Chapter 9

On the next day, Eunbi walks downtown to University and feels unsure of what happened yesterday- Chaeyeon's confession to be exact, just remembering it Eunbi feels uneasy and dizzy.  Eunbi somehow felt comfortable with Chaeyeon. She wanted to be right where she was.

As if the sky heard her, Chaeyeon can be seen on the side of the university entrance. Kicking imaginary stones as if she’s waiting for someone. ‘She’s waiting for me, isn’t it’ Eunbi thought or she was setting her hopes too high.

Chaeyeon noticed her and shifted her attention to her.

“Let’s walk together to class”. Chaeyeon said with an oblivious grin on her face.

The walk is silent- but a comfortable one. No one asks nor conversation between them. Just the two of them along with the bushing students around. Not until.

“There y’all are!” A breathless voice pulled Eunbi right out of the moment. Eunbi let out an exasperated sigh and shifted her attention to Yiren, who was standing before them with a high-side ponytail.

 “I’ve been looking everywhere”

“Why on earth would you be doing such a thing?” Chaeyeon frowned at her. “What do you want, Yiren?”  Chaeyeon added, like a sibling, like they’d known each other a long time.

Yiren blinked, then bit her lip. “It was Ms. Boa”, she said finally, snapping her fingers.

“That’s right. She got frantic when Eunbi didn’t show up for class. Kept saying how you were such a promising student and all that.”

Eunbi couldn’t read this girl. Was she for real and just following orders? Was she mocking Eunbi for making a good impression on a teacher? Was it not enough for her to have Hyewon wrapped around her fingers she had to move in on Chaeyeon now, too. ‘What I’m even thinking’ Eunbi thought.

Yiren must have sensed that she was interrupting something, but she just stood there blinking her big doe eyes and twirling a strand of her hair around her finger.

 “Well, come on,” she said finally, sticking out both hands to help Eunbi and Chaeyeon up. “Let’s get-go to the class.”

Miss Boa looked down at a sheet of paper when Eunbi, Chaeyeon, and Yiren entered the classroom. No “Where have you been yesterday?” No points off for tardiness. Just Miss Boa absently placed Eunbi next to Minju in the computer lab section of the classroom. Like she hadn’t even noticed that Eunbi and Chaeyeon had been gone.

Yena shot Eunbi an accusatory look, but she just shrugged at Eunbi and mouthed,

“What?”

“Where have you been, yesterday?” Minju demanded as soon as she sat down. On her right is Yena, the two persons who seemed to notice she’d been gone at all.

Eunbi’s eyes found Hyewon, who was practically burrowed into her computer at the station. From her seat, all Eunbi could see of her was the greyish halo of Hyewon’s hair, but it was enough to bring a flush to her cheeks. She sank lower in her chair, mortified all over again by their conversation in the gym. Even after all the laughs and smiles and that one potential near kiss she’d just shared with Chaeyeon, she couldn’t shut out what she felt when she saw Hyewon.

And they were never going to be together.

That was the gist of what he had told her in the gym. After she’d basically thrown herself at Hyewon. The rejection cut her so deeply, so close to her heart, she felt certain everyone around her could take one look at her and know exactly what had happened. Yena was tapping her pencil impatiently on Eunbi’s table. But Eunbi didn’t know how to explain. Her picnic with Chaeyeon. Or about to happen. But what was weird, and what she couldn’t figure out, was why all of that felt so much less important than what had happened in the gym with Hyewon.

Miss Boa stood in the middle of the computer lab, snapping her fingers in the air like a preschool teacher to get the students’ attention. Her stacks of silver bangle bracelets chimed like bells.

“If any of you have ever traced your own family tree”, she called over the din of the crowd, “then you’ll know what sorts of treasures lie buried in the roots.”

“Oh, jeez, please kill that metaphor,”  Yena whispered. “Or kill me. One or the other.”

‘You’ll have twenty minutes” access to the Internet to begin researching your own family tree,” Miss Boa said, tapping a stopwatch.

“A generation is roughly twenty to twenty-five years, so aim to go back at least six generations.”

Groan.

“An audible sigh erupted from another side- Hyewon. Miss Boa turned to him.

“Hyewon? Do you have a problem with this assignment?”

Hyewon sighed again and shrugged. “No, not at all. That’s fine. My family tree. Should be interesting.”

Miss Boa tilted her head quizzically. “I'll take that statement for an enthusiastic endorsement.” Addressing the class again, she said,

“I trust you’ll find a line worth pursuing in a ten-to-fifteen-page research paper.”

A few stations away. Chaeyeon winked at Eunbi before he began pecking at his keyboard. Well, Chaeyeon just confessed to herm yesterday. Chaeyeon wasn’t going to be able to shut up about how obviously into Eunbi was. Eunbi wanted to call Chaeyeon now, to bolt out of this classroom and take a rain check on the family tree assignment. Talking up another person was the fastest maybe the only way to get Hyewon out of her head.

*****

Eunbi, Yena, Yuri, and Minju together with others are gathered now in the open field. Eunbi circle is now seating on bleachers and drinking from bottled water-well they just finished a physical activity. Eunbi decides to have a walk around the field and some students are playing football.

"Heads up!” a voice called out. That had always been Eunbi’s least favorite thing to hear. Sporting equipment of all sorts had a funny way of careening right at her.

She winced, she couldn’t see anything and didn’t even have time to cover her face before she felt a smack against the side of her head and heard a loud ringing in her ears.

Ouch.

She rubbed her forehead and took a few wobbly steps. A hand around her wrist. A spark of heat made her gasp. She looked down to see tan fingers around her arm, then up into Hyewon’s deep gray eyes. “You okay?” she asked

When she nodded, Hyewon raised an eyebrow.

Hyewon let go of Eunbi’s wrist, and Eunbi thought he was reaching toward her, to the stinging side of her face. For a second, she hung there, holding her breath. Then her chest collapsed when Hyewon’s hand swept back to brush her own hair from her eyes. There was probably an imprint of a soccer ball on the side of her face.

“I think your girlfriend’s getting jealous", Eunbi said

“Which one?” Hyewon asked. “I don’t have a girlfriend. I meant, which one did you think was my girlfriend?”

Eunbi was stunned. What about that whole whispered conversation with Yiren? Was Hyewon lying? Hyewon was looking at her funny.

“Maybe you hit your head harder than I thought,” Hyewon said. “Come on, let’s take a walk, get you some air.”

Eunbi tried to locate the sarcastic joke in Hyewon’s latest suggestion. Was Hyewon saying she was an airhead who needed more air? No, that didn’t even make sense. She glanced at Hyewon. How could she look so simply sincere? And just when she was getting so used to the Hyewon so cold and brushing off aura.

“Where?” Eunbi asked cautiously. Because it would be too easy to feel gleeful right now about the fact that Hyewon didn’t have a girlfriend, about Hyewon wanting to go somewhere with her. There had to be a catch.

Hyewon merely squinted at the other students acro