poster CREDIT TO [FOREVERDARAGON] [MY EVER SUPPORTIVE BANNER GENIE]

It was the end of the month of hearts. I fought my friggin’ way upstairs like a waddling salmon swimming against the stream. Why did everyone else in the school always want to go downstairs when I wanted to go up? I wondered.

I remembered the panic I had felt at the beginning of my freshman year every time a bell signaled the end of a class and hundreds of students poured into narrow halls. Even after a whole year of survival training, I still wasn’t very good at getting around.

In fact, I really didn’t have much to show for my freshman year at all. Oh, I had learned a few things. I now knew that the hall six hundred wasn’t on the sixth floor because the entire freaking building was only two stories high. I knew that the cafeteria pizza tasted like . I knew what covalent bonding was and how smoking can cause death.

But I still didn’t know those absolutely essential things, like how to turn into ‘one of the girls’ who swept past me, with perfect hair bouncing around a perfect face. (But not the ty ones. Eww.)

They could balance books casually on one arm while turning to say witty things to boys standing beside them.

Frankly, I had expected my sophomore year to be different. I had known that in my freshman year I would be treated like a little kid straight out of junior high and be teased about looking for a nonexistent sixth floor. But I had expected to come back after summer transformed into one of those superior beings who knew her way around and who could talk to boys easily. But with one year behind me, I knew that I was still the type of person who got trampled going up the stairs and who boys just didn’t notice.

Not that I was the only one. My best friends, CL-roo and Minki-ah, were having the same problem with boys as well. Everyone else in the entire school managed to come down the stairs in twos, like the animals on Noah’s Ark, while we three girls hardly even spoke to guys!

It wasn’t that we weren’t interested. We had thought and talked about boys and dream about them since sixth grade.

Come to think of it, there was this sweet little boy with brown hair in kindergarten named Kevin – I remember he gave me half his kimbap once.  Little did I realize that that was supposed to be the most meaningful male-female encounter for the next ten years of my life!

But until we got to high school, most of the boys were wimpy kids. None of them suited our tastes. Only then last year, we were finally surrounded with gorgeous grown up–looking boys with deep voices. But not one of them had even noticed our existence. Ahhhyy. Life !

It didn’t even cross my mind that it was my fault that boys didn’t notice me. I was sure that the moment I stopped being a freshman and come back as a mature, sophisticated sophomore, everything would be the way I had dreamed it.

I was thinking about this as I continued up the stairs to my English class. Suddenly an enormous foreigner in a leather jacket bumped into me and almost knocked me backward. Oh, I forgot to tell you our school accepts the program for foreign exchange students, so having Caucasians and other Asians in our school is a pretty normal sight. It was actually thanks to them that we had an exclusive class on English and Japanese language. And I must confess that they’re quite fast learners on Hangul _(1).

“Oh, Mianhae,” he muttered with a slight bow that made him look cute. (Kyaaah!) “You OK?”

“Sure,” I said, peeling my back off the stair rail.

He then nodded, patted my arm, and ran on. (Eh? That’s it?)

Gahd, Sandara Park, are you dumb or just plain stupid? I scolded myself as I stomped up the last few stairs. If you had been other girls, you would have collapsed, , and that gorgeous foreign hunk would have carried you down to the infirmary. Why don’t you ever think in time?

The trouble was that, I was not one of those girls, and I could never have pulled off something phony like that! 

Well at least a boy had spoken to me. And not just a boy but a foreigner! (Kekeke) Progress! I nodded to myself like a freak. Yeah. I’d have to report that to CL-roo and Minki-ah when I see them on lunch.

Maybe I could spice it up a bit and say we collided on the stairs, our eyes met for a second, and then he asked me my name and what I was doing the night on Valentine day. But Nah, my friends would know that things like that don’t happen to a simple being like me. Those don’t seem to be happening to them either. Ahyy.

A girl was standing in the middle of the crowd at the top of the stairs. She was standing still, so all the students had to divide and walk around her. She was tiny, with dyed red curls. Just as I went past her, she grabbed the arm of a passing guy.

“Could you help?” she pleaded. “I’m totally lost, and I know I’m going to be late for class. But they told me to go to the office first, and I don’t know where the office is.”

The words came pouring out in a total jumble. The guy looked surprised but not mad. “The office is down this way,” he said, glancing at her hand which was still clutching his sleeve. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

And then they disappeared down the stairs. Another Noah’s Ark pair had been added. Maybe our school was made to be this way to slap the effing truth to me, I pouted as I thought.

And she was a freaking new freshman. I wouldn’t have dared talk to a boy when I was a freshman! Come to think of it, I hardly dared right now!

I finally had made it to room 603, just before the bell rang. Yang Hyun Suk-seseungnim, our homeroom teacher, didn’t get the chance to tell me I was late again or that I had better learn to be on time.

He was a strange man, quiet unlike any teacher I had ever come across before. To begin with he was freaking hilarious and comically enthusiastic. He danced around the room and clapped his hands and thumped the blackboard. The class spent a great deal of time snickering over his odd behavior. And to top it all, his face looks funny even when he’s serious or without doing anything at all. He made the subject more enjoyable except when he pounced on us and asked us question unrelated to the subject matter we were studying.

The course was supposed to be sophomore English, but in the first week of school, Yang-seseungnim had already flung out question on recent political issues, renal agenesis _(2), and the new line up of television programs. He claimed he was trying to make us aware.

Most of us didn’t want to be made aware. We just wanted to learn enough knowledge on English to pass the course.

Yang-seseungnim was also a very big fan of creativity. After a freshman year where I could get A’s by learning how to tell an adjective from an adverb, it came as a shock to find out I had to write a poem in the shape of a mushroom cloud the first day of class.

“We have now been together for a couple of weeks,” he said, near the end of class. “So I think it is about time I gave you your first assignment.”

Somebody behind me let out a groan.

“I’ll leave the subject to you,” Yang-seseungnim went on. “But I expect a creative effort. I want each of you to turn in ten well-written pages.”

“Ten pages?” a guy yelled. “I can’t write as long as that.”

“I don’t know what to write about,” another student complained.

“Will my Christmas vacation do? I met a lot of cute girls,” the first guy said, and everyone laughed.

Yang-seseungnim sighed. “I can see I am dealing with a very immature class. Very well, if you are not mature enough to pick a suitable topic, I shall have to give you one. I want each of you to select a new skill that you think will help you to mature and grow as an individual. Research it, learn the skill and what you’ve achieve.”

“You don’t want us to turn this in by tomorrow, do you, Yang-seseungnim?” Kim Yoona, who was sitting beside me, asked. 

Everyone laughed again.

“I hardly think that even the smartest student in this class could select, learn and write about a new skill during one evening,” Yang-seseungnim replied. “As a matter of fact, I will make this a long term project. You have two months, but I expect a well-written report at the end, and I want to see a proof of your new skills.”

“Will this be instead of our other homework, Yang-seseungnim?” Ailee wanted to know.

“Nope” he answered calmly.

This time all of us groaned. We were still groaning when we left the classroom. I’m having a headache…

~oo0oo~

¹ Hangul – Korean language.

² Renal Agenesis – a con anomaly; a person having only one kidney.

~oo0oo~

Annyeong Yeorobun! Comments are very much appreciated! And don’t forget to subscribe neh?

This chap is dedicated to my first subbies : piratess & cocoreiko

Just like on my fic “Uncommitted”, it’s now question time! Duh-dan! Question for this chap is: ‘Do you have problems with boys too? What are those?’

Till next update!

Keke. Spread the happiness! Kampai!

Kamsahamnida for reading! Saranghae yeorobun!

Sincere love,

~Crazy Appler Choi Yonggie^^~