Hawk awoke to the sound of someone laughing.  The noise rang through his skull like the clanging vibrations of a church bell some idiot had hung right next to his head.  He pressed his palms to his ears, but it seemed someone had tied weights to his arms and he couldn’t muster the force for the effort to do much good.

He vaguely remembered stumbling home with Hyun-Woo the night before and sprawling onto the couch.  But, beyond that, the night was pretty much a blank.

He hazarded a peak through one sluggish eye.  An overhead light blazed down to blind him from its niche in the ceiling.  He winced and, , clenched his eyelids shut.

Then he tried again.

The red-headed girl stood over him.  Like a celestial vision she hovered, breathtakingly beautiful and blocking the light from the offending fixture.  It radiated around her fiery curls, creating a hazy, ethereal halo. 

Hawk blinked. 

The girl stared down at him with a bewildered scowl.  Near her feet, on the living room floor, Hyun-Woo writhed and howled with laughter.

Delicately, Hawk pulled himself up off the cushions. “What?  What’s so funny?”

Hyun-Woo made a visible effort to calm down and answer, but when he looked up into Hawk’s face, he broke out into another flailing fit of convulsions before he was able to actually utter a single word.

Min-Jae sauntered out of the kitchen cradling a mixing bowl.  He spooned large bites of frosted corn flakes into his mouth while he made his way across the living room, pausing at the couch’s armrest.  He fished his cell out of his pocket and took a video, first of Hyun-Woo, then angled the device towards Hawk.

Hawk yawned and then scowled in confusion.

Min-Jae hurriedly stuffed the cell back into his pocket, then donned his most innocent expression and took another dripping bite from his bowl. 

“Haenyeo,” he mumbled through the mouthful, shaking his spoon disparagingly at the girl, “don’t stare at Hawk like that. Don’t you know that’s rude?” Then he plopped down onto the couch and leaned in close to Hawk to confide, “Hyeong, you might want to go look in the mirror.”

“Eh?”  Hawk stretched, arching his back, and reached up to run his hand through his hair, but instead of sliding through easily as they normally did, his fingers caught and tangled in something that, most definitely, was not supposed to be on his head.

Hawk bolted into the hallway bathroom and flicked on the light.  In the mirror over the sink, the reflection of a stunned and rather awkward looking girl stared back at him.  Her face had been carefully made up. Electric blue eye shadow encircled her eyes, and each orb was framed by long, thick false lashes.  Her cheeks were rosy, red circles, and her lips had been sculpted into a bubble-gum pink bow.  Her hair had been pulled into an assortment of spiky pineapple top ponytails, each adorned with little, flower-shaped barrettes.  But the pièce de résistance was the perfect black beauty mark painted just above the right corner of the reflection’s mouth.

Hawk’s mouth widened in horror.  The refection’s mouth widened with him.

“Eun-Mi!” he shrieked.

As Hawk stared into the mirror, his chest heaving with mortified disbelief, Seung-Bae entered the doorway.  Hawk whimpered and plucked at the fanning protrusions sprouting from his head in a vain attempt to squash them. 

Seung-Bae leaned a shoulder against the bathroom’s doorframe, solemnly studying the exhibition.

“I’d date you,” Seung-Bae announced dead pan.

Hawk snatched up a bar of soap from the sink and pitched it across the room.  It bounced off Seung-Bae’s thigh before skittering off across the living room floor.

“Ya!” Hawk shouted at his snickering friend and punched his index finger into the air in accusation.  “You helped!  Didn’t you?  … Didn’t you!

.  .  .  .  .  .

Eun-Mi’s grandmother was perched on the edge of her granddaughter’s bed.  It was a place she often visited in the quiet hours of the morning, munching on a catsup covered omelet while she gazed thoughtfully at the wall of posters and magazine cut-outs of South Korea’s handsome young idols.

Unfortunately, Eun-Mi was off of her normal school routine, it being the summer break, forcing the elderly woman to share her ritual with the quirky teen.

On this morning in particular, the child was acting even more strangely than usual.  She leaned against an inside wall, pressing her ear up to a poster and taking slow, silent breaths as she waited.  And waited.

“Aigoo …,” the grandmother finally sighed.  “Are you going to stand there all morning?  Why don’t you go eat your breakfast?”

“Halmeoni … sshhh!” Eun-Mi’s hand flapped anxiously, begging silence. 

“You’re blocking my view of Min-Ho,” the grandmother grumbled under her breath.

Suddenly, a faint cry echoed from the neighboring apartment.  Eun-Mi clamped her hands over and broke out into a fit of giggles.

“You crazy girl,” the grandmother sighed. “What are you doing over there?”

Eun-Mi smacked her palms against the wall to share a celebratory high five with her beloved Jae-Wook. 

“Halmeoni,” she threw her body onto the bed and wrapped her arms around the old woman’s waist before letting out a deep, satisfied sigh, “isn’t revenge just brilliant?”

.  .  .  .  .  .

Haenyeo watched as the two boys raced laps around the apartment. 

Seung-Bae was at an advantage with his longer legs.  When Hawk thought he had his friend cornered, Seung-Bae would spring over the couch, or dart away, twisting out of the shorter boy’s grasp.

Hawk bellowed.  Seung-Bae hooted.  Min-Jae crunched.  Hyun-Woo hiccupped.

And she smiled, suddenly realizing that the friends, in their own bizarre and childlike way, had, despite her intrusion, found their way back to normalcy.

“Just so you know,” Min-Jae told her between milky mouthfuls, “when you get tired of that immature, oversized child … I’m available.”