“It sounds like you had a rough night.”

I shot Hazel an incredulous look, projecting all of the frustration and stress I’d encountered in the past twelve hours. “You think so? I ended up sleeping at his place, and when I woke up... I went back home and took a shower, but when I went to go to my bedroom, he was standing in my living room.”

In the desk next to me, Carina spit out a mouthful of Instant Ramen onto her open Government textbook, almost choking on the noodles she’d been about to swallow. Hazel scoffed and sunk her head into her notebook, overwhelmed by the shock of my statement and amusement with Carina’s struggling coughs.

“Please, for the sake of everything holy, tell me you had clothes on.” Carina coped through her dilemma with an expression of utter terror. My silence made Haley lower her thin brows at me. “You weren’t , were you, Rae?”

I shook my head uncertainly, voice lowering so the surrounding students wouldn’t hear me. Then again, I was speaking in English, so I wasn’t in much danger of being overheard. “I wasn’t , per say... I was- Well, I was wearing a towel.” Carina’s gasp of shock was enough to draw the curiosity of several of our peers, followed closely by disdainful frowns from several of them. Hazel coughed purposely to dissolve their unwanted attention; I was glad they seemed to respect their upperclassmen, because they turned back to their studies.

Like me, Hazel and Carina were foreign students in Korea, choosing to get our educations in Korea for individual reasons. Hazel came to be immersed in different cultures; Carina was sent by her parents to pursue a specific career in Seoul. I came to escape the boring surroundings of the United States, relocating to a place with new scenery, new people, and new independence from my parents. While the two of them are funded by their family, I’d been struggling to provide for myself through the past months living in the Korean slums. My parents weren’t thrilled by my choice and severed me from any monetary supplements that they would have provided if I’d gone to an Ivy League school. But that’s parental support for you – it’s only there if you do what they want.

Now, we were in our study period prior to lunch, an hour in which students were able to collect in any of several specified classrooms to study language or converse with each other in foreign tongues. This allowed the three of us to speak in English without being reprimanded for socializing.

After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Hazel shifted in the seat in front of mine so that her face was directly facing me. “So, he saw you in your towel. What’d he do? Did you scream, did he say anything?” Carina leaned towards me, anticipation