Taerim wished the day was over. She wished she could just curl up in bed in her room, the only place in the world where she felt some degree of safety. But if she retreated there now, she risked doing badly on the exams that started next week, which could put her place at the school in jeopardy. Her last refuge.

She didn't know what had come over her when Jongin had come to apologize to her. She hadn't fully realized just how betrayed she really felt until she saw him in front of her with his head down, pouring out how sorry he was, how he'd wanted to help her but there was nothing he could do.

“I just couldn't get myself to stop them when I was so mad about your secret,” he'd said, every bit of his face painfully contrite. “But I felt so angry that I ignored that you're human, and that no one should be treated the way Jonghyun treated you. And I'm truly sorry. And I want to make it up to you somehow, I really do. I don't think... I don't know if we can ever go back to the way it was before, but... I owe you, all right? Just tell me what I have to do and I'll do it, I swear I will.”

It was like he had some kind of inner tally book of his relationships that had to be figured even at the end of every week. And for the first time, Taerim realized that she was furious at him. For everything – abandoning her when she trusted him enough to tell him why she'd come to this school in the first place, acting like she didn't exist when she tried to make it up to him, not lifting a finger to help her when Jonghyun pushed her out of the bus.

She'd only had one retort for him, and she knew it wasn't like anything he expected to hear. She wasn't brave enough to wait for his answer.

English was starting. Even though this was the one class that she didn't have to spend hours every day studying for, she still absolutely had to pay attention. She had dropped out of high school in ninth grade to go to Thailand, and her grammar was terrible. Without a strong understanding of grammar, she could easily fail the class. Stay on track. Stay alert.

Jonghyun sat a seat back a few rows to her left, and she could feel his eyes on her. She never looked at him, but she knew that he was appraising her, planning his next move. She knew what it was going to be, and she knew when it was going to happen. She could see it playing out in her mind, and there was nothing she could do to stop it from happening. She couldn't skip class. She couldn't run away, because she had nowhere else to run away to.

Am I desperate enough to fight for this? She asked herself, and she couldn't honestly answer. She knew that she could fight, she just didn't know if it would be enough to both protect her secrets and get Jonghyun to back off. He was strong, and he had backup.

And Taerim? What did she have? She had Minho, who she'd been forced to rely on. He was kind to her, but for how long? There was no one else she could befriend or trust. She would have to do what she had been doing all along – fight tooth and nail to survive. And she had Jongin. Worthless as his help was, at least he knew that he owed her. But would it be enough?

Despite her efforts to pay attention to the lesson, English passed in a blur of anxiety and dread. She was aware of Minho two seats away from her, his head turned slightly so he always had her in his peripheral vision, and Jonghyun on her left behind her, never looking away from her. She imagined the little smile he had on his face, the smile that said, I haven't won yet, but I'm going to crush you.

English ended, and Minho met her at the door. “트랙에 갈게,” he said. “Next class?”

“Piano,” Taerim replied. Minho nodded. They fell into step together.

“Lunch after?” he asked.

Taerim shrugged. “Yeah.”

Minho looked at her closely. “Back?”

“Fine,” Taerim replied. Her back wasn't the problem. “Hurts a little, but fine.”

Minho nodded and adjusted his gym bag on his shoulder. “그래. Lunch, then,” he said, and left her at the door to the little music building. Taerim pushed open the door and went in, realizing that it had been the longest conversation they'd ever had that wasn't absolutely necessary.

Of the two piano lessons she had every day, the first was the shorter and less demanding. Taerim cruised through it completely on autopilot, and her teacher, a small man who was so drastically nearsighted that he had been made exempt from military service, didn't notice anything was wrong except for commenting on how sweaty her hands were when he corrected her finger position on one part of a Beethoven piece.

Next was tennis. Taerim only had one trick up her sleeve, and it might not even work. She knew that the next hour was going to determine whether or not she got to stay at the school. She was a few minutes early as usual, so she dressed in one of the locker room showers in peace, and went to the field to hit a few serves before everyone else and the teacher arrived.

Taerim was good at tennis, and for the entire class the teacher had her work with boys from a lower grade whom she didn't know as well, helping them with serving and technique. She didn't look at Jonghyun again for the entire class, imagining that he was laughing at her behind her back, waiting impatiently for tennis to end. Now that Minho was out of the picture, it was time to make a move.

The teacher called the end of class and the younger boys all rushed for the locker rooms, pushing and laughing. Taerim followed them in and headed for the sinks. She splashed some water on her face, trying to cool it down when her heart seemed to be hammering hard enough to warm a person twice her size.

When she dried her face and turned around, there he was. Jonghyun, flanked by three other boys, all with the light of conquest in their eyes. Jonghyun pretended to look bored.

“You're in the way,” he said, intentionally slurring his Korean to make it harder for her to understand. Taerim stepped aside, unable to keep herself from clutching the towel she was holding in front of her like it could shield her in some way. Jonghyun looked over at her lazily. “You're still in the way,” he said, a smile curling the corners of his mouth. Taemin moved again, until her calves hit one of the benches in front of the lockers. Jonghyun raised his eyebrows. “I don't think that's helping,” he said. “Wherever you go, you're always in the way.”

About half the people in the locker room had noticed that something was happening, and they'd fallen silent, watching. Taerim forced herself to drop the towel and clenched her fists. “어떻게?” she said, with minimal shaking in her voice to ruin the sarcasm of it. Jonghyun advanced a step, his smile widening.

“You could leave,” he said. “Or, even better, you could stay, and provide us endless entertainment.” He said something else that Taerim didn't fully understand, but she thought it may have been, “it's fun to watch you tremble.” Out of fear, she supposed. If fear was what they wanted to get from her, she had to give them the exact opposite.

She didn't know how to say what she wanted to say. It didn't matter though; all she needed was to look and sound aggressive, bigger than herself. She switched to English, something she rarely did because it alienated her from the students she was trying to fit in with. Now was not the time to assimilate.

“In America I crushed little boys like you under my finger,” she began, holding up her finger as a visual aid, not letting herself feel triumph yet when she saw Jonghyun's expression change from satisfaction to concentration. He was actually trying to understand what she was saying. Good. All the more reason to make it memorable. “You think I'm in the way? It's little s like you that make boarding school a hellhole. You swagger around like you own this place and everyone in it. You make me sick. The minute you get out of here the real world is going to stomp on you and your friends like ants.” Even though her knees were shaking so badly that she could hardly stand, she forced herself to take a step towards him, looking him right in the eyes. “You are nothing. When you're a deadbeat drunk stumbling around on the streets of Seoul for everyone to see, I'm going to laugh. 'That's Jonghyun,' I'll tell people. 'That's the boy who bullied kids who were less fortunate than him because he was so insecure that he couldn't do anything useful with his life.' You pitiable bastard. You can beat the crap out of me, choke all my secrets out of me, make me leave and never come back, but that doesn't make you any less of a loser in the end.” She paused to catch her breath, realizing that she'd been shouting hoarsely. A hush had fallen over all the boys, and her voice rang in the quiet room.

Jonghyun had kept silent for her tirade, presumably trying to understand as much of it as he could, but out of all the boys in the room, his smile hadn't disappeared. It still hovered on his face, cold and smug. He shook his head.

“Look at that,” he said so everyone could hear. “He came here and called himself Taemin, but he can't even speak Korean. You're just a charity case. Why should we let you stay at this school when there's a waiting list of citizens a mile long? No one even wants you here any more.” He advanced a step towards Taemin so they were standing eye to eye. She was about three inches taller than him, so he had to look up at her, but it made him no less intimidating. “You think you're scary because you're American,” he said. “But we're not afraid of you here.”

“What are you going to do about it?” Taerim said, still in English. She pulled back her shoulders to force confidence to her trembling body.

“I'm going to make you sorry for calling me a bastard,” he said quietly, so only she and his three closest friends could hear. “You're going to regret that.”

His English comprehension was better than she'd given him credit for. She should have used bigger words.

“So what if I called you a bastard?” she replied, praying that he would become tired of trying to decipher her English and leave her alone. “It's the truth. You're a ing idiot, Jonghyun. If it was up to me, you'd be the person who picks up the trash at my backdoor every day. You don't even deserve that.”

Behind her, she heard one of the younger boys snigger and whisper a hurried translation to one of his friends. Jonghyun flicked a glance at him. “You,” he snapped. “You speak English?”

The sniggering stopped abruptly. “Y-yes,” the boy said.

“What did he just say?”

Taerim looked at the boy out of the corner of her eye and recognized him as one of the second-years she had been teaching earlier. She knew that they liked her as a teacher, and she could see that the boy was looking from Taerim to Jonghyun, trying to decide how to proceed. He eventually went with self-preservation.

“He said you're a ing idiot,” the boy said. Taerim thanked God that there was no single word in Korean that held quite so much potency as the English f-word. “He said you're not good enough to pick up his trash.”

Jonghyun threw back his head and laughed.

Taerim wasn't sure exactly how it had happened, but one moment the rest of the locker room was uneasily joining in on Jonghyun's laughter, and the next something hit her face so hard that her head snapped back and she crashed to the ground, one leg catching painfully on the edge of the metal bench she'd been standing against.

All the muscles in her back screamed in protest a split second after they slammed against the floor, and she knew a moment later that the gash on her side had opened again. The smarting in her cheek and eye from Jonghyun's punch was nothing – no amount of self-control could prevent Taerim from curling into a fetal position on the floor to try and ride out the white-hot wave of miserable pain that followed.

Someone grabbed her collar and pulled her up into a half-sitting position. “Face it, Taerim,” Jonghyun's voice cut through the ringing in her ears. “You're useless, stupid, and you don't belong here. Thought you had Minho to cover your back? Not even he cares enough to come help you out.”

Taerim could only wheeze in response.

“What's going on?”

Jonghyun looked up. “Oh, you came,” he said, unconcerned.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Jonghyun let go of Taerim's collar and she slumped back to the floor. “Don't worry about it, Jongin,” he said. “I'm just cleaning up.”

Taerim turned her head painfully. Jongin was standing in the doorway to the locker room, dismay written all over his face.