To celebrate the fact that i got my first job today, here's a chapter for y'all. Enjoy and if you can, please leave some comments. i'd appreciate them so much, thank you~

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Yaebin met Minkyung again when she was 11. It had been a year since she moved to Korea. Living here wasn’t as hard as she thought before. It was much easier for her to adapt to this new place because after that fairy-tale like summer, she was so determined to learn Korean and clearly, Kim Minkyung was her motivation to do so. Yaebin wanted to be able to talk to her, to know more about that special friend of hers, because last time they met, the two didn’t really say anything to each other, except for their names. Most of the time, they were just having a good time and having a good laugh together.

It was an unexpected encounter in the fall of 2009. While pre-teen Kang Yaebin was on her way back home from school, some bigger kids blocked her way and started to because of her unusual hair color. Yes, it was still that dirty blonde color. She lost counts of how many times per day she thought of dying it black in order to fit in with others in her school. But again, her blond hair was one of Yaebin’s proudest features, so she wouldn’t want to change it for the world. Being teased at like this wasn’t a really big deal to her anyways. She had been verbally bullied for weeks now and had started to get used to it. Most of the time Yaebin would just stand still and try to ignore the horrible language those people used on her, and they would just leave because Yaebin’s stillness bored them. She thought that this time, the only things that would suffer were her ears, just like any other times, so she didn’t expect one of the guys to physically push her from behind, so hard that her knees made a crack sound when they hit the flat terrain. They started bleeding badly. Redness smeared all over her freshly-washed knee-high white socks. The bullies just laughed it off and walked away, leaving a miserable Yaebin on the empty street, with both arms hugged her knees tightly. She sniffled loudly, hot tears kept running down her soft pink cheeks.

“Your legs are bleeding, are you ok? What happened??” A worried voice asked her.

Yaebin didn’t reply to that voice, instead, the poor girl continued to sob uncontrollably. However, she did notice how the shadow of the other person was painted on the grey rocky road. It didn’t move an inch for a few minutes, then she saw it quickly go away. Yaebin was left alone again. It was still a long way to her house, and she could barely stand up without adding more pain to her damaged knees. Kang Yaebin was helpless.

Yaebin heard two noises. They were getting louder and louder. The sound of a moving plastic bag, and the sound of shoes clashing with the road. Someone was walking towards where she was sitting.

It was that pair of white sneakers again. They were the same ones that ran away a few minutes ago.

“Sorry, I didn’t know that the pharmacies’ was so far away. You must have waited for so long.”

Yaebin heard that voice again, but she felt like it wasn’t the second time she had heard that voice. The sound was oddly familiar, like she had heard it somewhere before, and for multiple times. Being taken over by curiosity, Yaebin found the courage to look up. It was barely a millisecond before a smile crept up on her face in the realization of who that person was. Kim Minkyung was here to save her day again.

Yaebin winced when Minkyung lower her socks to take care of her wounded area. She was so focused on putting the piece of bandage she had just bought onto the poor stranger’s knees that she didn’t take a chance to look at her patient’s face. And she was about to do that, a shout from a lady across the street captured their attention.

“YAEBINIE!! Oh God, what happened to you dear??” The woman, with the same hair color with Yaebin, literally jumped from the other side of the street over and embraced the crying little girl.

It was Yaebin’s mother, who had been walking with fast pace around the neighbourhood looking for her daughter, because she went home much later than usual. Minkyung was lightly pushed aside when the lady got closer to observe her daughter’s status. The mother’s worriedness died down a bit when she saw her daughter’s wound had been nicely covered up with clean bandages. She then quickly realized that there was another person still standing near them. Assuming that this girl had helped her daughter, she quickly sent an apology and a thank you.

“Oh, sorry dear. You must be the one who helped my daughter. Thank you so much sweetheart. May I know your name?”

“My name is Minkyung. And you’re welcome.” Minkyung politely replied.

“Such a kind and humble young lady. Where do you live? Do you want me to take you home? It’s getting late now.”

“Oh no it’s fine. I live just right around the corner and it takes me only 5 minutes to walk home, but thank you for your offer. I should head home now too, my mom must be worried. See you some other times! Be more careful and don’t trip again chingu-ya”

With that, Minkyung waved them goodbye and ran home. She couldn’t wait to tell her mother about the good deed she had achieved today.

On the other side, Yaebin was sad. Depressed even. She was disappointed that Minkyung didn’t recognize who she was. She had waited for the day to meet her childhood friend(though she was still a child at the moment) for years now, but it didn’t turn out like one of her fantasy, where Minkyung, with a bright smile on her face, came running to her and hugged the life out of her. The word ‘disappointment’ itself didn’t do justice in describe her state then. What she felt was much worse. Therefore, despite knowing where Minkyung lived, Yaebin never returned to at least say a thank you to the older girl.