The next day, Tiffany rolled out of bed before quickly checking her alarm clock and going into ‘--I’m-late-mode’. As usual on post-club mornings, she had been too generous with herself and the snooze button and now scrambled through her room in search of clothes.

“T-shirt, T-shirt. Okay, shorts, erm, these will do. Okay good. Socks…dammit where are my socks? Have I run out?!”

She opened frantically every drawer.

“Socks, socks, I need socks.”

“Argh, where did I put them!”

She hobbled through her room, jumping over the piles of discarded clothing before dropping to the ground and looking underneath her bed.

“You okay?” Jessica leaned against the door, munching through the bowl of cereals in her hand.

“I need socks” Tiffany wailed.

Then she stopped in her tracks.

“Actually” she turned to Jessica in realization “I don’t need socks”

“You disgust me”

“Just don’t sniff my sneakers afterwards”

“Ew”

Tiffany ran outside to the entrance of the flat and hastily put on her Converse before swinging her bag over her shoulder.

“9 am class, see ya later…lunch?”

“Maybe” Jessica called out from the living room “no classes today. I might just have an extended breakfast”

But Tiffany had already darted out of the door and was running down the flights of stairs to the nearby campus.

She arrived at the small seminar room, face flushed, hair in her face and out of breath. She tried to regain her composure and whatever dignity she had left by brushing her fingers with her hair and drawing in deep breaths, but there was nothing she could do about the red tinge on her cheeks. She placed her hand on the doorknob and whispered a silent prayer before deciding to go in.

Warm. The doorknob was cold, but there was something warm over her hand. She looked down and saw a smaller hand, with turquoise nail polish and rhinestones, resting over hers.

“I have time for lots of things, but not for some girl trying to grow some ovaries to open a door just because she´s late”

The tone was icy cold. Tiffany didn’t even need to look up to know who it was.

She immediately withdrew her hand and took a step back in disgust.

The girl gripped the knob tightly and spoke, looking at the door.

“So would you like to go first and be earlier than Kim Taeyeon and face the abominable wrath of the scary teacher, or will you move out of the way, stop wasting my precious time but be worse than the detestable Kim Taeyeon?”

Tiffany stared at the floor, her hands balled in fists.

“Suit yourself” the girl opened the door and gave a kick to open it fully. She strolled inside, dragging her bag through the floor while Tiffany was left to walk meekly behind. The professor shot them both icy glares as they made their way to the empty seats in the back. The difference was that Kim Taeyeon seemed to revel and even grow in the face of such animosity, while Tiffany felt her back spine shrink with shame.

“ it!” she heard the girl curse out loudly and Tiffany glanced up. The only two seats left were next to each other. The girl plopped her bag on the lecture theatre tables that stretched out for the whole row in the shape of a curve. Tiffany did the same with hers and proceeded to go to her chair.

She was stopped a few metres short.

“Move your chair, I can’t get through” she whispered threateningly.

“Or what, you’ll smash my head again?” Taeyeon replied, unfazed.

She didn’t speak another word but lifted up Taeyeon’s chair and pushed it towards the girl, leaving enough space for her to wriggle through. The girl winced, probably as her ribs made contact with the wooden desk but if she was hurting, she definitely didn’t show it. She placed her bag as a form of barrier between Tiffany and her and lay her head down to sleep.

Tiffany became oblivious to the explanations of their professor, who hastily scribbled on a blackboard with screeching chalk. Another day, she might have been furiously taking down notes and occasionally sharing jokes with her classmates at the expense of their balding teacher but today she just stared at the sleeping girl next to her.

She had fallen asleep facing Tiffany and she was able to see her features clearly, one could say almost purely, without the obnoxious expression that always adorned her face. In truth, she was pretty. There was a reason why she was Miss Hot so-and-so and that´s because, to put in plainly, she could be. Even in academics, she still managed to scrape past, much to the anger of the faculty members. Even despite her antics, she was still the one all eyes were on at parties. Even though she was an abomination of a person, there were still people willing to give her their love in exchange for her attention.

She recalled the events with Jessica last night and felt her stomach drop. She scrunched up a sheet from her notepad in frustration. If only she knew, she wondered, if only she knew, just how much other people despised her, just how much she disgusted them, would she stop? Would she change? She had once asked her dancing male friend this question and he had shrugged it off. According to him, even the people that hated her loved her. That’s why they hated her, he had said, they wanted to have what she had, have a share in her life. “Either be her or be on top of her” he chuckled and Tiffany had just shaken her head in disgust, sure that his mentality was also part of the problem.

She heard the collective sound of pen caps clicking and notepads being shut and realized that the class had ended. She must have been later than she originally thought, but then again, she did arrive at the same time as Miss Arrogant. She looked at the sleeping girl beside her- if she was feeling like crap, she was sure the other girl must be feeling worse. She pushed the girl’s bag to the right, brushing her head slightly. The girl bolted up, confused, before looking around and finally fixing her cold gaze upon Tiffany.

Tiffany ignored her and pretended to slowly pack up, hoping the girl would leave before her, so she wouldn’t have to relive the whole chair scene again. Alas, when she glanced sideways again, Kim Taeyeon was sitting with her arms crossed, legs bent with her feet touching the table and the chair pushed back as far as possible. She stared this time at the now clean blackboard at the front of an empty classroom, her brown eyes narrowed, her eyebrows frowning.

“You hate me”

It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even an exclamation or a sentence denoting shock, surprise or disgust. It was just that, a fact. Kim Taeyeon spoke and it was like she was reading a dictionary out loud.

“Yes”

“That wasn’t a question”

“I know”

The girl tugged on the cords of her black hoodie.

“I hate you too”

Tiffany felt a fiery sensation overpowering her body.

“Oh you do?” she raised her voice, now strained “you do, don’t you? I’m sure you have plenty of reasons, I’m sure you do”

She stopped herself, trying to control her emotions.

“I hate you because…” the girl went quiet. She tugged some more at the cords of her hoodie

“Right, whatever” Tiffany scoffed. She flung her bag to the table on the level below and stood up on her chair, gaining impulse to jump.

“Because sometimes I hate myself”

“You know very well, that’s not really my problem”

“That’s what you think” the arrogant smirk had returned and suddenly, it was all that Tiffany could see. The walls, windows, even the floor, her white-teethed smile was all that she could recall.

“ off and leave Jessica alone”

She jumped unto the table and let herself fall to the level below. She grabbed her bag and walked briskly off, leaving Kim Taeyeon behind, who carefully watched her leave.

When she stepped out of the classroom, she made sure to slam the door. Hard.

“I had to sit next to her in a class”

Tiffany lay stretched out in their worn out leather sofa. They had gotten it for free in one of those exchange sites, but as part of the deal, they had to carry it back home themselves. It took them four hours of lugging the sofa through the streets- with occasional breaks where they would lie on top of it. Spread out in the leathery cushions, Tiffany warmly recalled that half an hour nap they took in the park, in the middle of some grassy field, laying on their recently acquired possession.

Jessica, on the other hand, was sprawled out on the floor, using her pillow as a headrest. She hated the sensation of being stuck on the leather due to sweat and then having to unpeel her, which Tiffany secretly loved. She looked up at Tiffany, eating shaved ice.

“Kim Taeyeon?”

“Yeah”

“You don’t usually sit at the back”

“I was late. Technically, later than her”

Jessica held back her laughter.

“Is that possible?”

Tiffany sighed and flipped her body, so that she was now lying facing Jessica.

“Apparently”

They stared at each other for some time. Jessica opened to speak but no words came out. Her eyes darted, as if thinking of the right words.

“I’m not angry at you for last night. I’m angry at her. Was that what you were going to ask?”

Jessica nodded.

“She’s just-argggh. How can anyone be like that and-and still be like that and still, still appear so goddamn happy and smug?”

“People can be stupid. Like me” Jessica said, half-jokingly. “But, you know,” she sat up suddenly, directly facing Tiffany “Everybody loves her, they practically worship the toilet she s on. They talk, yes, about her, behind her back and all those things but at the end of the day, she’s still…”

“It. She’s still the at the centre of everything”

“Yeah. But you”

She cut her friend off.

“What about me?”

“You grabbed her arm, pulled her up and pushed her back into the sofa. You ignore her every time she’s around and if not, you confront her. Upfront like that”

Tiffany looked away, ashamed.

“I have a bad temper, so what? She kinda of deserves it anyways”

“That’s not the point. The point is that I would never be able to do that. I would never be able to just give it to her, which is what you do. I couldn’t, I mean you saw from last night. She’s just too much. But you, you do.” She paused and took a deep breath. “And I want to know why.”

“Why, what?”

“Why you have that confidence with her”

Tiffany got up, shirt sticking to her back and began to walk towards her room.

“I hate her, that’s why” she said, without turning back.

Had she done so, she would have seen Jessica shake her head.