“God dammit, Jinri, can’t you do anything right?” Mrs. Kwang snaps, throwing her damp dishrag onto the counter. “How hard is it to buy the correct brand of rice?”

“It’s still rice, isn’t it?” Jinri snaps back. It’s late Wednesday night and she and her mother have gotten into yet another stupid argument. “What does the brand matter? If there was a specific brand that you wanted, you should have said so.”

“We’ve eaten the same brand of rice for years,” her mother says irritably. “Are you that self-absorbed that you don’t even pay any attention?”

Jinri’s jaw clenches in anger. It doesn’t take much for her to reach the end of her rope with her mother, and she’s past that point now. Grabbing her coat, she heads for the front door.

“Just where the hell do you think you’re going?” Mrs. Kwang shouts after her furiously, but Jinri has already tuned her out. She lets the front door slam closed behind her.

She wanders aimlessly for a while, her breath steaming out from between her lips. Eventually she finds herself at a children’s play park, one she takes Jinah to often on the weekends. She sits down on one of the cold, hard benches and pulls out her handphone. She skims through the contacts halfheartedly. There aren’t many, because Jinri doesn’t do the friend thing, but she stops on the newest entry.

She doesn’t know what possessed her to even program the number into her phone, bur for some reason she did, waiting until the hastily-written numbers on her hand had faded so much they were almost impossible to decipher. Her fingers hesitate over the keys and then she’s pressing the connect button, though she’s not exactly sure why.

He picks up after only two rings, his voice bright and cheerful even though it’s definitely too late to respectably call anyone. “Hello?” he says.

Jinri hesitates. She’s not really sure why she even called. She has nothing to say to him. But she can’t exactly sit there like a stalker not saying anything, so she takes a deep breath and says, “Did you mean it? When you said I could call to talk?”

There’s a small pause while he tries to work out who she is. “Jinri-yah?” Himchan finally says, sounding almost as surprised as she is that she’s calling.

“No, it’s the ing tooth fairy,” she snaps irritably. “Of course it’s Jinri. You’re the one who gave me your phone number.”

“Well, yeah, but I didn’t think you were going to call, especially since you’ve been purposefully avoiding me at school,” he replies, and there’s a hint of amusement in his voice that annoys Jinri to no end.

“Fine,” she snaps, irrationally annoyed even though she’s the one that phoned. “Forget I called.”

“Wait!” he says, and she hesitates before ending the call. “What do you want to talk about?”

She shrugs indifferently. “I don’t know. I don’t care.”

“You called me this late at night just to make small talk?”

When he puts it like that, of course it sounds stupid. “I can just hang up,” she threatens again, but the threat is quickly losing its effectiveness. She sighs. “I just need to be distracted right now.”

“Okay.” There’s a pause, and it seems like he’s thinking hard about what to say. “You know, they say an awful lot of things about you at school.”

“I know.” She doesn’t bother getting annoyed or angry. She deals with the gossip no matter where she is, what school she’s currently going to. She doesn’t even need a scarlet letter on her chest to identify what she is. “You more than anyone should know what I’m like.”

He hesitates again. “They say you have a kid.”

“So what if I do?” she challenges.

Yet again, he pauses. “Where are you?” he asks finally. “Do you want to go get some coffee?”

“It’s almost midnight,” she points out, a smile threatening the corners of her lips nonetheless.

“A drink then,” he amends, rather impatiently. “I’d just rather talk in person. I don’t like talking on the phone very much.”

She purses her lips. The thought of having a drink with Himchan is certainly more enticing than going back to her house and facing her monster of a mother. “Fine,” she gives in. “I’m at the children’s play park off South Bend Avenue.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” he promises, and they hang up.

True to his word, Himchan is pulling up in his expensive car exactly fifteen minutes later. She doesn’t wait for him to get out and open the door for her, just slides into the now-familiar front passenger seat.

“What were you doing at a play park at this time of night?” he asks by way of greeting, directing the car towards a nearby bar. Jinri is well-acquainted with all the bars and clubs in the vicinity, so she knows exactly where he’s taking her without having to ask.

She shrugs, gazing out the tinted window as the familiar scenery flashes by. “Just getting some air, I guess. I needed to get out of my house for a while. My mom was driving me crazy.”

“So you live with your parents?” is his next question.

She frowns at him, brows furrowing together. “I’m still in high school, so obviously I live with my parents. Don’t you live with yours?” Come to think of it, though, she didn’t actually recall seeing any signs of someone else living in the apartment he’d taken her to the other night.

“Nope,” he answers lightly. “My parents work abroad a lot, so they’re gone most of the time. Mostly in Europe. I wanted to finish up high school here in Seoul with my friends, though, so my parents pay the rent on my apartment while I’m finishing.”

“That must be nice,” Jinri mumbles, more than a little jealous.

He shrugs. “It’s a bit lonely, actually.”

They park and go into the bar, flashing the doorman their fake IDs. Himchan buys them both a beer from the blue-haired bartender and they settle into a booth at the back, where the music is a little quieter and they can talk without having to shout.

“Your ID must be pretty good,” Jinri comments, sipping leisurely at her beer. She’s not out to get drunk tonight, so she can actually take the time to enjoy the alcohol and the slow buzz that spreads through her veins. “The doorman didn’t even look twice at it.”

He grins. “Yours is even better. You use it all the time, huh?”

“Every weekend. Sometimes during the week as well,” she nods, her long fingers playing absently with the neck of her beer bottle.

He purses his lips thoughtfully. “And do you always leave with a stranger?”

“They’re not always strangers,” she answers, more loudly than she probably needs to. She’s always louder when she’s trying to be assertive, and she’s had enough of people questioning her rather promiscuous habits. “Sometimes I know them. But I guess mostly they’re strangers. It’s easier that way.”

“But you always hook up.” It’s an observation rather than a question.

She nods, taking another sip of beer. “Yeah. Every once in a while I get unlucky, like with you the other night, but mostly it always pans out. I’m sort of an expert.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little dangerous?” he suggests carefully, sipping on his own drink. “Hooking up with strangers isn’t exactly the safest thing to do, especially if you’re always as -faced as you were the other night.”

“I can take care of myself,” she says bluntly. She’s so used to people lecturing her by now that she’s stopped really listening.

“There’s more to life than just , you know,” he points out, his lips twitching up in a smile even as he lectures her.

She laughs harshly, sounding jaded even to her own ears. “Oh yeah? Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he drawls sarcastically. “Like friends and family? Or, heaven forbid, a real relationship that’s based on feelings and trust rather than .”

Jinri snorts dryly. “I don’t need friends; I don’t exactly play nice with others. And if I never had to see my family again, I’d be perfectly happy. All relationships are bull. It’s all about people lying and pretending, so I just cut the crap and get the good bits.”

“Everyone needs friends,” Himchan says, rather sadly.

“Not me,” she insists stubbornly. “I don’t have friends, and I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

“You do have friends,” he says, a bit more quietly.

Jinri shakes her head again. “No, I really don’t. All the girls hate me because they think I’m going to steal their boyfriends – not that I can really blame them. I’m not a nice person, so I’ve done it before. And the boys are just nice to me because they want to get in my pants, but we’re not friends.”

“Well, I’m not afraid you’re going to steal my boyfriend, nor do I want in your pants,” he points out with a cheeky smile. “So we’re friends, aren’t we?”

Jinri forces a laugh, mostly to hide the awkwardness she feels at this blunt question. “No, we’re not friends,” she tells him. “Have you forgotten the other night so easily? We were both drunk and we definitely would’ve ed if you hadn’t left in the middle of it.”

“I’m not talking about then.” He brushes it off impatiently. “I’m talking about now. What we’re doing now, this is what friends do. They hang out and talk.”

She sighs and blows a loose strand of dark hair off her forehead. “This isn’t going to lead to us having , right?”

He laughs despite himself and shakes his head. “No, it’s not. If that’s the only reason you called me, I can go ahead and take you home now.”

“Eh, it’s not why I called you anyway,” she mutters.

“So why did you call me?”

Jinri doesn’t answer, mostly because she doesn’t know herself why she called. She takes another sip of her beer, but Himchan never looks away so she knows he’s waiting earnestly for her answer. She sighs. “I guess it’s because I wanted someone to talk to,” she finally admits.

“Oh, you know, like a friend?” he teases, his smile widening.

Jinri’s cheeks tinge pink, but she’s very nearly smiling. “So…we’re actually friends?”

“Yes,” he says in exasperation. “I’ve already told you this. If we weren’t, I sure as hell wouldn’t have come out this late on a school night just to have a drink with you.”

She purses her lips, scrutinizing him. “You don’t have to pretend, you know.  You don’t have to pretend to be my friend to get me into bed.”

“Jesus, Jinri, you sound like a broken record.” He rolls his eyes. “I’ve already told you that I don’t want to sleep with you anymore. That ship has sailed.”

As usual, she gets defensive. “You were perfectly fine with having with me the other night,” she snaps, subconsciously wondering if perhaps her hair isn’t good enough tonight or maybe her makeup is only sub-par. “What’s so different about now?”

“Because now I actually know you and I would much rather be your friend than just another notch in your extensive bedpost,” he points out, waggling his eyebrows comically at her.

She sighs and leans back against the padded seat cushion. “Well, I suppose that’s understandable.”

They finish off their beers in silence. Jinri hasn’t had a friend – a real friend – in a very long time. Of course there are always the boys that pretend to be her friends just to sleep with her and there are always the simpering girls who want to feed off her appeal, but none of them are real friends and Jinri can always tell. But Himchan…he seems different somehow.

“Do you want me to take you home now?” he asks when their drinks are gone. He looks almost amused at the way the evening has turned out.

Jinri nods. “I guess so. We have school in the morning, after all.”

They pull their coats on and walk out to the car park and his waiting car. “Do you want me to drop you off on that corner from the other night?” he asks as he maneuvers the car back to her neighborhood.

“Nah, you can just drop me off at my house,” she replies lightly.

“Ah, so I’ve graduated from the corner?” he teases. “Now you trust that I’m not a creepy stalker?”

She rolls her eyes but she’s almost smiling.

It doesn’t take long before he’s pulling up in front of the blue house. All the lights are off. Her parents didn’t bother to wait up for her, but that’s not exactly surprising.

“Thanks for tonight,” she says, fingers wrapping around the door handle.

Himchan’s hand on her wrist stops her before she can get out. “I really think that you and I should hang out this weekend. You know, instead of you going to the clubs.”

Her smile is definitely amused. “But that’s not going to result in me getting laid, now is it?”

“No,” he agrees, also smiling. “But that’s not all there is in life. Try it my way once, okay. I guarantee we’ll have fun.”

“Maybe,” she gives in. “But I’m not making any promises.