Hyejin’s life is one big cosmic joke.  The worst part is that no one else finds it as funny as she does.  Before she became friends with Mark and Amber, no one really seemed to comprehend just how comical her misfortunes are.  And that’s probably a good thing according to some, but Hyejin’s only joy in life is the entertainment she gets by being dumb.  Or rather dumb things happening to her—from the dead bird on her doorstep to her driver’s license photo perfectly capturing the essence of her eye roll.  And those are just the exceedingly mild misfortunes—“test trials” if you will.  If you were to ask her to give a synopsis of her life thus far, she would tell you that she is the dorky heroine suffering from the hands of dramatic irony.  She just happens to be aware of the irony.  And finds it hilarious.

October is sunny and dry in Seoul, and Hyejin doesn’t have to consult the Oracle to know this day will be no different.  She is up before tenebrous night gradually fades to dawn’s pewter gray, and the shadowy half-moons under her eyes attest to her status as useless night owl.  But she’s used to this—running on little sleep yet waking earlier than necessary just to ensure she gets to school before anybody else.

She’s condensed her makeup routine down to ten minutes, a personal feat of which she is secretly proud.  She’s in the bathroom applying eyeshadow when her dad pokes his head in.  

“Hyejin, I think my keys are vacationing in the thirteenth vile vortex that is this house.”  

She glances at him in the mirror.  As usual, his hair is unruly reflecting his intrinsic state of harriedness, and his tie is a bit askew.  The skin of her fingertips prickle to adjust it, but she knows it’s futile.  “Did you check with the Wisdom Wand?”  

“It’s stuck on its dramatic recitation of Song of Solomon!” he exclaims.  “Has it been watered lately?”  

She pauses to think, small brush held in midair.  “Maybe it just hasn’t had enough sunlight.”

Dad gives her a deliberately blank look.  “Hyejin.  No one in this house has seen sunlight since the Battle of Waterloo.”

“Least of all Napoleon,” she retorts.  “He’s too short to make a shadow.”  She makes one last on her eyelid with the brush.

Dad lifts his chin in acknowledgment of her quip; she can tell he’s trying to think of a rejoinder.  

“Perhaps the only way to associate himself with a shadow was to become one.”  He pinches his mouth together; she raises a brow in anticipation.  Upon noticing her response, he enters the bathroom fully before he continues with his thought.  “They probably just cremated his body and ground his ashes until they became very fine.”  

Hyejin now has her liquid eyeliner pen out.  She believes she knows where he’s going with this, and it’s definitely funny, so she suppresses a premature laugh so hard it sends a tremor to her a hand and nearly causes her to mess up her eyeliner so badly she’d have to contain the damage by making her wings à la Amy Winehouse.

“There was never a lot of him to go around, but how much do you need to make one tiny container of eyeshadow?” he persists.

She wants to roll her eyes, but he’s watching so she averts her gaze instead to the eyeshadow palette that’s setting on the counter in front of her.  “Can you dye the ashes of human remains?  This is clay brown.”

He squints for a few moments, one eye almost attaining wink status.  “Uh…dunno about that.  Supposing it could be done without damaging the ashes, I seriously doubt it’d be the most efficient and straightforward way to achieve the color you want.  You could blend it with some kitchen spices or mica powder probably.”

She thinks she should probably steer him away from that idea—if given the means and opportunity, he would try it.  “Okay, I need to finish getting ready.  Are you going in early today?”

He shifts until he’s closer to the door again and drums his fingers against the doorjamb.  “Yes, I have a safety meeting first thing, and I need a little time to psych myself up for it and gather some data.”  He sighs absentmindedly and rubs his eyes with a heavy hand.  “I hate safety meetings.  I know the executives need to be informed of what’s going on in the company, but I’d rather they just let me do my job with no fuss.”

“You just hate people,” she comments without looking, too busy getting the wings of her eyeliner even.

“I hate people,” he reiterates as fact.  “I hate being around them, having them talk to me, having to answer to them, having them look over my shoulder.  You’d think that after all this time they would understand that I do my best work when I have lots of space and freedom.  I hate progress reports.”

Hyejin doesn’t say anything back.  He doesn’t want an emotional response, and he already knows exactly why those “progress reports” are logically necessary—for his superiors.  It’s just an inconvenience for him and his preferred modus operandi.  She understands.

Dad stays in there with her for a few more moments, but his mind is elsewhere.  She doesn’t particularly care to know what he’s thinking, however.

Suddenly he in a quick breath and slaps the doorjamb a couple times.  “Well, I’m off.  Wait, my keys…”  Then he retreats abruptly.

When he’s gone, she sighs heavily and scrutinizes herself in the mirror for a couple seconds before making her gremlin face and the noises that come along with it.  Interestingly enough, it’s what all dysfunctional artists do when their work doesn’t meet their own arbitrary standards.  (See Der Schrei der Natur by Edvard Munch for reference.)

God, she’s tired.

By ten till six she’s walking from her street of row houses to the bus stop, coffee thermos in hand.  This part of Gwangjin District is awake but drowsy; the sun has not yet rubbed the crust of sleep from its rays, leaving everything awash in a still, gray light.

She boards the bus alone.  It isn’t full to capacity at this hour, but most of the seats are occupied by workers just getting off from night shift.  If they’re lucky, they may get home in time to eat breakfast with their families.  And of course there’s the handful of men and women in professional business attire, people who either have a long commute or an important day ahead of them.  She unconsciously recognizes almost everybody now, enough that she doesn’t feel awkward sitting next to the aging grandmother who is too old to be working.

She takes a sip of her coffee, careful not to burn her tongue with the still-scalding brew.  It’s blessedly stout enough to float a hammer, which in her opinion is really the only way to drink it; anything less is just juice.  Soon enough the caffeine begins to kick away the cobwebs in her brain, giving her mind a little room to breathe and think unimpeded.  She embraces the sense of clarity it brings while simultaneously adjusting to the abrupt change of gear her body endures.  Mornings are the bane of her existence.  (Well, that and aforesaid dead bird on her doorstep—the omens never stop giving.)

“Excuse me, miss.”

Hyejin looks up to see that she is the recipient of a curious stare.

“Are you a K-pop star?” the woman asks with wide eyes.

Hyejin’s initial reaction is to panic a little deep inside because a stranger is speaking to her—what do you do?  Then she is confused as to why this lady has asked her if she’s a K-pop star.  “Huh?” she wonders aloud.  It comes out all weird and strangled; she wants to punch herself in the face.

“K-pop,” the woman repeats with emphasis, leaning forward and lifting a lock of Hyejin’s hair—a lock that’s dyed a dark pastel pink.

“Oh,” Hyejin says dumbly.  Sometimes she just forgets.

The woman seems to realize that she’s just touched a complete stranger’s hair on the bus.  She reddens and quickly pulls back, then bows a little.  “Sorry…” she mumbles.

After Hyejin gets over the awkwardness a little, she bows back and smiles at the lady as if to say it’s okay.  “I’m…” she begins, sounding quiet and a bit ill at ease, “not a K-pop star, though.”  

There are people staring at them now.  She can feel it as overactive nerves beneath her skin, but she reminds herself that she’s used to this—used to the odd looks and overlong scrutiny, the occasional remark or question regarding her hair.  And she’s not ashamed of it.  She doesn’t regret dying it that first time nor all the times after, but the stares that cast her into the spotlight are something she will probably never find truly comfortable.  Some would say she shouldn’t have dyed her hair if she didn’t want all the stares.  Be that as it may, she didn’t dye her hair for the attention.

The woman still looks embarrassed.  She doesn’t say anything more; neither does Hyejin.

After four more stops, she gets off the bus with several others, none of them students.  The remaining walk to school is short and one she generally finds kind of pleasant, even on the more humid days of late summer and spring.  The sun is higher by now but still in a bit of a listless state, faintly glowing white-gold through morrow’s vapor.  It’s brighter out, though, with activity picking up steadily about the vicinity—the sounds of construction, machinery, human conversation, a truck without muffler, faint laughter…It’s all white noise to Hyejin.

The school’s main building is open but predominantly unlit when she enters, its hallways not so much hallow as hollow.  In all honesty, it kind of looks like an empty slaughterhouse—mostly dark save for the red glow of exit signs and one or two safety lights, and there’s a slight industrial feel from the reflective surfaces of metal lockers and polyvinyl flooring.  Everything is so empty, so still, so silent; if photons in shiny corridors could have a voice, this place would be lit in contralto.  

Mr. Bang’s classroom, A58, is located on the second story of the A hall, right at its midmost point.  The in-joke among the school’s most clever league of underclassmen is that he was given that spot because it sounds so much like a-hole.  Or something like that.  Anyway, it’s a dumb joke, and Hyejin doesn’t appreciate the little sophomore jackanapes throwing shade at her favorite teacher.  Mr. Bang is pretty much the most chill one they’ve ever had.  Excluding Mr. Zhang, of course, the bedimpled Mandarin teacher who was once (or twice) spotted smoking colitas out in the parking lot of the Food Dragon.  Unapologetically, she may add.  And normally she disdains any sort of gossip at all, to the point where she will actually walk away if you begin harvesting the grapevine, but she saw him with her own two eyes and smelled it.  Tobacco it was not.

Due to the U shape of the building and A58’s central position, huge picture windows nearly take up the length of an entire wall, offering a good view of the greenhouse and, quite further out, the back of the football stadium—where the Kangbyun Misfits fight in crimson glory, for the Crimson Glory, almost every Friday night of the season.  If you’re looking for a team specializing in defensive shutouts, the Misfits probably aren’t your best bet…but the Seoul Sound Glory Hallelujah Marching Band sure can give you a run for your money!

She goes to home games sometimes.  Mostly to support Amber, first chair tuba player/dumb best friend, but also to stare passively at the drum major’s as he conducts from a platform at the 50-yard line.  If you could see him, you’d understand.  Jongdae’s facial structure is exquisite.  Absolutely exquisite.  It’s every Renaissance sculptor’s aesthetic dream—to find a man whose cheekbones and jawline look as if they’ve already been carved of marble, whose eyes are balanced so wonderfully, whose set of mouth is perfectly distinguished.

Really, though, his striking facial features have no bearing on his .  You just get what you can from games.  There is more at play there than the triviality of hoping the other team experiences a crushing defeat both competitively and in morale.  Sometimes you just gotta look at butts.  Sometimes you find yourself testing the elasticity of your face by glowering at a certain player on the offensive team.  It varies by night and mental subjectivity.

And by “a certain player,” she means Park Chanyeol.

Park Chanyeol is 185.42 centimeters worth of loud and stupid.  Other things about which he can brag include being (a) the football team’s “invaluable” center, (b) the mathlete’s vice president, and (c) the school’s resident gangster.  From two different logical standpoints, nobody really knows how he manages to be all three, but he does and he is.  It’s freaking weird.

Honestly speaking, you’d think Park Chanyeol would have already gotten suspended or at least kicked off the football team and demoted by now, but he somehow manages to get away with all the bullcrap he pulls.  It makes no sense; it also gets on Hyejin’s nerves.  She can look at a teacher the wrong way and get detention—because besides having a face that is masterfully void of expression, the only thing that can make her seem worse in the eyes of the faculty is her septum piercing.  And the more times she tries to explain that it’s just her face, the less they believe her.  So she’s just learned to roll with it.  If they think she’s a rebel then so be it.  Doesn’t mean she doesn’t get irritated by PCY, though.  If he isn’t the spawn of Satan, he’s probably Satan’s nephew.

Hyejin won’t go so far as to inconvenience herself in trying to avoid him, but the desire to do just that is certainly there.  The only thing that stops her is the cognitive knowledge that such an act would be preposterous, and worse still is the thought that he wins by default.  She can’t give him that satisfaction; her brain would never shut up about it.

She doesn’t know exactly when this aversion to Park Chanyeol began, but it’s safe to say it’s there for good.  Possibly the only things that could make him redeemable in her eyes is if he were to save a small child and baby goat from a house fire—but that’s even more improbable than Amber wearing a dress, so luckily Hyejin doesn’t have to worry about it.  She thinks that being content in her loathing is the way to go.  Everybody wins!  Except for Chanyeol.

She’s utterly alone in Mr. Bang’s darkened classroom when Amber attacks her from behind with a big wet kiss on the cheek—effectively shattering Hyejin’s little bubble of early-morning serenity.  She wipes off the resultant wet spot with a nasty glower aimed at Amber, discontent beginning to course through her veins.

“Ugh.  You’re so gross.  No wonder everyone thinks we’re gay.”  But she’s not mad, not really.  Also the fact that a whopping eighty percent of the student body believes they’re in a relationship is hilarious.  And they’ve never done anything to dispel the rumors either.  In fact, they may have exaggerated the womance just for effect.  It’s actually very gratifying to be in a pseudo-lesbian relationship.  (At least in school where one of the girls has a reputation for being—in softer terms—hardcore, and the other is just phenomenally well liked.)

“Please,” Amber retorts, sitting down in the desk beside Hyejin’s.  “I’d never go for you.  I’d go for Amy Lee.”  She sticks her chin out and looks down her nose at Hyejin teasingly.

“Oh, I feel that.  Amy’s pretty hot, yeah.  Hey, what about that girl…Jiyoon?  Jihyun?  Something Ji.  Had green hair for a while?—you know who I’m talking about.”  Amber knows everybody and everybody knows Amber; she could infiltrate any circle if she were so inclined.

“Yeah, her name is Jeon Jiyoon, she hangs out with Hyuna and Gayoon.”

“I don’t know who they are.”

“Don’t know who—oh, the gossip thing, yeah.  You haven’t missed much.  Basically—”

“Yeah, I—no, I really—I don’t care,” she declares with the faltering speech of someone who cannot process why the things being said are actually being said.

“Oops,” Amber says, exaggeratingly aspirating the latter half of the word.

They sit in silence for several minutes; the sun is more awake now, brighter and more yellow and hovering a little higher over the football field.  For Hyejin, it’s a comfortable sort of silence, the kind she loves most, but she knows Amber is either growing bored or dying to talk or both.  She decides to lower the flag.

“So why’d you come in so early this morning?  I know it’s not your thing.”  She eyes her best friend with neutral interest, careful not to appear too keen.  There’s nothing Amber hates more than scrutiny.

“Ah, my dad came in drunk at like four-thirty and my mom was super pissed so they were fighting all morning.  I can’t listen to it for too long ‘cause it gets me too keyed up and I can’t focus on stuff, so I just left.  Jackie snuck off to her friend’s as soon as she realized Dad wasn’t gonna be in.”  She shrugs like an unbiased onlooker, and Hyejin can tell she’s not going to say any more.

“This morning my grandma called me Inhee.”  

Amber shoots her a look.  “Well, to be fair, you look just like her.”

“Yeah, but like worldlier and with cooler hair.”

Amber smiles.  “I dunno, your mom had some rad hair.”

“The Korean version of Farrah Fawcett, you mean.”

“Yeah, man!  She rocked it.  Totally slayed back in her day.”

Hyejin has to smile a bit at this, too.  “Maybe I should keep the pink but cut my hair like Farrah’s.  What do you think?”  She turns in her seat so Amber can look straight at her.

Amber inspects her facial structure for a few moments.  “Yeah, you could probably handle it.  Might set a trend, who knows.”

Hyejin makes a disgusted noise.  Trends.

“Don’t be a douchester.”

“A what?”  Hyejin is bemused.

Amber rolls her eyes.  “Douchey hipster.”

“You couldn’t just say two more syllables?”

“Syllables are too mainstream, Hyejin.”  

“Wow.  So sass.”

Suddenly light floods the room.  Hyejin blinks.  For how long did she bathe in the silence while thinking about her hatred for PCY?  Amber didn’t turn up more than fifteen minutes ago.

“Two overachievers in my classroom this morning!  Get out.”  It’s Mr. Bang, also known as The World’s Hottest Teacher With The Most Arousing Voice.  Amber shivers upon hearing it.  His voice is deep—like, very deep, possibly deeper than Chanyeol’s.  His natural tone makes it sound deeper, at least: the smokiest, huskiest timbre anyone has probably ever heard.  He should be a night DJ.

Except no, because then Hyejin would lose her favorite teacher, and the whole student body and faculty would mourn his resignation (even aforementioned cleverest league of underclassmen).  He’s really, really hot, you see.  He’d still be on fleek even if his fleek ran away.  Plus he’s a very competent teacher with a laidback approach to things.  You can’t go wrong with such a combination.

He’s crossed the room and has just gotten to his desk when Amber opens .  “Mr. Bang, are you coming to the game on Friday?”  She imitates the sound of a trumpet but makes the motions of playing a trombone.  Yet she plays the tuba.

He drops his bag in his chair and makes a thoughtful whoosh noise as he sits on the edge of his desk, arms and ankles crossed.  “Well, I’m not sure about that yet, to be frank with you.”  Oh, to be frank with you.  Imagine that in boxer briefs.  “Is it a big game or something?  I’m”—he makes some wavey gesture with his hands before refolding his arms—“not aware.”

Amber makes a face like nah.  “We’re playing Seojjog Gangdug, so it’s pretty much set in stone that we’re gonna lose, but marching band is testing a new arrangement.  It’s pretty cool if I do say so myself.”

Mr. Bang quirks a brow.  “You wrote it?”

“Yeah, man!  It’s lit for marching band.  We really need to step up our game.”

“Agreed.  The last time I went to a game you played ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ during halftime and it was such a moodkiller.  None of you kids even know that song!”

“Jongdae tried to pull for ‘They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!’ but Director Lee vetoed it because ‘no one can even say that title without taking a few breaths in between.’”

Mr. Bang throws his head back and laughs.  “Might have to look that one up then.  What’s your composition called?”

Amber doesn’t blink an eye.  “‘Shake That Brass.’”

Hyejin has never heard Mr. Bang laugh with such glee, much less in such a high pitch.  And she’s in her last year.  

“Aight, I see you,” he remarks with a grin and a nod.

“Dude, I even wrote words for it.  But obviously we’re only doing the instrumental version.”

Amber has such a crush on Mr. Bang.  She’s leaning so far forward that the hind legs of her desk are centimeters away from being off the floor.  Hyejin decides to help her along a little (just to humor her and make her feel good about herself).  “Amber, sing some!  Like four bars.”  She actually has a beautiful voice.

Amber hangs her head a little and gives Hyejin a sidelong look.  Then she refocuses her attention on Mr. Bang but makes sure to include Hyejin in her next statement.  “It’s actually more of a rap, honestly.  There’s barely any singing lines.”  The back of Amber’s bare neck is beginning to flush.

“A rap, huh,” Mr. Bang comments.  He looks vaguely amused as if he knows something they don’t.  But whatever he’s doing with his face is a gift, so…

Hyejin wonders if she’s going to hell for lusting over a teacher.  Oh well.

First period English was dumb.  No one should be subjected to a foreign language class first thing in the morning—international school be damned.  She doesn’t even understand how ph belongs to the f phoneme!  What even is a phoneme?!

Second period was okay.  Miss Kim gave a short lecture on trying not to understand physics on a molecular level but instead seeing the bigger picture to get the speed of things.  Then she laughed out loud at her own joke and almost snorted.  It was excruciating.

Third period was graphic design which was pretty dope.  10/10, would recommend.  Instructor Lim, who does most of the artsy classes, basically lets them have a free-for-all, only occasionally giving input or commenting on their work.  But his grading is no joke, so pretty much everybody musters up some try.  She enjoys that class, though.

Fourth was literature and comp, a class which requires only around six percent of Hyejin’s capacity for effort, so she mostly just doodles in the margins of her notebook paper.  She tends to draw mazes in particular, but sometimes she draws people’s faces, only with one or two quadrants revealed to be constructed of gears like that of a clock.  She loves clockwork.  There’s nothing worse than faulty clockwork.

Fifth is third lunch wave wherein Chanyeol eats at least two pimiento cheese sandwiches and doesn’t stop dominating the decibel levels.  She really hates him—he’s so obnoxious that it’s almost impossible to ignore him.  She just glowers for the whole lunch period as she eats her breakfast-style egg rolls.  The egg rolls have some exotic sausage from America in them.  So good.  But she still glowers.

Barom shakes his head at her.  “You need to stop hating Chanyeol.  The hatred is unfounded; he’s actually pretty chill.”

“Chill?  Chanyeol has no chill.  He doesn’t even have Netflix.”  Ugh, Chanyeol.  Even his name is disease.

Barom is amused; she can tell by the set of his mouth.  Then he rolls his eyes.

Fei, who is new to the table, asks, “Why do you hate Chanyeol?”  She’s going out with Barom, poor girl.

“Because he represents the double standard,” Hyejin states firmly.

Fei looks at her blankly.

This is when Mark decides to pipe up.  He usually falls under quiet and neutral observer.  Also he’s Hyejin’s other best friend.  “She’s just butthurt.”  Or was.

She decides to ignore it.  Letting her friends get her all wound up over Chanyeol’s putrid existence is like leaving a window open for Satan to get in and crack all your eggs.  She needs to detach herself.  Don’t give them a reaction.

The only other person at the table is Jaehyun, but it’s like he isn’t there at all.  All he does is check Instagram and Twitter; he’s barely conscious of his own surroundings.  Actually he’s probably not even conscious of his own consciousness.  Pretty much the only reason he sits with them every day is because all his friends are in a different lunch wave.  Hyejin doesn’t mind, though.  If she requires conversation (which she doesn’t), Barom contributes plenty for all of them.

After lunch is economics, her most dreaded class of the day because—you guessed it!—Chanyeol is in it, which is tragic.  When she enters the classroom he’s already there, sitting on a desk instead of in it, talking animatedly to a couple of his friends and anyone else who will listen.  There’s Jongin (the quarterback), Lee Chan (running back), and two dancers by the names of Hoseok and Min.  

Chanyeol is going on about another school’s game from the previous week, expounding on what all the Misfits are going to have to work on in preparation for playing them in a couple weeks, and for the first time Hyejin can tell he’s having sinus trouble.  To be honest—and she says this objectively—he sounds kind of y.  His voice is already a resonant, colorful baritone with a skeletal layer of gravel beneath it; the crud in his head only deepens his tone, adds even more grit, and the sound is throaty and glottal.  Sinus infection, though—serves him right.

She sits in the back row on the far left side of the room; he sits at its epicenter.  She thinks he likes being at the heart of the disturbance,  likes being attacked with the vibes people throw off as electromagnetic waves through space.  Isn’t it tiresome?  Doesn’t it harrow his very bones?  Doesn’t it leach him of all color?  She will never understand.  

Amber isn’t exactly low key, and there are definitely times where Hyejin has to mute or ignore all contact for a few days, but they’re good together.  Both assertive yet reasonable, both willing to own up to mistakes.  The latter generally smooths out any wrinkles that come of their contrasting traits.  And most importantly, they can both laugh at themselves and each other.  That counts for more than you’d think.

Her teacher is walking in just as she gets a text from Yeunja.  Stealthily she reads the text from her sister.

< I called Grandmother to see about bringing Daeho over on Sunday.  She thought I was a nurse from the doctor’s office and asked questions about her prescription, which she doesn’t want to take.  Is it progressing?

    > Class talk later

    < Ok.  Has Dad noticed at least?

    > Lmbo

    < Figured lol

She slips her phone into the pocket of her jeans and wonders what dumb thing will happen next.  Hopefully it will be something she can laugh about without others getting all pissy over it.  Unlike the time she—and Yeunja and Youngbae, oops—was practically kicked out of the movie theater during a showing of a certain Nicholas Sparks adaptation.  (Look, it was badly done.  She can’t be sympathetic to characters like that!  Also there were at least three girls within view who were sniffling into their boyfriends’ necks.  It was hysterical!)

The rest of economics passed by without incident, but fortunately Hyejin finds the subject matter intellectually stimulating.  It makes her think about cause and effect but in contexts that transcend textbook material.  Textbook material contains a linear sort of logic, but her brain knows how to work around that effortlessly.  She can think up a million different scenarios and conduct countless experiments on them all in her head.  She intuitively understands variables and can come up with at least three solutions for problems that haven’t even happened yet.  The United States of America could use somebody like her.  (But it would get old fast.  And it would make her get old fast.  No gracias.)

As soon as class is dismissed, Hyejin has her phone out to update Yeunja as she blindly navigates the now-congested hallway.  During school hours, in between classes when the halls are so full and chaotic of people coming and going, it always reminds her of some kind of dual cattle handling system, with each side going in a vis-à-vis direction.

She walks slowly as she texts.  It’s her free period, anyway.

> Grandmother is ~okay~ but she’s def been a little extra confused/suspicious lately.  Sometimes she thinks I’m Mom so she gets mad when she sees my hair etc and she threatens to jerk my piercing out herself lol.  Other times she doesn’t know who I am.  Like the other day I got locked out so I knocked on the door and when she opened it she thought I was a Jehovah’s Witness.  You can imagine how that went.

Someone bumps into her from the left just as she presses Send; she sidesteps to the right to avoid rubbing any more shoulders.  She can’t stand that—the nudging and shoving and pushing.  She realizes that sometimes it’s inescap—

A sharp, unforeseeable force strikes her nasofrontal area, bringing with it a storm surge of rattling pain behind the eyes and momentum that knocks her backwards and headlong into a bank of lockers.  She’s on the ground now, and she doesn’t know how she got there.  She’s disoriented: it’s as if she’s a halved pomegranate at the hands of an excavator who’s taking handfuls of rubies from her very nucleus.  The only thing on her radar is pain, radiating pain that makes her see lightning bugs and imagery straight out of a Lewis Carroll novel.  It’s hard to localize the pain and even harder to compartmentalize it.  Jesus.

“Jesus!  Are you okay?”  There is a voice and the voice needs to hush.

“Shhhhh shhhh shhhhhh, stop talking.”  Oh, she’s saying words now, too.  It hurts.  The dead bird—ohhhh.  She groans.  It feels like there is some sort of thick, tiny ghost circling outside her head and making inaudible ghost-y sounds that disrupt the normal movement of air.  Funny how air can exacerbate pain.  

“I am so freaking sorry.”  It is the voice again; the voice is annoying.  “I was just—like—I was just talking and—”

“Please shut up, person.”  She sounds miserable even to her own ears; her voice sounds far away.

“I am so sorry.  Do you—we should go to the nur—oh, that’s a great idea, let’s do that.”  

And then there are hands under her armpits and someone is lifting her up as if she is a puppy.  In a weird way, it makes her feel like a puppy—she whimpers.  And then she feels stupid.  Then she wonders if she is even still a person with real thoughts and feelings and a consciousness.  She doesn’t feel very intentional.  What if she’s actually a boy?

“Hyejin, I’m taking you to the nurse.  Can you stand?”

She tries.  Being upright is wobbly and inelegant, and the fluorescent-soaked view before her does not seem very present, but she allows muscle memory to take over and then she is moving forward.  Slowly, with the shuffling gait of a dementia patient.  An arm is curled around her upper body and is bearing down supportively; her subconscious processes the arm as heavy and male, belonging to someone much taller than her.

It isn’t until they arrive at the nurse’s office—where Hyejin somehow gingerly collapses into the first chair she sees—that she realizes that the person with the voice is motherfreaking Park Chanyeol.  MOTHERFREAKING PARK CHANYEOL.  But somehow she is not surprised—of course this would happen!  And it pains her to admit it, but she’s still feeling so dazed she can’t have a proper reaction to things.

“Your nose is bleeding,” Chanyeol comments helpfully.  He’s still standing, towering over her (or maybe hovering, she’s not sure which), and he is honestly just too tall.  Is it possible for someone’s height to be intrinsically robust?  His seems to be.

She touches her nose.  It is definitely bleeding.  “Well, it’s not because of arousal, I can tell you that.”  

“Whoa,” he exclaims.

The nurse snorts and makes her way over with one of those little lights doctors use for checking eyes; Hyejin can’t remember what they’re called right now.  “I’m not sure arousal-induced nosebleeds are physiologically possible.”  She is very, very amused, but Hyejin is still in a state of disassociation, so she doesn’t really catch on—she just wishes everyone would stop talking and moving and being.  

Chanyeol is looking at Hyejin and pointedly making vaguely grabby gestures at his nose when the nurse continues onto her next thought.  “Chanyeol, get her a tissue, will you?”  He snatches five Kleenexes before deciding that she probably just needs the whole box (she doesn’t) and shoves it at her.

Hyejin wipes her nose, but still more blood trickles out.  

“Uh—you should probably,” he begins, extending one long arm toward her before withdrawing it quickly as an afterthought, “take out your septum…”  More wild gesticulating that triggers the bong in her head.

Carefully she takes out the bloody septum, wrapping it in an unused tissue which Chanyeol then takes and puts in the pocket of his letterman jacket for safekeeping.  She doesn’t really get why, but she also doesn’t really care at the moment.  She tilts her head back to stanch the blood flow from her nose.

“No,” the nurse protests, “tilt it forward—well, not right now, I need to check your eyes.  Chanyeol, kick me my wheely stool.  Thanks.  Look straight ahead?”  

Hyejin obeys.  Well, sort of.  She thinks she’s looking straight ahead, at least.  Just maybe with some difficulty.  Her eyeballs feel like they’re floating around in their sockets and everything she sees looks