Work Text:
i
Jihoon is a Straight As student with a temper as short as her height. Coincidentally her cup is an A and her less than ideal body type may or may not be the cause of her irritable countenance. Just thinking about it serves to irritate Jihoon more; why should she care about what others think of her? Fuck them, is what she wants to say, but if that one senior from her 6th period so much as ruffles her hair and calls her cute, she crumbles and hates herself a little more. She hates that she feels flustered and ashamed when she’d pass through the school quad only to overhear huddles of boys rating her a 5 (she has no boobs but her face is aight ) or a 6.5 because she’s cute in a ‘I want to molest her way’. Disgusting.
She wants to be a Strong Independent Woman. Which is why, when she meets Yoongi, with her neon green hair and her plugged and double helix pierced ears– stars alighted in her eyes.
ii
“What’s wrong with me?”
“Do i know you?”
“No,” Jihoon pauses, suddenly feeling shy, “But I want to be like you.”
iii
Yoongi likes to smoke at the concrete junction between the girl’s locker room and the inside court for gym, so naturally Jihoon skips class and starts going there instead. She’s blowing out smoke from her mouth, forming rings that float away before gradually fading from sight, their scent the only proof of their existence. Yoongi snorts when Jihoon shares this but she passes Jihoon her cancer stick and Jihoon feels acknowledged.
iv
It’s summer and its hot but Jihoon refuses to wear shorts because she’ll only get called chicken legs again. Yoongi has no such compulsion and is sporting booty shorts and a stretchy tank that doesn’t quite cover her bust.
Jihoon feels a blush creep on her face but doesn’t look away, “I can see your bra.”
“Good,” She takes a long drag of her cig before blowing the smoke towards Jihoon’s face, “ It’s cute and I paid fifty bucks for it.”
“You don’t usually spend that much money on anything that’s not equipment,” Jihoon scrunches her nose, either from the smoke or the thought of spending such a ludicrous amount of money on a piece of cloth that has no other use than holding up bags of fat. Thinking on it, it may just be both– Jihoon did not enjoy that first time she took the cig from Yoongi’s finger tips.
Yoongi chuckles, the same condescending one that she reserves just for Jihoon– Jihoon liked to think it sounded a bit fond at times.
“You know me so well short stack,” She pulls out a second stick, handing it to Jihoon as if to reward a child with candy,”My boyfriend paid for it, actually.”
Jihoon’s not fond of the nickname but accepts the cancer stick. She puts the brown tip between her lips, careful to keep a firm hold on it as she leans closer to Yoongi. Yoongi meets her halfway, lighting the cig with the dying flames of her own.
Jihoon takes her first drag and almost coughs out a lung and Yoongi merely laughs, shaking her head back and forth.
v
“Why does your boyfriend pay for so much of your shit?” Yoongi looks up from where she’s unpacking all the shopping bags she’d accumulated with Jihoon. They’d been swiping her boyfriend’s credit card left and right, some purchases weren’t even for Yoongi but for Jihoon. Yoongi raises an eyebrow before pulling out a G-string from the a Pink! bag, stalking salaciously towards where Jihoon is perched on top of her bed, a mischievous grin painted on her lips.
“It’s not the shit he’s paying for,” She takes Jihoon’s slender ankes, slipping them through the G-string, one at a time without breaking eye-contact,”But for the honor of taking them off me,” She pushes the lace the rest of the way with her teeth and Jihoon feels her hot breath fanning into her crotch but she’s still held captive by Yoongi’s gaze so she can’t be entirely certain if Yoongi actually licked her crotch through her stockings,”My dear Jihoon.”
vi
Yoongi is crying and Jihoon is aware that she should be giving her comfort and hugging her and telling her that things will get better but all she manages is a crude what the fuck?
Because what the fuck?
Yoongi only continues to cry, not bothering to look at Jihoon as she crushed all that Jihoon believed in, crushed Jihoon’s image of her completely. Jihoon feels bitter and confused and betrayed and Yoongi was still just crying.
Jihoon means to tell her to stop crying and that Jihoon was here for her but all that came out was, “I can’t believe you’re crying about that bastard who only bought you shiny things to get into your pants.” She may have picked up a lot more of Yoongi’s language than she initially thought. But she’s still naive because she doesn’t expect the sting of a punch landing itself on her cheek. It hurt like hell and “Weren’t girls supposed to slap each other?”
“You know whats wrong with you, Lee Jihoon? You think that to be strong, you gotta be some cold-hearted bitch who doesn’t give a fuck but news flash! Everybody gives a fuck about one thing or another so don’t you dare tell me that crying because i lost my boyfriend, who i gave a ton of fucks about, makes me fucking weak, you fake-ass wannabe feminist.”
vii
Jihoon decides to stay away from Yoongi. She was a bad influence anyway– she was better off without the older girl. From now on, she was going to focus on her studies again and set herself up for success.
This lasts for a whole week before she’s back to sitting with her back on the dirty concrete wall between the lockers and the gym. And Yoongi’s there, like the fucking rock that she was. It’s a wonder that she’s going to graduate at the end of the year– she never went to any of her classes.
Jihoon blames the tears gathering at the corner of her eyes on the godawful experience that was smoking. Yoongi just laughs her usual condescending laugh while ruffling the smaller girl’s hair.
viii
Yoongi’s lip gloss does little to mask the smell of smoke and Jihoon imagines that the heat she’s feeling is the searing sting of a cigarette’s end.
ix
Yoongi graduates and she doesn’t let the dress code stop her from decorating her cap with the words “Fuck U!” with pink and purple glittery sequence. It was the first time Jihoon’s witnessed someone get kicked out of their own graduation but Yoongi just shrugs and drives them to the nearest McDonalds to stuff their faces.
x
Yoongi’s gone but Jihoon still has to stay two more years in the institutionalized hell called school. It’s worse because she just sees all the same bullshit but its also better because she knows better than to feel anything less than secure in herself. The most important things she learned in high school wasn’t from any number of power point presentations or long-winded lectures but in the dirty confined space of a concrete wall sandwiched by the smelly locker rooms and the equally smelly gym on school grounds. It still smelled faintly of old smoke and its enough for Jihoon.