Chapter Text
Myoui Mina barged into the chandelier lit lobby of her new school, JYP high 20 minutes later than what was expected of her. A tall, petite woman was already giving orders and assigning tour guides to groups of new students, which meant that she was already behind.
"Remember, the reds are always watching you!" the woman bellowed, almost sounding like a man when she did. "Remember what I told you and no one will be able to touch you here."
Mina hurries to slip in behind the group, still wondering if she filled out the giant stack of paperwork correctly. She sneaked a peek at the three other students, standing in a half circle around her. At her previous school, YG high, she met her best friend at the campus tour. But now, it seems like no one here will be willing to be her friend.
To Mina's right was a woman with a dancer aura, the bad girl type of look with hair flowing down to her fit waist. The way she ignores the attendant speaking in front and seemed to be lost in her own thoughts gave Mina the impression that this girl doesn't even want to be here.
The woman on her left, on the other hand, fit Mina's image of this place perfectly. She was tall, with a backpack slung over her shoulder, silky short brown with hints of black hair, and deep-set golden eyes. Her lips were a natural full color that boys and girls alike would kill for, the perfect image of the girl crush type.
Unlike the others, when this girl turned to meet her gaze, she held it and didn't let go. For some unknown reason, the girl's irises were golden, not like the normal ones you see in your everyday life. It was enchanting, as if someone is hypnotizing her. She gazed at her, standing still like a sculpture, which made Mina feel rooted to her spot too. The said girl smiled at Mina warmly, which made her think like they knew each other way before they even met.
With some loud throat clearing noises, the attendant interrupted Mina's moment with the girl. Mina blushed and pretended she was busy rubbing the back of her neck. She swears, she can hear the girl's little chuckle when the attendant noticed them staring at each other.
"So, that's all. From now on you're all alone" But Mina, unlike the other students who were all heading off towards their own directions, went straight where the attendant is heading.
The attendant's office was small and brightly lit, almost blinding Mina when she went inside. It's too small; a little waiting area (for students like her, Mina thought), with foldable chairs, a red carpet with speckles of dust, and a big wall clock ticking loudly.
"Can I help you?" The attendant turned around to face her.
"I'm Myoui Mina, a new student and I was a little late earlier" The attendant's eyes lit up when she realized she was talking to the daughter of the famous Dr. Myoui.
"Of course," the attendant said, digging around the stacks of paperwork on her table until she found what she was looking for. She handed Mina a map of the school and her schedule.
"Thank you," Mina smiled at the attendant.
"No problem," the attendant even went through Mina's classes for her, highlighted the best routes to each in the map and gave Mina a slip to have each professor sign, convincing Mina that she was quick to judge the attendant harshly earlier.
"Thank you again," Mina smiled at the attendant, and the latter returned it warmly. Mina went out of the attendant's office and started to memorize the routes highlighted on the map. Mina hopes she won't have to walk around with it stuck up her nose. Mina didn't notice a woman with bunny like teeth in front of her, so she bumped into her.
"Oh, I'm sorry!"
The bunny woman turns around to look at Mina, and when she saw who it was she suddenly averted her gaze, making Mina think that she made a bad impression.
"I'm really, really sorry," Mina reaches for the woman's hand but the latter yanks it away from her.
"No, no it's okay" The woman quickly walks away from her, as if she was some disease that should be avoided.
'weird...' Mina thought to herself.
Mina keeps her head pulled inside her hoodie as she walked to the sidewalk, crowded with teenagers ogling her. 'good thing my black hoodie doesn't stand out' Mina thought in relief.
Once she got close to the cafeteria, building G was easy to spot. Mina runs towards the building, and stops when she reaches the door of the classroom, trying to catch her breath. Running isn't really Mina's forte, as someone who did ballet for over a decade.
She turns the doorknob and goes inside, people stares following her as she hands the slip to the professor who stopped talking to introduce her to the class. He was a tall man sporting shaggy black hair, with a silver nameplate identifying him as Mr. Woods.
"Okay class, this is Ms. Myoui Mina, the newest addition to our campus. Be nice to her. Ms. Myoui, please introduce yourself," He gestures to the front, silently telling Mina to go introduce herself.
"Hi I am Myoui Mina, you can call me Mina," Mina looks back awkwardly at the professor.
"Would you mind telling us your hobbies, anything about yourself?" the teacher trails off, making Mina turn around to face her classmates.
"I did ballet for over a decade, sometimes when I walk I look like a penguin. And I'm not as rich as you think," at the last thing she said, the class erupted into a fit of laughter, making her chuckle. But at the back of the class, she can see the bunny teethed woman from earlier, not joining in the laughter. The woman just stares at Mina with her golden yellow irises, and the latter can feel her stares bore right into her soul.
The professor clears his throat, making Mina snap out of it and pay attention.
"You can sit over there, Ms. Myoui" the teacher points at a seat in front of the class, and Mina sat down keeping her eyes glued to the book they were supposed to review. Mina ponders whether her mother would send her a file of her old essays, or if her mom would think that was cheating. She went through different arguments with her Mom in her head while the teacher droned on about female authors not being acknowledged back in the '80s
When the bell rang, a startling sound, a girl with little girl with blonde hair and really, really thick specs leaned across the aisle to talk to Mina.
"You're Mina, aren't you?" she looked like the cheerful type, one that can make you laugh in difficult situations.
"Yeah," Mina replied softly, everyone within a 2 seat radius turning around to look at her.
"Where's your next class?" she asked Mina, with hopeful eyes
Mina dug inside her bag for her scheds, and turned around to reply at the girl
"Um, physics, building A." There was nowhere to look without curious eyes.
'is this what a transferee feels like' Mina thought.
"That's great, we're on the same class!" The girl exclaimed, snapping Mina out of her inner monologue.
"Hey, don't scare Mina" another girl hit Dahyun playfully, asking her, "Does she know who you are?"
"Oh, I forgot to introduce myself," the girl rubbed her nape sheepishly. "I'm Kim Dahyun by the way, and this woman right here is Minatozaki Sana" they both introduced themselves, offering handshakes. Mina smiled at the two and accepted their offer to be friends.
While busy introducing themselves to each other, the three didn't notice a certain bunny teethed woman staring at them as if pondering on whether to join or not.
"Why don't you join them?" A girl with shoulder length hair behind her asked, snapping her out of her thoughts.
"Jeez, don't you know how to not surprise me every time we meet?" She snaps at Jihyo, who just laughs at her.
"Come on Nayeon, we all know you're whipped for your little girlfriend who doesn't even know you-" Nayeon slaps her hand around Jihyo's mouth to stop her from talking
"Shut up, can't you see I'm trying my best to avoid her?"
Her bestfriend just sighs, removing Nayeon's hand from her mouth.
"You know you can't do it, Nay. Just..." Jihyo trails off, unsure of what to say to Nayeon.
"I can, for her safety."
~ - ~ - ~
"So here, you'll find our state of the art gymnasium," Sana and Dahyun were touring Mina around the campus, now reaching the gigantic gymnasium, with a 10 feet pool, track field, and a soccer field. Mina was amazed when she saw all of those. Mina jogged to keep up with the unending energy of the other two, drinking in the rest of the grounds.
To Mina's surprise, the two suddenly stopped when they reached a mango tree overlooking a-
"Oh, and there's the cemetery," Dahyun points out to her and Sana slaps her hand down
"Don't you know you're not supposed to point at a cemetery?" Sana whisper-yelled at her girlfriend.
"Oh right, I'm sorry" Dahyun whispered back at her.
"I'm sorry, but why are we whispering?" Mina interrupted the heated conversation of the two, making them look at her.
"There's a rumor that if you speak too loud, the spirits will haunt you because you're disturbing them," Dahyun explained calmly to Mina, still whispering.
"But is this, like, a real cemetery?" Mina asked the two, not believing them.
"Of course dumbass, there's no such thing as a fake cemetery" Sana giggled.
The cemetery looked unkempt, bordered on three sides by thick forests of oaks and mist surrounding it.
"There's a cemetery here because it used to be a battleground during the world war 2 and this is where they buried the dead. It's real creepy," Mina nods in understanding at Dahyun.
"Anyways, this so out-of-topic but are you going to the party later?" Sana asked them excitedly, wiggling her eyebrows.
"Stop that satang, you look like a kid who's high," Dahyun laughs at Sana, while the latter just hit her arm
"Wait, satang?" Mina asks in confusion, and Dahyun quickly explains.
"I uh, we make nicknames for each other. She's satang, I'm Hyunnie, and you..." Dahyun looks up in contemplation.
"Ah, mitang!" Sana happily chirps, and Dahyun agrees with a smile.
Mina feels happy that she made two friends on her first day of school, so she agrees to attend the party with them.
"Great! You may have attended parties at your old school, but I can assure you this one's different" Sana winks at her.
"What's the difference?"
"You'll see."
~ - ~ - ~
As they came around the corner of one of the biggest classrooms, Sana skidded to a halt. "You have to promise me you won't eat anything they give you."
"Why?" Mina wonders.
"Just because. We don't want you getting high on your first week of school, don't we?" Sana smiles mischievously.
"Okay"
All the other students seem clustered underneath the shade of the trees, some of them drinking booze, others smoking weed and the rest just playing around dangerous games, like playing with fire and wrestling on the ground. Your typical high school party.
A group of tattooed girls standing in a cross armed circle wore bangle bracelets and their bandanas remind Mina of a movie she'd once seen about motorcycle gang girls.
Mina's eyes locked with one of the girls, and the sideways squint of the girls darkly lined cat eyes made Mina quickly shift her gaze.
Beside the girls were a gand of blonde boys playing poker on the table. With just one look, the guys radiated a specific kind of toughness, right there in the look of their eyes. Everyone here radiates a specific kind of feeling, like all of them had secrets no one else but them knows about.
Dahyun noticed Mina's eyes running over the rest of the students.
"We all do what we can do to forget," she said, shrugging. "I'm sure you've heard that almost all of us are here because we were abandoned by our parents" Dahyun and Sana took a seat on a bench underneath an oak tree and patted the spot right next to them for Mina. Mina wiped away a mound of decaying leaves and sat right next to Sana.
But just before she sat down, her eyes noticed the bunny teethed woman from earlier, this time sporting a black leather jacket. It was far from cold outside, but the woman had a turtleneck underneath her black leather jacket. Maybe because she was the only one in that part of the field, but she was all Mina could look at.
In fact, everything else paled for one moment that, Mina forgot where she was.
She took in her black hair with hints of violet and pale white skin. Her sharp cheekbones, her bunny teeth poking out of her plump red lips. In all the movies she's seen, this woman is the definition of the perfect "it" girl.
The woman leaned up against a tree with her arms folded lightly over her stomach, and for one moment Mina saw a flashing image of herself folded into those arms. She blinked but the vision was so real, she almost took off towards the woman.
'you must be going crazy, Myoui Mina'
Mina knows this instinct is insanely crazy. She didn't even know her. The woman is talking to someone who's shorter than her with shoulder length hair. They were laughing genuinely, in a way that made Mina strangely jealous. She tried think back and remember how long has it been since she laughed like that, without a care in the world.
"That's Im Nayeon," Sana said, leaning in and reading her mind. "I can tell she attracted somebody's attention," Sana teases her.
"Understatement of the century," Mina agreed, embarassed that she was caught staring at Nayeon.
"Yeah, if you like popular and sometimes not very kind girls"
"What's not to like?" Mina said.
"Her friend over there is Jihyo, student council president and all around person," Dahyun joins the conversation, nodding her head in Jihyo's direction. "She's cool"
"What about Nayeon, what's her story?" Mina asks the two.
"Ohoho, she's not giving up isn't she" Sana laughs, and clears her throat. "Nobody really knows," she explains "She kind of holds up this popular, mysterious girl persona she has. Just your typical high school bully, I guess?"
"I'm no stranger to bullies"
She glanced again at Nayeon. Nayeon turned and saw Mina looking at her. Her gaze caught Mina's and Mina watched as her eyes widened and then quickly narrowed in what looked like surprise and suspicion. But no, it was more than that.
Mina recognized her from somewhere. No, not the earlier encounter they had. It's somewhere as in, like they met in their past lives or something. "but that's impossible, right?" Mina thinks to herself.
Because she would have remembered meeting someone like her. She would've remembered this feeling of nostalgia.
She realized they were still locking eyes when Nayeon flashed her a bunny smile. Mina felt a shot of warmth in her chest, and she raised her hand to wave at her but she just flipped her off, causing Mina to gasp.
"What? We don't have time, I think the guard's gonna come down here any sec." The girls. seemingly oblivious to what just happened, told Mina. And just right on cue, the guards whistled at the students and Mina can feel her getting dragged away by Dahyun and Sana.
But before she was out of eyeshot, she can see it.
Nayeon, with her golden eyes momentarily turning red then going back to the normal, was watching her go with a smile.