September, 1999

As the first rays of sunlight peeked over the horizen, painting the sky in hues of pink and orange, there was a magical moment where it felt like the world was quiet. Jimin woke up on an early morning and she was hoping to wake up to a bright painting, where the colors were vibrant and the air was filled with anticipation. Unfortunately, as per usual, she had woken up to a screaming match downstairs. It was none other than her own parents. Everyday she would wake up to them fighting and it wasn't foreign to Jimin to learn another creative cusswords coming out of her parents' lips. Where else would anyone think Jimin got her smart mouth from? 

A small sigh escaped her lips as she slowly raised her body up from the bed and was immediately greeted by her horrendous bed hair from the reflection in the mirror that was positioned right in front of her bed. She scoffed beneath her breath and immediately got her morning routine started. 

Despite her not remembering when her parents had first started fighting, she has always known that it hasn't always been like this. There would always be a sense of emptiness inside her and she still to this day, could not quite pinpoint the source of it. Eventually after a couple of years, that feeling had formed into nothing but numbness, raising her nonchalant behavior along with the death of her innocence. 

''You're ing insane, you can't even keep your damn voice down!'' she heard her father shout as she calmly walked down the stairs. ''You've woken Jimin up! Are you proud?! Are you proud to be exposing this toxic witch behavior to our child every single day?!'' 

''You have the audacity to be blaming me?!'' screamed her mother back, completely ignoring the way her daughter was just trying to walk through them to quickly pack some breakfast into her school-bag. ''Take a ing look at yourself!'' 

''Me?! Haven't you taken enough look at yourself you self-obsessed narcissist!'' 

After a couple of minutes of being completely invisible to her parents, Jimin was already out of the door. She was heading directly towards her driver who was waiting patiently for her, right outside of their mansion gate. 

''Goodmorning Ms. Yu, it's a lovely day today isn't it?'' greeted her driver, with the happiest smile they could offer. Jimin simply sighed and hopped right into the car without saying a single word. She just wanted to finish her breakfast silently in the car without engaging in some meaningless conversations and thankfully her staff didn't seem to mind much. 

''Can you take a longer route today?'' said Jimin.

''Well of-course Ms.'' responded the driver and gave her an acknowledging smile in the rearview mirror. 

Wasn't it ironic? She was considered to be the prettiest girl in her entire school and she was also the most respected one as well. She has an incredible reputation thanks to her family and their generational wealth. As long as you have money, you have power, and if you have power everyone immediately bows down to kiss your feet. If you get groomed up to normalizing such behavior while you were growing up, eventually these things become a certainty to you at some point in your life and that's exactly what happened to her. 

As a young girl she had always craved for closeness, intimacy, and a connection with her parents or to just anyone in general. Her receiving lack of emotional connection got always compensated by materialistic gifts. It was always very satisfying and helped her a lot, but it was never emotionally and mentally fulfilling. As as girl who always wanted her mother to pick her up at kindergarten, became a girl who never wanted to come home to meet them. 

Afterall, she had basically received the validation she ever needed outside of her mansion. When she wasn't home, she was the most prettiest girl at school, the wealthiest, the most respected, the most envied, and the most looked up to. Those were things that kept her going, and it felt good to finally be so acknowledged and loved when you've been abandoned and neglected for so long. Eventually these compliments became facts to her, and with that, her story began.

Jimin was five minutes late to her first class, which was never a big deal considering the fact that no one had enough courage to ever scold her. However, the amount of noise that came out from her classroom was incredibly unusual. As she stepped in, there was no teacher in sight, which confused her incredibly. Her brows frowned and headed towards her seat, which was of-course, right next to Ning and Aeri. 

''Guys what's going on?'' asked Jimin. 

''There's a new student,'' replied Aeri as she redirected her gaze to the unfamiliar girl at the back of the classroom who was currently surrounded by most of their curious classmates. 

''Yeah, isn't that odd?'' Ning whispered, ''No one holds the entrance exam for new students in the middle of the school year.'' 

''What? A new student? In 2nd term?'' Jimin was completely baffled, because Ning was absolutely right, no one has ever enrolled after the first term before. Not that it was odd and probably very difficult to handle, studies wise, but it was also against the school policy. No one was ever important enough to be allowed to go against the school policy, well no one normal at least. With that realization, Jimin's brows furrowed slightly as she turned around to look at the girl one more time.

Petite, black bobcut, and the blue ribbon attached to it like everyone else. 

''It's blue.'' mumbled Jimin before turning away, ''Can't be that important then.'' 

''Probably donated her way in,'' snickered Aeri. ''I mean who can blame her? Who'll invest in your future like our Academy? Any parent would give up a limb just for their kids to get accepted.''

''Yeah well she probably paid a lot, yet not enough to get herself a red ribbon despite all of her generous donations.'' Jimin laughed mockingly along with her friends as she was completely unaware of the fact that she was being observed.

There were not many expectations that Minjeong had before her first day of school, but she still didn't expect her day to go the way it did. Despite being greeted by unfamiliar and curious faces, she saw two red ribbons in a classroom of blue and they were all staring back at her. There was still fifteen minutes left before the class started but the classroom still seemed to be full nevertheless. Everybody seemed to be awfully well-mannered and all of them seemed to be following the rules accordingly, which was quite abnormal from what she had experienced from other schools. Well she had to remind herself that this was not a regular Academy either. It was incredibly special, from what she's been told. 

She was told way earlier that this wasn't a regular school and it would be quite different from what her parents have transferred her to before, but for some reason she still took it quite well. Being away from troublesome students who never wanted to listen to the teachers or respect each others boundaries have now finally gone out of her window. Once there was enough silence for her to speak, she put on a bright smile and bowed in front of the class.

''Good-morning, my name's Kim Minjeong and starting today I'll be joining your class. I'm used to transferring schools so I'm extra excited now that I'll be staying here until I graduate. Please let's become friends.'' she greeted shyly.

They all returned their greetings back and happily welcomed her in. She was guided to her seat, despite the absence of their homeroom teacher, and was grateful there were people curious enough to engage in conversations with her. 

Everyone seemed to have at least one or two things to ask her about, all except for the ones with the two red ribbons. She had noticed that they have given her a couple of glances. Although she was unsure of whether they were curious glances or cold ones, she still wasn't interested enough to find out either. Especially when there was a group of people who were actually genuinely curious about her. Well understandably, she heard the acceptance percentage was less than 3 percent each year so naturally they would be curious of who she was.

''You said you kept moving schools, why's that?'' a student asked. 

''Ah... That's because of my parent's work,'' Minjeong responded with a shy smile. ''But they've found work here in city that was suitable for us to stay until I graduate.'' 

''Woah that sounds... high maintenance.'' the classmates sneered with a chuckle. ''What does your parents do for work? Do you guys earn a lot of money?'' 

''Geez, Sooyoung, maybe you should've gotten hit harder.'' said another student with caused the surrounding group to burst into laughters, ''You have no shame. How could you immediately ask the new student that?'' 

''I was just curious! She was talking about herself so how was that rude of me?!'' defended Sooyoung and immediately started brushing her hair to cover her black eye from the other day's incident. No one was aware of what happened, and perhaps it would be rightous of her to expose Jimin for what they've done, but the thought of people finding out about her stealing and gambling habits could possibly end up even worse for her. 

''Ah, that's alright actually.'' said Minjeong but her words were ignored in midst of the arguing. It was already chaotic but for some reason Minjeong didn't seem quite to mind. Her life has always been very quiet, calm, and isolating so being suddenly crowded by a bunch of people felt like a positive change. 

''See! She said she was alright damn it!'' Sooyoung continued, earning a chuckle out of Minjeong. 

As the questions went on, the clock to signal the start of class had already ticked off, but there was still no sign of the homeroom teacher's whereabouts. When the door slid open there was a sighting of a young female student with long black hair that reached all the way down to her waist. She had some baby hair that stuck out while the remaining hair was tied up into a nice braid, which was nicely wrapped in a red ribbon. 

Her eyes slightly rounded as it finally hit her. There they were! Those three girls that she saw when she was collecting her school supplies. They were the only ones to wear red ribbons in the entire school while the remaining students had to wear blue. What were the odds of them to end up all in the same class? It stirred up a lot of questions in her mind and she was ready to ask her classmates about them but before she could, there was another realization that made her heart pause. 

Her eyes widened at the facial features of the girl that just had walked in. Her facial features felt extremely familiar to her. She carried very much resemblance to a girl she once knew, many many years ago. Someone whom she still thought about every once in a while, wondering where she ended up, wondering where her life's potential had led her. 

It couldn't be... Could it? 

She felt her entire world stop and the noise had immediately cancelled out as the time was suddenly slowing down. She watched the stranger's head turn around and their eyes only met for a couple of seconds. But once it did, it felt like an hour and Minjeong knew immediately that it had to be. 

Jimin gave her a short glare before turning around with a silent scoff. Minjeong couldn't hear what they said, but those three girls were giggling to themselves. Minjeong was now looking at a stranger's glare that once used to smile reassuringly at her.

''If you don't blend in that means you're mean to stand out, silly!'' Her voice still echoed loud and clear.

In that moment, the world went back to it's normal pace but why was Minjeong's heart beating so fast? 

It was past noon and the last class of the day was already long over. The girls were found hanging by the swings, the vibrations from their giggles swung along with the breeze as it tickled through the hem of their s