“You’re really jumpy, Megan.” The phrase itself was enough to jerk me out of a slight daze as I stared at the characters scrolling over my worksheet. They were all starting to blend together, and the Hangul handwriting I had produced was somewhere between poor and indecipherable.

Hazel had obviously taken notice of this and was frowning slightly, her lips puckering and eyebrows drawn close together – it was the same look she gave her boyfriend, Jiyong, when he canceled a date due to schedule conflicts. “Your handwriting’s almost as bad as mine was when we were back home. Are you okay?”

There was a persistent dryness in my throat that hadn’t been assuaged by the downpours we’d been getting as of recent. It broke my voice on occasion, and I was bothered by it, so I’d been resigned during class even when we were encouraged to speak amongst each other. My friends may have attributed it to my astute dedication to work, but at some point, my uncharacteristic silence must have been too obvious to go without notice.

When I answered with a shuddering nod, Carina gave me a doubtful glance but continued to practice her character symmetry – she simultaneously texted her boyfriend Minho under the table, sending copious hearts and emoticons. They seemed to drop the subject for now; maybe they accepted my drifting mind as a result of being so infatuated with my neighbor. It was all they talked about for the past two weeks since they saw him passing me notes in class – they already seemed to be planning our nuptials.

They were enthralled in the prospect of me entering a relationship, since I was the only one out of our trio to not become committed to someone yet. I had to deter them from continuing that kind of nonsense before he got back into school, assuming that I ever saw him again after what had happened. If he were smart, he would probably immigrate to another country in order to avoid me and whatever I decided to tell other people about what I knew.

But... what did I know, really? Not even what I’d seen the previous night seemed real enough to speak about to anyone. Besides, who other than my two foreigner friends would believe the half-formed Korean blabbering of a hysterical American teenager? I couldn’t even think of the proper words to explain what had happened, what he’d been able to do. Just remembering the effect his eyes had over my actions had me convinced that I couldn’t tell anyone. It was all too surreal.

As if my thoughts had summoned the Devil himself, I watched as, for the first time in eight school days, Junhong strolled into the room. He wore his uniform, but had no folders or bag with him to carry schoolwork; the teacher, a substitute while our professor was apparently on leave, looked up to scold his tardiness. She hadn’t even spoken, but his head rolled sideways and he gave her an obstinate stare which silenced her almost immediately. She didn’t even write down his name on the detention list.

I hadn’t drawn a breath since he entered the classroom. There was fear seated in the cavern of my stomach, and it bloomed into an explosion of dread when he adamantly pitched his body int