SO HERE’S THE THING. I was too stupid that it’s beyond easy to create bad talks about me. One good example was how I ridiculously “stripped” after PE in front of everyone.

I disliked conventional bras because some random girls at school were into this lame hobby; pulling other’s bra clip for fun. I still wonder, where’s the fun? As result, I favored sport bra instead, even until today.

Seeing all the sport bra mannequins in the mall gave me a real strong jealousy. I was jealous with how comfortable they looked in their outfits—just a sport bra with sweatpants, or a sport bra covered in ed thin jacket and still with sweatpants.

I believed they must’d felt very cool in this world full of heat, and that gave me the ridiculous idea; I assumed it’s fine to wear sport bras that way in front of people.

Fast-forward, my high school had various clubs for its students, one of which was journalistic. So every year, freshmen had to apply to at least one club. But the journalistic one had this weird position with crazily high privileges, called the School’s Journalist. They accepted everyone who applied to the club, but not for that position—they only accepted one.

In my senior year, there were two applicants for that. Was it weird that only two people wanted to be that? It wasn’t, really. Because who wanted to be a journalist anyway; other than the one who was truly passionate about it, and the one who deadly craved to control the issues?

The chosen one would have the right to write articles in a particular website for a year. It’s the school’s official gossip website, if I could give it a name. I put the word “official”, because everything written there was always considered to be serious by the whole school.

The girl I met today was the passionate girl, and she had to duel with a certain girl, who I’d just address as the scary girl—I wish I never met her. Both were tasked to post articles about the latest issues in school. I guess.

If you’re curious about their names, it’s Zhang Yuxi vs. Sun Qian.

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One day, out of nowhere, the crazy girl started to post stuff about me.

First, she tried to convince the school that I couldn’t dance. Which also indicated that all of my videos on the internet were fake. Is that even possible?

I was pretty bad in PE and she used that; claiming that it’s likely I couldn’t dance, for I couldn’t exercise at all. She even put my bad PE grades and pictures of me looking very struggling in the class on the website.

Well, I was—and still am—a couch potato. So I hated bringing myself to do basketball, soccer, swimming and other things.

But, the passionate girl came up with some very brilliant ideas—some, because she tended to not only have one “weapon”. She gathered people on the field and forced me to dance to one of my video. She literally played the song at our lunch break, then dragged me to the field to dance. There were plenty of footages people spread, so I was cleared up.

Also, she enlightened me that I might be good in one PE chapter. I truly forgot that I was good in aerobics, before she asked me how my test for that chapter turned out—which I replied with “it’s a success.”

She highlighted the fact that aerobics was easy to me because memorizing movements and moving my body according to the music [despite how weird the music was], were my specializations. Because I was a legit dancer.

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Second, the scary girl posted about my “stripping” incident.

So my school’s PE clothes consisted of jacket and sweatpants. They were extremely thick and the weather was crazily hot. That’s why, after being drained by a certain soccer match, I ped my jacket, at the field.

Initially, the coach instructed us to split the field into two; half for girls only, half for boys only. They boys played by themselves and so we did. But, in the middle of the match, since the girls were really annoying that they always ing chased the ball wherever it went, I gave up before it ended.

I walked to the corner, ped my jacket, and threw it to the ground—now that I think about it, I might be pretty good in PE, if only I wasn’t into walking out in the middle.

I left the field, in that state, to my class. I was about to get my drinking bottle and kind of had to pass few classrooms for that.

This was like a fresh-from-the-oven piece of cake for the scary girl and she ate it. She posted the photos of me walking in my bra. She even highlighted my tired-looking face, claiming that it’s obvious that I loved the night life although I was underaged.

She’s really good. My bluish eyebags, lame eyes and pale lips were all visible.

In my first year, people used to accuse me to be partying every night, because my face looked like that every morning. But I hardly heard people calling me that in senior year, since I had familiarized myself with concealer and lip balm by then.

Maybe, this time I was sweating so much, so they all had disappeared.

She also listed scientific theories about how a normal face could turn into a depressed face or basically my face after experiencing a certain dirty lifestyle; not dirty in terms of dusty but, you know.

So what did the passionate girl come up in my defense?

I told her that she should just let this one slide. I don’t think everyone would consider anything I say about to it. But she insisted that we shouldn’t have any regret in the future.

Sorry for dragging you here.

She interviewed me with this and that. Then, she came up with an article. She wrote that my tired face was because of my erratic sleeping pattern. She listed my schedule for a day; how I had to dance, do school stuff, help Lin jie, and play games.

She posted the activity diagram of my PC, which showed that I played games every night after work, namely Final Fantasy, Pokemon, Phoenix Wright, Sims and many others—I still keep them now lol—to raise a point that I wasn’t in any club every night.

And for my tired face, she put some additional info about this syndrome called Resting Face (RBF) and listed some celebrities who’re diagnosed to have that. I still can’t believe that it’s legit. Apparently, people with RBF had a hard time to make normal facial expressions due to a certain facial muscle disorder. So, it’s likely that they looked like a most of the time.

Even with those weapons, we both were going downhill.

I quick-read few comments on both of their articles and saw:

“She’s after the clubs.”

“Lol. What is this? You can bring a laptop to clubs.”

“I’ve always had a bad feelings for gamers.”

“She’ll be on some Korean news for underaged drinking or stuff. Lol.”

“Competing in hangover state. I’m picturing that already.”

“She’s basically inappropriate.”

“This kind of girl goes to our school? Disgrace.”

“Heard she’s from an orphanage? No wonder. She must’ve been ripping her family off with her s.”

Nicely written, guys.

I was even called to the principal’s office.

---

I felt a little joy in my heart, thinking that this might be my chance to clear everything up. So I brought myself to knock the door, then wait until he permitted me to go inside.

“Come in.” He said.

I opened the door and walked to his table.

I introduced myself, “Excuse me, Mr. Sun. I’m Lexie.”

He’s still busy writing on something when he said, “Have a sit.”

“We’re sorry to inform that we can’t accommodate you to Seoul.”

He didn’t take a glance at me, at all. Was this the appropriate act for my kind of matter?

I was paralyzed for a moment, like I just got hit by a golf stick right on the head, but didn’t get to scream or even say a thing, simply because nobody’s there.

“I thought.... you’re going to ask me about what happened?” I asked, weakly.

Since there’s no response from him, I pressed my eyes and bit my bottom lip; I'm trying to hold all the emotion inside.

I shouldn’t explode here.

With all the might left, I added, “Shouldn’t you listen to my opinion first?”

I believed I have to fight for this. Although I knew that I wasn’t completely innocent, but—

Wasn’t it too much that you cut a student’s opportunity for some lousy gossips?

“If you have nothing to ask, please leave.”

I felt my blood rising to my head and it gave me a hard time to breathe. So I stood up, while trying to control my irregular breath, and protested, “Sir? I gave you two questions already.”

“Mr. Han!” He yells the name of our school’s security.

And in instant, the security came and asked, “Yes, sir?”

“Please this student to her class.”

As Mr. Han grabbed my hand, I whispered, “Please let me say something first. I’ll go after that.”

He’s a nice person; I used to stay late last year, practicing at the club room, but he always reminded me to go home before it’s locked.

So he released his grab, and I turned to the principal.

“Isn’t it too early to accuse me? There’s no solid proof that I’m living that kind of life, and I never come to night clubs in my life. I swear.” I took a deep breath.

“Even if you don’t believe me, please remember that lies are short-lived.”

I stormed out of the room.