I.

Loud music, drunkenness, and the smell of nicotine- among other things- permeated the air. LED signs flickering. An unsaid urgency in the way everybody moved. It was Seoul city at night.

“Pass me the cigs, kid.” A woman elbowed Chaeyoung in the arm. That hurt.

Chaeyoung scrunched her eyebrows and eyed this woman-- the woman looked nearly identical to almost all the women who passed by, white-faced and blaringly red lips, that Chaeyoung almost found the whole situation comical, although she was also quite surprised, because she did not believe that people noticed each other in the midst of bustle. Either way, Chaeyoung was astonished-- what was this attitude? Her face contorted. “Do I know you?”

“Dammit. I know what you’re holding onto in the pockets of your denim jacket.” She squinted her eyes at Chaeyoung. “Now give me a stick, I’m older than you.”

The smell of alcohol that entered Chaeyoung’s nose- to which she almost gagged- strangely extinguished a portion of resentment she had felt for the woman. This was exactly how intoxication was an excuse to a lot of things. But also, Chaeyoung sighed in an attempt to get rid of whatever air she thought they mutually breathed- if that made sense, because it certainly did in Chaeyoung's head. “Fine.”

Chaeyoung slithered out a cigarette stick out of her pocket in a millisecond. Her fingers were painfully familiar to the tobacco sticks.

“Thanks. ing finally.” The woman immediately lit her cigarette with a lighter out of her pocket with such precision that Chaeyoung wondered how she wouldn’t have any cigarettes with her at any given time.

Chaeyoung forced a smile, her remaining annoyance seemingly, slowly scraping away whatever tiny scraps of curiosity she initially had for this woman. “You’re welcome.” Chaeyoung deadpanned. The woman ignored her.

Chaeyoung resumed leaning back on the concrete wall. She looked at her wristwatch. 2:34AM. In front of her, a jazz band was playing-- they were men, all around her age. An indie song she had never heard before. Determination and hope played on their faces. It was depressing to watch.

“Thanks for the cigarette, kid.” The woman suddenly said. Now the cigarette stick was being crushed from the weight of the woman’s shoe. Stomp, stomp, stomp. “My name’s Nayeon, by the way. I always see you around here.”

Chaeyoung eyed Nayeon dubiously. “Right.”

Nayeon silently laughed, more to herself than anybody else. “Where are your parents, anyway?”

Chaeyoung cut her eyes at her. “You don’t need to know.”

Nayeon laughed again. “Okay.”

She shrugged. Chaeyoung’s parents were away. Always away. What kind of parents would they be, anyway, to let Chaeyoung out into the streets at 2AM? She’d snuck out her window more than once, which she assumed that was normal, but to take train rides all over Seoul at the wee hours of the morning just for the sake of it, with her parents knowing-- that would be a mess. Yes, Chaeyoung’s parents may be absent all the time, but they weren’t dysfunctional, let-down parents who had conceived a child just to save their marriage, or to season their love-lives, whatever that meant. People had always asked the most bizarre things; how could they wonder how Chaeyoung had such a bizarre imagination, too?

Chaeyoung sighed and shut the thought down as she thought about home. Strangely she had wanted to go back, and before she knew it, her legs were taking (dragging) her to the train station. It was bleary and depressing to think about a lot of things, and home was one of them.

“Yah!” Nayeon yelled. Chaeyoung had honestly forgotten she had existed. And how Chaeyoung could forget things in the span of less than 5 minutes, it was a talent. A skill. She could’ve become a variety idol if she wanted to. “Where you going?”

Chaeyoung faced back, cut her eyes at Nayeon the nth time this night. “Home.”

And Nayeon laughed. Again. “Wait for me, kid. I’m taking the train, too.”

How did Nayeon even know she was taking the train? A surge of pain struck Chaeyoung’s head. The headache was back, what a mess.

Chaeyoung ended up waiting for Nayeon that night.

The first period of the first school day of the week was Math. Chaeyoung hated Math. It was unnecessary and confusing lines of numbers and numbers. Each line was supposed to be a continuation of the last, but to Chaeyoung they had all looked the same. Perhaps if she tried she would figure out that they actually did make sense, that they were just as essential in the civilization of communities as literature and music, but that was the thing-- Chaeyoung never really tried. It was no wonder Chaeyoung had often failed Math.

But I’m not stupid, I swear, Chaeyoung liked to promise to herself at the back of her head. Various numbers and variables flew throughout the room when she did.

“Chaeyoung, wake up,” Her seatmate whispered. Her seatmate was Tzuyu. So pretty and tan, the smartest girl in Math class, Chou Tzuyu. “Chaeyoung, I swear to God-- wake up. We have a pair assessment and you know damn well you’re going to fail if you don’t wake the f--” Tzuyu paused, and her tone softened. “Chaeyoung, please wake up. I’m begging you.”

And it was probably pity Tzuyu had felt for Chaeyoung. The headache from last night came back. Pretty girls are bad for you; all they do is nag and curse at you and give you headaches, Chaeyoung surmised. This was enough to wake her up completely.

“Yes?” Chaeyoung now arose. She could feel that her short hair was all over the place. She would borrow a mirror to check how she looked herself, but only one eye was opening. Why was only one eye open. Chaeyoung huffed out of frustration.

“My god,” Tzuyu looked astonished. Chaeyoung couldn’t see her properly, not yet, but she was pretty sure. Besides, she could almost hear the astonishment. She knew Tzuyu well enough. She closed both her eyes and counted to three. When she tried to open both of her eyes, both of them had now opened. Magic. “You look like a ing mess. What the -- what happened to you last night? Did you get--”

“No, no.” Chaeyoung lightly vibrated in her seat. This was her way of laughing at herself. “Don’t ask. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what happened last night?”

“No.”  

“My god, you poor baby.”

What Tzuyu felt for Chaeyoung was pity layered with profanity, because Tzuyu was nice that way. Chaeyoung finally looked at Tzuyu in the eyes and saw that Tzuyu looked at her with a sense of empathy so powerful she knew Tzuyu would do anything for her, because Tzuyu was her friend. And friends would supposedly do everything for each other. But why couldn’t Chaeyoung do anything for Tzuyu. Why.

Chaeyoung blinked, and looked at Tzuyu again. Her nose was a perfect triangle. Maybe Tzuyu was built to learn Trigonometry, after all.

Now it was lunchtime, and during lunchtime Chaeyoung was usually OK. A few periods in the morning were usually enough for Chaeyoung to, in layman’s terms, get her together.

“So you stayed around Gangnam until 2AM doing nothing, correct?” Tzuyu interrogated her as she chewed a salmon sashimi in . They shared a single table together. Kim Dahyun used to eat with them, a girl a year older who liked to dance and “rap” (Chaeyoung always made sure to refer to quote-en-quote), but now that she graduated she was gone. Just like most of the seniors. Quite symbolic of the general human dynamic, if you ask Chaeyoung. Frankly nobody needed them anymore.

“Correct.”

“Which is relatively normal for you, I know. Correct?”

Chaeyoung sighed. “Correct,”

“But you… met a woman who cursed you for not giving you cigarettes and she accompanied you going home and it baffled you so much that you weren’t able to sleep last night?”

“Correct,” Chaeyoung begrudgingly admitted. It seemed like it was only a misfortunate event when it had unfolded last night (or this morning, actually), but now that it’s verbalized and said from the mouth of a close friend it just sounded pathetic. Chaeyoung sighed for the Xth time that day.

A perfunctory thought came on then, about what underlay social interaction, and why people talked to each other, and it occurred to her that it was because people needed other people. She has vague memories of pre-teen angst, of her claiming she had wanted to be herself and nobody else, and of her grandfather giving her a sermon thereafter that identity doesn’t come as easily as we think; we need to constantly shapeshift ourselves to accommodate people’s likes and dislikes, because networking comes smoother when we are likeable, Chaeyoung remembers him saying.

She realizes that it’s been years she’s heard that. Now Chaeyoung is 18. The concept of time is strange. Either way, it didn’t matter, because Chaeyoung always found herself unlikable anyway.

Chaeyoung coughed. The headache came back. “I want to graduate ASAP.”

“If you stop failing your classes- except Literature and Music class, yeah.”

Chaeyoung laughed. She was thankful for Tzuyu lightening up the mood. She feels she had somehow subconsciously taught Tzuyu to mock her misery like she does to herself, so she won’t have anybody pity her anymore.

“If only I would start the teachers’ asses like you do.”

Tzuyu laughed at that, too.

People often blame accidents for their misfortune.

Life was more systematic than people thought it was; it is structured and paneled out by the decisions that we make throughout the course of our being alive, because being alive usually meant having a choice, although this was usually ignored, because excusing one’s self to passivity was always a convenient resort. Chaeyoung found it an irresponsible and lazy quality of man; why demean your own personal autonomy for the sake of fear, she thought-- or was it because people loved power too much? After all, Chaeyoung has heard of a theory that power was merely an illusion, and that whenever we thought we actually had power, we were delusional. We do not have power.

Chaeyoung wonders if it’s true, whether there really are no accidents, or if we absolutely do not have power over anything. She checked her phone. An unread message.

Will I still be seeing you tomorrow?

The sender was an unknown number, but Chaeyoung didn’t need to check elsewhere to know it was Nayeon. She had (foolishly) given out her number to her that night, but she hadn’t asked for Nayeon’s back now that she thought about it. Chaeyoung hesitantly replied.

Yes.

She turned her phone off. Now, Chaeyoung was convinced, that there truly were no accidents. She closed her eyes, not to open them until the next morning.