The next few months were the happiest Taerim had ever had. Jongin had meant what he said - he threw himself into the business of being her friend with the same kind of earnestness that she soon realized he reserved for everything in life that he liked the most - soccer, maths, and sneaking out to PCbangs on the weekends to play Starcraft. He was kind in his own way, but peculiar as well; he had a moral conscience that puzzled Taerim. She had never thought of what she had done in Thailand to be wrong. The furthest she had ever gotten in that train of thought was that it was forbidden. But she'd known Jongin for all of six days before she was suddenly sure that he would condemn the kind of work she had done dealing drugs without a second thought. Half of Jongin's popularity stemmed from the fact that he was the sort of person who didn't back down from doing and thinking what he thought was right, no matter what the costs were. It gave him a kind of righteous likeability, a charisma that Taerim had to admit pulled her in from the beginning. Jongin had all these feelings about everything, all these opinions that set him apart from the other boys at the school.

He helped her with everything at first, down to helping her move into her room and decipher her class schedule. He was thrilled to find out that her roommate was a boy named Minho, whom he described as "the track king, totally daebak, we've known each other for years." Minho didn't speak much English, but he seemed alright - even better, his endless practices and track meets kept him away from their room a lot of the time, giving Taerim the chance to shower and dress without worrying that he would walk in on her.

In short, without Jongin, Taerim would have spent the early weeks at school a deer in the headlights, with no idea what to say or where to go or who to be friends with. Just her proximity to Jongin was enough to make her accepted. The other boys weren't as enthused about her presence as Jongin was, but they tolerated her at least, perhaps partially because she spoke English fluently - an advantage she soon realized most of them envied. Jongin was the great unifier - he had friends from all tiers at the school. He even managed to get along with sunbaes two or three yrars older than him, as well as a few people even Taerim would describe as "unsavory" - specifically a boy named Jonghyun who used his hypnotic influence to surround himself with boys who did whatever he told them to do. Inexplicably, Jonghyun and Jongin got along famously, and whenever Taerim was with them both she felt like she was in the way. But she got by, somehow. She spoke in Thai to Jongin and in English to teachers and in broken Korean to everyone else. One way or another, she managed to get by.

She and Minho had little to no communication - greetings in the mornings, if he hadn't left for practice before she woke up, and in the evenings inquiring politely whether or not the other had eaten before quietly doing homework and going to bed. He was older than her, she discovered, which perhaps explained why he didn't try making friends with her. She certainly didn't understand Jongin's insistence that Minho was "daebak". He was certainly committed to track, but beyond that after weeks gone by Taerim still didn't know the first thing about him, besides that he talked in his sleep sometimes and took showers that were literally thirty seconds long.

Once, in the longest conversation she had ever had with him, she haltingly asked him whether she could borrow a pair of his basketball shorts for an impromptu weekend day trip to the beach Jongin had proposed to his group of friends. The water was too cold to swim in this time of year, of course, but he wanted to play some volleyball in the sea breeze and have a picnic.

"I'll wash them and have them back to you on Monday," she said to Minho. She would have asked Jongin, but she knew he would ask questions, even if they were in good humor. Why didn't she bring shorts to school with her? Why didn't she just buy some clothes on her allowance? Taerim didn't have any money to spare, honestly - the two thousand dollars she still had hoarded away was more precious to her than gold. Besides that, she had nothing.

But Minho, bless his heart, had no such curiosity. He shrugged and tossed a pair of shorts to her from the laundry he was folding on his bed.

The problem came days later, after the trip. Taerim had completely forgotten about the shorts, which she'd thrown on the floor of her closet among all her other dirty laundry. She came back to their room after her last class on a Wednesday. Minho was there, packing a gym bag for practice with his back to her, but Taerim's eyes were immediately drawn to her usually tightly-shut closet door, which was now hanging open. Some of her dirty laundry had been displaced onto the open floor.

Some of her dirty laundry, including one of the thick, hooked bands that Taerim used to bind her chest. It was on top of the pile. Minho hadn't tried to hide that he'd seen it.

"I needed my shorts," he said, his back still to her. He zipped up his gym bag, perhaps a little more roughly than normal, threw the strap over his shoulder, and walked past her out the door. He didn't even look at her.

Taerim was sure that it was over for her. He knew. Minho knew. As far as she could tell, he was the first and only person in the entire school who had any idea of the sort of imposter she really was. She was fully prepared to run again at the first sign that he'd told anyone else, but the sign never came. That evening Minho came back to their room as usual, a sheen of sweat on his skin, threw his bag onto his bed and headed to the shower exactly like every other night, not even bothering to glance Taerim's way. When he came out again, he dried his hair with a towel, put on headphones, and spend two hours doing homework before going to bed.

The only sign that he'd even put two and two together was that he rarely spoke to her at all any more. Taerim got a sense that he was angry at her, but he did absolutely nothing about it.

She couldn't be more grateful. 

Taerim hoped for, even expected, a better reaction from Jongin, if in the future she decided she could trust him enough to let him in on some of her secrets. That's what friends did, right? They didn't keep secrets and they didn't judge each other for their past mistakes. Real friends were inseperable.

She couldn't have been more wrong.