Jinhee left early that morning, leaving a note for the still sleeping group of people literally all over her house.  Her maids told her there were people in the theatre room, three of the guest bedrooms, the living room, and then there were also the two girls who had been sleeping in her bed with her.  She tip toed out the house and hopped into her car for the first time since her dad bought it for her.

Jinhee drove, using the term ‘driving’ loosely, to Haneul’s house. Her parents had taken her home last night for school the next day. She waited for the girl to come out and honked her horn. This was the first time anyone was seeing her drive her car, so it took some time for Haneul to recognize her.

“You’re driving?”

“Yes. Seatbelt.” Jinhee waited for her to get buckled in before she drove again. Now, her way of driving is special. It was very dangerous, first of all, and it was very fast.

Haneul shakily fell out of the car when they got to the school. “What the hell…”

“My driving teacher was an F1 racer.” Jinhee smiled and helped the girl up. “It’s good, a lot of your bruises and cuts healed nicely. How are you feeling?”

“Good, they gave me the good stuff.” Haneul gave the older girl a thumbs up. “What hasn’t completely healed is hidden by makeup!”

“Yeah, I told them I wanted you better as fast as possible, or else I’d fire them.”

“Well, they did their job, so let’s not fire them.” She laughed nervously.

“Oh please, like I would actually fire a bunch of nurses and doctors. I’m not that psychotic.”

“Sometimes I wonder…”

Jinhee glared up at her hoobae.

“So why are we here so early?”

Jinhee smiled and took out a stack of papers. “Are these the girls that attacked you?”

Haneul reluctantly flipped through them, “Yeah… how did you find out?”

“Security footage and an awesome team led by an awesome assistant. I’m going to warn you, I’m going to be doing some things, and they’re going to realize what all my victims will have in common – you. You will be blamed at first, I’m sure, but I just need you to keep quiet about it for a while. You’re not going to be left alone anymore. I’ll leave my class a few minutes early and take you to eat your lunch with me in my classroom, and then I’ll walk you back to class before my lunch. At any other time, you are to always be with me or one of the guys.”

“This feels like house arrest.”

“I don’t care what it feels like.” Jinhee said harshly. “You are not going to get hurt again.”

“It feels nice having a friend like you.” Haneul smiled weakly. “Thank you.”

“A friend like me? Honestly, I wasn’t even sure if I had friends to begin with. So thank you… for calling me your friend.”

“We’re all your friends. Why do you think we hang out with you so much? Yeah, you and your house is an awesome replacement for a hagwon, but we come to you because we like you so much. We know you have issues with calling us friends, but we still think of you as one.” She grinned.

Jinhee blushed and nodded. “Friends. Cool.”

“So what are you going to put them through?”

“Oh I’m sure you’ll hear about it.” Jinhee smiled grimly.

“You’re definitely scary.” Haneul shivered.

“Here they are. I told them that you were bullied, not beaten like you were, just the same way I’m bullied, just the talking and pushing. Nothing extreme. It was just to gain the acceptance of my overbearingness to you now. Hyunseung may go a little crazy. I only left them a note with a brief message, and I’ve been getting texts from everyone since they woke up.”

“Fan-freaking-tastic…” Haneul sighed and winced when she heard Hyunseung’s worried yells as he ran to her.

“Are you okay? Who hurt you? Where are you hurt? I’ll hit those girls! I swear! I don’t care if they’re girls!”

“I’m okay. Jinhee took care of me.” Haneul sighed and let him worry over her like a mother hen.

“Thank you!” Hyunseung’s hug nearly knocked Jinhee over on her seat beside Haneul. “Why didn’t you tell me anything?” He asked Haneul.

“I didn’t want you to overreact.”

“Are you okay?” Everyone caught up and asked Haneul.

“You guys make sure she gets to class okay. I have some things to take care of.” Jinhee smiled darkly as she put the papers back into her backpack.

“What are you going to do?” Dongwoon frowned down at her.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I don’t want you to get into any trouble. You don’t have to do anything.” Haneul sighed.

“Tell us what it is, we’ll help you. Hell, we’ll do it for you. Your future shouldn’t be blemished by vigilante acts against some high school es.” Junhyung tried to grab her backpack and take the papers inside.

“Not a chance.” Jinhee dodged him easily, smiling emptily. “I’m the only one that could get away with this anyway. Plus, I don’t want to tell you guys about anything I’m going to do.”

“You want to give us plausible deniability in case something goes wrong.” Doojoon nodded. “Fine, but we’ll cover for you any chance we get. And if we see you doing something, we’re going to help.” He nodded.

“Why are you encouraging her?!” Dongwoon shoved his friend.

“You know her. Do you really think we can stop her?” Doojoon sighed.

“You’ve already set it in motion haven’t you?” Junhyung was eying a new, younger janitor in the window of the school. There were more cars in the lot than usual, mostly unmarked cars that were very typical and hard to remember.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m going now. Keep her safe.” Jinhee left, smiling tightly.

“She said she’s going start psychological warfare.” Haneul whispered. “She won’t be good at that right? She’s straightforward, so she won’t be any good at messing with peoples’ heads, will she?”

“She’s more than capable.” Dongwoon sighed. “The same way she can persuade people to give her what she wants, she can make them think what she wants. It’s one in the same.”

“There were some kids in our neighborhood that didn’t like us…” Junhyung frowned, extremely serious, “She made it stop.”

“Is it right that we don’t stop her now?” Dongwoon sighed.

“I have no idea.”

 “I’ll stop her again if I have to.” Dongwoon nodded firmly.

Junhyung agreed. “You’re the only one who can.”

“And yet, no one will clue us in on your relationship with each other.” KiKwang looked at Dongwoon and sighed.

“I’ve already given up on figuring it out. I just accept it now.” Yoseob laughed.

Jinhee got to class just before it started. She sat in her seat in the front row and diligently pulled out all of her things for class. She paid attention, and played her part as a good student. She said nothing to her teacher, and didn’t even argue with the teacher to let her pass out papers. She sat there quietly, speaking to no one, just doing her work, sitting alone, like she did before she began talking to the boys.

“Has she always been this scary?” Doojoon asked his friend.

“People say that, but I’ve never thought of her as scary.”

Doojoon just gave his friend a weird look.

“Thank you for taking care of her.” Dongwoon said suddenly.

“No problem.” Doojoon nodded. “She just gets cooler and cooler the more I talk to her. I don’t get why you two can’t get over what happened and just be cool with each other again.”

Dongwoon just remained quiet and closed his eyes to sleep until it was lunch time for first years and Jinhee came into the room with a protesting Haneul.

“She’ll be eating her lunch here for the time being.” She explained to the teacher, who just nodded and continued meekly with the lesson.

“I can eat in the lunch room!” Haneul glared up at her friend.

“It’s here or Hyunseung’s class.”

“I think this is a wonderful place to eat.” Haneul immediately changed her tone and began eating. Dongwoon chuckled at the two of them.

Jinhee, with Hyunseung, who heard about her eating in her classroom, walked Haneul back to her class. Hyunseung wanted to eat lunch in her class, and begged Jinhee to make it happen, but Jinhee just dragged him to lunch with her.

“I heard interesting things have been happening today.” Junhyung smirked when she came to their lunch table, where Doojoon had taken her lunch for her.

“Is that so?”

“Yeah, some girls found spiders, ants, and roaches in their things.”

“Oh my, I hope none of those precious creatures got hurt in the process of such a strange occurrence.”

“People noticed that these were all girls who were bullying Haneul.”

“Oh, that’s curious.”

“One girl got her eyebrows burned off when she was drinking from a water fountain today.”

“Oh dear, fountains sure are dangerous these days.”

Doojoon just started laughing, “All these things are horrible, but they’re genius! You’re scarily clever.”

“I’ll agree with you that I’m smart, but I have no idea what you’re talking about. These things all sound like eerie coincidences that have nothing to do with me.”

“Just don’t take it too far…” Junhyung sighed.

On cue, a blood curling scream came from a table not far from them, almost as if to punctuate his point. Everyone turned to see what had happened.

“What do you think it is?” Yoseob asking as the girl ran out crying.

“I would take a guess and say a dead frog from the science lab.” Jinhee said quietly pushing around her food. Dongwoon and Jinhee made eye contact. Neither of them ate another bite, they were no longer hungry. They were both too preoccupied with what was happening to her mentally.

“Gross.” They all grimaced.

“What’s next?” Doojoon asked, looking away from the other table.

Another scream from across the room.

“If I could take a guess for whatever could be happening over there, I would say it's worms in her noodles.”

“How did you even find the time to prepare all of this?” He asked, no longer fazed by what he was learning about her.

“Prepare what? My lunch? A maid does that for me.”

“Fine, you’re not going to admit to anything.” Doojoon smiled wryly and patted her head gently. “Just don’t do something you’ll hate yourself for.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Oh my god! Two third year girls got their butts glued to a toilet seat!” Someone screamed after checking her phone.

Everyone at the table turned and stared at Jinhee in shock.

“How did you even…?”

“I don’t know why you’re looking at me.” She smiled with her poker face on. “Poor girls.”

Doojoon just burst out laughing. “I’m sorry, it’s really bad and probably dangerous… but she had someone glue those girls to a toilet seat! It’s too funny. You on April Fools must be a riot!”

“It’s coming up; shall I start on a prank for you now?” She smiled up at him softly.

“Oh my god…” Someone gasped at another table. “A girl was found knocked out in a janitor’s closet this morning! She’s the third year fan club leader for Hyunseung…”

“There it is.” Jinhee mumbled to herself, looking at her food, tired.

“Did you…?” Doojoon was startled and looked down at her.

“Did I what?”

“Nevermind.”

“I would guess and say there will be two more this week…” Jinhee pushed her food away from her completely now. She laid her head on the table solemnly.

“You don’t have to keep doing this.” Dongwoon sighed.

“What really happened to Haneul? This is too much for you to be avenging Haneul if it was just simple bullying.” Junhyung frowned.

“Does it have to do with her ankle and her sore ribs?” Hyunseung asked quietly.

Jinhee stayed quiet but sat up and leaned her head on Doojoon’s shoulder. He sighed and held her to his chest as tight as he could to comfort her.

“They almost killed her.” She whispered.

Everyone stared at her, not sure what to say.

“They wanted to kill her.” She closed her eyes.

“How… do you know this?”

“I got a hold of security footage. I saw everything.”

“Can I see it?”

She gave him her phone. “I had it put on my phone to look at any time I’m questioning myself.”

He watched it, with the others over his shoulder.

“It happened after I walked her to her apartment complex.” He said, horrified.

“It happened after my people drove you two home.” Jinhee said grimly, taking the phone away before the beatings got worse. “You don’t want to see it, trust me. It lasted half an hour before her parents came back from the market and tried to stop it all. They hit them too until the cops showed up.”

“I know it’s tough for you, but don’t stop.” Hyunseung said quietly. Dongwoon glared at him, but said nothing.

“I don’t plan on it. In fact, my plans are quite detailed, and none of it involves going easy on these girls.”

“You’re… not going to kill them right?” Junhyung hesitated.

“Of course I’m not. That would be going easy on them.” She scoffed.

“I’m sorry you have to do this, but thank you.”

“No problem. I have all the teachers watching out for her right now. I’ll get a text the moment something is up.” Jinhee smiled thinly.

“I expect no less from you.” He nodded, not in the mood to eat either.

Author's Note

I am officially no longer in my teens. Sigh. My birthday was on the 20th, it was great, I had fun, we did stuff, ate a fancy dinner with five other people and the bill totalled up to over a grand. Blah blah blah. I was told to watch out; my friends told me they were going to do a reverse Hangover for my 21st b-day. They plan on drugging me, sticking me on a plane, and have me wake up in Vegas with a plethora of shots ready for me to drink. They're lovely people.

Random Question:

If you had one place in the world you could travel/vacation to, where would you go?

I would go to Norway. It's beautiful there. South Korea would also be fun, as would Singapore, Macau and other beautiful places like that, but I think Norway would be a breathtaking experience. I'd also like to see that Giant Pink Bunny in the field, forget where it was, I just remember it's in Europe.

As usual, Thanks for reading, please comment and subscribe.