Racing To The....Finish?

“Ahhhh! It feels so nice to be home!” I exhaled and plopped myself on our beat up couch.

 It’s been a while since I last saw my mother and our small apartment, and for some reason after coming back, everything became so important to me. My mother’s slipper glides, her nagging, and our humble furniture. They’re all such small things to look at, yet I always want to remember it. I guess it’s because since I’ve been away, I missed everything the apartment held. Returning to my true home made me realize I missed the little things more than I thought.

“Oh, I should tell Eunseol I might not be coming back tonight…” I reached for my phone in the clutch to inform her about my absence, considering I had to pack up the rest of my things to actually inhabit my new fancy room.

I texted a good half a paragraph and locked the phone. I was about to just call it a night to go ahead and sleep, but as I was grabbing the clutch I suddenly started to reminisce about tonight. My life’s filled with working, waking up early, and more work. What happened this evening really forced me to step out of my comfort zone, but it was a step I didn’t regret. That person who helped me was someone I used to loathe, but now I’m showing interest in them. How could this be?

“Geez, just because of tonight my head hurts from everything that happened; I should go to sleep…” Placing my hands on my eyes, I rubbed them like any normal sleepy person.

“Seriously?” I took an accidental glimpse of my palm right before standing, and witnessed an unwelcomed blob on my fingers. Multiple messes actually, I was stupid enough to rub my eyes while I still had makeup on and completely forgot about it. Streaks of eyeliner over there, mascara here, and I could feel the fake lashes resting on my eyebrows as I furrowed them.

Antagonized by my stupid mistake, I head for my room with heavy steps and opened my door.

“AHHH!” I belt out a screech as if an animal were run over, and another dying animal scream unites with mine.

Turns out to be Yeonni in a Kung Fu pose in front of my opened door. 

“What are you doing in my room?!” I complain, stomping in my territory.

“Do you think I evaporate into the sky as soon as you leave?!” He backs off when I step in with my angry expression and sits on my bed.

“You startled me! I thought a burglar climbed into my window!” Slapping the clutch on my desk, I head towards my closet to pick out my sleeping attire.

“I think I should be the one startled, look at your face.” He unpleasantly squints at me, making me want to high-five his face.

Snickering, an ‘unknown’ ball of sock flies towards his direction while I step outside.  “Why did you throw that?!” Yeonni verbalizes while following me, as usual.

“I don’t know; you’re the genie here so you tell me.” My words travel to his ears one by one sourly as I close the bathroom door on him, making sure his nose hit it.

BRRRINNNGGG!!

Rummaging through the miscellaneous items on my nightstand, I finally managed to find my alarm and mute it. Raising yourself up to a sitting pose is the hardest when waking up, especially at an early hour for something you don’t want to do, for instance school.

I look over to the side and see Yeonni still half dead on the floor, as usual with his face buried in the pillows, sleeping up. I can only see a horizontal slit of my room from my eyes while fighting to open them up, but I just ended up closing them back up with my fingers and stay still for a moment, sitting with my hands covering my face.

I don’t put a load of effort into getting ready, it’s just hygiene and changing into school clothes, which is a navy skirt along with a button down and tie. 10 minutes would suffice, since I don’t really do anything special for hair nor do I own makeup.

Other than that, I take another 10 minutes for breakfast. Which are quite simple, just a bowl of rice and whatever side dishes are left over from the night before. Today a few eggrolls are accompanying my bowl of morning carbs, and some kimchi. I hope these are eggrolls, serving food for yourself while half-awake can be surprising; what you thought you’re eating could be the opposite of what it actually is.

I set the eggroll plate and my bowl on the table, sit down on the pillow, raise my right leg and rest my eating hand’s arm upon it. I might look like a street cab driver eating, but I’m at home, only females inhabit here and this position is quite comfortable.

After a few chews I decide to open my eyes, since I can’t live the entire day looking half-dead, walking around with closed eyes. Blinking and gradually getting my eyes to open, a foreign ‘thing’ is on the opposite side of the table. Multitasking my chews, blinking and neck extending, I try and puzzle piece together what that ‘thing’ is.

AUGH! AUGH!! I start coughing like a mad man who just unknowingly swallowed a meatball. I grabbed the glass of water and tried to suppress this reflex, which was initiated with a surprise. Taemin is sitting across me! He’s the ‘thing,’ the ‘thing’ that saw me sit like a drunk man and probably saw my underwear from it since I wore a skirt.

“A…are you okay?” He tries to get up and somehow console me, but I deny it with a chopstick sway. “I..i’m fine..augh!” Frowning from the burning cough, I try and put myself together again.

“Wha..wh..why are you here?” I question him with a raspy voice while drinking more water, this time, while sitting like a girl actually should.

“You didn’t come back last night…and I thought I’d pick you up, since we all go to the same school.” He still looks worried from the spaz I just had, and has his mouth open a bit along with curvy eyebrows.

“I can just walk to school….it’s fine.” Sliding my chopstick down, the feeling of hunger flew away in exchange with embarrassment.

“Since I’m already here, we should go together.” He picks up a napkin from the table and hands it to me, as if he didn’t see me like a mental patient a few minutes ago.

“So my mother let you in?” I ask curiously about what happened before my cough scene.

“No, actually…the door was unlocked.” Taemin laughs a little and rubs his thighs.

“Creep.” Kai, with his headphones around his neck, comments from the opposite side.

The car ride went by awkwardly, with Taemin sitting in the middle, uncomfortably, and with the two end people looking out the window.

“Do people line up like this for your arrival every day?” I point out the window to a group of girls as soon as I spotted them.

“Yeah, but they don’t usually have scarf headbands on with…picket signs?” Taemin looks out my window and then Kai’s, constantly moving his neck to check around.

“Picket sign?” I look out too, squinting to see what they said. I didn’t notice the signs, since all I saw then were people, not people holding signs.  They must’ve held them up once they saw the car.

“It looks like they’re protesting for something.” Kai pops up, and places his pointy finger on the glass.

The driver cautiously drives up the school’s driveway, making sure he isn’t about to crash into a fangirl. The closer we get up the school, the more the circle forming around us solidifies, purely by girls. With picket signs.

“It..it says…’Stay away from them, you !’” Kai reads one of the signs aloud, only processing what it said after he narrated it. “Oh…”

‘Go back to the dumps!’

‘!’

‘Stop seducing them!’

‘Die!’

All the signs, posters and unpleasant screaming were about something negative. Why is there such a riot at school?

“Oh my god...guys! Guys! She’s inside! She’s inside THE CAR!” A girl with bangs and a megaphone spotted me in the car once she was close enough to the vehicle, as if they’re not already engulfing the car in their massive group.

But what girl? The only girl in this car is me…the driver is male. Are…are they talking about me?

“I know it’s quite difficult to get out because of the situation, but the bell will ring in a while.” Stopping, the driver reminds us.

Kai bravely unlocks the car door and steps out, at that moment the screams slowly quieted down to a whisper, and an abundant amount of space forms for him once he came out.

“We can’t stay in here forever, let’s go out and see what’s going on before the bell rings.” Taemin tells me, yet I can’t hear him. I’m scared. I know the answer won’t be a positive thing, and I surely know the answer will be about me. I can’t look at him in the eye and just stared at my lap, grabbing onto my skirt.

“It’ll be okay, trust me.” Taemin lifts my chin up with his finger and looks straight into my eyes. ‘Trust me’ was what he said, and that’s what his gaze says. I had no choice but to do so and nodded my head.

We both stepped out of the car slowly after Kai, and scanned around. Kai looked back at us with a worried expression and bit his lip. He must’ve already figured out what this whole thing is about. And it didn’t seem good.

I only spotted the harsh words and didn’t bother to see the photo. A majority of the signs had multiple copies of one photo. I shuffled forward to get a better vision of what the photo was of, and saw something that left me breathless.

The photo was of me; and of the two people who accompanied me on the car ride just now. Kai and Taemin. In the photo was Kai clutching onto my waist, with Taemin centimeters away from him grabbing my wrist. This…was taken behind the school, when Kai was trying to figure out my name. He caught me off guard and I fell, then what happened next was recorded in the photo.

“Get lost!” They chanted, over and over. Their two words ringed in my head continuously, making my head feel stuffed. The next round would be ‘Seduce someone else!’

There especially was one girl who was extremely loud, the one that spotted me in the car and had the megaphone. Her eyes looked sly underneath those bangs as she made the crowd roar louder.

Right when the girls were at their chanting peak, someone behind me slid on a pair of headphones on my ears. After that, I couldn’t hear anything.  Only some low volume, unperceivable words. They were like tiny hums.

The hums disappeared when music started playing. An acoustic guitar started the song off, the rest were just vibes. I still didn’t forget about what was happening right in front of me, but I did shove it away for a while after the mesmerizing music started playing.

Then, someone intertwined their fingers with mine tightly, and led me away from the crowd. He walked in front of me with large steps, causing me to jog to keep up. It was Kai. He tugged me out of the circle made by the girls and kept on walking without looking back. Right before I left, I couldn’t see everyone’s mouths move, nor could I hear hums in between the silent parts of the song. They must’ve stopped chanting.

We both ended up behind the school, where my first class was. The girls didn’t follow us, nor did Taemin. Kai was still leading, his back facing me, grabbing onto my hand tightly. He finally turned around to see me smile slightly while holding the earphone with my free hand.

With my head down, I had two emotions on my face. I was smiling out of comfort and happiness from the song, yet tears welled up in my eyes from the incident he helped me escape from.

I finally looked up after the song ended, and I was just living in a world surrounded with silenced noise with the headphones still on. Once I raised my head, our gazes met. The tears disappeared, yet the hands still remained an unbroken link.

“Finally, this jerk helped someone else. You did good, Kai. But why now? And to Jieun also…When you knew…I was about to jump in first to save her...." Taemin stares at the leftover path Kai made through the crowd with his hoodie, ready to cover someone, dangling on his lifeless hand.