulging in an adequate amount of self-pity, Nakyoung rises again to test if the doors have decided to feel sorry for her. Another strong pull, with which an irritated grunt escapes her, indicates they have not, but she then hears a high-pitched chime that doesn't quite match the hopping birds tweeting in the distance. Something more alike to a laugh.
Nakyoung whirls around, pure instinct urging her to pull her blazer sleeves back down. She'll look like a newbie dork again, but the gravity of being careful means her body is willing to sacrifice reputation. She squints and surveys the open yard, the shimmering but drab fountain, the uniform rows of trees giving a slight sway in the breeze. Footsteps crunch into the gravel and from the school's left wing comes Kim Yooyeon. A face you easily remember even after a split-second glance.
Her hair is more tousled than before and her face no longer startled but rather snarky, snooty even, and she doesn't talk as she approaches up the stairs. Have you been following me? Nakyoung is far too conscious of the social points her odd behavior has already deducted from her. She bites her tongue. Remodels it.
"Hi. Are you Kim Yooyeon?"
Funnily, it catches her off guard, and she recoils. Yooyeon has a mole on the side of her nose and her front two teeth protrude just a tad. Her blazer sleeves are only rolled up once, sitting ambiguously over her forearms. She doesn't wear any bracelets. Her tie is straight and her socks at equal heights. She has two badges on her blazer and maybe that's why Seoyeon got so snarly when she was barged in the corridor. Maybe that's why Yooyeon barged Seoyeon in the corridor. School hierarchies and all that. Nakyoung has no badges, what does that make her? Peasantry?
And her expression is pinched, as she scrutinizes Nakyoung up and down. She wonders whether she should do a little spin so Yooyeon can get a full scan.
"…I am. Who are you?"
"We just met, actually! You might have forgotten." Nakyoung doesn't know why she says it; there's just something fascinating about watching the cogs turn in Yooyeon's brain. How her lips sit slightly ajar as she thinks, the frosty calculation dances through her irises.
"I don't know who you are." Yooyeon insists, and peels her eyes away from Nakyoung's attempt at a cordial smile. She knows she looks peculiar, she's made peace with it. Her hair isn't particularly unruly but she's never been too good at styling it — her hair never wants to sit pretty in the two spindly plaited pigtails she wrestles it into every morning. Her tie is lopsided because some things she'll just never get the hang of, plus she zoned out while eating breakfast and then realized she was going to be late for her first day if she didn't dash. She did not have time to agonize over a messy tie.
But Yooyeon really doesn't need to look at her like she's a feral toddler, or some hermit she's dragged out of the woods. Nakyoung is a normal girl. She goes to school and does her homework, not always on time. The city bustle isn't for her but she enjoys a karaoke night and hiding convenience store snacks in her desk drawer. Her eyeliner always comes out wonky but she has perfected a rosy lip-tint combo.
"Kim Nakyoung. The new girl," She offers out her hand and beads clink together piercingly. It seems Yooyeon has to concentrate a lot of intention into not taking a step back. Ignoring the hand, Yooyeon procures her student ID and bashes it against the keypad.
"Oh. Right." The huge front doors whine open, automatic but creaky nonetheless. Yooyeon gestures for her to walk in first and she makes sure to mutter a couple of thank-yous. "Did your tour guide ditch you or something? Wouldn't put it past her."
"No, no. She was pleasant enough." Nakyoung reassures. Though she'd walked ahead, she's now tailing Yooyeon down the barren school halls, and even their quiet small-talk echoes like someone's trying to listen. Yooyeon raises a brow as if she doubts Nakyoung's honesty. "I just… took a walk and got stuck outside. I didn't know you needed a fancy card to get back in."
"Your student ID. Have you picked it up?" Yooyeon frowns, then frowns deeper when Nakyoung shakes her head no. "Go and do that, then."
"I don't know where the student support office is." Her helplessness makes Yooyeon scoff, and brush her hair back with an idle hand. It's like a nervous tic. No wonder her hair sprawls in waves down her back. Something about the action, as exasperated as Yooyeon may be, sends fluttering warmth through Nakyoung's body; calming her. Ironic, with how jittery Yooyeon's manner is, how much Nakyoung wants to stay by her side, observe her a little longer.
Somehow, Yooyeon offers to accompany her despite the detour bleeding out her attendance record. It's weird. She has two badges pinned to her blazer but only seems the regular amount of agitated at going out of her way to guide an absent-minded newbie around. Anyone this important should be huffing, puffing and begging Nakyoung to fall to her knees in pathetic apology for being such a nuisance.
"Your tour guide really was useless," Yooyeon affirms, maybe to herself, a gleeful minute victory. Nakyoung probably should have been keeping track of which passageways they traversed rather than studying Yooyeon. She follows mindlessly, eyes glued to the twitches and shifts in Yooyeon's confusing expressions.
Her pupils constantly swivel on autopilot like she's conducting a thorough surveillance of every dust mote that twirls through the air around them. Monitoring to see if the books on the hallway shelves shuffle around. If the windows were open just a sliver wide. A slick, icy shiver of paranoia tinges the air around them, it feels colder when Yooyeon's around. But the building has been a little stuffy and sour all day, so Nakyoung doesn't mind.
"Are you an inclusions person too?" Nakyoung regrets the question immediately, after all, her ceaseless curiosity had left her abandoned by Seoyeon in these winding halls. But Yooyeon doesn't seem perturbed, just shakes her head. "What are your badges for, then?"
Yooyeon halts in her tracks, and Nakyoung, still staring at the way her lips curve downwards when she's considering whether to reply or not, nearly collides straight into her back. She catches herself just in time, lips tickled by a few flying strands of Yooyeon's hair.
"One of my roles is gathering up the stray cats wandering around, making a mess on the school grounds." What a peculiar habit to earn a badge for. Peering around her shoulder to get a good look at her expression, Nakyoung finds Yooyeon's face to be a blank slate.
"Really?" Nakyoung tilts her head on one side. "I was wondering why you were skipping class too. Do you get a lot of cats on the grounds?"
"I wasn't skipping class," Yooyeon huffs, tone suddenly frigid. It thaws fast and a chuckle interlopes her words. "And I was joking, there's no cats. These are a couple of irrelevant ambassador tokens. I just keep the badges on to skip the lunch queue."
Fascinating. Yooyeon manages to maintain total monotony, a real deadpan face, even when making a joke. Nakyoung has made progress in reading between the lines in her years, but those with invincible poker faces and flat voices like Yooyeon still stump and intrigue her.
"So you do have some affinity for skipping." Nakyoung surmises, and Yooyeon blinks heavily as they approach a wooden door decorated with patchwork bunting. It looks like a counselor's office, all dolled up and childish on the outside to invite the broken souls in.
"This is the office. Miss Jung is a bit cuckoo but she'll sort you out with an ID." Yooyeon rocks on her heels, biting her lip. Her eyes flicker with excessive blinks and she nods, hair tumbling over her face like a curtain call. "Nice to meet you. Try to stay out of trouble."
Before Yooyeon goes, Nakyoung has to give into a fizzing desire that has been weighing down her pocket for the duration of their detour. She reaches into her blazer and extracts a bracelet, making sure to feel for the right one. It's made of beads in translucent, pearly pink and a cherry blossom charm dangles from the clasp. Nakyoung holds it out on her flat palm, an offering.
Her first gift was supposed to end up with Seoyeon, before the girl's manner hardened so much Nakyoung thought that a proffered bracelet would be strewn like marbles across the floorboards. But Yooyeon looked more like she needed it. From the way her glances haunted the corridors, the deer-in-headlights stare she shot Nakyoung the first time they met eyes.
She seemed like she'd take it.
Cautiously, she lifts the bracelet into her own hands, pinching it oddly between her thumb and index finger like holding a dead bug. Her eyebrows arch almost comedically high. "What's this? You like making friendship bracelets..?"
"They come in handy when you switch schools often," Nakyoung comments, and a tiny smile twitches at Yooyeon's lips.
"You're really weird," She says. Nakyoung shrugs; Yooyeon is hard to read, but malice usually isn't, and it's merrily absent in her words. "Uh, thanks, Nakyoung."
Yooyeon slides the bracelet over her slender, long hand, and with her sleeve rolled up, it's immediately visible. Marbled glassy pinks bloom against the pallor of her skin. As Yooyeon waves her off, bracelet twirling into place, Nakyoung returns the gesture. Her sleeve falls down, showing the prismatic stack of beaded bands filling up her own wrist. She locks Yooyeon's bewildered smile away, deep into her the dusty bookshelves of her mind.
── ⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──
Having a student ID makes skipping class a lot easier, something she doesn't intend to fall into over the uneventful following week but it happens regardless. Once the pressure of the first day has worn off, her resolution to conform crumbles into ash. Screw the equilibrium. She'll keep her blazer sleeves un-rolled and tidy for the time being, it's safer that way.
It's really not that Nakyoung wanted to slip so readily into bad habits but she grows restless with keeping two feet on the floor, elbows to a desk, ears pricked and tuned into every droning word that falls from her teacher's mouths. She doesn't hear their mathematical formulas, just their desperation to make rent this month and exhaustion from being berated by bored teenagers for a living. Accidentally, she forms a real routine of ducking out of the back fire door at the end of lunchtime while no teacher is really checking who's around, and ditching her fifth period math class.
Instead of blinking at algebra she finds herself tucked in an alcove around the back of the arts block, overlooking the slope downwards to the memorial garden. The groundskeeper seldom bothers with the arts building, she learned fast, since around here she never felt the tinny ringing in her ears of another human too close by. She nestles herself between two protruding pillars, feet pressed against one, back to the other. Her bag and belongings mourn her absence, waiting patiently beside Sohyun.
Sohyun remained quite similar to her first impression; she kept to herself and didn't question why Nakyoung habitually disappeared after every lunch. The first time she had strode back to her desk like she'd always been there for their following language class, Sohyun had asked if she was okay, which Nakyoung found interesting. But Sohyun didn't seem to want much else to do with her so she didn't think a bracelet offer was necessary, not until Sohyun stopped wearing her earphones every time Nakyoung was around.
Her mind casts back to Seoyeon a lot but the only time they have since encountered each other was Seoyeon bristling past her on the way to the cafeteria. If, like Yooyeon said, sporting a badge gives you privileges to skip the lunch queue, then there's no reason for Seoyeon to be in such a rush. She just seems to dart around with this purposeful, frantic energy, like she is always needed someplace or another and she's not particularly pleased about it. Maybe that's just how she keeps herself running, maybe she's scared to slow down. But one thing for sure is that she doesn't have any time to spare for Nakyoung, so her fleeting first day company doesn't warrant a bracelet either.
As for Yooyeon, she's made herself pretty scarce too. After the thunderous way Seoyeon had grumbled her name Nakyoung was convinced she would be a much bigger presence. Everyone knows her. So why does Nakyoung only sense her in those gaps between, dashing from class to locker, cafeteria to courtyard? A flutter of ruffled black hair and the raising of goosebumps. Nakyoung's got a taste for it and doesn't want to let go, but even if Yooyeon accepted her bracelet, she seems intent on avoiding her.
Nakyoung sighs woefully, picking at some overgrown grass blades by her side. The greenery tickles at her calves, her fingertips, and though she's come out here to unwind, her joints feel stiff and unhappy. A dull ache knocks at the base of her skull. She studies the arrangement of bracelets she had chosen for today with keen, narrowed eyes, but nothing's absent. Other than the circlet of pink beads she'd given up last week, Nakyoung's basic jewelry remains.
She shakes out her wrists and stretches her tense shoulders but all of a sudden the hairs on the back of her neck make a rebellious stand. A shiver travels down her spine like a rain droplet. But then her heart fizzes in anticipation, reaching for the cold thrill she's been hungry for all this time.
Distant, she makes out the thudding of intentionally heavy footsteps, trampling the grass to stamp out irritation. At first she wonders if Seoyeon got bored enough to seek her out again and chastise her for skipping, but as the volume of stomping grows and Nakyoung's body chills even more, she discerns the reality.
That reality is Kim Yooyeon, hands braced against her hips in a stance that looks more abrasive than victorious. Her doll features, usually unmarked by things as mundane as human expression, are contorted into a blazing grimace that really doesn't make sense on her. Even her hair is wilder than usual, frizzy and disobedient. She marches up to Nakyoung and her breath escapes in short pants as if she'd ran a marathon just to come and waste time around the art block with the new girl. Nakyoung flashes a crinkled, delighted grin up at her.
"I was beginning to think I wouldn't see you again," She admits, a pleased flutter nestling into her stomach. Despite Yooyeon's insistence against it last week, she seems to have a skipping partner. Maybe she can't abide maths as much as Nakyoung. Patting the patch of grass beside her to beckon Yooyeon over, her smile wavers when she's met with a defiant snarl.
"What did you do to me?" Yooyeon thrusts her index finger forward, and freezing electricity wracks through Nakyoung's entire body, shooting from her forehead down to her twitching toes.
"I'm sorry?" Nakyoung pushes her feet off the wall to sit up properly. She can feel the urgency emanating off Yooyeon in thick, hissing waves and knows it's no time to lounge languidly across the ground. Skipping class feels scold-worthy now. Bowing her head to shield herself from the sleet of anger, she crosses her legs.
"This," Yooyeon hisses, pointing at the beaded bracelet a little too large for her wrist. She yanks it off and flicks it, careless and scornful, landing straight in the tufts of ripped grass Nakyoung had earlier fidgeted with. "Did you put some weird curse on me? What kind of voodoo shit is in that?"
Nakyoung blanches, in full sincerity. Yooyeon is erupting, spilling over with anger and it hits her like a blizzard, but she cannot fathom why, because their mild conversation only lasted fifteen minutes and all she had done was give her a gift. Painstaking time is put into assembling each of her unique bracelets, the only habit she'd hunch over a desk for, under dim lamp light until her muscles scream. Now it lies discarded, disgraced, in a muddy patch of earth. She makes a real effort not to let her upset show, but she feels her hands shaking.
"Why on earth would I curse you?" Her lower lip is pushing itself out, even when she bites the corner of it.
"I don't know," Yooyeon's rage simmers, and she grasps at her elbow defensively, gaze flickering away from Nakyoung's potent own. Too intense? For once, she hopes it is. "I guess because I shoved Seoyeon the other week, and you're all buddy-buddy, so—"
"You're the only person I've given a bracelet to." Nakyoung cannot help but interrupt, and she also cannot help how plainly hurt hijacks her words. Yooyeon must feel it, because her eyebrows scrunch in confusion and her hands return to their defensive poise on her hips. "Seoyeon didn't get one, because she didn't really like me."
At a loss for words, Yooyeon simply drops herself into the grass as her flare of anger ebbs away, dissolves into the stuffy summer air. Nakyoung really couldn't help it, becoming so bitter and hardened in the face of these terrible accusations. Dark magic is not a force to be toyed with and she has never ever had any inclination towards it. Yooyeon is just paranoid. She's always had that about her. She takes every measured step like she's being monitored.
"I'm sorry. I've just been stressed." She acknowledges in a low murmur and plucks out the taller grass blades, just as Nakyoung had been doing before. Her chin thuds against her knees, cold whirls of anger thawing. "But seriously, what is with that bracelet..?"
Yooyeon lifts her bowed head, squints intently into Nakyoung's eyes as if she's trying to discern something, find a secret she can grab onto. She blinks back at Yooyeon. "What is with you? I still don't know anything about you apart from that you wear the entire rainbow in beaded bracelets down your arms."
"I like making them, and I'm just trying to make friends. I didn't mean to hurt you with your bracelet, and I'm sorry if it has." If Seoyeon hates people who ask too many questions, it's no wonder she clashes with Yooyeon, who has come to disturb Nakyoung's peaceful retreat by jabbing her with her icicle interrogation. She resists letting her eyes befall the unwanted bracelet lying like a gravestone. Yooyeon's foolish if she really leaves it behind, and Nakyoung took her for a smart girl. With her two badges and pervasive reputation.
Though she avoids hanging around the hallways for too long, the whispers in the walls making her vision misty and stuffing her brain with smog, Nakyoung always hears Kim Yooyeon chanted like a forbidden mantra. Everyone knows her. She's a prismatic enigma, an ambassador who haunts the school grounds in broad daylight and seems to skip just as often as the dozy new girl who's transferred schools five times in a year.
"I don't know why I did it," The words rush out of Yooyeon in a single, hurried breath. From here, sitting side by side, Nakyoung can watch the remorseful scrunch of her nose. She swallows thickly before her next spilling sentence, it takes effort to be sorry. "I mean, shoving Seoyeon. Sure, she's an ass, but I don't- I don't want to hurt her."
"Places like this make you do things you don't want to," Nakyoung agrees, but she is not quite sure how much she buys Yooyeon's pity party, when her eyes are still flitting and her pupils dilated like a hunted animal. The repenter looks to her, a sharp inhale hissing through her bared teeth.
"I wish you would say anything that made sense." From experience, that isn't really something you say to someone you're trying to befriend. Now the air now feels too thin and frail to make it into Nakyoung's lungs. She really wants to stomp her sticky mary-jane sole straight through the rosy beads so one day glassy tendrils can germinate from the soil and find Yooyeon again and bite into her skin.
"Don't come to me if you're going to belittle me." With a final mumbled request, Nakyoung yanks herself to her feet. It's not that she wants to but biting the inside of her cheek for so long really hurts and Yooyeon is starting to look like a cobweb over a window frame. Bits and pieces of string and hollow sinewy gaps. She had yearned so much for that cold breeze to twirl back into her life, that unforgettable face to twist into smiles, maybe frowns too, but Yooyeon might just be far too freezing to keep close. And Nakyoung really ought to stay out of trouble this time.
── ⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──
It's been a couple of days since Nakyoung ditched Yooyeon behind the arts block with the bracelet. As soon as she tapped her student ID onto the main building's back door she felt bitterly unhappy with herself and her whims because she was still having to bury her teeth into her lip to stop the trickle of betrayal, even after leaving Yooyeon to deal with her frosty air alone.
When she forced herself to return to her desk for next period she wondered if Sohyun would ask if she was okay again. And she looked like she might, for a moment, lips pouted and eyes bulging at Nakyoung's stormy glare. Instead she only pushed over a leaf of lined paper crammed with history homework answers, her fingers crawling across the desk like spiders legs. It didn't matter. Nakyoung didn't even know the homework existed. But a smile cracked through her frozen, miserable face anyway.
That was kind of enough to keep her mind off the bracelet and how Yooyeon declined her friendship. Empathy for Seoyeon's short temper seeped through, where she'd put stubborn blockades against any kind of affection towards someone so snappy and dismissive. Kim Yooyeon gets under your skin. Sohyun's history cheat sheet can't wipe that away. Her voice is flat and low so it can slither between your veins undetected until you explode. Her glare is so blinding you can't scrub the flashy outline from behind your eyelids no matter how hard you squeeze them shut until your eye sockets groan in pain. That's all Nakyoung wishes she could do. Sohyun's starting to shuffle her chair closer to the far edge of their desk every time she catches Nakyoung's face all scrunched up when they're supposed to be outlining practice essays.
Luckily she had memorized the classroom that Seoyeon ducked into after she had abruptly ended their tour last week. 3C is next door to hers so it's rather strange they have succeeded at not at all bumping into one another again. But now, she lingers deliberately, fingers tickling the doorframe just before the lunch bell rings. Her lips are set in a determined line. The bell sounds more like an apocalypse siren than a warm invitation to a comforting lunch. As predicted, Seoyeon is the first out of the door even though she doesn't need to be with her badge and all.
But it means Nakyoung can catch her. Thumb and an index finger circling the doughy skin of her forearm. Seoyeon's good eye shoots her a warning of unkempt embers; thankfully, Nakyoung was braced for it.
"Didn't I tell you to talk to your class president instead of me?" Seoyeon grumbles, shrugging Nakyoung's rather flimsy grip away. It was a hard request to adhere to since Nakyoung doesn't even know who her class president is. She strides ahead without so much as a hello, and Nakyoung scampers along at her heels, trying to copy her marching band left-right left-right before the lunch rush swarms the halls.
"I don't need anything," It's lie-adjacent, because she doesn't need anything really. She just wants it, her tongue fizzes with urgency to launch a stream of questions into Seoyeon's weary ears. It's hard to resist because Seoyeon knows things, like, she knows every nook and cranny of these school grounds plus what shape they used to take. She probably knows every single whisper infused in every single wall. "Kim Yooyeon helped me pick up my student ID."