Eunsu hoped that he wouldn’t become like everyone else and ignore her. The girl sat silent, keeping her attention on the teacher’s introduction and off of the whispers heard around her.

    “He’s a foreigner,”

    “Does he even speak Korean?”

    “He’s kinda cute,”

    “I hope he doesn’t sit by me,”

    Eunsu heard these muttered remarks and hoped the boy would take the empty seat in front of her. She kept an ear on the teacher’s words and grew excited at a particular sentence.

    “Would anyone like to volunteer to show our new student around the school?” Mrs. Choi said. Without an ounce of shame in her body, Eunsu’s hand sprung up. The woman looked at her and smiled. “Of course, our top student Hu Eunsu, would you mind walking him around whenever you get the chance and show him where things are?” the teacher said.

    “Of course,” Eunsu said as she looked at the boy. He looked back at her and suppressed a smile.

    “What is he, her boyfriend or something?

    “Now Eunsu-ah isn’t going to let us copy her work anymore,”

    The girl stopped paying attention to the remarks when the teacher told the boy to take a seat and he started walking down her aisle, taking the one in front of her. Eunsu didn’t care how silly people thought she was, she couldn’t help her excitement. Classes passed until it was time for lunch and the boy turned around in his desk and faced her.

“Don’t worry, I’ll show you where everything is,” she said with a smile as she stood up. He didn’t say anything back but returned the expression and followed her out of the room. The girl pointed out bathrooms and lockers and different classrooms as the boy took note of it all but knew he wouldn’t remember most of it.

“This is the cafeteria, and there is the front entrance,” she said, pointing to the obvious exit that was a few steps away from their destination. The girl couldn’t stop talking and most of her words were used in asking the boy questions, which he mainly gave one worded answers to.

“How do you like South Korea so far?” she asked.

“It’s nice,” he answered, not saying anything else during the silence Eunsu left for him to elaborate on his answer. Maybe he was just quiet.

“So, why did you move here?” she asked. The girl watched as the boy hesitated to answer, which made her mor