over the course of some few weeks, kim jongin developed a sort of obsession with the girl with one sock, and priscilla lee considered suicide two times.

 

the first time was, coincidentally, the second time they had met. she had dreamt of him, and she felt immensely embarrassed to look him in the eye. she had read a book her old friend had bought her over the summer which she had read over and over again about dreams and what they meant, but she still didn’t understand it. what was she meant to feel when she had a (awkward) dream that they were both madly in love, and she only wore pink silks and smelled like lilacs, and he had built the whole city of paris for her and painted the february morning with his flushed fingers, strawberry sky dusted with white winter powder sugar sun? she thought, when the boy gave her a big smile, his eyes turning to crescent moons - if the synapse between dreams is composed of clouds that we can never grasp, whenever we sleep we pass through this place and brush against something beyond us, something bigger than your subconscious wants you to see. she thought this had been a sign, and with her twilit nerves and rose milk blood still blushing, still singing her in her coral-twined skeleton, priscilla managed to smile back, painfully and reluctant to abjure her logic for her underlying self, not to mention the utter distaste for the boy who had been very fiery at their first meeting, to which he was met with apathy.

 

but it wasn’t a dream, when jongin saw her at school. it was strange to jongin, after seeing her dance so beautifully; priscilla kept her head down in the hallways, and her body was no longer stretched and pulled, like she had complete control over every muscle in her body, it was an empty vessel then, filled to the brim with a school girl’s coyness - sleepy eyes, timid smile, blushing cheeks. at night, though, when the schoolgirl yields to a maniac, a fiend with an insatiable thirst for beauty, a zealot who worships perfection and obsesses over her art form like it’s the last breath of a dying man, he knows she’s different from the rest. or, at least, that was what he kept telling himself.

 

“hey, priscilla? i was wondering - well, i was wondering, and yixing, and sehun, if you’d like to come to our dance class instead of your lonely little night class.”

 

“... who are they?”

 

“yixing and sehun? oh, they’re some of my friends. they’re not that annoying, once you get used to them. yixing’s kind of clumsy and generally confused, but he’s a really great dancer, better than me even, and he’s a real nice guy. sehun’s… sehun. he’s a little bit spoiled, a little bit of a , and all around a weirdo, but he’s my friend, y’know?”

 

“not really, but alright. i… i guess i could go.”

 

“cool. well, i’ll see you later then. what class do you have last hour?”

 

“um, japanese.” she briefly wraps her arms around her, as though a cold breeze had come by.

 

jongin still doesn’t understand, does he?

 

“oh, okay, i'll meet you outside then after school, okay?”

 

“alright.” and once again, she is running away from him, only this time she is wearing a yellow school sweater instead and for once, she has on shoes. feet pounding on the hallway floor, passing by onlookers who, like most of the general population, thought she might be insane.

 

but she didn’t really care, because she was in no way one of those people who became someone else just for fun or because she needed to, so she ran and ran until she came to her japanese classroom, face flushed and mind racing. disgust was the main emotion, disgust and simultaneous wonder and barely-cloaked rage. he liked her, didn’t he? that’s the only reason boys ever cared, ever pretended to care, because they wanted something, but oh, they caressed her like a rose until they discovered she had thorns - lovers and fools love only what they allow each other to see, he only knows the outer surface, the poor, pitifully-lovesick idiot; he doesn’t know what lays beneath, he doesn’t know anything about her, he only knows her name and already, he’s seen her dancing (“the most intimate of activities”), and he wants her to dance around other people. he’s a boy, he’s a stupid boy who doesn’t know anything about her.

 

all of class, she doesn’t pay much attention, but that isn’t anything new.

 

by the end of class, priscilla lee has contemplated suicide a total of three times.

 

jongin is waiting for her when she left the classroom, got changed in the locker room, and met him where he told her to, though her legs teetered and shook at the knee, as though even her nerves and muscles were all against the idea, the very inkling of dancing in front of jongin, in front of his friend, in front of anyone. or perhaps she was being a bit dramatic, that was it, it was just anxiety, and if mr. kim ever taught her anything, is was that anxiety was overcome with head-on strength of will, of hope for the future and conquering the city only known as fear. and thus, though her legs did not seem to agree with this, her brain forced the rest of her to keep walking with him until they finally got back to the dreaded practice room, cloudy wallpaper and all. maybe it was there to make it feel less like a prison?

 

jongin's friends, like himself, are drop-dead gorgeous, which naturally made priscilla irrationally upset. sehun is a fawn of youth; a slender, tall frame, with brown tousled hair and cold, slanting dark eyes, while yixing who stands next to him, fiddling with his fingers, she does not know what to think of. he’s shorter than sehun, by only an inch or two, with longer dark hair that hung messily over his forehead and his ears, a dimple in his cheek, and a certain air about him that he was constantly lost in his own world. as he was now, staring at his hands as though they held all the answers in the world. by the face sehun wore, his lips curled into a frown and eyebrows furrowed, whatever discussion that had occurred between the pair of boys was something important. but jongin did not seem to care, throwing their bags on the ground and stretching his arm behind his head with a loud groan.

 

“god, priscilla, what do you have in there? rocks?” jongin asked, rotating his shoulder playfully.

 

“dead bodies, actually.” she deadpanned. the room was silent for a second.

 

“yes, call the news station, miss priscilla lee is making a joke, groundbreaking information. contrary to popular belief, i am not stone. i am, however, a ing delight.”

 

sehun burst into laughter, tossing his head back and cackling, while jongin snickers and pulled his sweatshirt off, tossing it to the ground. priscilla’s eyes wandered to the slightly strip of skin that showed when his shirt pulled up too, before she looked away and decided she was going insane.

 

“so, jonginnie, this is your friend? priscilla, right?”

 

“you are correct, sehunnie. priscilla, this is oh sehun, and the one who’s daydreaming over there is zhang yixing -” instantly, at the mention of his name, the boy’s head shot up, staring at jongin who spoke it. his eyes trailed off, from him to sehun and, finally, to priscilla. his eyes widened slightly, beginning to bow passionately.

 

“oh, i’m so sorry, i didn’t mean to be so rude, i was just- just caught up in my thoughts, that’s all! i’m really sorry -”

 

“why?”

 

silence.

 

“oh. um, well, how old are you?"

 

“younger than you, i’m sure. no need to bow, anyways.” she paused for a second, “i’m from the states, anyways. we don’t see any reason for bowing. but, i guess over here, it’s different, huh?"

 

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