*

GONG MINJI

*

As I sat in our school’s courtroom, the same room we often used during mock trials for government classes, I anxiously waited to hear my sentence from the “judges” seated in the front of the room. The panel of judges included both headmasters, Mr. Kim and Mrs. Jung, as well as the faculty members, Mr. Lee, Mr. Yang, and Mrs. Park, and lastly, the superintendent, Mr. Cho, so that made six judges in total.

I watched them talk amongst themselves, their mouths moving at impossible to follow speeds, so I couldn’t even begin to make out what they were saying even despite being only some 10 or so feet away from them. Whatever it was they were saying, I knew I was in deep trouble.

So far, nothing was looking in my favor, so I knew better than to hope to be found innocent, but I did hope for their mercy. After all, prior to this trial, my record as a student had been completely squeaky clean. I had never been in trouble, not even once, not even for detention, but that all changed once I’d gotten acquainted with Kim Jongin, my lame excuse for a co-president.

Now sneaking a glance over at the defense side of the room, I looked to where said person sat looking as calm, and collected as ever. I wanted to give him one of the most hateful looks I could possibly muster up. He just looked so innocent on his side of the room with his big eyes, and serene face like he wouldn’t harm even a tiny fly. I was probably the only person in the entire room who knew his whole innocent demeanor was all bull, but then again, it was I who was in the offense chair, not him, so he had the benefit.   

In my seat, on the offense side, visually, I too, displayed a calm, and collected demeanor, but on the inside, I was complete wreck. My heart was beating so fast, one would’ve sworn I had just ran a 10k marathon. Under the table I sat at I was fidgeting like a crackhead who was going through withdrawal. My head was swimming with millions of possible outcomes to my trial like: will I be found guilty? If I am found guilty how bad will my punishment be? Will I be forcibly removed from my position as president? Or worse, will I be expelled from school? And why the hell are the judges taking so long to give their final sentence?!

We’d been in the courtroom for almost three hours! Not even actual court cases went on this long, though we had, had a thirty minute break during the trial, so technically, two hours and thirty minutes, but still…

Whatever the case may be, I just seriously hoped that the judges didn’t find me-

“Ehem,” one of the judges cleared their throats, signaling everyone’s attention, including my own. I looked up to the front of the room, the panel of judges ahead of me and I knew this was it. My heart stopped. Everything in the room, around me seemed to slow to almost a complete standstill. The only thing I could focus on were the judges and their final statements.

As the superintendent who sat in the center with both headmasters on either side of him took ahold of the paper passed up to him by the court reporter, or in this case, our school’s computer teacher, Mr. Song, I realized that this was finally the moment. Now was the time I would find out about my fate. I was so nervous I could’ve thrown up on impulse. It was a good thing I hadn’t eaten anything this morning.

The superintendent cleared his throat once more before beginning:     

“We, the panel would like to thank both the defense and offense sides for being both honest and respectful while giving their arguments. It shows great character on both sides even despite the situation. However, that being said, after listening to both sides, we the panel have come to our final decision.”

“The offense, please rise.”

My heart skipped a beat as I realized he was talking to me. I slowly stood up from my chair and waited to hear what he would say next. He read from the paper:                   

“In section A of the Student Conduct Code, we, the panel, find Gong Minzy, senior president of co-ed academy, Cheonan High School, guilty of committing several counts of misconduct, including the following:

Section A-3 which prohibits physical, and verbal abuse, and/or threats, harassment, intimidation, or coercion that threatens or endangers the health or safety of any person.

Section A-4 which prohibits committing ual harassment or discriminatory behavior based on .  

Section A-5 which prohibits damage to property of Cheonan High School or property of a member of the Cheonan High School community or other personal or public property, and lastly,

Section A-17 which prohibits conduct that is disorderly, lewd, indecent, or expression that interferes with Cheonan High School’s primary educational responsibility, or which adversely affects a student’s standing as a member or of the school.

Gasps and whispers. Behind me, the audience in the room flooded with them but I, on the other hand,  remained completely still, unable to move, think, or barely even able to breathe.

“With these several acts against her,” the superintendent continued to read. “We, the panel of judges for today’s meeting, find Gong Minzy unfit for the role of senior president of Cheonan Academy and therefore, remove Gong Minzy from her title, or having any affiliations with student government for the remainder of the school year.”

There were more gasps and more whispers from everyone, except from me. I remained silent; unmoving.

All those crimes the superintendent had said I’d committed didn’t even sound like me. It sounded like a completely different person, but it was all true. I’d done all those things. I’d committed all those crimes. Every single one of them, but so had Jongin, and yet he was getting away with it scot-free all because fate had made him the spawn of the headmaster whose influence exceeded everyone else's on the judges panel including Mrs. Jung’s.

As a result, the only person who was going down in this whole ordeal was me. In that moment, I honestly wanted the floor to form a big, giant sinkhole and swallow me whole. But it wasn’t over yet; the superintendent had a few more things to add.

“In addition to being removed from her title as president, Gong Minzy will also have to issue a written, public apology to her fellow students and faculty for causing such a disruption. Meanwhile, since the offense could not provide any legitimate evidence against Kim Jongin to support her claims against him, he is found not guilty. Kim Jongin will then continue to remain the male senior president of Cheonan High School along with the female vice president, Lee Chaerin, who will proceed to replace Gong Minzy for the rest of the year.”

The superintendent stood from his chair as he picked up his mallet with his right hand. “This is the judges closing statement. Everything we have said is final. As superintendent, I hereby announce this case closed.”

Then, with one final bang of his mallet on the desk, the trial ended, and everyone proceeded to chatter with their normal voices instead of whispering to each other like they had been when the meeting was in session. However, this meant that I could actually hear what everyone was saying now, and I wasn’t liking too much what they were saying about me.   

“Gong Minzy,” one woman said. “I always thought she was such a good girl but apparently I was terribly mistaken.”

“Tell me about it,” agreed another. “I always thought she was very mature for her age but after hearing all those things the headmaster’s son said she did during the school year, I have to say that I am very disappointed.”

Somewhere in the room, a man gave his two cents on what he thought.

“Personally, I think they should’ve just let Kim Jongin remain the only senior president instead of appointing that other girl who was vice-president as the new co-president,” he said. “What if she turns out to be just as irresponsible as that Gong Minzy girl.”

A lot of the comments continued like that, painting me in a bad light and as I turned my gaze down at my fingers I realized my reputation on campus was completely ruined. I felt frustrated tears forming at the corner of my eyes.

Then I heard the familiar voices of my friends behind me.

“Ugh, can you believe the nerve of some of these teachers?” Bom’s voice said from behind me. “They think they know everything but they don’t even have the whole story, only because Kim Jongin is such a good liar.”

Then I felt a hand land on my right shoulder. “Minji-ah,” Chaerin’s warm tone beckoned from behind me. “Are you okay?”

“Please don’t listen to what they’re saying back there,” Dara insisted on my left side. “They don’t know anything.”

I knew they were only trying to comfort me, but somehow, their words of encouragement only seemed to make me feel worse and made me want to cry more. I was trying my best to hold them back, but every time I thought about how much had happened ever since the guys had arrived on campus, thus turning everything upside down for me and eventually leading up to me getting publicly stripped of my position as president I couldn’t help but get more and more frustrated at the fact that I was the only one being punished.

I didn’t let anyone see me cry though. No...I saved that for when I went to sleep that night.

*    

One week earlier...

Rambunctious laughter filled the girl’s dormitory as we all chilled in the lounge room, watching the tapes we recorded of the boys on repeat. I hadn’t seen anything this good in forever! All I could say was payback’s a and the guys had found that out loud and clear when they woke up to find themselves in a desperate need for toilets thanks to the laxatives we had fed them over the weekend.

The video recordings showed them ting themselves in the hallways, in the plant potteries, and anywhere else they could turn into a quick toilet seat. Oh, and not to mention the horror on their faces when they realized there wasn’t any tissue is any of the bathroom stalls was priceless! It was perfect!

Yoona squealed. “The best part is when the golf balls started blasting all over the hallways and the boys got pelted to death!”

“I think the best part is when they started fighting each other for the bathrooms,” Tiffany said. “They looked like animals!”

“No, the absolute best part is when Minzy catches Jongin running into the girl’s bathroom on accident, and records him on the toilet!” Jiyeon gushes.      

Immediately, we all start to laugh and I nod in agreement. Truly, the look on my co-president’s face during that moment was the highlight of my senior year thus far. I’d taken his pride, ripped it to shreds, and buried it six feet under ground! Now he, and the rest of the guys knew that we girls weren’t to be messed with.

“So, I only have one question,” Yoona, who sat in a chair across the room said to me. I nodded my head to her to continue. She smirked and leaned forward. “What are we going to do next?”

At this I frowned. “What do you mean ‘next?’”

“Well, the guys were originally planning to make a website dedicated to their pranks on us, weren’t they?” she asked. “Shouldn’t we do the same for them?”

This piqued Bom’s interest as she jumped up from her chair. “Ooh! Yeah, it’ll be payback for the public humiliation they put Jiyeon through when they uploaded that one video of her online. We can give them a taste of their own medicine by putting our own videos online of them and make it public for everyone to see!”

Instantly, around the entire room, there were nods of approval shared amongst every girl, but little did they know that I had other ideas.

I straightened up in my chair and tried to look as dignified as I possibly could because considering how eager they all looked at the mere idea of taking our prank to the next level, I knew what I was about to tell them would most definitely cause some backlash.

“Actually, you guys,” I started carefully, shushing them before they could get too carried away. “Truthfully, I don’t plan to do anything with the videos.”

There was a still pause that followed the moment I finished speaking. Nobody said a word, but judging by the confused looks that were on the girls’ faces what I had just told them might as well have been spoken in Swahili or something.

“Huh?” Yoona inquired, confusedly, seemingly voicing all the other’s exact sentiments.

I sighed and stood up from my seat. I knew I was going to have a lot of explaining to do.

“Look, girls, I know you all want to get the ultimate revenge on the guys because of what they did, but just hear me out for a second,” I told them as I moved to the center of the room to speak to everyone. Once I was the center of attention, I started. “I don’t think we should make the videos public, mainly because rather than just pranking the guys and making them pay for the things they did, what I really wanted to do was to teach them a lesson and I think through our prank, they pretty much learned that lesson. Seriously, I don’t think we’ll have to worry about them pranking us from here on out. Not only that, but we also have to think about the possible repercussions of being found out. I mean, say we did post the videos online, if any of the faculty found out who knows what they would do to us but I know it would be something that would make us regret it.”

As I paused for a moment, I could tell my concerns were getting through to the girls since they all seemed to be listening quite intensely and no one had yet to argue against my reasoning, so I continued.    

“Also, what I really want is to finally call a truce with my co-president and end this feud once and for all. Originally, I’d had high hopes for this school year but so far, it’s just been a complete mess. I don’t want to be fighting with him and the rest of the boys for the entire school year until we all graduate. I just want smooth sailing the rest of the year, and although I’m pretty sure he’s not too happy about our prank on him and his boys, if I can explain to him why we did it, I’m sure even he will have to agree that he and the guys deserved our revenge prank and maybe he too, will want to call a truce to agree not to prank each other anymore. This way we can end the ongoing war that’s been between us girls and the guys since the start of the year.”

All the girls seemed deep in thought as they listened to everything I had to say which made me feel really good inside. I always liked that as a class president, whenever I talked, people listened.

“I mean, don’t you all want that too?” I asked them now trying to further sway them to see things from my point of view. “We’re all in our senior year, our last year of high school. We have more important things to be focusing on like studies, college entrance exams, and our futures. Do you really want to waste time trying to plan a bigger, better prank on the guys just so that we can preserve our prides when we should be knuckling down on our school work?”

I knew I had them when I finished that last little part of my speech. The girls all looked really deep in thought now and some were even nodding their heads like they knew what I was saying was right. I looked around the room waiting for someone to speak. It ended up being Chaerin to be the first to break the silence.

“Ms. President is right,” she said. “We have way more important things to be focusing on but I’ve been so caught up in getting revenge I kinda forgot about what’s important.”

“Very true,” agreed Yuri, one of Yoona’s friends. “Plus I really don’t think I’d like fighting with the guys all year. I want my senior year to be as smooth as possible considering all the stress I’ll be going through while trying to get into college.”

Many of the other girls began to agree one after the other making me smile until Yoona pitched in her two cents.   

“Well, personally, I still want to make the boys pay,” Yoona declared with a flip of her long, dark hair, and for a second I thought she was going to be the only one to disagree with me, but as she continued I realized that wasn’t the case. “But I understand what you’re saying as well, so I’ll forget about uploading videos.”

I sighed in relief when she said that.  

“But!” she added a full breath later looking square at me. “When you talk to that co-president of yours just make sure that he explains to his boys that we girls,” she gestured to herself and the rest of the girls in the room. “Don’t want to be apart of their stupid pranks anymore because I swear if i find my drink or my food or whatever else has been drugged by them again,” she paused as she pulled out a tiny switch blade from her pocket. “One of them is gonna get cut!”

I stared at her, horrorstruck. Some of the girls started laughing, like they thought it was a joke, but I didn’t believe it was. Yoona was not to be messed with. I knew she would do it too, so i nodded vigorously. The last thing this school needed was a murder case. “Okay. I’ll be sure to tell him to warn his boys.”

Or, at least i thought I would be able to tell him. That same night I had texted Jongin requesting that he meet up with me the following morning in our shared office so that we could talk but he never responded and neither did he ever show up to talk with me either. After I had waited around the office for nearly two hours I realized he wasn’t coming and I decided to leave. I shot him another text asking why he didn’t respond, to which he still didn’t respond, and that was when I figured he must have been so angry at me because of the prank that he didn’t want to speak to me ever again.

I had actually started to get worried when a few days had gone by and I realized he hadn’t been attending classes; neither had I seen him around on campus. Little did I know at the time that I would very soon find out what he had been up to, but I wouldn’t know this until I got an urgent text from my roomie, Bom, one afternoon, demanding that I get back to our dorm room immediately with five exclamation points marked after it.

I had been in the office tallying the results from the elections we had held just that passed weekend (something Jongin was supposed to be helping me with but since he had gone AWOL I had had no choice but to do the work myself) when I had received the message. Bom never sent texts that were so urgent, so I knew whatever it was that it had to be serious.

Immediately I had stopped what I was doing and rushed to the senior house, heading straight for the girls wing once I got inside. I hadn’t been expecting to be met with so many panicked faces once I made it in, but there they were, surrounding me.

So many of the girls started talking all at once that at first, I could only make out about half of what they were trying to tell me. It was something about “Headmaster Kim”, “my dorm room”, and “searching.”

“What the hell is going on?!” I demanded, overwhelmed by all the noise. Then a familiar, lower-toned voice cut through all the other girl’s high ones, grabbing my attention.

“Amber?” I said, confused. Amber Liu was one of my closest friends from art class. We never hung out very much, mainly because we hung out in different social circles, which was a shame because we always had a blast whenever we were in class. Regardless, I still considered her to be one of my girls.

“Dude!” she exclaimed, pushing aside the others to get to me. “Mr. Kim is in your room right now with some guys and they’re literally tearing your room apart searching for something!”      

“WHAT?!” I squawked. Immediately I started to push my way through the girls determined to get to my room to see for myself what was happening.

Behind me, Amber followed in tow, speaking quickly. “Everyone’s been freaking out since he barged into our dorm with those guys. They’re looking for something you have.”

I stopped dead in my tracks as I remembered the video footage of the guys I had on my laptop...which happened to be in my room.

“Oh no,” I panicked before picking up the pace. There’s no way Mr.Kim could know about the videos to go looking for then in my room, could he? No way. Unless someone told him...

As we climbed the stairs, I asked Amber how long Mr.Kim had been searching my room for.

“Maybe ten to fifteen minutes or so,” she replied. “He just came in without even warning the girls, some of which were only in their towels since they had just come from the showers but he didn’t even care! He just marched straight to your room with those guys and they started rampaging through it.”

I had to bite back a growl. I was pissed after hearing that last bit of info. Didn’t they have any respect for the girl’s decency? Who am kidding? Of course they didn’t! The boys certainly proved they didn’t care after the prank they had pulled on us. Now I knew where they got such behavior from--their own headmaster.

By the time I made it to the third floor where my room was, I was livid. I could’ve cursed up a raging storm.

I blazed down the hallway in a fits of rage so great I could have lit the halls on fire with my glare alone, but my rage faltered a bit the moment I rounded the corner and caught sight of my open dorm room at the very end of the hall.

The sight of Mr. Kim’s back was facing me as he stood in my door way, filling up the entire space. He was really tall and broad, just like Jongin.

I could hear his deep voice calling out orders to who I assumed to be the men he had searching my room.

“Make sure you check the all the drawers,” he ordered and I could hear things being moved and tossed around in my room. “I don’t want to leave behind any possible evidence I could use on Thursday’s meeting with the board members.”

The last two words made my heart skip a beat.

Board members? And what “meeting?”

Some of the girls who lived on the same floor, stood in the hallway gaping at the scene of Mr. Kim in my room. As I walked down the hallway they all stared at me with wide eyes, probably astonished by what was happening. I eventually caught sight of Bom who stood outside of our shared dorm room, off to the side, leaning against a wall while she picked her at her fingernails, nervously.

She stood up the moment she looked up and realized I was right there.

“Minji!” she exclaimed, almost like she was relieved I had finally shown up. I glanced at her for a moment and gave her a reassuring smile, but it went back to a thin line once Mr. Kim spun around, obviously after hearing Bom call my name.

“Ah, Ms. Gong Minji,” he said formally, and beckoned me forward with his hand. I listened and walked up to him, only to sneak a glance into my room since I was right outside of it now.

I nearly gasped when I saw the state of it. It was a mess! My stuff was all over the place! But at the very least they hadn’t touched Bom’s things from what I could see; however, the sight of the men currently searching my room got me fired up again, and immediately, I started firing questions at Mr. Kim.

“Mr. Kim, what’s going on? Who are these guys and why do you have them searching my room?”

“Minji…”

“And why weren’t the girls’ privacies taken into account before you allowed three strange men to just barge into the girl’s dorm?”

I would’ve continued, but Mr. Kim suddenly squared his shoulders and lifted his jaw in a way that made him seem much taller and more intimidating to my barely-hitting-his-shoulder-height. “Headmasters don’t have to ask permission of their students to search through property that belongs to the school in the first place, Ms. Gong Minji.”

I grimaced. I was really getting annoyed with the way he kept calling me “Ms. Gong Minji.” It was intended to sound formal and polite but it actually came out sounding rather condescending. Like he was carefully addressing some problem child he was deeply annoyed with.

“I’m actually quite glad you’re here,” he told me, placing a hand on my shoulder. “It’ll save me the time of having to look for you since we need to have a little chat in my office.”

“A chat?” I repeated, unsurely, not liking the sound of it. He simply nodded before turning back to the guys still tearing up my room. “You guys make sure you search every square inch of Ms. Gong Minji’s things. Don’t leave anything out, but please, in consideration for her belongings, be delicate with her stuff. I don’t want anything broken. Arrasseo?”

“Nae,” I heard both men reply before continuing.

After that, with the hand he still had placed on my shoulder, Mr. Kim turned me around and gently pushed me forward to make me start walking back down the hall. “Come on Ms. Gong Minji. You and I have much to discuss.”

“Um...Mr. Kim? Am I in some kind of trouble or something?”

“Well, see that’s what I am here to find out. But we’ll save this conversation for when we get back to my office where my son is.”

Before I’d even realized it, at the mention of “his son,” my neck snapped around to look at Mr. Kim, but he hadn’t bothered to look back at me, keeping his eyes straight forward, as he continued to push us through the girl’s dorm. Everybody’s eyes were on us and I felt mildly embarrassed that I was being witnessed in such a predicament.

Once we got down to ground level, in the lobby, where most of the girl’s were at, I heard Chaerin and Dara both call my name. They came jogging up to Mr. Kim and I.

“Minji, we came as soon as we got a text from Bom,” she told me, her face showing worry. She then glanced up at Mr. Kim then back at me. “What’s going on? Are you in trouble?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know yet, but apparently I’m about to find out.”

“Ottoke?” Dara panicked on the side. I looked at her and then the rest of the girl’s mirroring the same amount of panic and worry. I had to say something to calm them.

“You guys, everything’s going to be fine,” I told them even despite the fact that I wasn’t sure what I was saying was even true. “Mr. Kim just wants to talk to me about some...things.”

I’d paused because I’d realized that I still didn’t know exactly what Mr. Kim was searching for in my room. I had an idea, but it just seemed impossible for him to know about the video footage when the girls and I were the only ones who knew about it.

Behind me, Mr. Kim cleared his throat gaining all the girls’ attentions. “I suggest you ladies be on your best behavior from here on out. Very important members of the board will be coming to our school within the next week and you all will be under very heavy surveillance for any tomfoolery.”                         

Chaerin crossed her arms over her chest as she sized Mr. Kim up with her eyes. “Quite frankly Mr. Kim, I think you may want to be telling that information to the boys.”

“Oh, I intend to,” he replied back in a manner so serious it made me frown. The graveness of his tone just sounded odd and out of place to the point that it made me curious as to why he had said it in such a way. But before I could ponder on it anymore, he continued to push me forward towards the exit door. “Now if you all will excuse us we need to get going. After you, Ms. Gong Minji.”

Biting my lip, annoyed at the sound of him calling me “Ms. Gong Minji,” again, I walked out the door with him following close behind, but once we were outside, he quickly switched our positions, him ahead of me, yet he kept his hand placed on me the entire time; only now, instead of it being on my shoulder, he was gripping my cardigan, so it was more like he was tugging me along.   

Once I saw the little green golf cart parked right outside the senior house, I realized that was what he’d used to get over here and that he was leading me to it.

In reality, it was a short walk over to that little green cart; it had probably taken us no longer than fifteen seconds to get over to it, but because of the attention we had accumulated since we walked out the door of the senior house, it had seemed much, much longer.      

If I had felt embarrassed being pushed along by Mr. Kim while the girl’s stared at us back when we were inside the girls’ dorm then I definitely felt ten times embarrassed by all the curious stares I was receiving from students roaming the campus who had caught the sight of me being tugged along by the headmaster. I couldn’t even walk with my head up.

I’d just planted myself in the seat beside him after he had instructed me to “get in,” and kept my head down as he started the machine. “I hope you have a clear schedule this afternoon Ms. Gong Minji because this chat we are about to have is bound to take up all of it.”

* * *

Y’all! I’m so happy! I finally got a new chapter up and it only took me a whole year...

Uh...yeah, it’s been a long time. But I’ve been thinking that I REALLY want to finish this story. Plus, I've missed Minzy stories so much, so I’m going to finish this one out even if it kills me!

I just hope some of you are still reading it...

This is just a snippet of what’s to come. Aigoo! Minzy and the girls are about to be in HUGE trouble… Be looking forward to much drama between Kai and Minzy from here on out!