"Gil Daran, the daughter of the killer!" I hear girls and boys squeaking in the halls as I sit in my class, alone, during the break. It's not like it's the first time or something. I used to wandering around all by my own. No friends. No one to talk to, or share my lunch box that I made myself with.

Well, I don't blame them. Their parents warn them not to sit around me, assuming that if they ever hurt me, my father might aim their heads. Some mothers warn their daughters not to hang out with me, saying that I might ruin their reputation and then they will never get married.

So ridicules, isn't it?  

Sometimes I would think  they are lying if they didn’t at least got scared of me, being my father's daughter, after seeing his face in the news, and his pictures hung on the walls, written down that this man is wanted. And sometimes I would thing that even my father who's scary, creepy and everything, is not that bad. Why would they hate him when they have never even spoken to him?

They have never met him, never listened to the stories he used to tell me, they've never been taught how to shoot a gun, or how to hit a person on the deadly spots.

They've never seen his warm smile, his eyes as they sink and almost disappear.

I know you might think that doesn't make sense, but father's told me once he's never killed anyone unless they did something horrible to this city. He told me that when I was eleven. Back then, I didn’t know what does he mean. But now I do.

To be honest, I try to know what he meant by that.

The bottom line, I don't think my father is a bad guy. You know the bad guys by their faces! You feel that they're bad, not good, dishonest, sly. I read about it once, that years ago, people used to read faces. They knew that this person is guilty and that person is not by their faces and their body.

So I believed that too.

Our neighbor is full of bad people who think my father is devil himself! I sometime stand there, staring at them, wanting to shout. "Look at yourself first before insulting my father!"

Recently, he's never home. He's been like that for 5 weeks, and I feel the house so cold without him. My mother's changed after his absence. She drinks a lot, though she doesn't drink!

Every time I come back home, I find her drunk, crying and pretend that's because of the Korean Drama she's been watching. I don't know when my mother will get that I'm almost 18 now, not 10.

I look at my watch that was my fifteenth birthday present father gave me. I get out some tissue and clean my table, after that I get out a book that would distract me from my surroundings' annoying stares.

Same routine over and over since my first years in middle school, except I had friends back then. Funny, isn't it? I mean, isn’t life sometimes funny and cruel?

So the next period is starting after 15 minutes, and staying still isn't something new for me.

I plug my earphones, though I'm listening to nothing but with this I would reflect that I don't pay attention to those who pass by me and throw mean comments.

*

*

*

The school day is over, and I'm out of here 10  minutes later than the other students. I try to avoid the stares and glares as much as possible. And obviously I don't only avoid that, some of the parents who come to take their children would try to hit me. I don't really see the purpose of this, or what exactly they're getting out of it. Like, what's my fault? Just because I'm his daughter? Damn you all.

I was hit once by a rich lady, in her late forties. Because my father killed her son who's twenty years old. She hit me hard to the point that I couldn't walk properly for a couple of weeks. I tried not to cry in front of the crowds of the students of my school where the woman hit me. I tried to pretend that's not painful at all. She's not hurting me, I won't give her nor the other people the satisfaction of seeing me cry.

I tried to forget the students and how they piled to see me under that woman merciless words and punches. I tried hard to forget that none of them, even the teachers, stepped in and stopped that woman.

But as always, she is not the first, so why would I care? Why would I even think?? And I would think that whatever I've faced, my mother's faced double.

  My mother is a chemist, as well as my father. However, my mother works at a laboratory in PT section at a hospital near our house, while my father has abandoned his job more than three years ago. What breaks my heart even more, that my mother has been bond to the house. She left her job as a result for my father's sudden disappearance, despite their daily calls for her to come back, she kept herself in her shell, which's our house.

This is the longest time my father ever took for his secret missions, as he used to call them. I mean, 5 weeks, with no calls, no messages, no signs that tells us that he's around but hidden somewhere. For instance, he sometimes slid a note under the door, writing in Russian which he and mom sometimes speak while I'm with them, not understanding a word. Another examples, fixing the outer door's knob, changing the place of the flowers pots that's piled along the wall outside, he'd put some notes into the daily news paper which's placed on its basket on the wall.

But none of this happened. Mom and I were disappointed, and sad. We tried to hide our sadness at the possibility of him being caught somewhere and that he will never come back. Whenever he comes to the house, he was always undercover as a woman which has never failed to draw a big smile on my and my mother's faces. I go to the bookstore on the same street as my house, since I don't want to face my mother while she's drinking or smoking. She always warn me not to imitate her, she smokes in front of me and tells me as she points at what's between her lips how dangerous this thing is. But she needs it these days.

I don't mind if she wanted to, but as long as I don't see her sinking into the smoke. My heart squeezes as I see my family collapse before me. So I'd bury myself, reading and reading and reading medical and other books. Yes, I want to be a doctor. That's my dream. I work and work every day, to save some money that would help me someday to travel to somewhere else away from here. Staying here is suffocating me.

Staring at my feet, entering the bookstore and heading to the same section. I put down my bag, my uniform tells that I'm from the neighbor's school. I find my only friends that filled the shelves. I'm not silly, but when I read I don't feel alone at all! I sit at the very far table as usual. The perfect seat for not being noticed or bothered.

I lay the book, and open it where I last stopped. Before I read a word, I send my mother a message telling her that I'm at Yoondai Bookstore. Even though this message somehow became a daily routine to tell my mother I am at that bookstore, I've never chosen not to do it.

I notice a huge hand, full of different sizes rings, grabbing my book and flipping it to read the title. "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman. Again?" and here comes his low voice, smiling behind me. I  turn to him, and do a small bow with my head. Kris. Or Kevin. And sometimes he tells me his real name is Wufan. Although I believed that he was lying at me all this time, I don't feel like distrusting him. He's the only one I speak normally to, besides the Tablo family, of course, whom I work for.

"Yes, again, and what're you reading this time, Mr. No name?" I find myself loosening the tense in my muscles as I smile at him. I've met him 6 months ago, here in this library. We've never met somewhere else. We only see each other here. "Told you, Kris is fine."

I laugh every time I remember my father's frightened face when he once saw me with him and started his lists of warnings. I tell him he's not that bad, but father insisted, he told me that he's not good for me, and then I would remind him that we're not like that. He thought I'm seeing this guy officially, but I told him to relax, because nothing like that would ever happen. I don't know how even my father has got that idea. 

Even though I know nothing about this guy, not his name, not his age, not if he's a student at some college here or something, or if he was a teacher in some school in this neighbor. But I still feel comfortable around him.

"How're you, Dee?"

I haven't told him my name, but it happened that I always come here in my uniform, so he read my name card, and kept calling me Dee, not Daran. And that's weird because, Dee? 

I glimpse at the two books he's holding and I widen my eyes, impressed. "Is that Russian? Whoa," He smiles at me, ruffles my hair as I move my head to the