I can’t lie; My roommate is probably THE reason I stayed in Korea. The first day she got back from Japan, she hugged me for 20 minutes. Not kidding.   She’s just….I can’t even halfway explain how amazing she is. Half French and English. Born in Paris. Raised close to London; fluent in French, English, Korean, and Japanese. Extremely fun, yet grounded enough to know when she needs to get serious. She’s the best kind of friend you could have in the kind of circumstances I found myself in….uncertain of myself, my surroundings, and of my future….

     “We should go over the basics first.” She replied, nodding at me after I recounted the “incident” I had experienced earier in the week, all the while enjoying a few laughs about how “ballsy” I was.  “We’re going to get along just great,” she assured me.

     She taught me things like when you’re taking a drink in front of someone older than you, you should turn away, “remember to bow”, Gangnam is the affluent part of Seoul, honorifics until you’ve established age with someone, “always show elders respect”, and chaebols are rich kids of rich parents who inherit everything “just because they were born”….and the list goes on and on. Seriously. I wouldn’t have survived a day further without her.

     She showed me the coolest parts of Seoul, took me to the closest grocery and drug stores, and showed me the school we would be teaching at. She’d be teaching middle school in the building next to mine which was a comfort; we’d get to be close so I could run over if I needed her. Thank god for safety nets…and Chanelle.

A few nights before I began my teaching assignment, Chanelle decided that I need to stop being “soooooooooooo depressed” and learn to enjoy Seoul, so she made me shave my legs (I procrastinated after I ended up in jail…just didn’t seem like such a major priority anymore after that…), let me raid her closet, and then took me out to a club a district over from ours. We met up with a few of her friends, who were thankfully familiar with English, and not snobby chaebols. We had way too much soju, danced a little too much, and ended up at a little café near the club to sober up. I’ll admit I hadn’t had a great deal to drink that night. Not that I didn’t WANT to, I just didn’t want Chanelle to have to take care of me even more than she already was, and also, I’m a little of a control freak, so when I get drunk it usually means that I’m in “IDGAF” mode…which is something I desperately try to avoid.

     Walking out of the café, Chanelle and I separated ways with all but one of her friends because his apartment was in our direction. We got on the first bus, still talking about the fun we’d had a few hours before. When we hit our stop, we got off to walk the short distance to the bus stop around the corner. As we started to round the corner, I looked down at her friend. He was walking straight, but it was taking so much effort. I started to chuckle at him, and he playfully smiled at me.

“Hey. Don’t laugh at me, Kara. I see you trying not to!” I stopped to face him for a brief moment. “Well, I’m sorry, but come on dude, you’re in tennis shoes and I’m in heels and I’m doing a better job than—“

All of a sudden, I heard Chanelle scream….

“OH MY GOD!!”

I turned and faced the direction that Chanelle was looking towards. I gasped. There was a little girl; probably 7 or 8 years old. She had on a school uniform, and she was crying…but that’s not what was concerning to us.

She was walking towards a crosswalk that had just changed from yellow to red, and it was evident that she had no intentions of stopping for it….obviously frantically looking for someone. I saw Chanelle’s friend try to run towards the girl, but he slipped and fell…still obviously intoxicated and unable to help her out.

     I kicked off my high heels and ran for her as fast as my legs could take me. Halfway towards the girl, I started to yell so that SOMEONE…anyone…would notice her…or me…running towards this little girl. There was no one. Just me, Chanelle, this little girl, and a lot of traffic. I panicked for a moment, which slowed me down.

     “No. I CAN’T!” I composed myself and pushed myself to run. The mini skirt I had on was restricting my long legs, still I pushed myself to go faster. As I reached the start of the crosswalk, the light turned to red, she was feet away from me….just a little more…seconds, just give me SECONDS…..then, at that moment, I noticed a car coming towards her out of the corner of my eye….it was moving fast….I panicked again, my heart already racing from the run, began to beat faster, if that was possible. When I reached her, I picked her up, quickly and held her tight. I turned towards the car, and then quickly realized that I would not have time to dodge the car, and in a moment of panic,  I turned my back to protect the girl from the car, and prepared to be hit by it.

The last thing I remember is Chanelle yelling for me. Everything afterwards went black.