The Past

 “Minjoo-ah,” Minjoo’s mother calls out to her and still, there were barely any response from the girl on the other side of the door. She didn’t exactly keep track of how long has it been since she had last seen her daughter, adding the fact that she too is busy with her work. If it weren’t for the fact that the school had reached out to her – telling her that her daughter had not attended school for a week now, she wouldn’t have known about the situation that Minjoo is in.

A part of her feels guilty as a mother, not being able to pay attention to Minjoo as much as she would like to but all along, Minjoo had been a tough child.

Ever since her husband left them behind, a part of her felt that she needed to work extra hard in her career – wanting to provide Minjoo with the best that she could, to the point where she ended up neglecting her daughter emotionally.

It was hard for her to rely entirely on her husband to keep them alive. The man could just decide to stop wiring the money into their accounts one day and what were she to do then if that happens? She couldn’t bear to let her daughter suffer, just because of her and her husband’s negligence.

Over the years, Minjoo would never complain about the lack of parental love from them and to see that something like this had happened to her only daughter, whatever that happened must’ve been really bad.

“Minjoo-ah. Someone’s here to see you from school,” she turns to the other girl standing just behind her – whom introduces herself as Lee Chaeyeon and is apparently tasked by one of their teachers to check up on Minjoo, simply because she sits next to her in class.

Truthfully speaking, Chaeyeon barely knows the girl.

They were just a few weeks into their semester and is still very much in their freshmen year.

The most that Chaeyeon had spoken to her was in class, in between breaks and what she does know about Kim Minjoo was that the girl is pretty, in an innocent way and so far, Minjoo had been nothing but nice to her.

So to see that Minjoo stops coming to school all of the sudden was concerning for everyone.

A few minutes passes by quietly and just as the two were about to give up, the door finally creaks open.

Minjoo looks at them with a gaunt expression.

There was a brief hint of surprise in her eyes when she notices Chaeyeon awkwardly waving at her but she allows the girl into her room anyway, and nods her head to her mother to acknowledge the older woman’s presence before shutting the door closed once again.

Contrary to how Minjoo looks like at that very moment, her room was rather clean. Everything else were placed neatly in their places and Chaeyeon was expecting the room to be messier, with how haggard looking the other girl was.

The only thing that looks out of place was the chair placed out in the balcony. From the looks of it, Minjoo had probably spent quite some time out at the balcony in the chair, as there were a few novels scattered around on the floor of the small balcony.

A sense of worry instantly washes over her. 

“Is there anything I can help you with?” Minjoo says weakly. This causes Chaeyeon to twiddle with her thumbs. She doesn’t exactly know how to respond to the other girl, considering that the two were not close enough in the first place so Chaeyeon ends up saying the first thing that was on her mind.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Chaeyeon wanted to smack herself then, really. Out of all the things that she could’ve said to Minjoo, it had to be her asking Minjoo on whether she’s hungry or not. It doesn’t take a genius to tell that Minjoo hadn’t been touching any food for the past few days, due to whatever was bothering her.

Chaeyeon silently prays that Minjoo wouldn’t be offended by her words. The last thing that she wanted to do is to offend Minjoo in her current state.  Minjoo only stares at her and shakes her head. “Not really.”

“Well, I am,” Chaeyeon nods slowly, a faint blush rising up to her cheeks. “Do you want to go out for ramen?”

“I’m… not exactly in the state to go out, at the moment. I’m sorry.”

Well, she expected that. Chaeyeon sheepishly rubs the back of her nape. “Do you mind if I eat here then?”

Another blink from Minjoo. The look on her face was difficult for Chaeyeon to discern. “Do as you please then.”

And Chaeyeon continues coming to her place the next day, and a couple of days after that subsequently. She would just sit next to Minjoo out at the balcony in her room with her cup of ramen without a word, after being let in by Minjoo’s mother herself until Minjoo breaks the silence between the two one day.

It took Chaeyeon exactly six days to actually make Minjoo speak to her.

“Why are you doing this?” Minjoo says to her and she seems different from other days. This time, the girl actually looks agitated, unlike the other days. Chaeyeon lets out a sigh of relief and finally places down her cup of ramen next to her, hugging her knees close to her chest.

“Everyone was worried about you,” Chaeyeon says and looks up to where Minjoo was seated at with her chair, the novel that Minjoo previously buries her face into is now on her lap.

Minjoo quickly answers without missing a beat, almost hissing at her. “You don’t even know me and you say that everyone’s worried?”

“I… don’t,” Chaeyeon finally admits but refuses to back down without a fight. She’s not leaving Minjoo the way she is. Someone needs to take the action, may that be her or not.

“But that doesn’t make me lose the right to worry, you know? I know that we’re acquaintances at best but I want to help. I want to listen to whatever is bothering you. We talked for a little in class and even then I could tell that you’re a great person and I would hate to lose a potential friend. I mean, I admit that our teacher was the one who sent me here at first but I just don’t know now,” Chaeyeon pauses, almost uncertain with her words. “I saw how you looked like the first time I came here. And I just end up coming here again and again, waiting for you to finally speak. I don’t know what’s bothering you. Stopping you from coming to school but sometimes, it just feels better to let it out to someone, you know? Someone you know or someone you don’t know. And well, I figured to offer myself as sacrifice because why not?” Chaeyeon manages to slip in a wry smile.

Well, at worst Minjoo could just push her off the balcony if she’s even more pissed and Chaeyeon would just fall to her death because of what she had just said.

But instead Minjoo looks at her, the gaze in her eyes faltering a little. “That’s just stupid. You know?”

“I know. Everyone around me tells me that. But for starters, can we be friends first before you call me stupid?” Chaeyeon rubs her nape out of habit and chuckles. “I mean, if you’d like to. Or you can start by telling me what’s bothering you and then I can decide on whether to be friends with you or not. How about that?”

-

Ahn Yujin was everyone’s favorite.

At least, in the first four years of her time at the academy.

The academy that she attended consisted of both of middle school and high school level education and is considered to be the top school in the country for the kids from the wealthy families, so of course it’s only plausible for her parents to put her in there as soon as she finishes being home-tutored for elementary level.

That’s what they always wanted for her.

To be amongst the best ones and nothing less.

Well, Yujin stopped giving a damn the moment she started enrolling in the academy anyway.

Her classmates knew her as the easy-going person in the class and everyone likes her because of this, really. She was never afraid to be the ‘class clown’, making fool of herself just to get everyone else to laugh and although Yujin considers herself to be a troublemaker, the most she would do is wear her track pants under her skirt to school (which is convenient with how she is on the track team) or rushing in to class late, which of course earns snickers from her classmates and detentions from the teachers.

And she likes it. She likes the way her daily routines makes people laugh. 

But even the most liked person in the room is bound to rouse jealousy from some people.

So the moment Yujin first laid her fist onto her homeroom teacher’s face during the first year of high school when she sees him groping her classmate in the middle of the quiet hallway, those very same people jumped on the train of defending the teacher and placing the blame on Yujin alone.

It didn’t help that the teacher himself filed a complaint against her, saying that Yujin had assaulted him out of nowhere and the victim that Yujin tried to save?

Said nothing about the incident.

Said that it never happened and that Yujin was lying through her teeth.

Everyone else follows along, refusing to be the one to stand up for Yujin for the fear of being singled out and bullied.

“She’s always hitting people as she pleases.”

“Yujin is scary. I saw her bullying someone in the hallway once.”

Yujin this. Yujin that.

What bull.

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