Chapter 10

Garbage

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There were always two periods of school life hell: mid-terms and finals. Everyone went into a studying panic. School areas looked like ghost towns because of the absence of people, while libraries were mobbed with students unable to find seats.

Sure, school wasn’t everything, but right now, it seemed like everything. Even Soo-Young who often hung out at Seulgi’s house did not show up as often to take her studies seriously. Wendy, on the other hand, began sending her “exam week encouragement messages” to everyone she knew. Joohyun did not show up for her part-time jobs during the weekend, but she still received some messages of encouragement and how-are-you’s from Wendy too.

Of course, Seulgi hit the books pretty hard that even in her dreams she was still calculating formulas and composing essays ever so vividly. She knew she was going to have to grind hard to achieve her goals, and that was exactly what she did. She worked day and night, and since Wendy was not yet teaching Yeri, Wendy also had time to help her again. It was a rough week. But when she received the test papers, she was surprised at how much she actually knew. The dummy, Kang Seulgi, was actually confident about this for once. Maybe those hours of revising actually paid off. And just like what Joohyun said, it does make you feel stronger, knowing someone believes in you. She had, not only her parents and Wendy and Soo-Young, but now also Joohyun, believing in her. It was all the positivity she needed.

On the final day when exams were over, proud and satisfied Seulgi flopped herself on her bed, and opened her phone. She had set a selfie of her and Joohyun together as her lockscreen wallpaper, so that every time she opened up her phone, she could see Joohyun smiling beside her, and it would make her smile.

As she was staring at the photograph, reminiscing the time they spent at Han River, she received a message: from Joohyun Unnie. She suspected it would be about their next “date” like Joohyun promised. Just with that thought of seeing her again helped her get through this hell week of studying and taking exams. She thought of it as her prize for working this hard. And so, excited Seulgi opened the message. However, upon reading it and rereading it once more, she was just lost and a little speechless. Her high hopes of seeing Joohyun again this weekend came tumbling down.

“Seulgi.. I’m very very sorry..ㅜㅜ I don’t think I can see you this weekend. Sorry Seulgi. :( ”

***

Joohyun's Midterms

“When you’re tired and having a hard time, eat it, and it will give you strength.”

There was a long deep sigh that seemed to had come from the very depths of her lungs. Between her two fingertips was a candy wrapped in foil. With the release of her fingers, the candy fell with a light plop on the cushion of her notes and papers. Books with markings and scribbles were opened on certain pages. Pens and highlighters were out of their case. In the midst of that disarray, the candy sat atop, and she stared down at it as she gently laid her tired head on the pile.

“Would it really give me strength?” Joohyun wondered out loud. She tended to talk to herself when she was alone in her room. Usually she studied at the library, but never during exam week. She knew better than to wander the halls looking or waiting for those non-existent empty seats. Today, she was in her one-person dorm room. Alone. Alone once more.

Whenever she was alone and had no one else to talk to, something else was there to entertain her—or torment her, rather. She never invited it nor did she ever want it to persist in the same little enclosed space she was in. She wasn’t even sure when it first introduced itself into her life, but its grip on her grew in strength whenever she was tired, or upset, or having a difficult time. She wasn’t even sure what it was, but it was there. It was there, staring her right in the face, gripping her entire being and had been trying to strangle her until her lungs could no longer function. It brought to light all her weaknesses and made her think she was nothing but a worthless, helpless fool. Loneliness and exhaustion were its friends, and they had ganged up to crush her.

Nevertheless, she fought. She fought every time. This battle had been going on for a long time that she had become jaded by the tiresome push and pull. To her, having it there when she was alone and lonely was now, sadly, a very normal thing. And yet, she still wanted to be freed from the looming menace’s grip. And so, she kept fighting.

The sleepless college girl propped herself up with her arms and sat up straight. With her eyes closed, she took another deep breath and released it all until her body forced her to inhale again. Without opening her eyes, she stood up and turned away from her table. When she opened her eyes, a familiar friend—Ryan—with his gentle cartoony countenance, was sitting inanimately on her purple sheets.

A memory of her birthday flashed before her eyes. “My name is Seulgi Bear, and I want to be your friend so you wouldn’t be lonely!” For a moment, she smiled, and it loosened its grip. Then she approached her bed.

“It’s hard to go on, Ryan,” Joohyun whispered, crawling over the sheets and taking him in for a snuggly cuddle. She held him close and caressed his fluffy head as she lay on the mess of her pillows. “There is so much to remember… so much to memorize… so much work left to do… I don’t think I can do it all… I don’t want to do anything anymore. I just want to rest…”

The restless girl closed her eyes once again. I need to keep studying. I can’t fail. If I can’t stay on top of my game, I have no reason to be here.

The most prestigious schools were not at the top just for show. Expectations were a lot higher, and the pressure to be the best was enough to break through the psych of even the most well-rounded and mentally sane students. The only problem was that nobody can be perfect. Nobody can live up to standards as high as Mt. Everest; as far as the farthest constellation in the sky. When you reach your peak, you don’t really have anywhere else to go, but down… down…

Buzz. There was a new message on her phone.

“Joohyun Unnie!!!! I hope you’re not overworking yourself! ㅠㅠ Be strong! I hope you do well in your exams!! Sending virtual hugggg~~~~xoxoxo hehehe :* ilysmbjh ” from Wendy.

A smile formed on her face. “I hope you do well on yours too Wendy! Big hug <3”

“Don’t u worry bout me. Seul says hi and btw. I’m studying with her right now.”

“Hi Seulgi Bear! By the way what’s ‘ilysmbjh’????”

“I Love You So Much Bae Joo Hyun”

Joohyun burst out laughing. Whenever she received messages like this from those two, it would temporarily leave her. Whenever she did not feel lonely and the very friends she adored distracted her from her own negatively swaying thoughts, she was her cheerful self again.

“What the.. ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ me too. I love you too.”

“They are so adorable. I don’t know why, but they seem to like me a lot. Not that I’m complaining, though,” she mumbled while staring at her phone. Then she breathed out a sigh that was not induced by exhaustion or sadness. Her loud heartbeat was steady in her rising and falling chest, and she let out a fluttery, refreshing exhale. It felt good.

The next day, Joohyun tied her messy hair into a bun, quickly put on her eyeglasses and sweats and hastily ran all the way to the exam hall. She woke just 10 minutes before the exam started, but the exam hall was approximately 10 minutes away from her dorm on foot. She almost ran into some cyclers and a few cars on the way there, but for situations like this, it was either you make it on time for your hell of an exam, or you die. Some people prefer the latter, unfortunately,  Bae Joohyun stayed strong and arrived right on time.

Then the exam started. Everything was quiet. Everyone began to write answers.

“Ah, …!” someone cussed from the back.

“Silence!”

When Joohyun flipped the page to the other side and read the next set of questions, she just stared at it, her eyes blinking in disbelief. “.” The cuss word from that one student echoed across the room and ringed back and forth in Joohyun’s throbbing head. What is this? She flipped over to the previous page again; her eyeballs jolting left and right across the paper. She flipped it back to the next page, scanning it up and down, and she just went blank.

I don’t remember this.

Her eyes left the paper and roamed around the room. There was one guy a few seats away from her, and he was just scratching his head for a good whole minute. To her left, a girl furiously twirled her pen between her fingers before finally jotting down something on her paper. To her right, someone was busy writing and erasing answers. Joohyun took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Then she looked down on her paper again.

I can’t believe this. Finally, she just decided to write whatever might come up in her head. Some random jargon, some random idea, some random explanation—she just wrote anything, and she hated herself for it. One rule in taking exams: never leave a question blank. No matter how clueless you are, never give yourself a “zero” chance. Guessing might give you points, but leaving a question blank will give you nothing. At the end, she reviewed her test paper, and began to estimate how badly she presumably had done. There were questions she was confident in, but the others, not so much.

After that exam, she left the hall and stepped outside to breathe. That was when she felt it again. That breath she took on that warm sunny day felt strangely stifling. There was no relief. A tension due to anxiety was slowly creeping in, knowing she barely did well on that first exam. I really hope I didn’t do too bad. I need the scholarship and all… but ugh, this all just blows!

“Damn it, dammit, dammit!” Shouts and loud stomps from another angry college girl echoed from behind. Before Joohyun knew it, some freak accidental collision caused her to plunge onto the university’s neatly trimmed lawn. She fell facedown with her attacker falling on her from behind into a full body slam.

“Oh my god, I’m so, so, sorry! I wasn’t looking at where I was going!” said the person who just stumbled onto her. She helped Joohyun up and brushed the grass off the innocent victim’s sweater. As much as Joohyun was surprised to find someone randomly running into her, strange behaviors exhibited during exam week can only be viewed as an inevitable phenomenon when everyone was going mental.

“It’s fine, I—” Joohyun stopped and stared at the similarly dressed girl before her. Like her, the girl who ran into her was also wearing sweats and tried to hide the fact that she barely had make-up on by incorporating a baseball hat in her not-so-fashionable exam week attire. “Yongsun?”

“Oh, hey, Joohyun! Even in sweats and glasses, you look pretty!” the girl named Yongsun complimented her. “Congratulations on getting the main emcee role for this coming university festival, by the way. I heard you and Bogum were selected last week.”

“Yeah, uh, thanks…”

Joohyun knew Yongsun because they took almost all the same classes and were both part of the school’s media and broadcasting committee. Joohyun always thought this girl was weird, maybe kind of a klutz, but at least her stunning visual and fun personality compensated for that, maybe. She was one of the university’s star DJs, going by the alias “Solar,” and everyone loved listening to her evening segment because she always made hilarious unconventional comments about school life.

“Oh, hey, what’s this?” Joohyun squatted and picked up a folded paper that had fallen on the grass. It was filled with unintelligible scribbles in really bad handwriting.

“Oh, shi—!” the other girl in sweats quickly snatched the thing from her fingers and crumpled it into a ball. She stared at Joohyun nervously, and that was when the intuitive Daegu girl understood what was going on.

“Was…was that a…cheat sheet? Oh no, you didn’t…” Joohyun held a palm over her gaping mouth.

“Nononono! I-i-i-i-it’s not what you think!” the popular university DJ suddenly could not articulate words.

“Kim Yongsun!” Joohyun dropped her hand and let herself call her classmate out on her wrongs like a mother who did not approve.

“Shush!” The desperate college girl grabbed Joohyun and held her captive, covering the little thing’s mouth so she could not snitch against her.

With Joohyun’s strong hands, she broke free but stayed calm. She had no idea what to say to this “exam cheater” right now, but she was nonetheless completely and utterly disappointed. The look was plastered across her face too. Here she was, diligent and hard-working Bae Joohyun, going through hell for what could probably turn out to be a less than ideal exam score, and there before her was a cheater. It’s not fair!

“Joohyun, please, listen to me,” Yongsun begged in a whisper. “I’ve never done this before in my life, I swear!”

“Then why do you have this?!” Joohyun said in a low voice, careful to not speak too loud in case anyone would end up hearing them. She never had any intention of ratting her classmate out. She wasn’t that cruel of a .

“You know it’s hard nowadays. You know it yourself. You’re just like me.” Her classmate began to tremble. “And if you look around you, everyone is doing it. It’s unfair. I didn’t want to do it either. But if I don’t help myself, then no one will. It’s all about chances now. This is the best chance I have.”

“What about working hard? What about exertin’ effort?”

“There’s only so much I can handle, Joohyun. I can’t let my grades drop. They’ll kick me out of the school broadcasting committee. That means, no more DJ Solar! I’ll lose that one job that keeps me sane!”

“But if you get caught doin’ this, you’ll be expelled!”

“Of all the people who cheat, only maybe about 10 percent get caught. But if I don’t do this, there’s a hundred percent chance my grades drop below the limit, and I can’t just take that chance.”

Hours later, Joohyun took her next exam. It was not as bad as the previous one, but that was when she finally noticed them. That one student at the corner, he was looking down by his sleeve. This other girl in front of her, had something written on her wrist but was cleverly covered by her thick wrist watch. Who knew how many more of them were out there?

Ain’t they all just geniuses? Joohyun returned to her dorm room feeling like a piece of —confused, frustrated, exasperated. Cheat. The very word itself made her want to clench her fists so hard until her fingers dig deep into her palms and carve bloody pits in them.

Nonetheless, there was truth in what her classmate had said. It was all about chances at this point. With all the credits she was taking and all the work she had to do, it was barely possible to keep up and maintain that high grade point average. But she was no Big Data storage cloud. She was simply Bae Joohyun, tiny, overworked, and wearing thin. Anything hell-bent and corrupted can be irresistibly tempting when the demons start whispering sweet nothings to a desperate child’s ears.

But no. Just no. Think rationally, Joohyun, she thought to herself. Cheating is wrong. It is just wrong! This is how all the corrupt CEO’s and officials start their plot to undeserved riches. This is how all the dirty politicians—the good-for-nothing senators and governors and even the President—got seated on their gold-laden thrones made of innocent civilians’ blood, sweat, and tears. The world is run by all these awful, disgusting cheaters who added to the very reason your life and many others’ lives are nothing but an unfair mess! You can’t be like them! No matter what, you can’t be like them! But then again, that was the exact reason why the prudent and humble stayed and suffered at the bottom.

The perturbed Daegu girl lunged herself onto her bed and pulled in her huge stuffed mane-less lion for a cuddle. She shut her eyes tightly, not wanting to think about anything.

It was her very first exam week in this new university, and it was very disappointing. She was not just disappointed in herself; she was disappointed at the world for being so unfair. She thought this place would be different since it was one of the most highly-ranked schools in the country. But nah. Not everything that sparkles on the outside sparkles on the inside. Nothing is perfect in this world.

The following day, she had no scheduled exams…and no food in her small dorm fridge. After throwing on the same sweats, she went out to the nearby convenience store.

“Joohyun?”

Joohyun turned around and saw a familiar upperclassman, an international student who also lived in the dorms. She immediately bowed to greet him. “Henry Sunbae… good morning.”

“I heard you were going to emcee for the festival next month. I’ll definitely go watch!” he said beaming a wide smile on this fine mid-week morning.

“Ah… thank you,” she stiffly said while holding two cans of banana milk on one hand.

“By the way, have you heard?” he grabbed a bottle of orange juice and placed it in his basket.

“Heard what…?”

“You and I are in the same class for that one subject, right? Global… something… relations…? I don’t remember the name exactly…”

“What about it?” Joohyun blinked. That particular subject had too many English and other foreign terms and involved a bunch of essays concerning current events worldwide. It was one of the more difficult subjects she took this semester.

“I heard there was a sudden change in exam content. The professor changed the exam questions because of the increasing ‘foul play’ in exams. Now nobody knows what’ll be in the exam tomorrow. Can you believe that?”

Upon getting back to her dorm room, she opened up books again and estimated how much reading she had to do to cover up every single topic the professor ever discussed for that one subject. But she also had another exam on the same day, and she had to study for that as well. That was when she remembered Yongsun’s words: “You know it’s hard nowadays. You know it yourself. You’re just like me… If I don’t help myself, then no one will. It’s all about chances now… There’s only so much I can handle…”

The next day, Joohyun made her way to the examination building. Her heart was beating so loud in her chest that she swore it was trying to implode in her rib cage. Her breathing was short and restrained; her forehead was damp with sweat. Within the pocket of her jeans was a neatly folded piece of paper. Although it was thin and small, it felt like a burning match in her pocket; a small prickly thing that felt like it would engulf her entire being in flames.

She had two exams that day. One was for the subject she took with Henry, which would be an essay-filled test, but the questions were unpredictable. The other one was the subject she took with Bogum, which involved a more predictable set of questions but a lot of memorization of terms.

The cheat sheet in her pocket right now was not for the essays; it was for the other one—the subject she took with Bogum. Now although she helped Bogum with that subject often, there was so much to memorize that not everything could possibly be retained by an ordinary human brain. She understood the concepts, but memorizing everything will probably cause her head to explode, especially after reviewing every single lesson for the previous exam.

After taking the first exam and barely finishing her essays within the time limit, she headed for the next one with the folded paper still stinging in her pocket. It was in a different building. Before heading in the building, there were a line-up of trash cans outside the entrance. “Bottles”, “cans”, and “paper.”

Paper.

Joohyun, you need to ace this next exam. You might have done a mediocre job at the other exams, but you should at least ace one. Come on, she thought to herself in second person. But then she answered back to herself, But is this really the right way?

She stood there staring at the garbage bins for a good long minute. People passed her by, making their way into their respective exam halls. I… I can’t. I just can’t.

Her fist trembled and her eyes produced tears, but she kept them from falling. It has come for her once again, smothering her entire being with guilt and shame until it was difficult to breathe.

Finally, she pulled out the folded paper from her burning pocket and tore it to shreds. The pieces fell into the bin, along with the rest of the university’s garbage—right where it belonged.

With all the courage she could muster, she took another deep breath and released it all with a force that broke free from its grip. I’ll do this cleanly—fair and square. If my GPA drops, it won’t matter to me. If I can’t keep up my scholarship, I’ll just work harder next time.

Joohyun took the exam and did her best. She cleared her head of all the crap from the past few days and answered the questions calmly.

Time passed. It was almost the end.

Joohyun could hear the supervisor’s heels clopping against the marble tiles.

But then, there was a sudden rattle, a muffled sound made by something light—something small—that fell and rolled toward the desk beside her.

More clopping from the sound of footsteps.

Before Joohyun finished the exam, a tap abruptly forced her to stop.

“What is this?!” exclaimed the exam supervisor. She held a hand out to Joohyun, showing a small paper that was crumpled and opened. It contained answers and more. The handwriting looked very neat, slightly similar to hers, but slightly different…

…and the worst part was, it was not hers. She had torn and thrown her cheat sheet away before she even entered the building. It couldn’t be hers. But here was one with strikingly similar yet still somewhat different handwriting, greeting her like an old friend she never intended to be friends with in the first place.

“I… I don’t know…” Joohyun uttered, completely flabbergasted at what was going on. “I-It’s not mine… It w-wasn’t mine…”

The supervisor snatched her exam paper away from her and scrutinized the handwritings. “You are now prohibited to continue this exam until further notice. Please leave the hall immediately.”

Author's Note:

"It" is a personification of a strong, negative, yet ambiguous feeling (similar to anxiety and depression) that Joohyun experiences whenever she was not at her best moments. I did not want to call it something specific, like depression or anxiety, for example, because if you examine the definition of those terms properly, "it" is NOT either of those. A better explanation for "it" would be "the little demon on her shoulder that actually wants her dead" or something like that. "It" can literally be anything—a personified abstract concept, or an actual character with its own actions. It depends on how you interpret it.