Chapter Text
Ever since moving from Seoul, South Korea six weeks ago, Jeung Yoonchae has risen to the top of her class, perfect grades glittering like medals on her record. She's made a few friends since she started, too. The student council president, a girl named Sophia Laforteza, showed her around on her first day and the two clicked instantly, Sophia even introducing Yoonchae to her girlfriend, Daniela. Ever since then, Yoonchae has started to hang out with them outside of school, the three of them currently sitting at a picnic table underneath a blanket of stars, watching the lights illuminate the spray of the park’s fountain. At least Yoonchae is, the couple is talking about something. A party that is going on later this week, debating whether or not it would be worth it to go.
“I think we should get going,” Sophia sighs, standing up. “It's almost 10 and it's a school night.”
“Okay, mom,” Daniela teases, slinging her tote bag onto her shoulder before turning to the youngest. “Do you need a ride, Yoonchae?”
“No, it's not a long walk. I like to watch the stars.”
“Are you sure?” Sophia questions, pulling her jacket higher onto her shoulders as a gust of wind blows through her hair. “It's kinda cold.”
“I'll be fine,” Yoonchae assures, picking up her own bag. Little flowers adorning the fabric, the girl got the bag from her grandma after finishing middle school ranked #1 in her year. Before the oldest girl could protest, Yoonchae waves and starts toward her house, following the sidewalk lit by the store windows lining the downtown. As the fall chill sets in, Halloween decorations begin to litter the storefronts, grinning pumpkins resting on hay bales outside the doors like trickster guardians.
She almost makes it out of the downtown area and into the neighborhood, but a voice calls out to her. “What’s a pretty lady like yourself doing, walking alone?”
Turning to look at the person, Yoonchae finds a tall blonde guy, one she’s seen walking in the halls at school but not enough to know his name. Puffing a sigh out of her nose, she spins back around and keeps walking.
“Come on, don’t be rude,” the blonde guy slurs, his voice getting closer behind her. “I was talkin’ to you.” Suddenly, she feels a hand on her shoulder, grip too firm to be friendly. Yoonchae whips around, the motion tearing his clammy fingers off of her shoulder in the process. Cocky grin pressed onto his features, the boy looms over the girl, even though she is fairly tall herself. “I can walk you home.” He takes a step forward.
“You can barely walk straight,” the girl bites back, taking a step back to reinstate the distance.
“Come on, stop being such a cunt! I’m trying to be nice!” Before he has the chance to do anything else, another person walks between them, pushing the blonde backwards. Oversized black hoodie obscuring their face, Yoonchae isn’t able to make out who they are as they begin to tell the guy off.
“Back off, Henry. You’re drunk,” they say, a firm hand pressed against his chest.
“So are you!” he defends, gesturing to the bottle dangling from their other hand.
“Yeah, but I’m not harassing pretty girls on the street.” On the back of the person, a streetlamp catches the pattern of their hoodie, the red and green threads now illuminated. Embroidered on the hoodie, winding vines encapsulate a dozen roses littered across it, thorns and leaves filling up the empty space.
As they’re arguing, awkwardness washes over Yoonchae, feeling out of place as she spectates. She feels like she should leave, but she can’t bring herself to walk away, something about the person keeping her rooted in place. With one last shove and a biting comment, the person manages to get Henry to leave, sighing as they bring a hand to their face as they turn around. Finally able to see her face, Yoonche is surprised to see a girl with dark hair, pink streaking through her bangs and the ends of her hair. The dye is faded and grown-out but matching the flush on the girl’s cheeks, presumably from alcohol if the bottle she’s still holding in her hand is anything to go by. Something about the girl makes Yoonchae’s insides lurch, as if someone strapped her into a rollercoaster without her knowledge. Eyes dropping down the girl’s face, Yoonchae finds chapped lips, picked at and split.
“Sorry about him,” she says, rubbing her eyes. “He’s kinda a dick. You should probably head out before another one of my idiot friends comes over here.”
“Thank you,” Yoonchae replies, eyes snapping back up to meet hers and nodding slightly. The girl quickly spins on her heel and makes her way to her house, ignoring the small flutter in her chest. Must be the adrenaline.
~-~-~
Headache still hammering at her brain, Megan groans as the harsh light of the classroom mixes with her teacher’s droning voice announcing they were changing seats due to the end of the quarter. Maybe she really did drink too much last night. But that would mean Lara would be right and she can’t have that, so I guess that means she’ll have to stick it out without complaining. Tugging the hood of her jacket down on her face a little more, Megan gathers her stuff and watches as the teacher pairs off people to sit at the lab tables throughout the room.
“Skiendiel and Jeung, lab table 7. And take off that hood, will you?”
Rolling her eyes, Megan follows the teachers instructions and attempts to school her expression into something a little less pained as she sits down beside a dark-haired girl, quickly attempting to soothe the frizz in her hair. Rubbing her fingertips on her temple, she lets out a sigh, blinking hard. As the teacher begins her lesson, the girl tries her best to follow, scribbling down half notes and small doodles. Halfway through the class, the girl beside her slides Megan a small piece of folded notebook paper, the blue ink from the pen she used bleeding faintly through it. Opening it up, she finds neat, loopy handwriting reading:
Are you the girl from last night?
Brows furrowing, she attempts to remember the fuzziness from the night prior, catching small moments with her friends before finding one a bit out of place. A girl. She vaguely remembers seeing Henry heckling a random girl and telling him off, but she honestly thought it was a dream. Turning to look at the girl beside her, Megan traces over her features, the curve of her nose, the deep brown of her doe eyes, her lips. The memory of the girl seeps back into her brain, causing a deep flush to settle across her cheeks. She hadn’t expected to see the girl again after last night. Hopefully she hadn’t said anything too bad in her inebriated state. Picking her pencil back up, she scribbles out an answer.
Yeah im sorry about Henry (and me idr exactly what happened)
Watching through her peripheral vision, Megan sees the girl read her response, pausing for a moment before writing something out, crossing it out, then writing again. Going back to her work, the girl passes it over without looking up, diligently taking notes.
Thank you.
I’m sorry last night is kinda hazy for me
Once the girl reads her response, she simply nods and tucks away the slip of paper before zeroing back in on the teacher’s lecture, which seems to go on forever as Megan’s brain still pounds in her skull.
“Party too hard last night?” Lara asks as Megan sits down on the picnic bench and promptly drops her forehead onto the table. “I told you to drink some water when I left with Manon. Did you not listen?”
“You know I never do,” she groans, using her hood to block some of the sunlight. “It was hardly a party either. It was a bunch of teens drinking around a fire while trespassing on a beach. That’s not a good time, it's just sad.”
“Hey, I didn’t say it, you did.” Lara steals a fry off of Megan’s abandoned lunch tray, resting her chin on the heel of her palm. “So what’s got you all grumbly?”
Picking her head up, the girl takes the sunglasses sitting on Lara’s head and puts them on. “I have a raging headache, my ears are ringing, I forgot I told Henry to fuck off when he was harassing a pretty girl, and now, said pretty girl is my lab partner in chem. Worst part: she remembers me.” To end her sentence, Megan shoves a handful of fries in her mouth.
“Damn,” is all the older girls says, a mildly impressed look on her face.
“It’s that crazy smart Jeung girl. The one who transferred. She passed me a note asking if I was the girl last night and thanked me.”
“Wait, so you’re saying that the Jeung Yoonchae—the only person able to dethrone Sophia from top spot, near perfect GPA, cracked at running Jeung Yoonchae—thanked you—nearly flunking out of English, day-drinking, barely holding onto her spot on the track team Megan Skiendiel—for drunkenly ‘saving’ her from your equally drunk friend?” Lara questions, eyebrows raising so high it's a wonder they’re still on her face.
“You don’t need to be so mean about it,” Megan grumbles, resting her chin on her crossed arms on the table. “And the only reason for the track thing is because I skip practice sometimes.”
“Sometimes? I haven’t seen you there once in the past two months.”
“Well, there was that one time where…” Megan trails off. “Yeah I got nothing. I’ll be at all the meets though.”
“Yeah and piss everyone off when you get third in a competition you didn’t practice for.” Lara takes back her sunglasses, making Megan wince at the light, before standing up and grabbing her bag. “Drink some water, girl. Oh, and wash your hoodie. It smells rank.”
As the older girl walks away, Megan sniffs her hoodie, scrunching her nose when she realizes Lara was right. She’s been wearing this hoodie far too often lately, but she embroidered it herself. Can’t a girl just be proud of her work? Rising to her feet, Megan digs a pack of cigarettes out of her backpack, pulling one out and holding it between her lips. As she searches for her lighter, the girl moves further off campus, not wanting to bother others with her bad habit.
~-~-~
“I knew we should’ve given you a ride,” Daniela huffs, crossing her arms as the three of them sit on the bleachers. It’s one of the places they frequent for lunch, obscured just enough by the nearby trees that it provides some shade from the still annoyingly warm, autumn sun. “That Henry guy is total bad news.”
“It’s fine. That girl was there,” Yoonchae dismisses.
“That girl is Megan Skiendiel—the most unruly, audacious asshole in our year,” Sophia huffs, rolling her eyes. “She wasn’t helping you just to help you. She must’ve wanted something.”
“That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?” Dani replies, linking her pinky with the other girl.
“She almost got me kicked off the student council!" Sophia shouts, throwing her hands up in the air. “She let everyone think I was the one who put up protest posters because she used my student council printer code! I don’t even know how she got it! Promise me you’ll stay away from her.”
“Sophia-”
“Promise me, Yoonchae.”
Dipping her head a little, Yoonchae nods. “Yes, I promise.”
After a moment of tense silence, Daniela clears her throat. “So, are we going to that party this weekend? The other soccer girls want to know if I’m going.”
Yoonchae begins to zone out, thoughts circling back to Megan rather than some party she couldn’t be bothered to care about. If she’s apparently ‘unruly’ and ‘audacious’, then why was she so quick to help Yoonchae? Was Sophia right? Did she want something else? Her thoughts slip back to Megan from class—flushed and tired—then to Megan from last night—apologetic and distracted. Everything seemed so genuine; could she really be lying?
“Hey Lara, what does ‘idr’ mean?” Yoonchae asks her teammate, pulling her hair up into a ponytail.
“I don’t remember,” Lara replies, not looking up from where she’s tying her shoes.
“It’s fine I’ll just google-”
“No, it means ‘I don’t remember’.”
“Oh, thanks.” Stretching with the rest of her teammates, Yoonchae looks around the track, not searching for anything particular but rather taking note of the others. The sprinters all huddle in a group, occasionally pulling a nearby runner into their conversation, as the hurdlers and other jumpers poke fun at the coach while he’s still absent. Yoonchae relaces her tennis shoes even though they’re perfectly fine, doing it just for something to do with her hands. There’s a weird buzzing in her chest. She’s not sure of its source, but only of the fact that it won’t go away. Standing up, she joins the rest of her relay team for their practice, half listening as the coach explains their workout. Her mind is elsewhere, cycling through everything from the past 24 hours. Something in there has to be the reason.
“You with us, Jeung?” Coach Sohey asks, snapping her attention back to him.
“I-uh, yes, sir,” she stutters, nodding.
“Then why don’t you run practice today? Show us how well you were listening.”
Luckily, their practice schedule was the same every other week, so since it was Thursday, “20 minutes easy run, then a 10 minute tempo. After that, an 800. And don’t forget, the first real meet is this weekend.” Though only being here for six weeks, Yoonchae has already memorized his spiel, finding comfort in routine.
“I guess I spoke too soon,” the coach mutters, “but yeah, what she said.”
Starting her run, Yoonchae attempts to clear her mind of the intruding feeling. Usually the rhythm of her shoes hitting the pavement is soothing, but today it feels like a hammer pounding into her skull. Her thoughts are clouded far more than she’d like, slipping out of her control so much she can’t even decipher them into coherent strings. Control is good. It’s safe. So, she does what she always does; she uses the stress as energy, pushing faster than she normally would on the tempo section until all she can focus on is the burn in her lungs and legs rather than her head. The pain is controlled—known—in a way her thoughts aren’t. Maybe she’s finally going insane, finally done over by the late nights of studying when she should be sleeping. Maybe she’s thinking too hard about what Sophia had said. Either way, she needs to let off some steam and focus on practice.