Chapter 3
High school diary
September, 2006
Being a girl like me meant being invisible. After one month in high school, the only friend I had was Jinri, I was grateful because despite having a lot of friends, Jinri still paid all her time to be with me. I asked her several times, during our first year and later, that if she ever got bored because of me, she always had only one answer
"I feel peaceful around you."
At that time, every month, we had 3 tests for each subjects and at the end of each month, a report card would be sent to our parents given our GPA and our ranks. So the last Friday of each montth would be either the best day cause we made our parens proud or the nightmare cause we brought back a horrible result.
Our homeroom teacher, Mr. Kang came in class on a Friday morning, holding our first ever monthly report cards. Howon was standing and chatted with In Guk, another cool kid in our class , near my place, but upon seeing teacher, he quickly came back to his seat, which was the last one in the corner.
Ever since our first encounter, we sometimes walked past each other in the hall and everytime I gave him a small "hi", he replied with a smile. Just that little thing was enough to make my day. Despite knowing that he's someone who was taken, I couldn't stop myself thinking of Howon and imagined what it could be if we were a couple instead.
Mr. Kang cut myy thought with his speech.
“Firstly, I want to say I’m really proud of our class’s result this time. Despite some ladies and gentlemen somehow made themselves rank in the bottom half of school…”
He stopped and shot a cold glare at the cool kids in the back, then continued.
“… the others did a very good job and most of you ranked in top 100 which is an honor. I especially want to congratulate our best student of September, who did not only rank 1st in our class but also climed to 5th place of the whole school.”
Our class was just “Oh” and “Ah” hearing one of us managed to be in top ten. We were extremely curious who this student was.
“What? Oh my god did that one really have no life?”
Some laughters broke out from the back, which made Mr. Kang silent them before raising his voice once again.
“Miss Go Ara, congratulations! I hope you will keep this up and get even better result!”
“Ara? Who is Ara?”
Inguk asked loudly.
Ignoring him, Mr.Kang handed out the report cards before warning.
“Give these to your parents, I want these reports back with their signs and feedbacks on Monday. And don’t even think of faking signatures. Have fun with our report cards and lunch.”
With that, he left, leaving us being panicked, didn’t know how our results were.
“Our class have someone named Ara?”
Inguk continued. He’s still trying to find the girl ranked 1st.
“I’m curious what she ate to rank 5th place of all school like that, cause I don’t think she eats rice, only humans eat rice. She must be some animal though.”
Another voice questioned, earning a loud laughter from his gang. I regconized this low voice, it belonged Choi Minho, a famous jerk and footballer of our class. I heard he’s smart, but he’s lazy and didn’t want to waste time in studying. He just did enough to get average result, the rest of time, he spent with his gang and girl.
I turned around, seeing Eunji and Inguk amongs those who were laughing, which pained me cause I really liked and wanted to get close with Eunji. However, next to them, Howon didn’t join in. He just silently put his report card in his bag. Somehow, it made me really happy.
Before I could do anything, Jinri already stood up and pointed at me.
“This girl next to me is Go Ara, any problems with you? She has rice, she sleeps and uses her free time to study instead of playing around like you losers. That’s how she ranked 5th if you want to know. ”
All the laughter died down immediately. I could see Minho's face turned to a deep shade of red.
“Well thank you, of course it must be an ugly nerd, it’s just you all look so alike and we have no idea who is who. However, I didn' know she could look this horrible. God is so unfair righ? He gave some of us both brain and look, meanwhile he only gave some a brain and nothing else!”
Hara, Minho’s girlfriend spoke up and glared at Jinri.
Suddenly, the atmosphere in our class turned from chaos to a thick, heavy one since half of class in the back and half of class in the front having a shooting glares fight.
To the cook kids, we good students were those annoying nerds who always remind teachers about homework and knew nothing but studying. And to us, they’re rich, spoiled kids who wasted their parent’s money.
"Stop, both of you"
Some students said, didn't want to let this fight get out of control.
“Sit down Jinri, I don’t want any war.”
I pulled her hands to make her sit, Jinri finally broke her eyes with Minho and sat back.
“Seriously they’re so rude!”
She complained.
“I know, but I don’t care, as long as I can keep this result, I can earn respect from other classmates and make my parents glad. That’s all I need to know.”
“Fine, if you said so, but I won' let them pass if the badmouth about you again. By the way, you are awesome Ara, I didn’t know you are this excellent.”
Jinri pat my shoulders.
“I’m just lucky, I didn’t think it was me until Mr. Kang said it”
“I was surprised too, you were so depressed after the final test, and even said you did so bad. “
“I really did, I made mistake in that test though.”
“Shut up you got 90 out of 100. Damn, I even had to buy you ice cream that time.”
Jinri whined as I chuckled, remembered how she bought me a huge chocolate ice-cream cone just to cheer me up cause I almost cried after finishing the test.
“Fine, fine. I’ll pay for your lunch today, okay?”
“Agree! Nothing’s better than free food. Let’s go before the others take all the good dish.”
Jinri pulled my arm and headed to the cafeteria. On the way out, we passed Howon. He sent me a small wave, and smile.
“Congrats Ara!”
Feeling face all hot, I couldn’t even greeted him back, just like that running after Jinri.
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