Chapter Three;
Do You Not Have Faith in Me?

joohee

   The piercingly bright sunshine crept through the small cracks in the white translucent blinds. It quickly attacked my eyelids in bullish bursts, forcing me to open my eyes and welcome the new day. I rubbed my drowsy eyes and forced myself out of my comfy pink bed.

   After regaining my composure, I attempted to run my fingers through my thick tangled hair. Struggling, I tried hard to pull my fingers loose of my bed head but with no prevail. I grunted as I was unable to remove them from my mess.

   “Injung,” I called as my fingers were finally set free from my hair’s garden of tangles. “Wake up, Injung.”

   Injung groaned and pulled a stiff black pillow over her head. She turned her body so that her back was facing towards me.

   “Come on,” I said, nudging her. “We have class soon.”

   “I’ll get up tomorrow,” she mumbled.

   I furrowed my brow, what to do? What to do? I scanned the room, searching for anything that I could use to wake my friend up with. My eyes stopped on a specific pink pillow, aha!

   Grabbing the pillow, I whacked Injung in the back as hard as I could without hoping to damage her. Though, she was not the frail one. Injung was skinny, yes, but she had strong defined muscles everywhere presumably due to her ballet classes that she had been taking for years now.

   Injung winced from the impact and sat up reluctantly. She groaned and scratched her forehead. “What?” She mumbled.

   “Class!” I shouted in her ear as I dragged her off of the bed.

   Injung held a hand to her forehead. “We have break, you idiot.”

   “Oh.” My mouth formed into a small circle. “Sorry then,” I apologized as I tried to place Injung back onto her bed.

   She groaned and stood up in defeat. “Seriously. . . I might as well get up now.”

   I looked up at her, pleading for forgiveness with my eyes but Injung just ignored me.

   She grabbed her clothes and began to change, I did the same. I picked out a strapless bright pink sundress and a pretty white blouse to go over top to avoid showing a scandalous amount of skin.

   I looked over at her plain white dress. Her ugly black Mary-Janes shone in the new sunlight, her hair was tied up in a tight ponytail, long navy socks went up past her thighs, and she looked poor.

   But I didn’t care what she dressed like. She was my friend and that’s all that mattered.

   I took Injung’s hand and dragged her out into the dorm’s hallway and skipped as I led her towards the lounge. I was so excited to check the news board today; I made a habit to check it every day.

   On the board, an unfamiliar purple sheet of paper sat. “Attention,” I read aloud. “Our staffs have planned a fantastic dance that will award all of the students with sixty-five percent or higher average with an amazing night out. You must be seventeen or older to participate. The destination and full details are yet to be announced. See our dance representative, Park Hyomin, if you have any questions.” I was jumping up and down in excitement by the time I finished reading this.

   Injung rolled her eyes. “You read slowly.”

   But I couldn’t hear her; my brain was already filled with beautiful fantasies about the dance. Maybe they’ll hold it in the city hall’s ballroom! It’s the most beautiful one that I know of. Or maybe it will be a swimming party. That would sure be fun! What if—

   “Don’t start this, it said for students with a sixty-five percent or higher average; how do you know that you’ll pass?”  Injung asked in a serious tone.

 “What, do you not have faith in me?” Injung’s eyes shifted as I tried to meet hers. “My mom and dad selected you to be my tutor and you of all people are supposed to have faith in me. For if you didn’t, then what would you think of yourself?”

   Injung smiled. “Joohee, that was probably the smartest thing you’ve said all year,” she told me.

   I wasn’t sure whether that was intended as a complement or an insult, but I decided not to say anything about it. “Let’s go pick out dresses!” I exclaimed in attempt to waver the topic.

   “But, Joohee, it’s a little bit too early to pick out dresses. We don’t even know if we’re going to the dance yet.”

   “Of course we’re going to the dance. It’s the first dance that this school has ever hosted,” I reasoned.

   Injung sighed in defeat. “Fine, I guess I’ll go then, since you refuse to stop pestering me. Let’s go the main office and pick up our final assessments and then we can decide what we’re going to do.”

   “Okay,” I beamed and skipped all the way to the building.

“Choi Joohee?” The frail old lady behind the desk asked for the third time.

   “Yes, ma’am.”

   I blinked as she finally went back into the small room behind the counter to search for my file. Injung had already gotten her assessment back and refused to look at it until I received mine as well.

   “Here you go, little girl.” The lady handed me the package that contained my final grade for this year.

   Our school had an odd system that was different from all of the rest. It was split up into two semesters, summer and winter, in which we were graded once per month and then a final overall assessment. From what I had heard, the school used to be for elites but then due to budget cuts, lowered the entrance and monthly fees to serve children of all statuses. Also, the class system was not like any other I had seen before. The school had tens of buildings that accommodated from pre-school to university.

   My parents had sent me here at the age of fourteen and I hadn’t really seen them since. Now, I was turning nineteen and I had spent more time with Injung than my mother and father.

   The two of us escaped the dust-filled air of the cramped office and walked down the sidewalk to a barely far away park. It was my favourite place to be. It wasn’t on-campus, but it was just outside of the grounds. It was ginormous though. There was the main park that was a field filled with play equipment for children, surrounding the play-area was a huge forest that had several different paths.

   One path led to a beautiful garden that looked as though it had been professionally landscaped. Another path, my personal favourite, led to a beautiful waterfall that branched out into a lake. An antique wooden bridge was set across at the mouth of the waterfall.

   We nicknamed that area ‘Swan Lake’ after the ballet, because one could occasionally see the most beautiful bright white swans there. The forest was home to many, many paths that led to the most beautiful areas I had known of, but only few were actually explored. Sometimes, if you were deep enough in the forest, when you squinted you could see the base of a mountain. I had always wanted to go and explore more, but Injung forced me to work.

   Eventually we reached the playground. We both took a seat on an appealing iron bench. The designer had engraved patterns into the railing and the backboard. Whoever had constructed this park had really done it beautifully with all of the perfect little details.

   “Let’s open them once I count to three,” I suggested. But as I looked over at Injung, I saw that she had already opened her package and was thoroughly reading her final assessment. I groaned in disappointment but soon opened my own package to read the results.

   I quickly flipped through the pages, uninterested in everything but my total average. Where is it? Why is this thing so dang long? I sighed in relief when I finally reached the last page. I swiftly scanned the page for numbers; numbers that would determine my entire existence, or that’s how I saw it. I gaped widely when I saw the final amount.

“SIXTY-TWO?” 

a/n:

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