anak [[Noir.Jihyo]]
A memory: Jihyo is nine, and she’s watching the sunlight filter through the curtains, the way the dust floats around in it, how it’s only visible in the light, how many things are. She’s watching it cut through the air diagonally, like a border, a small, clearly confined part of the world. She’s watching a little ladybug crawl over the desk, lift its shell with a little shudder, the way it parts right next to a black dot, how the wings unfold and it takes flight.
She’s watching her teacher’s face twist in annoyance, hard angry lines up put upon angry, the way the eyebrows dip, the lips part.
“Pay attention,” her teacher says.
And if she says I already was she’ll get in trouble for talking back and no one ever understands, but she says it anyway.
It goes like that all the time from then on. She pays attention, but never to the things she’s supposed to. She doesn’t remember the math, but she remembers the dozen different ways her mother can look sad. She doesn’t notice people talking to her, but she notices the smallest shift in body language.
They call her ‘blank’ and ‘dazed’ and she lets them, because it only takes her a few times to get tired of being misunderstood. She notices everything, and it makes her good at what she does, because she doesn’t need to listen to the explanation, she needs to know when they will strike.
(And she always, always does.)
It’s the same with her, with Noir and the way her eyes flicker out of focus to a far away memory (or is the the mirage of one?) whenever she walks past a playground. The way her shoulder are a hard, stiff line when someone talks about childhood. The way she would something just vanish, in an air of melancholy and dread, to a place no one knew.
It was like this Jihyo found her, her hands around the chains of the swing like she was frozen to it, her feet dragging to the sand, drawing idle patterns. She walked to her the way one would approach a frightened or dangerous animal, sitting down on the swing next to her, pushing herself off the ground.
“Hiya,” she said lightly.