The next day, in class, Yuri grabs me as soon as I go through the door of the female's literature class. Though we were ignoring each other just yesterday we now are friends. While the break, she talks about her life. Her father hates her and treats her like guano. He says the day she was born was the worst thing of the world. When her and her mother needs money, he sends his servant to throw a huge enveloppe at them like one would throw peanuts on a monkey. Her mother is a former e which beauty have been faded away and never cares or minds abour what Yuri is doing with her time. She spends all her days outside, at opium lounges...

Despite this, Yuri is at least ten times more free than I am. Thanks to her father's money, she always went to the best schools and can get a new dress tailed at every seasons. At a young age, she had learned how to play with a charms to attract men. In the embroidery classes, whispering in the back of the room, she tells me married men often came to pick her home and brings her to the smartest restaurants of the city. They whispers sweet words at her ears, gives her jewels, perfumes from the black market...

"There's no one to settle a marriage for me", she confesses. "But I won't get married for love... I will marry a wealthy man who will know what makes me happy."

She's superficial, but in some kind of ways, I think she's more honest than all those girls dreaming about one man to get them out of their promise wives conditions. We all can't escape our destiny. Myself, I can feel it, Father won't wait before introducing me to a prentendant... But Yuri is the only one to decide what her life will be, and she likes the comfort and the guarantee of a wealthy life over an utopian marriage of love. I'm filled with admiration forward her freedom and her self-confidence. I respect Yuri a lot for that and agrees to be her friend.

The night before yesterday and yesterday, I haven't met Yunho near the Market Place. I couldn't help but being worried. I have been wondering if he wasn't sick or worse, if he haven't been captured. I have read all the way, with an eating fever, the Official Newspaper of Korea, looking for the least article about a potential catch of one of the riot's instigator. Since there weren't any, I have been partly reassured. A hundred times, in my bed, I tossed and turned wondering what the hell could have happened to him. I hope I'll meet him tonight...

It's been days since Yuri is talking mysteriously. She's trying to get a message to me that I'm no good at understanding.

"Real men know what a woman wants from them. They don't try foolishly to prove how manly they are by treating them as their submitted objects. When he's with you, your feet get off the ground and your reason is gone. Real men know how to make you feel precious and unique."

Obviously, I don't know what she's talking about. I have never been closed to men older than me, except Jong Woon oppa and I have only known things about love surreptitiously, with Kyung Jae. Compared to her, I'm just a little girl who have to learn everything about the adults' world.

Her life looks like out of an eccentric novel to me. It's made with passion, pleasure as well as danger and a big part of sorrow hidden under a layer of golden paint. I don't know if I have to envy or pity her.

Today, her school uniform all wrinkled, leftovers of heavy makeup on her eyelids, her cheeks are pink, her lips are swollen and her hair is free and messy. She looks to me heavy and raucous, like those foreign perfumes with strong fragrance she sometimes wears.

I'm asking her what did she do last night, and her eyes in the vague, she's answering half-words :

"A blooming flower only deserves to be called like that when a bumblebee has came to gather her honey..."

I guess Yuri has a new lover. My heart thumping, my skin is burning. Her metaphorical confessions embarrass and confuse me, as much as that illustrated book found in the library. And yet, I'm feeling it of a tremendous curiosity. I'm urging to get more details from her. My manners are the only thing holding me back. So, half-words, I'm asking :

"How can a flower bloom?"

She bursts into a noisy laughter, hidden behind her delicate hands with nails painted in pink and doesn't answer. I'm feeling more embarrassed than I was earlier...

To flee from the heat outside, after our lunch, I'm lugging around Yuri at the library with me, by force. She's complaining that the place is filled with dust and it makes her suffer from a headache. In vain, I'm trying to get her interested into the origins of religions, ethnology and social sciences. She's yawning until her jaws pop and finally falls asleep, leaning against a poetries collection, which she didn't even opened. Irritated, I leave her here and go looking for censored readings.

That's how, turning at an aisle, Kyung Jae shows up, like out of nowhere! It's been a while since we haven't seen each other and I was expecting to feel something big when I would meet him again. But nothing happens in my chest. He's grabbing my forearm, squeezing all he can and brings me despite myself in a corner of the room, where no one can see.

"I saw you the other day, at the party of the new mayor. You were with another boy, what did you do with him?"

Surprised by the sudden vehemence of his tone and by his questions that I think are indiscreet, I'm trying to leave him here but he catches me back and pins my shoulders against the wall. On the left side, under his black hairlocks, a vein is thumping under his temps.

"Answer!"

He almost screamed and I'm scared someone would surprise us. How could Kyung Jae be so nervous? I never heard him raising his voice at all. Already exasperated by Yuri's immature and careless behevior, I guess this jealousy crisis is here at the wrong time. I'm closing myself like an oyster trying to protect its pearl, turn my head around and refuse to answer as he expects. Her fingers are digging into the flesh of my shoulders and I repress a smirk from pain.

"You can't speak with another boy like this! Especially one of that kind! Him and his friend are always talking sardonically, I know they're making fun of the Regime, and the Motherland! You can't talk to them, I forbid you to!!"

I'm more and more deceived. Since when Kyung Jae cares about Regime and Motherland? Politics always passed him by, he never felt interested about that. Here in his eyes, a light I didn't know yet had started to shine, a light of hate that I didn't know. That Kyung Jae in front of me now has nothing to do with the Kyung Jae I've always known in High School, the one I have loved unconditionally. This person is a perfect stranger. I don't understand how could he change so much in so less time.

In the past, his innocent smile was enough to turn me upside down. His voice sounded incredibly melodious, and even just brushing his fingers would have made me happy as ever. Today, this angel face looks as misleading and hypocrite than all the rest. His voice and manners irritates me and his fingers dug into my shoulders are burning me like red-hot metal...

I'm tearing his hands off me in a rude move, before flying away as fast as I can to the outside.