Chapter Text
It was hot – close to unbearable.
Jenny scratched the back of her neck, loosened her shirt collar. All around her, girls were fanning themselves and anxiously patting their make up whenever the teacher was facing the board. A group of boys walked past the classroom in their sports kits; a waft of sweat flooded the class, causing everyone to groan. The teacher shut the doors, effectively cutting off both the sweat reek and the airflow. As soon as the class was dismissed for the day, Jenny quickly made her way out of school, taking her tie off as soon as she was out of the gates. Rounding the corner of the street, right there by the underpass, she paused. The other kids were still on the school grounds – they always took forever to leave at the end of the day, chatting with their friends and making plans. Dragging their feet on their way to cram school, for those that went. Loitering by the boys’ classrooms.
Jenny shoved her tie in her bag, opened up a couple of buttons of her shirt, dropped her bag to the ground, and, finally, finally, untied her hair.
It always fought this – the tight coils gripping at the tie, tangled, not ready to let go. Then suddenly it would begin to burst out of its confines, remembering what freedom tasted like, and all of it would stand on end, catching the breeze, wild curls twirling in every direction but down. Jenny let out an audible sigh, reaching her fingers through her hair and rubbing at the roots a little, feeling the way it tingled and sparked. She flung the whole thing to one side then the other, before letting it do as it pleased.
The first few voices of her school mates came to her from somewhere further up the street, and Jenny picked up her bag and made to leave.
And that was when she clocked him.
He was sitting almost directly above her – at the top of the underpass. He was flanked by two other dudes, all of them smoking. How had she not smelt the smoke?
He was wearing the Ganghak uniform jacket and trousers, with his own choice of trainers and t-shirt. He still sported the smart boy glasses that had all new teachers fooled, until he revealed himself for the total psychopath that he was.
And Jenny wasn’t using that word lightly – Geum Seongje was a psychopath.
Total lack of empathy, bored with life, lover of violence and pain, no moral compass, unpredictable. Something dead in his eyes. No light. When he smiled, it wasn’t a good sign. Silent and withdrawn was his safe mode – and still, you had better give him a wide berth. Teachers certainly did: no one challenged his loose compliance with the school uniform, no one insisted he hand his phone in, no one dared approach his table when he was in his merciful state of silent and withdrawn.
There was a hierarchy to the bullies, and at Ganghak High, Geum Seongje was at the very top. No one was crazy enough to mess with that.
Jenny had seen him fight, once. She had just been emerging from the staircase when she’d seen him, right there, in the middle of a crowd, fighting with some jock. The other guy had moved out of the way at the last second and Seongje had punched the wall, the thud loud like thunder. Jenny had cringed from how painful it sounded. Seongje’ had not even flinched. He’d not even cried out. Instead, he’d cackled, the sound creeping up Jenny’s back like goosebumps. Something was the matter with his brain: he felt no empathy, and no pain. It was a very bad combo. His one redeeming quality was that he was also extremely self-absorbed. He only noticed potential threats, and so had never so much as looked in Jenny’s direction. Barely bothered with girls at all – mostly he was either playing games on his phone, or on the school computers, or he was fighting. Jenny had been quite content knowing that she did not exist in Geum Seongje’s world.
But he was looking at her right now, up there above the underpass. Dark eyes pinned to her, behind the smart boy glasses.
Really looking at her.
So were his two mates, but Jenny hardly saw them at all. Geum Seongje was looking at her. He was seeing her. Like a rabbit caught in headlights, Jenny stood there, frozen. Only her hair moved, catching every single inflection of breeze and using it for motion, like sails on an ocean.
Her fingers twitched with the urge to tie her hair back up, and she realised with a drop of her stomach that the hair tie was not in her hand, nor was it on her wrist.
She couldn’t look down for it. She couldn’t look away. Geum Seongje was looking straight at her, unblinking, focused. His phone in his hand, limp.
Voices came closer – Jenny made herself look away. Her feet moved – moved too fast.
She ran.
The appeal of the exotic had lasted for about a semester, and by the halfway point of elementary school Jenny had learned to blend the fuck in, as much as her dark skin and coily hair would allow. Granted, she couldn’t do much about the skin. The hair she squeezed and squashed and pulled into a tight bun, so hard you could almost forget about the sprung up curls that wired up into the air whenever her hair was down. Her hair was never down as such – in true 4A fashion, it shot out of her skull and up towards the sky whenever it wasn’t tied down.
She was Korean, she even had the passport to prove it. Her last name was Korean: Jung, her father’s name. Jenny’s mum was Haitian, and they’d lived over there for most of Jenny’s childhood. Moving to Korea had not worried her at all, to be honest. She could speak Korean, well at least she could speak it with her dad and on the phone with the relatives over in Korea, but elementary school kids’ fast-paced and gossip-fuelled chatter had been something to adjust to – she could admit that. The whole alphabet had been something else again, requiring her to take additional lessons for about a year, and causing her to fall further behind with the curriculum. By about six months in, Jenny was barely literate, she was behind in all subjects, she looked different, and even though she could technically speak the language she had none of the social codes and relational subtleties the other kids seemed to naturally possess. In middle school, this made for a potent cocktail, and so, once it was established that she was neither really foreign, yet not quite fluent enough to crack jokes with, nor was she great at anything much, Jenny quickly found herself extremely isolated and lonely.
Ripe for the picking on.
Some comments were made about her hair, and to make matters worse even the teacher said that the hair was too big and placed her at the back of the classroom, away from everyone else. No one looked like her, which, when you’re a twelve year old girl, is probably one of the worst things that can ever happen to you (twelve year olds are dramatic like that). After the hair, there were comments about how far behind she was at. Nothing crazy, but it did become a point of reference: “oh, you only got such and such a grade in the test? Don’t worry, at least you won’t get zero marks, like Jenny”. She crushed them all in English class, her one redemption point. She was not hated, per say, she was just not particularly bothered with. People still picked her for sports teams and there was always a kind soul (Go Na-ra, always Go Na-ra) to check if she’d noted down the homework accurately, but there were no real friends as such.
Until one fateful day, when, by some weird cosmic alignment, Jenny scored higher on a test than the most popular girl in the class. And that didn’t sit well with the girl – because when the scores were announced, everyone ooh-ed and woo-ed and teased, and it didn’t matter than Jenny herself did not show any emotion about it. She went from being unacknowledged to being actively ignored, and she clung to that – through middle school, well into high school, Jenny let herself be ignored, sought it, because it was better than the only alternative possible: open hostility. On her first day of middle school, Jenny saw a group of boys pick another up and dangle him down out of the second-floor window. No one did anything, everyone laughed, and when the teacher returned no one said a thing. That night, she ran home and begged her parents to let her take martial art lessons – any at all.
And so middle school passed – and high school began.
There was plenty of open hostility, at Ganghak High. Mainly between the boys, often between the girls, sometimes from the boys towards the girls, occasionally from the girls towards the boys.
Hostility could erupt from anything – a look, a smile, a bump, a grade, a haircut. Sometimes there was no apparent trigger at all. Everyone would just start hating on that one kid, and it lasted anything from a day to a year to more.
Jenny was just that little bit taller than most of the girls, and she had mastered the poker face by now, and with her hair hidden she stood out less. Word had also spread that she took kick-boxing lessons, so, thankfully, she was left alone by the bullies. The only snickers that came her way occurred whenever her mum picked her up, wearing the brightest clothes anyone had ever seen, and with her hair styled in an afro so huge it eclipsed the sun. That hadn’t happened since middle school – Jenny had made sure of that.
Her dad was a little concerned about her lack of friends, but honestly Jenny was not worried. Invisibility suited her just fine. Better that than to become caught up in whatever the hell the boys were up to.
Except now maybe that was all over – the whole ‘Union’ rubbish seemingly coming to an end. Perhaps as a result of that, Geum Seongje was bored, looking for his next plaything.
Seongje and her clocking each other at the underpass had happened on a Friday night, and Jenny had thought of nothing else since. So much so that when her phone buzzed on Sunday night, Jenny was instantly certain that it was a message from Geum Seongje, perhaps promising her a slow and painful death, probably because he’d hated her hair.
It wasn’t that, of course, but seventeen year olds are dramatic like that.
It was Go Na-ra, yet again. Na-ra was nice. Jenny had known her since elementary school, and though they’d never really been in the same social circles, Na-ra had always been decent to Jenny, even after everyone else stopped inviting her to their parties. Even now, years later, Na-ra still occasionally texted her to check she knew there was a test coming up, or to remind her about Sports Day. Na-ra had been assigned as Jenny’s ‘buddy’ for the first week of elementary school, back when Jenny had first moved to Korea, and it seemed she had taken that role for life. Jenny tried to repay her as best she could – it being that one time when Dan, the exchange student, and a total douchebag, had tried hitting on Na-ra and not taken her clear rebuttal for an answer.
“She’s saying no, douchebag, give up,” Jenny had said, as they were all queueing up for lunch. Dan had been just in front of her, and Na-ra just after that, and Jenny had had to withstand a whole ten minutes of his heavy handed flirting and her awkward and evasive chuckles and non-committal answers.
If the swear word shocked him, Dan recovered quickly.
“I’m just trying to see if I can get her number,” he laughed, ever the nice guy.
“Well, you can’t. Leave her alone.”
Amazingly, Dan did leave it at that. Jenny then noticed that everyone was looking at her, and she realised that this was the first time she had spoken this academic year.
This time, and this was the second weird thing that happened this week to Jenny, Na-ra’s text wasn’t about homework.
Hi, Jenny! Have you had a nice weekend?
Jenny raised an eyebrow.
Yes, thank you, and you?
Yes good thank you.
Jenny left it at that. Shortly after, her phone buzzed again.
Did you see there’s a sale on at Forever 18?
Jenny downright scowled. What was this about?
Is there
Yeah! I’m going to go next weekend
Ok
Her phone fell silent for a little while. Moved by suspicion alone, Jenny glanced at the conversation again, and saw that Go Na-ra is typing… kept on flicking on and off at the top of the screen. Either Na-ra was about to lay a novel of a text, or she was hesitating to say whatever was actually on her mind.
Finally, after three whole minutes, Na-ra’s response appeared:
Do you want to come with me?
Jenny blinked. As if flood gates had been open, Na-ra’s next texts came in quick succession.
We could check out the sales and then have an iced coffee
I know this really nice café
Or we could eat
Do you like fried chicken?
It’s totally fine if you’re busy
It was Jenny’s turn to begin typing, and then take forever to push out one sentence:
Like, just me and you?
She cringed.
Is that ok? Invite anyone you want I’m totally cool with it
Jenny scoffed: she had no one to invite, but nice of Na-ra to pretend she did. She bit her lip – part of her suspected this was some sort of twisted ploy to get her out of the safety of her house and then pour pig’s blood on her, but she dismissed that idea immediately. Na-ra just wasn’t the type.
Yeah that’d be nice
Great! Na-ra said. See you tomorrow at school!
Then there was a smiling cat emoji, followed by a series of screenshots of the different Forever 18 clothes Na-ra had been eyeing up. And just like that, in the same breath as she’d somehow caught the attention of the worst person in school, Jenny landed a friend.
Na-ra began to sit with Jenny in class – hesitantly at first, then as if she’d always been there. She sat with her at lunch, too, and they walked part of the way home together. Jenny accepted the friendship with an edge of carefulness – why now? Who did Na-ra normally hang out with, and why was she no longer with them? The Dan incident had been a good six months ago, was it possible that this was what it was about? Would the friendship end instantly if Jenny just outright asked Na-ra why now?
“You should let your hair down,” Na-ra commented during break of the fourth day of their friendship. “I bet it’s really pretty.”
“It’s ok,” Jenny deflected. The suggestion would keep coming up at regular intervals, but Jenny didn't know that yet.
At the weekend, Jenny went shopping with Na-ra, then they got an iced coffee, then some fried chicken from a place run by some really angry man and his loud and flirty son, then they ended up going back to Jenny’s and Na-ra was invited for dinner. If the girl had had any doubts as to whether Jenny secretly had a vibrant social life, these doubts would have been well and truly crushed by the intense and excessive excitement with which Jenny’s parents welcomed Na-ra into their home. They were so clearly thrilled by the friendship that Jenny felt something close to shame. Na-ra, lovely as ever, pretended not to notice. Everything in her manner seemed to suggest that Jenny and her had been friends since childhood.
In hindsight, Jenny should probably have had a bit more of a suspicion, but at the time it was all so confusing that she totally forgot about Geum Seongje, and the interesting timing of her new friendship with Na-ra. And to be completely fair, perhaps she had not wanted to see. There was, as it turned out, something incredibly intoxicating about friendship.
The feeling of being watched began creeping up her back and tingling the back of her neck sometime during her second week of friendship with Na-ra. It would rise like mist, then fizzle out as soon as she tried identifying its cause. No one was looking at her behind her back. Perhaps she was imagining things.
As it turned out, Na-ra did have other friends. A bunch of girls, cheerful and feminine, who began to join them too. They were very friendly towards Jenny, but the latter still caught the looks they directed at Na-ra. Looks that said ‘is this ok’ and ‘are you sure about this’. Na-ra would just stare back, smiling, and eventually her friends stopped giving her those looks, and the way they interacted with Jenny became less forced, more organic, and before long Jenny was absorbed by the friendship group and no longer a total outcast. One girl in particular, Ju-kyung, quickly became Jenny’s friend. She had a round, cute face, and was completely incapable of not telling the truth. It was refreshing.
Right about the same time, Jenny began seeing Seongje everywhere. In the corridor, outside the classroom, in the yard, on the field, by the underpass – always by the underpass. And each time, he was looking at her.
Jenny would get that tingly feeling, and her eyes would scan her surroundings. They’d land on him – he’d already be watching her.
And, worst of all, he would not look away once she clocked him.
Always, always, Jenny would break eye contact first. And then she’d risk a glance back, and he’d still be watching.
Subconsciously, Jenny began keeping her hair tied up all the way home rather than letting it down straight after school.
Seongje never approached her, though, thankfully. He just looked. And looked. And looked. She gave it no reaction, unsure what else she should do, if anything.
One day, perhaps it was a moment of momentary madness, or a little bit of PMS, who knows, Jenny reacted.
“Seongje is looking at Jenny again,” whispered Ju-kyung.
“He’s not,” Na-ra dismissed instantly.
“He totally is! Look!”
Jenny risked a glance over her shoulder and saw that yes, indeed, Geum Seongje was looking at her again.
“He’s a total psycho,” Ju-kyung said. “He’s so scary. He broke my brother’s arm last year, did I tell you?”
Na-ra hummed noncommittedly.
“Didn’t he break your brother’s knee, too, a couple years back?” Ju-kyung insisted.
“Hyun-tak’s?” Jenny asked Na-ra, and hey, she’d done well with that. She’d not made it sound like Na-ra’s brother’s name had been dancing around in her head ever since she’d first laid eyes on him at the beginning of high school. She’d been very nonchalant about it. Probably had everyone fooled. Luckily, Hyun-tak went to a different school, the notorious Eunjang, which meant that Jenny at least did not have to make a fool of herself every single day – she could save that for whenever she was invited over at Na-ra’s.
“They got into a fight,” Na-ra said eventually, avoiding eye contact with them both. “When you fight you get hurt.”
“Still,” Ju-kyung said, “it’s pretty fucked up. It’s the reason why Hyun-tak had to stop taekwondo. Some guys just don’t know where to stop, with the violence.” She shook her head. “It can’t be good if Seongje’s looking at Jenny.”
The latter risked another glance over her shoulder – yep, still looking.
“Does he ever hit girls?” she asked the other girls.
“No,” Na-ra said instantly. “He never has.”
“Are you sure?” Ju-kyung frowned. “How do you even know that?”
“He just… doesn’t,” Na-ra insisted. “Anyway, more importantly, are we going to the karaoke this weekend or not? Because if we do, I think we should make a whole deal of it. Like, get dressed up and stuff. Jenny, you could wear your hair down?”
In hindsight, it was odd behaviour coming from Na-ra, but at the time Jenny was too engrossed in the situation to think anything of it. She threw another glance in Seongje’s direction, at the other end of the canteen, and met his eyes. Well, fuck it. This time, Jenny did not look away. Instead, she half turned in her seat, facing in his direction, and then raised one eyebrow and gave him a ‘and whatever the hell do you want’ kind of look.
Whatever kind of reaction she had expected to get, this was not it.
Seongje’s eye twitched, and so did his lip, and then he was downright grinning at her from across the room. It was like time stopped – no one else existed. His smile – never a good sign – and his direct eye contact, all of it froze Jenny to the spot and sent her soul into a whirlpool of fear, panic, which then unexpectedly erupted into anger.
How dare he?
She morphed her stare into a glare and turned away from him, decidedly, deliberately, playing it cool, betrayed only by her hand which flew of its own accord to her hair, checking it was still enclosed within the tight confines of its bun.
After that, whenever she felt his eyes on her, Jenny ignored Seongje.
Until she no longer could.