Chapter Text
Could a person possibly be too perfect? Not in the eyes of Choi San, it would seem. Today of all days, I was doing my best to avoid being discovered once more. Whenever Choi San and I were in the same room, he always had some bone to pick with me - about my uniform, my hair, my bag or shoes - he seemed to think I was just all wrong.
~
It all started on my very first day after transferring to a new school. My family and I had just moved house and somehow in the move, my alarm clock had got busted. 'Ah, but why didn't you set an alarm on your phone?' I hear you cry. Well, I hadn't realised about the clock until it didn't wake me up the next morning. Needless to say, I had to get ready in a rush and zoom out through the front door as quickly as possible.
It had been raining all night and the gloomy morning hadn't helped to wake me any more than the foiled clock. Just picture it - a slightly disheveled young woman (bag over one shoulder, hands trying in vain to force her hair into a scrunchie, shoelaces untied and blowing in the wind). I almost made it there ok, but for the rude van driver who blindly drove around the corner and straight through the murky grey-brown lake of water that had gathered at the kerb after the rain. In a mere second, I was soaked from head to toe. Rats.
When I finally trudged in through the front door of my new school building, no doubt I left in my wake some foul smelling footprints of dirty bog-brown puddle water. It was in this sorry state that I fully bumped into someone with almost a thud.
"You're ten minutes late, that's an automatic two-point reduction," said the person I'd collided with while simultaneously peering around looking for the reception desk and also trying to read the timetable on my smeary phone screen.
I tried to blink a drop of water out of my eye that had run down my face from my soggy wet hair and blearily looked up into the person's face. I'm sorry to say I was stunned at first. A lovely face looked down into mine, but the longer I stared, the more uncomfortable our joined gaze became. Curving eyebrows angled sharply into a frown; long-lashed, almond shaped eyes tightened disdainfully around the edges; chiselled lips curled up on one side into a sneer.
As I studied him, he reciprocated - clearly unhappy with what he found before him.
"Name and number." he bit out.
"Huh?" I responded, baffled by the entire encounter.
"Your name and student number. Give them to me now." he reiterated, offering no explanation.
"Oh.. alright," I mumbled confusedly, telling him what he wanted to know as he typed it into some kind of memo program on his phone.
"I suggest you study your rule book more carefully before the next time I see you," he said sharply, before turning on his heel and disappearing down the corridor.
Bewildered, cold, wet, (a little stinky) and feeling severely judged, I made my way to the first class. It was only after sitting down in the classroom that I discovered the puddle water had soaked my bag and all of its contents too, including the little blue book I'd received in the mail but hadn't yet had a chance to crack open. It was worse than useless now, having soaked up so much brown rain juice from the bottom of my bag, the pages stuck firmly together and swollen into a squishy lump.
Oh well, I thought to myself.. how hard could it be to figure out?
~
The next few days were a bit of a blur - trying to memorise the layout of the school, learning the names of the teachers and students - the incident with the stern guy had quite slipped my mind.
I was shuffling into the cafeteria with a potential new friend from maths, who I'd broken the ice with over a shared textbook - "You can call me Sonny, everyone does." - and taking in the colourful posters on the wall on the way in, when I almost missed the gasp from my companion. Sonny was glancing anxiously towards the lunch line on the other side of the cafeteria. Nothing seemed amiss.
"What is it?" I asked, confused by the turn from chatty and friendly to suddenly stiff-bodied and alert.
"Choi San, that's what."
"What are you talking about?"
"He's found some miscreants to torment today, be glad it's not you and me."
After Sonny pointed it out, I realised what they were talking about. This 'Choi San' character was working his way along the lunch line, pointing and motioning to the students, all of whom looked quite sheepish. I listened more carefully to what he was saying.
"Your shirt isn't tucked in and you're wearing sneakers outside of P.E., that's two more points deducted for you, Stevens. If you lose any more this month, you'll get a Saturday detention."
"That's the guy who was hassling me last time!" I whisper-shouted to Sonny. "Who does he think he is, the Principal?"
"Shhh!" Sonny motioned me to be quiet, but it was too late. The handsome devil turned his head slowly and trapped us both with his steely gaze. I dreaded what he might say as he looked the pair of us up and down, ostensibly searching for any fault in our manners or appearance.
"Lunch ends in thirty minutes. You wouldn't want to be late to class, would you?" he murmured, with his eyes still locked on Sonny and me. Sonny and I tried to sidle past him inoffensively, but at the last second I heard:
"What was your name again?"
I turned slowly on the spot to face the menacing figure once more, pointing at myself in a "who, me?" gesture, receiving a curt nod and sneer down his long (and perfectly formed) nose, in response.
"Oh, I'm no one special."
"Well, no one.... I'll be keeping an eye on you from now on."
~
That was all I heard from the fabled Choi San for quite a while, except for some pretty unbelievable stories passed down by gossipy students about his exploits. Something about tying up trespassers from a rival school or underground fighting... probably all nonsense. It turned out that he didn't consider himself Principal - he didn't need to, as he was actually the Principal's son!
I say that I didn't see him, but I did feel like I was being watched now and again. When I choked using the drinking fountain and spat water all over myself, when the pen in my pocket leaked ink all over my left tit, when a bee that'd mistakenly flown in through an open window got caught in the rat's nest I like to call my hair and then stung me on the scalp - all the time, I felt like there was someone just out of sight, no matter how I turned to look behind me.
Gave me the effing creeps.