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“Arang, what were you thinking? How could you leave your post without a word? Do you realize we could have been robbed while you were off at who knows where?” Mrs Han, Arang’s manager, scolded as she scowled at the young girl from behind her desk.

Inside her mind, Arang mentally cursed the idiot who got her in trouble before she looked at her boss. “I’m sorry, it won’t happen again,” she assured as she clenched onto the sides of her dress.

“Just to make sure, you will be on probation for the next week. Meaning, I will have my eyes on you every second you’re here. We can’t afford another fatal mistake like that ever again. Now you may return back to work,” Mrs Han ordered as she returned her focus to the sheet of inventory.

Arang gave her a slight but insincere bow before she rotated around and exited the office. Once she shut the door, she peered over her shoulder and glared at the barrier. “Probation for the next week? Why don’t you just fire me,” she grunted before resigning and heading back to the section she was stationed at. She didn’t like being baby-sat. She was an adult for Pete’s sake!

As she was folding the shirts careless customers were too lazy to fix, Arang was seething as the incident from earlier kept flashing into her mind. She was growing more and more frustrated with the ordeal than she should have been and it bothered her a lot. “You better hope I don’t find out who you are or you’re dead,” she growled under her breath as she moved to another area.

“Why so glum?” a boy questioned as he popped up from behind a rack of clothes unexpectedly. If it was anybody else, they would have suffered a heart attack already but not Arang. She was so accustomed to his random appearances that they no longer fazed her.

“You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you, Byunghyun,” she replied, patronized. She hung back some merchandise which had been abandoned in the changing rooms and tried to control her temper.

Byunghyun furrowed his brows and jutted his bottom lip out. “Try me.”

Arang sighed and cocked a brow at him. “Do you really want to know?” In her tone there was a hint of annoyance and aggravation, signifying that she didn’t really want to talk about the subject any further.

“I guess not,” he surrendered as he walked over to her. “Are you ready for lunch?”

Arang checked her watch and shook her head. “I don’t get off for break until three. You can eat without me though you know.”  

The latter pinched his nose bridge and dismissed the idea. “No, I don’t want to look like a loser eating on my own. At least with you there, people walking by will think I have game. Like last week when you left to the bathroom, this cute girl came up to me and gave me her number! She told me if I ever wanted something new to look at to call her.” Then Byunghyun eagerly yanked out his phone and scrolled through his contacts to show the evidence to Arang.

“Wow, now you have ten people in your address book. Do you want a congratulatory cookie?” she remarked sarcastically, totally unimpressed with him.

Byunghyun blew raspberry before he grunted and lightly shoved Arang. “Why can’t you be happy for me like a normal friend?”

“Why would I be happy that people think I’d actually date you, idiot,” she scoffed as she clucked her tongue and eyed him up and down apprehensively.

He his teeth indignantly before he looked away. “You act like I’d want to date you, hothead,” he grumbled, snorting to show how disgusted and repulsed he was with the thought. This was how their friendship of four years functioned. It involved plenty of name-calling, bickering and teasing but in the end neither of them would want to have it any other way.

Byunghyun and Arang weren’t best friends for life but they were pretty close to it. They had met at her first job while she was in the eighth grade. The So family was having a bit of a financial problem so to lessen the burden, Arang found a job to bring in a little more money. It may have not been enough to buy a car but every cent counted. As an occupation, she had to prance around in a chicken costume outside of a fried chicken joint for six hours on the weekends and three hours on a weekday. Talk about embarrassing.

Fortunately, Arang’s identity had been shielded from the world by the large feathered headpiece or else kids from her school would have never stopped teasing her about it. Yes, even back then children were cruel to one another. Some things never change. During this period, Arang was still on a journey searching for her true self and now that she looked back at it, she didn’t even know why she had felt embarrassed. She was doing what she needed to do to support her family and there was no shame in that.

One day she had run into Byunghyun while she was handing out flyers. It was random how they became friends really. The boy promised he’d buy something from the shop if she took a picture with him. Indeed it was a very peculiar request. He had been the first person to ask for such an odd thing but hey, if doing so brought in a customer, Arang was willing to oblige. It’s not like he knew who was under the suit anyways. So they had taken a photo together. Byunghyun dressed in his braces and minor acne and Arang in the hideous blob of bright yellow feathers. It was rather funny and after the photo had been taken, he kept his word and came back every week to buy himself a box of fried chicken.

He would eat outside, offering her a piece but Arang always refused.

She didn’t want to unveil her identity or she would forever be labeled as the chicken girl. However, on a hot July day, Arang felt like she was suffocating in the suit. It felt like she was sitting in a broiling hot sauna and not wanting to die from a heat at such an early age, she removed the headpiece. There weren’t many people around thankfully and Arang felt like she could rest and breathe at ease. She was enjoying the small breezes of wind which brushed her sweaty face, until a familiar pair of shoes appeared in front of her.

It was, as you guessed, Byunghyun. He had dropped by to purchase his usual and he couldn’t help but gawk at the girl. He recognized her from around the neighborhood and as they stood there in silence, Arang could feel panic rising in her stomach. She had quickly shot up to her feet, wanting to hide herself in a corner when the boy muttered the word, “Cute.” His reaction was not what Arang had expected and she sent him a baffled look. She thought he was going to laugh at her and blabber to everyone a