“Yah! Park, how many years have you gone without a boyfriend by your side?”

I looked into her eyes. I didn’t recognize this girl, but she looked like she was the type to be between the extremely popular and popular girls of the school. However, I did know the girl next to her. I tend to see her when I pass by the open doors of Class 1-C when I’m on my way to the bathroom during classes, before and sometimes after school.

I walked through the almost abandoned hallway. A few students littered here and there.

“Yah, you shouldn’t ask her that kind of thing.” It felt, for a moment, like the girl from 1-C was about to back me up. But I knew better. In my peripheral view I saw her smirking, her arms folded against her chest in some avid attempt to push her s up for any on looking boys.

“I couldn’t help it, she’s just too funny.” Their laughs echoed around me as I walked down the hall. But their mocking never gets to me. No one’s ever does. This is just how people are these days, things like chivalry and love don’t exist anymore, only in fairy tales… and 80s movies.

“True, but it’s so obvious that she’s never had one.”

“Not only that but she’s never had any friends either.”

“I know. Apparently no one has ever heard her talk.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, I know right?!”

Park Ae Hwa, that’s my name. Don’t wear it out. I am 16 years old and I have not once in my life ever had a boyfriend nor a friend. Whenever someone got close to me, like family members, they would die. At first, because I was so little when it began, I blamed myself but over time I started to blame others who were so careless as to get themselves killed. At my old school my classmates found out and they started calling me Hanajima.

Hanajima was a character from the popular Japanese manga that had been circulating the school names ‘Fruits Basket’. They called me by that character’s name because like me, at the time, they believed that I was the one who was making the deaths of my family members happen.

Fact is that around the world someone is dying right now. When I learned about this I thought that the Shinigami had it out for me. Like they were watching my every move and making sure that no one got too close to me or they would kill them. Like the Shinigami wanted to follow me everywhere. They forever walk by my side, eliminating those closest to me, waiting for my time so that they can finally take me away with them. But for now I am stuck here on earth, left here alone with my wild imagination. You’re probably thinking by now, that with all this talk of the death that seemed to constantly surround me that I am an emo, but I am not.

I have a job at the bakery down the road. I decorate the cakes and work out front, behind the counter, serving the people who come in. Today I watched as two girls pointed and gasped at my cakes. They went over to the buns. One of them started to complain about how she wanted a jam and chocolate bun. Her friend insisted that they buy both and split them between themselves. The girl then jumped up and down thanking her friend.

As they paid for the buns and left, I watched them. They then resumed their nonsense talk of unimportant nonsense.

I myself have had several of these so called friends. Well, I had believed they were my friends. Bu in turn they all left me and joined the other kids in throwing stones at me and calling me by my nickname. As I moved into high school the name seemed to stick as a few of my classmates from the middle school I went to also moved to the same high school as me.

Back when I was younger, the people who I had mistakenly believed to be my friends would have parties and not invite me. They would go to the park and not invite me… I didn’t realize till they started physically assaulting mw with sticks and stones that they were never my friends.

It’s a funny expressions, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me’. Well they were partially right. My bones never broke but they did leave bruises. To this day I still get the occasional group of girls following me home throwing sticks and stones at me… like today.

I continued down the street trying to ignore them. But they kept on throwing the stones as they walked behind me, picking up the ones they had already thrown at me to throw them at me over and over again. I could feel the bruises forming under my skin and starting to throb.

“Yah!” I heard a male voice shouting across the street, “What are you doing to her?!” I noticed that the girls were momentarily distracted and took the chance to run.

As I was running across the street, traffic having been stalled by the red light, I saw the boy who had shouted and his group of friends staring at me before I looked down the path a head of me. I saw a Kimchi pancake stand blocking my path. With nowhere to turn, as the traffic light had turned green, I jumped, grabbing the supporting bar and throwing my weight through the gap between the roof over the stand and the table part of the stand. I landed and kept running. Turning a few corners until I arrived home.

My parents had both come from rich families so they had already paid off the mortgage before they died. I still have their money that was left for me in their will which I use for the bills. However, everything else comes out of my own money that I get from working at the bakery.

As I opened the door and locked it behind me, I headed upstairs. I went to the bathroom and opened the mini freezer in my room that I use to store ice and water and the occasional snack. I know it’s weird that it’s in my bathroom but I moved it there so that I would have easy access to it when treating that day’s wounds. Today’s wounds were only a few minor cuts and bruises, nothing I couldn’t handle.

When the swelling went down I took my clothes off and had a quick shower before getting changed into my pyjamas. I headed back into my room and pulled my books out of my bag, which I had thrown in the direction of the desk as I had entered the room, and began to study. When I looked at my clock it read 21:43 so I headed down stairs.

I know this may seem weird, but I always make dinner for 6 people. I take it out side and place all six dishes around the table. I sit at the head of the table and eat my own serving while the other five are covered with tea towels. I always do this because every morning I come out and the bowls are empty, cleaned and stacked on the table I left them on. I don’t know how or why it happens but I don’t question it. I find it better that way. I like it because it’s like, after all this time, whoever is doing this, has stuck by my side when everyone else left me.

I took my own dish inside, after which I headed upstairs and jumped into bed, literally.

When I was younger and my parents were still around I told them I wanted to put a trampoline in my room. Being an only child they got in some builders to see what they could do. They ended up cutting a huge chunk of the floor around the bottom of my bed and replaced it with a trampoline that was fitted with a pink shaggy carpet over the top. My room is very big. As I landed into my bed I pulled the covers from beneath me and before I pulled the over me I remembered that I hadn’t fed kitty. I got out of bed from the side and went downstairs, grabbing a jar containing crickets that I had bought from the store.

I headed upstairs and opened kitty’s cage. Sometimes I call her Snowflake. And began to pour a little mound of crickets into the cage and closed the lid on the cage and jar. I quickly head back downstairs and put the jar back, still containing more crickets and washed my hands before heading back to my room and jumped back into bed this time fully pulling the covers on.

“Good night Snowflake.” I said as I watched my baby tarantula staring to wrap her spider silk around her dinner, and slowly closed my eyes, drifting off with the clouds.

A/N: For those who want to know what I meant by the jump she did, its like what the guy did in Step up 3, when they are running from the police and he jumps through the stand and flings his body through it too.