Chapter 01: coffee, cookies and competitions

 

The room fell silent as soon as she walked in, all eyes were glued to her every move as she made her way to her desk. A sigh escaped her lips as she sat quietly on her chair. This has been happening to her ever since she entered this school, students giving her weird stares, her locker filled with endless confession letters, she’s popular, no doubt about that but she didn’t want the attention that she is getting. All she wants is to have a peaceful and normal school life. But being Hong RiAn is never normal.

A daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Korea, a chaebol by birth, already has acres of land named after her. She has also starred in several CF’s for cosmetics, clothes and even modeled on occasions. But it’s not like she wanted to do those, she just has to since the people around her has set her bar high. She came from an all-girls school so seeing guys gawk at her makes her feel more uncomfortable than she already is. First, she is new in the school, second, she does not have her friends with her, third most of the girls seemed perplexed to even talk to her and fourth she’s not that much of a social butterfly. She immediately pulled out a novel from her bag and pretended to be immersed in what she is currently reading.

 

“You sure they’ll be back on June?”

“That is what I heard”

“Hope that you’re right, the boys left here at school is not that pleasing to our eyes”

 

RiAn then stood up and went out of the cubicle that she occupied. She has heard a lot of murmurs, whispers or rumors flying around the campus talking about certain individuals that according to the students are the top of the line when it comes to their visuals. She rolled her eyes. It’s expected that this school has that kind of thing when it comes to visually pleasing individuals. There seemed to be a system in the school where they rank the top visuals of the month so both girls and boys pays attention to almost every single detail of their appearance which she finds funny, she has seen almost everyone in the school and the student’s visuals is no joke. Take Wonyoung for example, that girl is the school’s IT GIRL for more than 3 months and some girls says that she can’t be replaced, and she agrees, seeing the girl in person even makes her heart flutter, since she looks so fragile and sweet. She finished washing her hands and went back to her classroom.

 

“Just in time” she heard a guy’s voice say as soon as she entered. “RiAn!”

She looked up and scanned the entire room as all eyes fell on her. “What is it?” she asked in a small voice.

“We need a representative for the monthly beauty rankings” Gyu said as he passed her the form.

“I-I don’t do these things” she replied taking a step back.

“Ri, we don’t have a choice, I mean you’re basically new here. And all of us” Hyerim, their class representative stood up and faced her, “All of us had joined and not even one of us got a place in the ranking, you’re our only hope”

“We just need to have this point so that our budget for the upcoming school festival will increase” another girl said.

“We decided on the foundation that we’d donate to, right? It’s going be a shame if we can’t at least give them a proper amount of donation”

“Just this once, please Ri” her classmates pleaded in chorus.

“Even if I join, we can’t be sure if I’ll get a place” RiAn answered in a defeated tone. “I’m just average”

“Average? You call yourself average?”

“Then how about us?”

“Ri, you’re already popular, being the new girl in this school and all you need is exposure plus” Hyerim walked towards her, “sweetie, we need to get rid of these glasses of yours, I know you don’t need them” she added as she held her hand open palms facing up.

RiAn held the rim of her glasses, took it off and gave her glasses to Hyerim.

“Thanks Ri, we mean it”

 

 

 

“You?” Irene’s voice pitched up as she starred at RiAn sitting across her.

“Is there any other RiAn?” she answered as she took a sip of her tea. She went to a café with her bestfriend, 1 hour drive away from her new and her old school. “I didn’t have much of a choice”

Irene laughed “have you told Seulgi?”

“No. and judging by how you’re reacting right now I’m pretty sure that she’ll be laughing her head off too” she sighed. “What should I do?”

“Why do you have so little confidence? Look at you, you’re beautiful.” Irene held her hand. “You’re been in not only one but more CF’s, you can do it”

“I was facing a camera, not tons of people.”

“Still the same.”

“No, it’s not. I have a script, I was trained how I should act in front of the camera but I am not fit to socialize”

“Ri, just be yourself, you can be sassy enough.”

“I am not sassy” she replied while she unknowingly rolled her eyes.

“You just rolled your eyes dear” Irene chuckled. “You can do it, and you don’t need any makeover. Trust me”

RiAn