Hell broke loose. Yep.

Learning lessons were okay. The constant mandarin-speaking was okay. The 15-minute walk from Auntie Rose's to town was okay. 38 degree Jeollanam-do on a sunny afternoon was okay.

Amber could tolerate those.

What wasn't okay, is the fact that kids between the ages of 4-6 have the attention span of what seems like 5 freaking seconds, the energy contained in a gallon of red bull, and no reservations whatsoever.

Before she knew it, she was tossed in the world of broken crayons, dripping snot, kiddie meals and incessant hair-pulling. Every day was chaos. The first few lessons that she handled, no one was even listening. It took her a few coaxing and shouting to even get them to settle down, and by that time two kids in row 3 have already started drawing at each other's faces with oil pastel.

Despite that though, it was pretty funny to look at Zhou mi's face while she explained why Jun from row 3 now has green eyebrows.

But the worst parts were breaks, in which the children were free to eat, play, and be freaking spawns of the devil himself. Now, it wasn't uncommon to find Amber walking through town with bits of food stuck on her pixie haircut, or multiple bruises from flying pencils, toys and whatnot.

You'd be surprised what a rotating lunchbox could do with a human's head.

One time, it was Art day at the daycare. There were finger painting lessons and watercolor on blank cardboard papers, and it's just a one way ticket for disaster.  Needless to say the day went on as how you would expect it to, and Amber got home with a toddler size handprint in front of her shirt.

"Don't." She exclaimed with a hand to Auntie Rose's direction, and the older woman did nothing but close and repress her laugh.

Oh, wait. She almost forgot, the worst of them all.

Xian. ing. Hua.

Even hearing the name makes her want to smash her phone into the nearest cupboard. Seriously, the guy never fails to get on her nerves. It was bad enough that he was ignoring her and letting the kids eat her alive, but whenever she made a mistake or when the children were becoming too much, he would always stare at her with this all-knowing smirk, like he was expecting her to fail.

Whatever his problem with her is, she doesn't know.

"Maybe you're misinterpreting it, maybe he's just curious. I met Xian Hua before, and he's the nicest kid ever." Auntie Rose told her on one of her dinner rants, which were becoming more and more frequent.

"Curious is one thing. Curious I can handle. But the way he stares is different, and I don't like the way he looks at my wrists."

"Well." Auntie Rose shrugged. "Those tattoos could make anyone curious, really." She muttered without looking at Amber.

Amber knows it. The moment she stepped out of the car and into this town, she knew how sorely she doesn't fit in. With her cropped hair, graphic tees and inked arms; there was bound to be talk.

She knew they talked. And normally, it wouldn't bother her. She had her fair share of gossip in the U.S., with her mother's pretentious friends and her father's business partners always on the loop on what the magnate's d