Chapter Text
1996
Gyeo-ul is, in the words of her best friend, “cool”.
There is an undercurrent of bemusement to that description, but she knows it’s because Jeong-won’s just a scaredy cat. He’s afraid of ghosts, roller coasters, and small animals—in that order, she tells her mother one day after he’d refused to go down a path they usually took home because there was a kitten in their way. She’d wanted to pick it up, but Jeong-won looked like he was about to pass out. So Gyeo-ul did the second best thing and turned him around instead.
“Great job, honey.” Her mum says, passing her a juice box. “Is Jeong-won alright, though?”
“I think so,” she pushes the straw out of its plastic covering, “he didn’t look so pale when we were outside his house.”
Her mother sighs in relief and comments about having to call Jeong-won’s mother to find out if he’s really okay. Gyeo-ul makes quick work of her juice as her mother dials over—he’s fine, she hears vaguely over the phone, he’s fine.
Jeong-won and his animal-fearing self had moved to their apartment complex just the year before. Gyeo-ul remembers the day very well, because it had been her tenth birthday. Her parents had baked a cake for her together and it was so big that they had to give most of it away. Jeong-won’s apartment was the last of the three on their floor, and she’d waited for all of thirty seconds before the door was pulled open by someone with wild hair and a very big smile.
“Hi!” He’d chirped. “Who are you?”
“Gyeo-ul.” She says, nodding. “Who are you?”
“Jeong-won!” Someone calls for him and the boy turns around.
“That’s my second brother, Gyeong-won.” He whips back around and tells her like they haven’t just met. “We just moved here.”
“Oh.” She nods again, shifting the plate of cake she’s holding from her left hand to her right. “Do you want some cake?”
“Yes!” He says immediately and she passes the plate to him. He takes it and puts it on the floor before stretching out a hand. “My mum says I need a haircut. Do you want to go to the hairdresser’s with me?”
Gyeo-ul stares at that hand for a long moment before she shakes it.
“I also think you need a haircut.” And with that, their friendship had been sealed.
Jeong-won turns up to their lift lobby the next morning, looking like he’d been up all night. “I feel bad,” he tells her when she asks what’s wrong, “maybe we shouldn’t have left that kitten there?”
Gyeo-ul thinks she’s heard enough over eleven years of living to know that Jeong-won has something up his sleeve. He turns to her, eyes bright like the day they first met, and she gulps a little.
“We need to go back and look for the kitten,” he says earnestly, “or else I’ll never sleep again.”
“Must we?” Gyeo-ul’s only memorised the way to school and the way back home. The only diverging path she knows is the one they took when Jeong-won had been so deathly afraid of the cat he wants to save now, and even then she’s not confident at all.
He nods quickly. Gyeo-ul furrows her brow and tries to clear her mind as he barrages her with pleas all the way to the gate of their apartment complex. Jeong-won even brings out the big guns—cookies, sweets, how about chocolate?—and Gyeo-ul finally agrees to the conscience-easing plan when they reach the school gates.
“I’ll meet you here after school,” Jeong-won says, patting her head, “don’t run anywhere else, okay?”
“I don’t ever get lost,” Gyeo-ul says, but Jeong-won’s already run off to join his fellow sixth-graders. She watches as he flings an arm around someone she thinks is called Yang Seok-hyung, since he has that distinctive bowl haircut Jeong-won’s mother is always talking about, and disappears into the crowd.
—
They retrace their steps together that afternoon, Gyeo-ul grasping tightly onto a bar of chocolate Jeong-won had stopped to buy earlier. She’s really the one leading the way, since he’s keeping such a close eye out for the missing cat. Gyeo-ul honestly doesn’t think they’ll find it again but the look of concentration on Jeong-won’s face makes her not want to say anything like that at all.
“Jeong-won’s very kind,” her mother tells her one time, “and that’s something Mummy thinks is very rare nowadays.”
Gyeo-ul looks at Jeong-won, who’s now peering under a bush near the path they took the day before. Mum is right, she thinks, because she doesn’t feel like any of her classmates in the fifth grade would be willing to crawl under a hedge just to look for something they were afraid of.
“Can you see it?” She calls, trying to stretch as far up as she can to see what’s going on. Jeong-won’s almost all the way under the hedge now, his bag carelessly abandoned to the side and uniform certainly stained with mud and grass. “If you can’t find it, I think it’s fin—”
“Gyeo-ul!” He yells suddenly. “It’s here! I see it!”
She scrambles over and it takes some time before he emerges from the rough, covered in green grass stains and what seems to be several scratches on his arms. Gyeo-ul watches in wonder as he reveals the small cat, snug in his hands. It’s sleeping, she mouths, and he nods quietly. They watch the cat for a while more while sitting on the wet grass, Gyeo-ul marvelling at how soft its fur is. The cat is an interesting mix of gold and white fur and it takes a while before she realises that Jeong-won is still holding on to it.
“You’re not scared?” She whispers in his ear, still staring at the cat with wide eyes. “But I thought…”
“I’m not scared,” he says bravely but Gyeo-ul doesn’t want to tell him that she can see him quivering a little, “I’m not afraid at all.”
“Liar.” She whispers under her breath but Jeong-won doesn’t hear her. Gyeo-ul reaches out a finger gingerly to pat the cat on its head and he brings it closer to her.
“Here,” he says and edges over, “be gentle.”
The kitten is soft to the touch and as Gyeo-ul carefully runs her finger along its tiny head, she can’t help but think that maybe, maybe Jeong-won is the cool one after all.