Italics=Korean

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Second grade started, and while the motto “new year, new me” should have sparked inspiration within Sohee, the very real and very prominent “old habits die hard” featured daily. Although her new deskmates are nice enough, she cannot talk confidently with them, and she finds herself repeating the same routine of attend school, be quiet, leave school. She has a new teacher named Ms. Turner who has large teeth and glasses that swallow half of her countenance, and she is nothing compared to Mr. Lee who Sohee still assists during break time, like today.

“Are you almost done with your stack?” Mr. Lee asks.

“Yes.” She scribbles a thick three atop the impromptu spelling test issued yesterday morning. Everyone has barely passed it. Nobody studies in elementary school. “I just finished.” She collects her papers which have become a small misshapen tower over the process of grading, organizing them in a way that hides the fact that it was done by a small child. After her teacher takes the pile from her, she situates herself in ready position and remains quiet.

Mr. Lee files them away in a metal cabinet packed full with a rainbow of folders. When he swivels his chair to the front, he frowns as though wondering why her presence remains. “There are still ten minutes left of lunch. You don’t want to play?”

His slightly perplexed expression unnerves her. Her answer for the past few months have been redundant, and she had thought he had given up on her a long while ago. “No,” she repeats, “I’m fine here.”

As if replying to her own confused thoughts, he elaborates, “Aren’t you friends with Taehyung now?” He pauses, and starts again when she doesn't respond. “I know that you had that fight last year, but afterwards you guys seemed to get along alright. Really well, in fact.”

She fiddles with her fingers at the reminder of that fateful incident.

Sohee was grounded for two weeks, strapped to her bedroom, restricted from leaving. The living room and foyer are unoccupiable, and the kitchen was not allowed, and the dining room was acceptable, but only for meals. Sohee couldn’t comprehend that manner of punishment. It’s not as though she does anything else but breathe in those areas. In her room, there are bookcases stacked with Grimm’s fairy tales, a small TV to skim Pororo and Tooniverse, and a collection of colored pencils subjected to her artistry. If anything, that course of action was more of an affirmation of her antisocial tendencies than a deathly sentence.

In the end, it was more than worth it for her new companion she had gained during class hours.

“But back to Tae, it’s the start of the new year,” Mr. Lee insists again. “Perhaps you should start getting along with children your own age, even if it’s not him.”

She averts her gaze. “It’s not that I don’t want to play with him… I do… ”

Lately, she finds herself craving companionable interaction. It’s a foreign inclination, but it’s one she finds herself falling prey to easily. No longer does she experience gratification in her daily arrangement with Mr. Lee. She finds herself sighing more often. Her heart grows fonder. She is no stranger to loneliness, who has so long been her close associate, but this wave of desire drowns her. It intensifies unbearably.

Rockets, she hears when she leans into her chair. Zooming and zooming across the field like bullets. When she closes her eyes she can almost picture it. A coalition of first, second, and third graders lined up in a row. A self-proclaimed authority takes the initiative to count down, and in three, two, one, an army of children catapult forward and a game of freeze tag commences. It's liberating. She can taste the excitement on her tongue, kind of like tamarinds, but it may be because of her lunch.

But, that energetic scene is not what beckons her attention. What sparks this panging impulse is the presence of one person, her only friend. At the bare minimum, her close acquaintance.

She thinks it started when Ms. Turner sat Tae next to her, resulting in their amicable conversation between times tables and division problems, accumulating in unbidden laughs and crinkled eyes. Where a melancholic sensation rumbles with the picture of a small back running away from her and towards a plethora of friends so much bigger and brighter than her.

Mr. Lee hums almost in surprise. “That’s a first. So, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t think,” she juggles her words carefully, “I can handle him.”

“Really? I think you’re the only one who can.”

“That’s… no.” Sohee heaves a sigh.

Unlike Sohee, Tae is loud and dynamic and friendly. He is surrounded by warmth by the gallons, and so many more classmates that their own exchange seems so miniscule in comparison. Sometimes she thinks it would’ve been better if it had never occurred at all. But then he acknowledges her the next monday, and hangs out with her during math time, and—

The door opens, making the paper dioramas quiver, and muddied converse pit-a-pat their way towards the teacher’s desk.

“Ayo, Mr. Lee!” Tae shouts exuberantly in his usual, Tae-like fashion. “Wazzaaaaap!”

“Speak of the devil ,” Mr. Lee whispers under his breath. “Hello, Taehyung.”

The boy flushes. “It’s—”

“—Tae,” Sohee finishes.

“Sup, Sohee.” Tae beams and draws up a chair from a nearby desk. “We’re done playing our game of Zombie Virus. It’s tag, but you can tag as many people as you want and you can’t be untagged which is why you’re a zombie. Just eating people, you know? Like a virus. A Zombie Virus, which is why the game is called that, and—”

“That’s cool, but what brings you here?” Mr. Lee interrupted.

“I was getting there!” Tae whined. “I wanted to ask Sohee if she wanted to join the next round.” He turns to her expectantly. “Will you?”

Mr. Lee translates Tae's long-winded request.

“Now?” she asks.

Tae nods. “Well, yeah. Jiminie and Hobi are still arguing over who does the picking rhyme, so I came here while they decide. If we go now, we could still put our shoes in.”

“Jimin and Hoseok are playing?”

“Yeah, and Amber and Henry and Wendy and Jackson and Jia, everyone except the jump ropers are in.”

“No, I’m fine,” she decides, cringing as she watches his face fall, muscle by muscle. She caused that, and it puts a dent in her heart.

“Oh, okay,” he says plainly, and doesn’t make a gesture toward the door. “That’s fine. We can stay here and build a castle or something.”

“You can join them,” she says after him. He has long since pushed himself off the chair to sift through the assortment of blocks underneath the whiteboard.

Tae’s head pops up like an erupted volcano. He winks, or poorly attempts it. “Nah, I was feeling tired anyways.” He returns to the desk, toddling precariously. A box of tinkertoys is juggled in his arms. “So, want to build a workshop or a restaurant or school or a castle or something?”

A surge of warmth blooms throughout her chest, expanding and enveloping her within a blanket of fireworks and the sweeping sense of Autumn. She shifts her focus to Mr. Lee who watches with veiled amusement, and with a growing grin, she grabs a small tin hammer. “A house.”

“Just a house?”

She can physically feel him pout. “Mm. But we can add dragons,” she adds in appeasement.

“Dope.”

This continues for weeks. Less and less, she indulges in solitude. Less and less, the gratification felt in the company of their teacher is as satisfying. Less and less, she is lonely, fluorescent hair with a boxed smile slowly becoming her childhood.

But, as she finally musters the courage to play tag with the other students. When she slides down the apparatus with hands raised, one thing remains. Her parents scathing remarks echo faintly with every high-pitched giggle: that family is scum.

He isn’t, she knows, and one day she’ll prove it.

Seasons change, and Fall torrently whisks into Winter and melts into Spring—an era where youth accumulates into a harmonic of dodgeball, handball, and every other sport that ends with the token four letter combination, ball.

It is also the season of allergies.

Sohee hates spring. Her nose is cherry red, and she can't breathe. Everything itches and what pisses her off even more is the fact that everyone else in this school is seemingly unaffected.

She sniffles, Kleenex bunched in her left hand while her right hand scribbles down answers to simple division problems. Next to her, her (self-proclaimed) best friend of many months stretches his arms dramatically.

“Have you seen the petunias Ms. Mideros has been planting?” Tae says loudly. “They smell absolutely fantastic!”

She grumbles, blowing her nose in another set of tissues.

“They have the best scent for this great weather,” he insists. He tilts his chair towards her. “So flowery and springy!”

“Springy is not even a word,” she snaps. Her head is throbbing, a sharp dugeun-dugeun pounding her head in increasing decibels. The air around her thaws, dripping onto her skin and searing it. Everything is suffocating her. She only sees sixteen divided by four.

Tae taps the back of her chair, obliviously mimicking the orchestra wrecking her cranium. “Don’t be a debby downer. You just have to wake up and smell the roses—oh wait!” He claps like a seal. “You can’t!”

Yenny, a strong-minded girl with a penchant for following the rules, swivels around in her chair. Her index finger seems to have a permanent fixation to her lips for the plentiful times she has assumed this posture with other children. Because of this straight-laced demeanor, she has been lovingly dubbed ‘Park Boss’ or ‘PD Park’. “Shh! Be quiet! Do some of your work for once!”

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Taehyung has a bit of a reputation for being a slacker. Untrue, if Sohee had the guts to argue. He works hard to understand the lessons, demands help on his homework during recess, and is enamored with the classroom environment: the puzzling letters, the screaming classmates. It is his element and he owns it if his grades do not already validate his vigor. He’s just loud. And obnoxious. And mostly loud.

Tae cackles. “Ooh, Park-Boss, destroyer of fun, strikes again!” Sohee subtly smacks him on the arm, but he continues making crude faces. “Whatcha gonna do about it?”

Yenny’s cheeks flush with annoyance, hands clenching into fists and dropping to her hips. “I’m telling the teacher!” Like a rocket, her hand shoots up. So does Sohee’s headache. Her loud voice gripes Sohee’s eardrums.

“Woah there, let’s not go that far.”

“Ms. Turner! Ms. Turner!”

“Fine, I’ll do my work!” Tae concedes, nose scrunching in disgust.

The blonde girl adorns a smug grin before turning back to her paper. From behind, Taehyung sticks his tongue out at her content figure. With a huff, he knocks his head into Sohee’s, burying his face into her shoulder. “Make me feel better.” After a while, he pauses. “What the—You’re burning up.”

Sohee shrugs him off, part unfamiliar with such open skinship, part worried for his health being damaged by his close proximity to her. “Of course I am. I’m sick.”

“No, you’re like, really warm.” Tae’s hands come to feel her forehead. “Wanna go to the nurse?”

At that statement, a small bout of panic scissors her stomach. She’s not stupid. She knows that her fever warrants a one way ticket back home. However, she also knows that even if her parents pick her up, there is a highly unlikely chance of them staying. The last illness that befell her months ago was evidence enough. It wasn’t all bad. Mother had poured the raspberry medicine from Rite Aid for her accordingly, gave her steamy showers, but that was the bare minimum of her actions. For that most of those two weeks, she was left alone in her room to recuperate independently.

The lack of care did not bother her, but the lonely echo of the house consumed her. She was used to it, even enjoyed it time to time, but with the world feeling like it could break around her, chest clenching painfully, she was not eager for an encore.

“I’m fine,” Sohee says, tightening her fist around her pencil.

Tae’s face drops, eyebrows knitting together. “No, you’re not. Come on, I’m telling the teacher.” He takes ahold of her wrist, yanking a little.

“Tae, stop. I’m okay.”  

“I don’t care,” he states plainly. He raises his free hand and calls out to their teacher. “Ms. Turner—!”

She tugs hard, breaking the vice-like grip he has around her arm. “Tae, please!” Her voice blares, but she lowers it to a whisper to avoid attention. “Just until the end of the day. I’ll sit on the bench.” She detests the dimmed lights, the blurriness. She doesn’t want to go home. Not yet. “Please.”

His almond eyes bore into hers with deep-set suspicion, but as only a child of seven years, he is easily quieted. Reluctantly swayed. “Okay.” The conversation is only delayed, not terminated.

True to her word, Sohee avoids any form of strenuous activity instead watching Tae play with the other sets of children entranced by his exuberance. She sits by herself for all of her connections lead back to Tae. Without him by her side, no one feels an attachment towards her. They disperse, and while Sohee carries a lingering despondency, she has accepted it as reality, and only tries to focus on minimizing her stress.

Lunch passes fast. Taehyung was glued to her side in worry, shoving his stale vegetables onto her tray at every opportunity.

(“I’m doing this because I hate broccoli, okay!” “I don’t like it either.” “Well you should still eat it!” “Why?” “Cuz I say so!”)

Class also passes with Taehyung answering every question directed towards her.

(“Okay, Sohee, what is our planet called?” “Jupiter!” “First off, I was talking to Sohee, Taehyung. Second off, no.”)

Once the bell rings for the end of school, Tae links his arm with hers and insists on escorting her home, or at least to her car. This is unusual for he typically heads to the playground directly after school until his dads arrive. Her chest warms, and she perceives it as a symptom of her illness, puffing her cheeks as they stroll. “You’re embarrassing.”

He pokes her cheek, deflating it. “My mom says that if you keep having that face, it’ll stick like that, so you shouldn’t do that else you stay as a dumpling.”

“Shut up.”

She glares at him, and he cackles before shortly darting away for a few seconds to escape her hostile hands. They’re at the front of the school, and Tae can’t leave the premises before his dad arrives, so he turns to Sohee with a question to distract her insistent violence.

“When are your parents getting here?”

“They’re not, I always walk home,” she informs, trying to grab at him, but sniffling instead.

Tae’s small smirk drops immediately. His entire body stills as he absorbs her words. “But you’re sick. But not even that, we live blocks away from school.”

She shrugs, face warming. Her parents don’t have time to pick her up or drop her off. They are too preoccupied with promotions, businesses, and their social life. This is the least she could manage given that she is living off their wealth. “It’s nothing.”

“No, it’s not, they should be taking you home. You are sick.”

The dialogue skims too close to a hidden target to render her comfortable and while she resonates with the truth of his insistence, Sohee’s skill in repudiating tense subjects is unmatched. “I-I have to go, bye.”

Tae backtracks, “We can take you home. It’s no problem.”

“No—I just. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Knowing that he can’t follow her, she passes the school boundary and heads towards the streets. He calls her name, it’s anxious and worried and she’s sorry, but she can’t cope with confrontation. She’s not used to being a priority.

When she arrives at school a week later, fever long gone, they do not speak of their last encounter. He talks as though nothing is wrong, and if the honey yellow tone of his voice is tinged with prussian blue, it is not mentioned. The elephant in the room is palpable, but they are only seven years old and they do not understand how to address it. The conversation is only delayed, not terminated.

~

Pain in this life is not avoidable, but the pain we create avoiding pain is avoidable.

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