One
Dead EndIt’s been raining ever since Sohee left the house. As a result, her school uniform is soaked by the time she finally reaches the metro station. She has to run up the stairs and almost dive into the closing doors to make it in time. If she had missed this train, she would have had to wait for another twenty minutes. Oh the perks of living outside of Seoul’s busy city districts, yay!
She feels the eyes of the other passengers on her. One particular, an already elderly woman. She has a basket on her lap, a red towel covering her belongings. Two deep wrinkles run across her forehead emphasized to the worst due to her frown. She shakes her head at Sohee, visibly disapproving. Her eyes follow the girl's every step, just to make sure she wouldn’t dare to take and sodden one of the perfect fine seats.
She hasn’t planned on doing so anyway and instead walks to the far back to get some privacy from the curious yet pitying stares from the already seated passengers. Desperately clinging onto one of the handles as to make sure not to fall and injure herself once the subway drives off. Most of the people have manners enough to mind their own business once they settle with the thought that the drenched girl might not be as insane as she appears to be.
Except for the two junior High school boys taking pictures, and the man secretly eating his French fries he has hidden under his shirt with the very obvious spills of sauce on it. Now nosy herself, she takes a glimpse at the chubby man who is, not as stealthily as he believes to be, ogling her. While usually, she doesn't care about those looks, for years she has been the town’s odd one, and wherever she would go, there were always the whispers behind her back.
This time, however, it is different. The way he looks is bothering her. He isn’t weirded out, no. He is simply lewd. This isn't new to her either, and she isn’t quite sure if she should feel flattered or disgusted, and it is probably a mixture of both when she takes the courage to walk up and confront him.
She takes her sweet time, enjoying the distressed look on the man. That is, until her hands grab the hem of her shirt, lifting it up slowly and showing off her white wet sports bra that clings onto her skin and likewise some more. While the world stops spinning-
She could almost feel the disappointment, and the muttered curses of the two boys who were punished enough by only getting to view her back. There is a tickling sensation between her tights, caused by tiny water droplets merging, following the pull of earth’s gravitation searching for a way downwards. To her displeasure, as she hates the sticky feeling when her humid skin touches and her legs abrade against each other.
The moisture lets her hair stick onto her cheeks, but at least for once there isn’t a stubborn loose strain of hair attached to her lustrous red lips just to annoy her.
A puddle is all that’s left behind her, just where she had been standing seconds before. Formed by the water that dripped from her attire and body. Her breath is still short and caught from time to time, because of the running she had to do to catch her ride.
Grinning widely, she lets go of her shirt and instead holds her hand out openly towards him. “You owe me 20 Bucks for staring, and another 5 for imagining.”
Being fully aware that she caught him off guard.
Embarrassed and in despair to make her talk quietly the man pulls out his wallet to hand her the demanded amount. Which she counts right away in swift and skilled motions. Not bothering that it is considered as very rude to mistrust a man of honor, which the suddenly sweating man in front of her clearly is not.
“Consider yourself as lucky! I gave you a huge “forever-a-single-men-and-alone discount” and for once tonight’s wank-of fantasy won’t be just all drawings.” She points cheekily toward the plastic bag next to him, filled with Japanese comic books, also known as -mangas and yes, Ahn Sohee is conscious, that due to her current look she may have a fair odd resemblance with those drawings. And might as well have just jumped right out of one of those books. Of course, she hasn’t given him any discount, but it sounds witty in her ears, and she enjoyed the snickering sound of the eavesdropping boys encouraging her. “Pleased to do business with you.”
It isn’t her stop but she exits the coach anyway, it’s just two more stops till her School, she can walk the remaining distance. She doesn’t forget to politely, widely grinning, waving her goodbye with the newly earned money in her hand, to a man she knows she will never see again.
She is late, she knows, not terribly so but enough for everyone else to be already there. She figures that out by the full packed bus in front of her
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