“if the moon smiled, she would resemble you. you leave the same impression of something beautiful, but annihilating.” ― excerpt from Ariel: The Restored Edition, written by Sylvia Plath
NAME › KWON DASEUL (PARK SORA)
D.O.B. › JULY 13, 1988
POSITION › BIOLOGY INSTRUCTOR
( CONTENT WARNING DEATH )
she was born with the face of her father’s mistress and coldly welcomed into his home by the only woman she would ever learn to call mother. her childhood was spent hugging walls, trying to be as small as possible, deathly afraid those steely, unforgiving eyes would fall upon her with a cruel vengeance. she was disposable at best; an item held onto for nostalgia’s sake, a glittering piece of trash disguised by sentiment. the love of an absent man was worthless, but it would be all that she ever came to know.
money carved out an education for her that she didn’t necessarily deserve or want and she toured through the prestige of the country’s finest private academies, her nefarious reputation hushed, though barely, by the generosity of her ever patient father. stupid, lazy, despicable brat: she wound each title closer to her identity not through the carelessness of her actions, but the lack thereof. why? why? why? they demanded answers to the riddle of her character that she would never speak.
his mouth held her transfixed; the way words rolled off his tongue, the way his teeth punctuated his clever sentences with the calculated biting of his bottom lip. she had belonged deeply to herself and reveled in the freedom of her loneliness; she did not burn wildly with abandon like most girls her age, but flickered, a teasing flame in the darkness sending unseen and unacknowledged smoke signals through the night. he was her undoing; his breath on the curve of her slender neck, his long fingers tangling through the sleek lengths of her coal black hair. the things he could do in the few seconds that no one was looking; a glance, a suggestion, a taste of the forbidden. he was good in all the ways she was not, the perfect son from a perfect family. he had potential, he wore the promise of tomorrow, but she was his undoing too.
on the morning they are secretly wed, she eats cake in bed selfishly; stretching like a cat in the early light of dawn. for once she doesn’t want to hide or run, in fact, she never wants to leave their room. he is sleepy-eyed, messy haired, all apologetic smiles as he rushes to get ready for a class he regrets taking. this is love, she thinks licking frosting from the tip of her fork and brushing crumbs away from the corners of her mouth. he makes a move to leave and she begs him back to bed, encouraging him to forget everything but her and for a moment, it works, until she is consumed by guilt only to reluctantly watch him go minutes later. she never again sees him alive.
at the funeral she bites her tongue to the point of blood trying to conceal her the grief of her loss. she wants to sob and tear her hair out, to swear at every person in the room she felt was pretending. they didn’t know him the way that she did; they still had their cozy little hearts beating safely in their chests. she dreams about approaching her mother-in-law, rashly revealing the truth, but the devastation on the older woman’s face is the only semblance of a final truth weighing upon both of their shoulders: he is gone and he is never coming back. she is the wife of a ghost. she hates him. she doesn’t know what to do with herself.
she drinks herself into a stupor and stands boldly on the edge of her father’s building, looking down at the dizzy, dancing city below. she could offer herself to it as testimony of life’s irony, but then she would be simply another body mourned at best by strangers. no, she thinks, not like this; one day she wants to be resting by him, together in death as they were no longer in life. she would show him what he missed, what he dared to leave behind.
“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
NAME › KIM SEOKJIN
D.O.B. › DECEMBER 04, 1998 / SECOND YEAR
HOUSE › HYEON MU / CHEONG RYONG INITIATE / NO. 106
< KIM SEOKJIN’S SCRAPBOOK>
— first page : a newspaper clipping pasted neatly next to two ultrasound photos, a picture of a baby’s foot with a hospital band around his ankle, a blurry image of seokjin’s father holding a bundle of blue blankets with the more neat handwriting under it.
— note ( father’s handwriting ) : ‘i waited 9 hours for you. thankfully you arrived safely’
— newspaper clipping : < 4th of december, 1998 > “korean soccer player, kim hak-jin has welcomed his third child and second son in the early morning hours. close friends have said the boy is healthy, and that hak-jin is once again a proud father. his wife, former model, seo ri-seul, married four years ago and already have a set of twins, a son and daughter.”
— second to fourth page : scattered pictures of seokjin growing up, set between his older sister and brother, his 100th day, his first birthday when he cried, lying asleep next to another male baby with a note beside it, his first steps, the first time he kicked a goal in lounge room soccer, second and third birthdays with a reoccurring best friend.
— note ( mothers handwriting ) : ‘you two are always together. ㅋㅋ ㅋㅋ so cute’
— newspaper clipping : < 11th of january, 2001 > “soccer player, kim hak-jin shows off his four children with former model seo ri-seul in a family photoshoot. he bragged about how much his eldest son takes after him and how he’s already teaching his second son to play soccer. he currently has two boys and two girls. he denied any discussion of having more children.”
— fifth to sixth page: more pictures, showing fractions of him growing from the age of four where he’s struggling to wrestle with his father, to awkwardly wearing glasses as he stands against a wall with more black ink. followed by cut out images of a photoshoot with his parents, his older sister and brother, and another baby held in his fathers arms.
— note ( mothers handwriting ): ‘my little man looks so handsome in his glasses. ㅋㅋ’
— newspaper clipping : < 23rd of july, 2003 > “with rumours of injury surrounding kim hak-jin, currently a defender on korean national team and suwon samsung bluewings, his teammates and team manager have asked fans to keep their support high. sources have stated that there will be an official announcement made later today.”
— seventh to thirteenth page: there seems to be less pictures, only showing his birthday, events, christmas, vacations, the first day of school. more appearances of his father as time goes on and then disappearing when he becomes seven. that’s when two and three blurry pictures are pasted on a page, next to awkward and cumbersome writing. on the bottom of the last page a newpaper clipping.
— note ( seokjins handwriting ): ‘my best friend!’
— newspaper clipping : < 17th of may, 2005 > “soccer player kim hak-jin has signed to seoul football club after taking a year of to spend with his growing family and heal from an injury. formerly signed with suwon samsung bluewings, he spoke about wanting to be closer to his families home in seoul. he married former model, seo ri-seul in 1994, and they currently have five children together.”
— thirteenth to seventeenth page:a mixture of growingly less blurry pictures and normal pictures appear. regular appearances of seokjin with his arms around his best friend and then blurry ones of everyone else and his best friend minus seokjin. he’s growing taller, more awkward. two report cards from school shows his immaculate grades in languages and one letter to travel overseas due to his skills with languages. a picture of a three year old girl curled up in a hospital bed, a note written underneath to his baby sister.
— note ( seokjins handwriting ): ‘today you turned three! oppa is proud of you! you grow prettier and prettier every day. i’m sorry the cake i made had strawberries in it. i forgot you were allergic… get better soon. love your second oppa, jinnie.’
— thirteenth to twentieth page: endless pictures of seokjin and his best friend, and more with just his best friend. collections of comic books, manga, the halloween that seokjin dressed up as iron man and the one where he was superman every picture with a date and note in seokjin’s handwriting about what he meant to him. middle school uniform, hockey uniform. a newspaper clipping on the fifteenth page. pictures taken more and more by seokjin, less blurry. coming to the twentieth where there’s pictures of scenery with notes next to them.
— newspaper clipping : < 3rd of june, 2012 > “retired soccer player kim hak-jin, who played for korea, seoul fc and suwon samsung bluewings during his entire career has just been announced as the new coach for seongnam football club. he spoke to the media saying he was excited for the new adventure ahead of him and hopes to bring new energy to the club.”
— note ( seokjins handwriting ): ‘remember this day. it’s important.’
— twenty-first page: graduation from middle school comes with a neat photo, his glasses pressed upon his nose, parents either side of him, his father with his arm around him and his mother smiling widely. his mothers handwriting underneath.
— note ( mother handwriting ) : ‘i know you fought with your father today. he’s only trying his best and he doesn’t understand why you’re not more like him. why you chose hockey instead of soccer, why you like superheroes instead of sports starts, why you want to be a chef and not follow in his footsteps. just give him some time, seokjin. just understand that when you were born and he saw you, he didn’t see a baby, he saw everything that you could be. he loves you. he just needs time. your mothers always got your side. fighting!’
— twenty-second page to twenty-fifth page: food appears more now. food and his best friend. food and his best friend. food and his best friend. a cycle that only changes when something exciting happens during his first years of high school; a fair, good test results, the hockey game win, the day of his shoulder being tapped for initiation. one page with a picture of the cheong ryong house and his handwriting underneath.
— note ( seokjins handwriting ): ‘it’s important to get into here. my father went through here. my older brother did too. if i do this one thing that he wants, maybe he’ll understand and let me do my own thing.’
“Pride is something you thrive on. You can live without it, but is it really living? A man without pride can do the worst things he couldn’t imagine if he had any backbone. But at the same time pride is our downfall and it kills us. It kills us. They tell too much pride is toxic and it poisons your body. It infects us. And it makes our minds rot away.”
NAME › CHOI SEYOUNG (LEE SEYOUNG)
D.O.B. › FEBRUARY 08, 1990
POSITION › BIOLOGY INSTRUCTOR
( CONTENT WARNING SEXISM )
0.01
“Come. Away from him.”
Choi Seyoung was forcibly dragged away from the man he called “dad”. As far as his child-like brain could tell him was that his mother and father were separated and never would come back together. He wanted to stay with his father, but his mother never gave him the chance.
“Umma, I want to-“
“no.”
“But umma, I-“
“Shut up and listen to me.”
Their new home wasn’t at all what Seyoung imagined. It was old, cheap. the paint on the walls was wearing away, the light shone through the windows with a dirty brown hue, and it always seemed so… cold.
0.02
She’s bringing in strangers. They were always nice to him, but he can’t trust them. He doesn’t understand why mother is bringing in men. Some are old and some are young. When asked, she’d always reply with “to find stability.”
At night she’s always asking him to stay in his room and not get out.
Outside the apartment he’s always laughing, not showing the discontent of living in such a place like this.
0.03
His friends told him he’s annoying. They leave him alone, and he could not understanding what they meant. They told him he’s taking the spotlight too much and that they didn’t like that. Even that clarification confused him.
“I’m sorry that I annoyed you all.”
0.04
Strange habits are formed easily.
He seems to like to eat while lurking on the table. He likes reading on the table. He likes to converse while standing or sitting on the table. It’s as if he is escaping from the problems who would return once he’s putting his feet on the floor.
0.05
Seyoung’s life really begins. Middle school has started, cliques are forming and he jumps from friendships to friendships. He couldn’t seem to keep one solid friend so he kept on changing. Seyoung seemed to be terrified to have another friend leaving because of him. Mother asks him how it was at school and he lies.
“So, Seyoung, how was it at school?”
“It was pretty cool at school, I hung out with my friends a lot.”
“Ah good for you. Seyoung, can you pull up the zipper on my back?”
“Okay umma, I’ll be making homework and be asleep when you’re home.”
Mother lifted up her dead, dull long hair, to reveal her back and he zipped it up for her. Then mother left for her nightly job.
Seyoung stays up every night late up for study, preparation for next class, not even taking a break for himself and goes to sleep right after studying.
In time his skill in lying improves and he starts to tell his mother more and more stories. But bad habits are easily formed and in time he starts to tell his classmates lies about himself. That he’s got cool parents that let him do anything, that he has a lot of friends outside, even that he was rich. That, of course, attracted many people, but not all were aiming to be friends- just to be friends.
0.06
They discovered he was lying. He wasn’t rich, he didn’t have much friends– none actually and that his parents were divorced and he lived in a poor environment. He got largely ignored by the majority of the people. The teachers praised his dedication but worried about his personality. Choi Seyoung already had the habit of talking down to people, as if he was more important and dismissed anyone he wasn’t interested in.
The news even reached Seyoung’s mother’s ears and she screeches at him for lying. Seyoung pitied himself wholeheartedly, it was like the whole world was blaming him. He wanted to scream out but instead gnashed his teeth onto each other and lied once and once again.
“I’m sorry for lying.”
0.07
She’s pretty. She’s got straight black hair, pretty shaped eyes, round and big. Even her body shape is perfect. His eyes keep getting distracted to her lushly shaped lips. Her hand gestures are attractive and the way her body moves is elegant.
There’s a new girl in class and she doesn’t know who he is.
He seduces her. He wants her. He plays with her. He teases her.
And she falls for him.
0.08
His world is destroyed again. She asked him to break up. She told him he was toxic. That she felt to be the only one in an relationship.
“Seyoung, you don’t seem to have any regard for my feelings.”
“Eh? But I always try to respect you and you know I love you.”
“You know, Seyoung, I’ve never heard such a pretentious line so dully said before.”
She starts to cry.
“You’re always saying awful words to me. You’ve never given me a present. You’re talking about me behind my back. And when you want something, you always say false things as if you were conditioned to say that.”
“But– How could I know that, that you felt that way? You should’ve told me! Don’t blame me!”
“See, Seyoung. You’re doing it again. Making yourself to be the victim putting me in the blame again.”
Again, he did not understand what she was getting at. He did what was expected from a boyfriend, right?
0.09
The stress is becoming too much for him. Although he enjoys studying, the peer pressure from the students and teachers alike becomes too much for him. Some of his classmates became victims of his own stress release. They were emotionally being beaten down, ridiculed, even threatened. His own class hated him, but even more they were terrified of him. He didn’t like the way they looked at him, but he enjoyed the attention.
0.10
Mother is losing interest. It had been going on for a long time but now it is definitive. He feels like a toy that’s lost its usefulness. When he reaches home, all he finds is simply a bunch of money and prepared, cold food. He spends all his time studying in his room after school and in the holidays.
0.11
They’re meeting him. The man who he once called “appa.” “Dad.” Seyoung can’t remember him well and considered him a stranger. He’s in time but his mother comes unfashionable late, her lipstick slightly smeared and she’s slightly tipsy. His ‘father’ raises his eyebrows at her, his eyes apprehensive and a bit disgusted. Seyoung agreed silently with the so-called father.
Mother lost her credibility as a mother and seemed to have become a street whore.
‘Father’ asked him to live with him but Seyoung refuses, feeling it as a matter of pride. ‘Father’ is disappointed but insists on keeping contact through phone. Seyoung agrees but never calls or messages.
0.12
He’s made a mistake. He let his guard down for a second and they came at him. The side of his face felt sore and he couldn’t feel his left arm. Breathing became harder as his ribcage refused to move properly.
A teacher finds him and the woman called the hospital.
He’d fractured his arm, his ribs were bruised and he had ugly welts on his face. The perpetrators were quickly found, but the story was embellished. Seyoung’s lying streak was going on again.
0.13
His ‘father’ sat by his bedside, genuinely worried about him, unlike his mother– who never came. ‘Father’ forced him to live with him after he would be discharged from the hospital and Seyoung reluctantly told him yes.
0.14
An entirely new situation. Seyoung is awed at the organized household. He’s always asked to get off the table for some reason. He gets decent food at decent times. He isn’t ordered to accomplish strange tasks. It makes him warm.
But he knew. He knew he’d never completely fit in and belong to the new family. His ‘father'– No, let’s call him appa now– was taking care of his two other children, both respectively seven and twelve.
0.15
Seyoung can’t shake off his lying habits. He’s hurt them multiple times already with his pointless lies. Father decided his son needed professional help, but Seyoung didn’t want to. He thought he was perfectly fine and that there was nothing wrong with him. The man pointed out the problems Seyoung had, the toxicity in his personality.
Seyoung still believes he’s fine.
0.16
Thanks to his eldest half-sibling, Seyoung discovers the subject he loved. Biology. Since realizing, he’d been putting more and more effort in his favorite subject. Deciding that SNU would be his aim, he began discussing with his teachers what course he should be taking.
“Why don’t you take up teaching, though?”
The wife of his father asked. She’d seen how well Seyoung could explain each subject to his younger siblings. She and him never were close, although she was trying to get closer.
Teaching? The student never thought about it. The more he thought about it, the more fun it seemed.
0.17
He’s crying, he never knew he’d manage it to get into SNU. His new mother baked him a cake, father and siblings started up a party with much excitement. It’s the last time he’d be staying at their home, Seyoung simply wanted to live in a dorm for ease.
0.18
He’s making the same mistake again. He approached a girl, dated her, and then got dumped again. And again. And again. They all tell him the same thing. He’s toxic. He lies, he tells them terrible things about them, he makes them feel bad. 'Dating Killer’ becomes his nickname. Soon after he’d be also called 'Friendship Killer’. Friendships were easily broken due to the fact of his being too prominently manipulative. Greedy. More importantly– heartless.
0.19
Graduating SNU in Life Sciences gave a huge boost to Seyoung’s ego. Huge enough for him to take up his 'stepmothers’ advice. He applied for a teacher course, carefully keeping himself in a distance towards the other students. He threw himself whole-heartedly into the study and quickly was allowed to start on the workplace. It was an easy class, he was sorted in and quickly got the hang of it. He started to organize the class, his presence intimidating. The students quickly understood that he wasn’t a man to be played with.
The way he sometimes treated the students was sometimes disapproved and sometimes approved.
0.20
He’s completed his study and feels ready for the real job. He’d been looking through the offers to be a teacher but none of them feel worthy of him. He might realize that he might be looking too high, but he doesn’t and it doesn’t stop him. He settled for Sunhwa and applied for the vacant place of biology teacher. He’d go through all the usual connections– send a letter, get invited for a talk, and then again for a talk and he’d be accepted.
He’d already planned out everything that should have happened. He never expected– well, he’d expected it but not so soon –that he received the okay in such a short time.
there are rumors around the school. there’s a new teacher coming and they say he’s very good-looking. they also say he’s very nice and likes to laugh a lot. they also say he’s very lenient. they say he’s gullible.
he knows that, except the first rumor, everything else is a lie.
“When you’re young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling time up in your hands, tossing it away. You’re your own speeding car. You think you can get rid of things, and people too—leave them behind. You don’t yet know about the habit they have, of coming back. Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you’ve been.”
NAME › CHA HYOSUNG (JUNG EUNHA, EUNBI)
D.O.B. › APRIL 19, 2000 / FIRST YEAR
HOUSE › JU JAK / NO. 101
She used to be invisible. Her physical appearance is nothing to look twice at, both her parents are teachers in elementary school, they are regular church-goer and volunteer and so is she. They live on the lower side of middle class, nothing special. Good, ordinary people, nothing to look at and nothing to talk about.
The only exception were Hyo Sung’s grades. They were above average, and that changed everything. Instead of going to the local middle school, they made her go to a more prestigious one.
Rich kids, extremely smart kids, pretty kids. Suddenly, Hyo Sung’s averageness stood out against all these high-class people, her grades were nothing special compared to other students. That’s when the teasing and bullying started. She could feel their stare whenever she’d walk in the halls, she could hear them whisper, wondering how someone like her ended up in such a school. Wanting to make her parents proud and not make them worry, she never told them anything and endured it all. 3 years of being shoved into lockers, of being tripped, of being ridiculed and laughed at. 3 long years where they would steal her stuff, shred her notes and make up rumors. Everything to drive away the girl who brought shame and tarnished the name of the school. Obviously, they were exaggerating, they always did.
Hyo Sung used to look forward to graduation, to getting out of this hell and starting anew in High School. That was until her parents had told her they had registered her to take the test to enter Sunhwa Academy. She knew about this school, but mostly, she knew the kind of people that went there. Her 3 years of intimation was nothing compared to what she feared would happen if she were to go there. But Hyo Sung was a good girl, a good daughter who did was her parents asked her to. And so she bit her tongue and went for it. She wanted nothing but to beg them to let her go to a normal high school but that would have saddened them. They were working so hard for her, how could she dare smack all that away when they only wanted what was best for her and her future?
She faked a smile, letting her parents embrace her tightly at the good news of her admission. She would be on scholarships obviously, no way her parents had that kind of money. They were ecstatic and there was no going back now. How will she fit at the Academy, she ignores. She expects a repeat of the past 3 years, but worst. Much, much worst.
Two paths are in front of her. Either she’ll stay the model filial Christian girl, or Sunhwa Academy will finally break her and she’ll succumb to the temptations. Only time can tell what will happen.
“I want to tear myself from this place, from this reality, rise up like a cloud and float away, melt into this humid summer night and dissolve somewhere far, over the hills. But I am here, my legs blocks of concrete, my lungs empty of air, my throat burning. There will be no floating away.” — excerpt from The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini
NAME › CHO HAERI (LEE HAEUN)
D.O.B. › JULY 22, 1998 / SECOND YEAR
HOUSE › JU JAK / BAEK HO INITIATE / NO. 201
I. the beginning
it was a warm summer’s morning when the new parents laid their eyes upon the newborn with a smile written on their face. “adorable,” the woman says gently to her daughter as the rays of the sun entered through the window inside the room of the hospital and illuminated her eyes filled with joy. her father softly caresses her peachy cheeks, thinking carefully about all the expectations the baby girl would have had to carry from now on, as he usually did with the rest of his family, included his wife and the mother of his children; the tradition must be carried on.
II. in the middle of the story
“expectations” this word echoes in her head for a long time, her mother never accomplished at all the expectations of his husband and haeri would have seen that as soon she stepped in their fancy house in the middle of gangnam, surrounded by the best stores of the city.
every night she heard the screams of her mother from her father’s office, their consistent fighting terrified her so much that she couldn’t sleep and when she did her dreams were all horrific nightmares.
but before she could have been able to realize all the violence inside her daily routine her mother disappeared, all was left was an empty closet, her belongings were removed immediately from the house and everything was quickly erased from her head like her mother never existed. her father played his cards in the shadow and shaped every single aspect of haeri’s life in his own image, another accident for their family would have been simply unacceptable.
luckily haeri is an obedient daughter, she’s diligent and listens carefully to any advice her beloved father gives to her and when it comes to events, she’s not afraid to respond to all the questions she receives about her future from those people. she replies and gracefully smiles to all of them, carrying with nonchalance a glass of golden champagne in her hands.
from the outside everything seems perfect and sparkly but the reality is much more cruel and less sparkling.
III. the end
it’s evening in seoul when a woman comes to haeri’s house pretending to be a secretary of her father. haeri opens the door and welcomes her but when she’s about to return to her room the woman stops her. “i’m your mother,” she says, haeri replies unsure if she understood that sentence correctly, “what?”.
all of sudden her life changes drastically. the girl discovers the truth behind all the mysteries about the figure of her mother and the cause to all the silences her father gave to her in the last years. an history of psychological violence perpetuated through the years, the impatience of her mother due to the continuous demands of his husband and an
unscrupulous man who wanted to have control of their lives since the beginning.
the truth is hard to accept, maybe too much. the girl finds comfort in damaging things, like alcohol, she attends parties all night and obviously ends up deprived of sleep and tired. at least in these clubs, far from all the toxic lies of her family, she feels safe. the pain is too much to handle, haeri feels fragile like she has never felt before.
only after a long time the girl will find the strength to recompose her life patiently piece by piece, she’ll finally understand that she doesn’t deserve this, even if it took a long time.
now she wants to fully live her life again, she feels way more mature than before and despite her questionable conduct in the last months, she feels confident enough to face the world and reappropriate of her life once and for all.
( YOU’LL HAVE MORE LUCK BAPTIZING A CAT THAN TELLING ME TO BE NORMAL )
“When you’re young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling time up in your hands, tossing it away. You’re your own speeding car. You think you can get rid of things, and people too—leave them behind. You don’t yet know about the habit they have, of coming back. Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you’ve been.”
NAME › LEE GEON (LEE GWANGMIN)
D.O.B. › JANUARY 8, 1999 / SECOND YEAR
HOUSE › HYEON MU / NO. 103
Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly, Lavender’s green
When you are king, dilly dilly, I shall be queen
“ One more time, then I’ll sleep. ”
She nods.
A six year old is still too short for the bed, he has to jump before he tucks himself in with a big smile as he hums along. His hand only fits around her pointer finger, but the loose grip is enough for her to sing until the lyrics become a mantra. The clock warns her in bright red, telling her that it’s already an hour past midnight.
When she rises to let him sleep, she sighs.
The sight of a boy swimming in the sheets, small and to think this would only last for a little while. Closing the door, walking down the hallways, and lighting her cigarette - she’d wonder for hours about Geon. How tall would he be? Would he one day think she was another irrelevant pawn, someone bonded only by blood? Will he be righteous, proud, and intransigent? Or will he be attentive to society’s needs? Will she have to start praying to God, in hopes that he finds peace amongst the pressures of this new generation?
No, she flicks the cigarette down to concrete. She knows that one cannot guess or predict anything when it comes to Geon.
That’s the troubling bit.
Who told you so, dilly dilly, Who told you so?
‘Twas my own heart, dilly dilly, That told me so
A grand piano, what a gift from her husband. Glistening black and pale ivory, both pushed for the love of sonder. It’s been years, though it only takes days to remember how it feels.
“ Grandma, can I play something? ”
She turns to him, eleven years old and already standing up to her ear. Sitting on the bench and patting the empty space beside her, she nods. He does not hesitate to touch black and white to make gray, pressing arbitrarily and looking for a note as he hums. He finds it and begins to look for the next one.
Familiarity overcomes her, she’s watching a mind work at its best. She doesn’t dare interrupt a new talent, it’s only obvious that he has a way with sounds. Soon, he’ll learn that this is called D Major. The first sequence is a perfect third combined with a run of eighth notes, and he will know not to forget the F sharp or it will become D Minor.
A good kid, that doesn’t mind that dad works far too often. He knows he works hard and always makes the best of his time when he does come home. He doesn’t blame mom for wanting to work to, she was never the type to rely on anyone.
She smiles, he takes after the both of them down to the very core.
He laughs when he finds the melody, one note at a time. Geon smiles and nudges her, assuring that she should pay attention. He begins to sing, off-tempo as he often forgets the next note. And he sings again, until he gets it right.
And she uses both hands to help him, pressing down ivory and singing along.
Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly, Lavender’s green
When you are king, dilly dilly, I shall be queen
An hour past midnight and he finally comes home.
The seventeen year old is too tall for his bed, his knees buckle when they hit the edge, and he falls back with a groan. When he reaches out his hand for her to take, she sees that his hand is twice her size. He still hooks his pointer finger with hers.
He falls asleep too fast, not even bothering to take his shoes off. There’s nothing she can say to him now, two piercings in his bottom lip remind her of what she used to want. Change and defiance, embodied in lanky body of six feet (no doubt he’d gotten it from his father). Her hands grew coarse through the small hours of each year, even with ink in his skin - he’s soft as pure vulnerability. A bold boy of only seventeen who smells of cigarette smoke. She cannot remember hearing his mother or father scold him for his visual preference, to cage Geon in restriction would only give him more of a reason to surpass them.
She nods with the tremble of her limbs and sufferings of old age, a good troubling boy. Dreams beyond her own capacity emphasize it, his idiosyncrasy. A rue overcomes her when she thinks to her days of youth, when she held back what he embraces wholly.
Her voice is not what it used to be, but she feels his grip tighten slightly when she begins to sing.
Who told you so, dilly dilly, Who told you so?
‘Twas my own heart, dilly dilly, That told me so.
“You need to be cool to be queen. Anne Boleyn thought only with her heart, and she got her head chopped off. So her daughter Elizabeth made a vow never to marry a man. She married a country. Forget boys. Keep your eye on the prize. You can’t make people love you, but you can make them fear you.” – Blair Waldorf
NAME › LEE SOOHYE (HAN SANGHYUK)
D.O.B. › NOVEMBER 11, 1997 / THIRD YEAR
HOUSE › BAEK HO / NO. 304
( CONTENT WARNING TRANSPHOBIA )
“stop that.”
she closes her eyes, nodding softly, though her father won’t hear it on the phone. it’s odd hearing his voice again after so long. it’s rough on the edges, tired with sleep and the scratch of his throat tells her that he’s been drinking again. a glance at the digital clock on her bedside table tells her that its only nine, and her stomach settles with something heavy. she called to hear his voice, like it’d calm her, like the sound of it wasn’t so familiar it unsettled her.
she used to sound like that, still does when she thinks too long of it. “yeah, yeah, you’re right. i’m sorry.”
the apology slips from her mouth all too easily, even though it’s him who should be apologizing. her mother is less than thirty feet away, getting ready for bed in her own room, while soohye lies in her mess of blankets and listens to her father talk about the pretty chinese woman he proposed to. it all sounds fairly pointless to her ears, but there’s something rushing under her skin, cold as ice.
“let’s talk later, okay? you should sleep soon.”
she nods again, like her father’s there to see it. he hasn’t slept in their house in over a decade. she hasn’t had a curfew in that long either. “okay. good night, appa.”
he’s careful with his farewell, avoiding her new name.
she fiddles with the hem of her skirt, manicured nails smoothing over the skin of her thighs. before summer, she’d been wearing uniform skirts on and off, daring to put one on before she retires it to her closet as soon as classes are over. the eyes on her weigh more than she’d like to admit and her mother brings up laser hair removal, like its so simple. soohye says nothing about the pain, tries to focus only on how pretty her legs look in her skirt. dresses are nothing new to her, but the brats at school are a formidable wall of their own, one that she cuts her hands and knees trying to climb.
before she’d changed her name and her papers, she’d been adored, and she wonders often, now more than ever, if it would have been better for her to hold her tongue than to have them judge her like this.
but her chest burns with an aching sort of pride, and she keeps her head high. she can handle coming back to school after the holidays, no matter how much she wants to cry. she went through initiation, clawed her way to acceptance while they all told her she was going to the wrong house. her sisters will always linger when they look at her, words in their mouths that they’ll never say, but soohye has known them for a long time, and she knows how to coat her words, drip malice the way they do to remind that loyalty is a two way street.
soohye has always been reserved, even before she was soohye, but she’s never bent to please someone else. her mother never did, not when her father begged her to be less flamboyant, less bossy, less dominating, and she responded by making him come home to his bags packed for him.
he blames himself for soohye’s identity, like the divorce had anything to do with the way she’s been feeling since she was born. and he’s stupid to deny it, not when she’s been caught rifling through her mother’s closet too many times as a child for it to be simple curiosity, begging her mother to teach her how to be pretty like the models on the covers of her magazines, even though back then soohye was tall and gangly and had cropped boy hair. maybe that’s why her mother took her coming out so calmly. the woman is anything but an idiot, after all.
the people at school are, however, and she still hears whispers about how she’s much more suited to be a cheongryong boy, how its unfair to have her on sports teams, how the cut of her jaw is too masculine for her to ever look like a girl.
soohye spares them no mercy when they step over these lines to ask about surgery, because she’s still as resilient as she’s always been, clever and sarcastic, charming in her own right, because she earned her right to be a baekho girl, no matter what they say.
“When you’re young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling time up in your hands, tossing it away. You’re your own speeding car. You think you can get rid of things, and people too—leave them behind. You don’t yet know about the habit they have, of coming back. Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you’ve been.”
NAME › JUNG JAEWON (IM JAEBUM)
D.O.B. › OCTOBER 12, 1997 / THIRD YEAR
HOUSE › CHEONG RYONG / NO. 301
eyes »
all it takes is a look.
if they say the eyes are the windows to the soul, catching his gaze is a glimpse into pure darkness—wheresin runs wild; unchecked by restraint.a glance is an invitation, granted in passing rarely without intention. ( there is too little that he won’t do; too few places he won’t look to find his fix in the form of a warm bodyand a pretty smile. ) like an addict, jaewon seeks to fill the empty spaces with something beautiful—
{ for him, the likes of sunhwa academy is more a prison than a place of learning. there are no visits, no calls; just a growing sense of shame in his mother’s gaze when she laments how useless her only son is. as the heir of korea’s largest hotel conglomerate; there are enough expectations to render him mute before her ‘punishment’ for his latest transgression—a place in cheong ryong, inherited from his late father.
( and she’ll be damned if his eyes are trained on anything other than textbook pages. ) }
ears »
it’s a dangerous game to be playing.
his ears stay pricked for sighs; for the plethora of sounds that are prone to escape when no one else is around to hear. it is sheet luck that he occupies his room without the burden of a roommate, allowing for company kept when the silence becomes too heavy to handle. even if he’s needlessly picky, there’s always someone to fill the quiet with him.
{ the rumors have never slipped past unheeded. no matter how smart he is—how many languages, how many papers, how many goddamn equations—the reality is simply inescapable; jung jaewon is clumsy and a devil girl feigning pregnancy is more than enough to show it. he won’t be his father; the adulterousfuck who left his wife with a failing company and three illegitimate sons to defend it against.
she hardens sooner than she gives in, and jaewon ( her only boy; her only child, is both her motivation and her handicap—a burden to be overcome, deserving of her ‘ discipline ‘ when the stress runs too high. )
it takes a decade to keep them both from going under. }
hands »
idle hands are the devil’s work.
warmth beneath his fingertips drives him crazy; the pulsing of a heartbeat not his own too often leaves him breathless, sightless. he keeps his nails trimmed close to acquiesce to the demands of soft skin ( though some part of him craves the power of leaving traces behind. ) and a semblance of reciprocation. his particular brand of indecency leaves little evidence, save for the gaping hole in study times on saturday afternoons.
{ he trusts her too easily. what she sees are won signs; what he sees is a beautiful smile and a tight hold of his fingers—her number in his favorites and her body splayed across his home screen like a trophyhe’s earned. he’s wrong. }
jaewon deserves none of it.
mouth »
he only knows how to consume.
it is with greed that he satiates a soul-deep hunger. a handsome smile and smooth words barely cover the spaces where too many things are missing; trust, happiness, hope. what he can’t find in himself, he seeks in others—their love, their acceptance, their acceptance offered up on the platter of soft, flushed skin and pretty swollen lips. jaewon takes, and takes, and takes.
