It’s hard to pinpoint the exact reason why I detest Hyejeong—there are too many to keep track of. It could be when she tore up the math assignment, which I spent hours on, by “accident”. It could be when she deliberately sabotaged our class last year in the “inter-class amazing race” or whatever that clown fiesta is called by going to buy coffee when it was explicitly disallowed. Or it could just be her condescending, jerkish way of treating me ever since we first met in elementary school.

Yes, I’ve known her for that long.

She’s like that one person who always happens to be in your class year in year out. For some, no, most that person is probably at least friendly to you. But for me, I’ve got a demon stuck to me for the entirety of my school life.

In any case ever since I came to high school she hadn’t been my deskmate, or any project groupmate at all. Mina was the one who held that title. You could say that she complemented me—I was hot headed, she was rational; I was a geek, she was a cheerleader. But no, it’s not romantic. Just a really good friendship.

A pity, therefore, when I realised upon checking the class allocation notice board that Mina and I were in different classes, while I was placed with the devil Hyejeong again.

How typical.

-----

The new form teacher comes in, and being a total upstart decides that he has the authority to decide who sits where and with who. And that you have to work with your seatmate on group projects for the rest of the year.

Well, I’m not exactly that opposed to that. Shin Hyejeong was but one of a class of 30, after all, and not getting picked here would guarantee immunity from her for the rest of the year.

“Byun Baekhyun and Bae Suzy. Shin Jimin and Kim Minseok. Jackson Wang and…”

As the teacher continued rattling off names, seemingly at random, apprehension was slowly taking over me. We were about 15 names through, and surely not...

I snuck a glance over at where Hyejeong was, and I read the same fear and aversion on her face.

“Kim Seolhyun and…” Great. My name was called, and there is about 10 names left. I’m safe, surely I’m safe, right?

“Shin Hyejeong.”

.

-----

“Don’t look at me like that. It’s not like I want to voluntarily sit beside plebs like you.”

Really? It took her one second after plonking her stuff down to start insulting me.

“Jerk, it’s not like I find this pleasurable anyway.”

“If you hate it so much, why don’t you go up to the teacher and do that prissy bratty complaining that you’re so good at?”

“Fine. I’ll do it after school, since you’re such a wimp and can’t do it yourself.”

“Bring it on, Kim Seolhyun. Let’s meet after school in front of his office and see who’s better at convincing. Meanwhile, you might want to consider taking a shower as well. You stink. He’ll probably die just looking at you later. Oh, and while you’re at that maybe you can consider plastic surgery, no, consider just buying a whole new body. Has anyone told you how ing ugly you are?”

See what I mean?

-----

Sitting with Hyejeong through an hour of math has made me acutely aware of two facts—one, she’s left handed, and two, she drops her pen on the floor all the time. Given that she sits on the right, and I on the left, it means that more often than not our hands bump, and whatever I was writing gets smudged. Every time this happens Hyejeong will turn around and berate me for “my mistake”. The first few times I bothered to argue with her, after that I just gave up.

Two, she has the worrying tendency of leaving her pen without backing on the slanted table, which means that more often than not her pen rolls over and falls on my side. Which means that I have to repeatedly bend down and pick it up for her. Which means that I’ll probably develop spine problems by the end of the year.

And then there’s this problem about her possessions. Being the cheer captain (I have no idea how she and Mina get along so well) claims she needs to bring a whole lot of with her, and so my chair ends up being surrounded by her most outlandish of possessions. And whenever I adjust my chair and it accidentally crushes her bag strap, she acts like I rolled over her entire family.

Not to mention the fact that apparently she does not know the value of bringing only what is needed to school, instead just dumping everything under her desk. I started the day having 100% of my desk space, I ended the day with 50%.

Not only was Shin Hyejeong a jerk, but apparently also the devil deskmate.

-----

After school (and grabbing lunch at the canteen) I went up to the teacher’s office in a desperate attempt to convince the teacher to reassign us to different desks. A pity, therefore, when I saw Hyejeong over there already.

Not a pity, to see her sweating nervously at the thought of the task ahead. Tsk, tsk, so weak.

Apparently I must have voiced my thoughts out (bad habit) because she turned around and gave me her death stare.

(From this point onwards I’ll just label her death stares as stares because she seriously uses it wayyy too often.)

“Hey, geek, think you’re confident right? Why don’t you go in and do it yourself?”

“Oh, self-confident cheerleader, you think you’re so good right? A pity your trembling hands gave you away.”

“Sure, I may be nervous, but at least I have friends and look decent. What about you? Have you gotten the full body exchange I recommended yet? No?”

“OH JUST SHUT UP YOU JERK!”

“Oh, have I gotten to you, Kim Seolhyun? You have such a short fuse. What a pity—”

“Who are you two? And why are you arguing so loudly in front of my office and disturbing me? Come inside, young ladies.” The cursed teacher suddenly appeared, and accosted us in.

Whilst not looking at us, Hyejeong turned and glared at me again.

What, it’s my fault now?

“Now, young ladies, account for your actions just now.”

“She provoked me first.” shot Hyejeong first.

“Nah, Hyejeong’s the one here with the wicked tongue. Do you want me to repeat for you what she said? She said that I should—”

To which Hyejeong used her hands to clamp my mouth and retorted with “She insulted my character!”.

Hmpf. As if she was the victim here.

I rushed to clamp too whilst screaming my response, but all that came out was strange muffled utterances.

“Since you two can’t seem to make your stories coherent, why don’t you tell me why you two have even come here in the first place?”

“To re-allocate us. We don’t want to be seatmates.”

“Why not?”

“We detest each other. It has always been the case, ever since 7 years ago when we first met.”

“Isn’t that better? I’ve seen enough from just now. You two need to make up, and become friends. Think of this as an opportunity to settle your differences, and make a lifelong bond.”

Lifelong bond? With Shin Hyejeong? No please.

It took me everything to walk out of the room and a respectable distance before starting to bicker with Shin the devil again.

-----

The next few days revealed most of Shin Hyejeong’s bad habits—sleeping in class and drooling, having absolutely disgusting hygiene practices, habitually whispering to herself, extending her hand over and placing her worksheets on my table….there were too many I lost count.

But that was okay. What I was most scared by was the prospect of having to do group work with the devil. There was no way that we would get along, and if we spent all our time bickering our grades would tank. Sure, she didn’t care, but I sure as hell did.

The first said project came a few days after. It was a “Math investigative task” which involved designing some instrument and then recording data with it. Solving the data problem was easy enough—fabricating is easily mastered with practice—but that god dammed instrument still had to be built.

Which led to how I spent the entire Saturday afternoon at Shin Hyejeong’s residence. Not really residence, though. Mansion would be the better term.

I arrived there, having biked from home. Her knowing that, of course, only led to her making me wait deliberately outside her house for 10 minutes before she finally told me the code to get in. And even then I had to solve some “puzzles” to get the number, which was thankfully easy due to her limited brain matter.

“Look, Hyejeong, you do know what we’re meeting up to do today, right?”

“To piss the hell out of you and for you to ruin my magnificent bedroom with your very presence.”

I was tempted to retort, until I realised that it would be terribly unproductive towards my final goal. So I swallowed my anger. Literally.

“Hyejeong. I texted you last night what materials I needed you to buy. Did you buy them?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I forgot. Got a problem?”

I am so ing done.

“Okay. Why don’t you go and buy it now, Shin Hyejeong.”

“Why should I? It’s not like I want this project completed anyway. It’s you who wants the grades. So if you want the grades, go get it yourself. The store where you can get the materials from is just down the main road. I feel like showering now, anyway. I’ll go shower now, and if you’re not back with the stuff by the time I’m done then I’ll take it as if you don’t want to do the project.”

I stood there, dumbstruck by how stupid her argument sounded. And yet it was true. Terribly true.

“Get going. Or at least out of my room. I don’t want you to see me stripping.”

Fine. I got out, made the “short walk” whilst still recovering from my biking just now, and tried not to get too tilted by Shin the devil.

I got back half an hour later, and let myself in with the passcode she gave me. Instinctively I walked up to her room and just barged in, completely forgetting the fact that her bathroom was probably attached to her room. Inside there I found her, barely wrapped up in a towel, clearly having just gotten out of the shower.

She looked gorgeous. Like as much as I would have you believe that she was a terrible person (she was), that doesn’t discount at all from how “model-like” she looked. She had a great figure, great torso, great legs, great…

I heard a smirk, and refocused back on her face. “Stared at me enough? I know I’m gorgeous, I don’t need gawking plebs like you to stare at me to know that. Now get out, will you, while I change.”

Pshh. She made me out to be like an awe-struck ert. She has a great body, sure, but in my eyes that didn’t make her any more likeable. Not a single once more.

We finished the project a few hours later, with Hyejeong surprisingly cooperative once she realised that I was actually being serious.

-----

As soon as I got home I allowed myself an hour of my only form of release. Fanfiction.

Yes, fanfiction. Which fandom? 1D. Which ship, specifically? Larry (HarryXLouis)

(Pauses to let you judge. Done? Satisfied?)

Although I read widely, the author that I looked forward to the most was one who went by “dongdong810”. She (he?) wrote well, yes, but my liking of her writing was also augmented by the fact that she (he?) is apparently also a high school student, and thus writes really relatable AUs. I checked her profile for updates, found none (she was on “hiatus”) and was prepared to re-read another one of her one-shots when I received a private message. It was from dongdong810.

[dongdong810]: hey, how’s your day?

You see, apparently she likes what I write (even though what I do write has like a tenth of the number of views and subscribers she has) and so we chat regularly.

[arhi]:

[dongdong810]: haha why :)

[arhi]: well I had to do some today but had a partner who was a real jerk

[dongdong810]: OMG SAME

[arhi]: haha really?

[dongdong810]: mhm yeah. She thought she was the boss of me and tried to order me about. Then I caught her secretly staring at my body. No one can resist me man. No one.

[arhi]: XD

[arhi]: btw please update soon man I’m waitinggggggggg

[dongdong810]: haha wait a bit please I’m working on it. I could let you read a preview first, I guess?

[arhi]: omgomg yes yes let me see it please.

Bit by bit, “dongdong810” helped me to forget the jerk that is Shin Hyejeong.

[A/N]: Heyy guys :) I'm actually not dead yet. This was orginally intended to be a one shot of a similar length to Presence in Absence, but its 2am now and I need sleep so I'll update Part 2 soon :) bear with me please.

[A/N 2]: I belatedly realised that the aforementioned school system may be foreign to some. I understand that in some countries including the US they use the "homeroom" system, and students shift between physical classes for different lessons. Where I live, each class usually has one form teacher who does like admin work and represents the class, while the student generally stay in the same class for most of the lessons. Hope that clears it up.