6. Chapter Six #2
“With what? Your good looks?” She tosses a bean hull at him. “Get in there and restock the chip shelf. Both of you. Earn your keep.”
We go. Ryowoon bumps my shoulder on the way through the door, I bump his back, and Mrs. Nam sighs behind us wearily, knowing she’ll be patching us up again before the week’s out.
14 Years Old
On the second day of the new school year Jiae catches me before first period.
She steps out from behind the big ginkgo tree near the entrance as I’m coming through the gate, bag slung over one shoulder, still half asleep, and she holds out a folded piece of paper with both hands, her head bowed slightly, cheeks pink.
I stare at it. Then at her.
Jiae’s been in my class since we were seven.
Skinny, quiet, always sitting near the window.
But she’s come back from summer break looking like a different person.
Her hair’s long now, past her shoulders, and she wears it down with a little clip on one side.
The roundness in her face is gone, replaced by sharper lines that make her eyes look bigger and brighter.
She’s taken to wearing lip gloss and maybe mascara and some other makeup. Whatever she’s done, it’s working.
“Will you read it?” she asks shyly. I take the letter automatically and to not be impolite.
I unfold it right there. She asks in neat, well-practiced handwriting if I want to go out with her. She says she’s liked me since last spring and uses the word heart twice and draws a small one in the margin.
I look up from the letter to find Jiae watching me with her bottom lip caught between her teeth, her fingers laced together in front of her skirt.
“Okay,” I say. “Uh, sure, I guess.”
She grins so wide it scrunches her nose, bows quickly and says she’ll see me at lunch before sprinting back toward the building.
I stand there under the ginkgo tree holding her letter and feeling like someone just shoved me off a ledge, but in a good way. My pulse thumps in my ears as I fold the paper carefully and tuck it into my jacket pocket.
When I find Ryowoon at the shoe lockers I can’t keep it to myself, I’m fourteen and a girl just asked me out and it feels life-changing, so I pull the letter from my pocket and hold it up.
Ryowoon takes it, reads it, his expression flat as his eyes move across the page.
Then he folds it back up and hands it over, but when he grins it doesn’t look like it normally does.
It’s a beat too late, like he had to remember how to make that expression.
“Our little Seyeonnie’s growing up, huh?” He slaps my shoulder, just hard enough to sting. “Jiae, really? She used to eat glue in art class.”
“That was second grade.”
“A man never forgets.”
He starts turning away, shoving his bag into his locker, and I almost miss it the way his jaw tightens before he covers it back up with his grin, an unreadable look flickering through his eyes before it’s gone. I’m too busy floating in my giddiness to think much about it.
Jiae becomes the center of my afternoons.
We walk home from school together at a slow, meandering pace because neither of us wants to get there.
We sit in her family’s kitchen when her parents are at work and she makes me instant ramyeon and laughs when I burn my tongue.
We hike up to the creek in the woods and sit on the bank where I used to read textbooks while Ryowoon hunted frogs, and now I sit there with Jiae’s head on my shoulder, her hair tickling my neck, smelling like the strawberry shampoo she uses.
My heart stutters every time she looks up at me through her lashes.
For a while I don’t pay too close attention to how quiet Ryowoon gets because things with Jiae feel new and bright, the thrill of having a new girlfriend consuming my every thought.
When our whole group is together—Jinwon, Haeil, Sihyung, Yoohan—Ryowoon is the same as always, loud and sharp-tongued, shoving Haeil off walls, stealing Sihyung’s snacks.
But when it’s just the two of us he gets oddly quiet, his answers clipped, his eyes drifting.
Between the times when I’m so occupied with Jiae and her pretty hair that I can’t think of anything else I do catch a few things here and there.
Ryowoon and Haeil cutting class to go down to the harbor.
Ryowoon and Haeil disappearing after school while I walk Jiae home.
Ryowoon and Haeil, Ryowoon and Haeil. I ask him once if he wants to come over and study on a day I’m free and he doesn’t look at me when he says he’s got plans with Haeil.
“What plans?”
“Just stuff.”
I let it go because I figure it’s not my business.
The leaves turn. The air sharpens, blending the smell of woodsmoke and salt from the harbor. One afternoon Jiae and I are walking home and she stops on the corner just before her house, the one with the persimmon tree whose branches hang over the wall, and she turns to me and kisses me.
Her lips are soft and taste faintly of the melon milk we were sharing earlier.
My hands don’t know where to go so I put them in my pockets like a moron, then take them out and put one awkwardly on her waist. She laughs against my mouth and pulls back, her cheeks flushed, says, “Bye, Seyeon-ah,” and disappears through her gate.
I stand on that corner for a full minute afterward, touching my mouth.
After that, I keep kissing Jiae. Behind the school. In the woods. Against the harbor wall when we think no one’s watching. I’m drunk on it, the excitement of another person’s mouth, the warmth, the way she tilts her head and closes her eyes.
The frost comes in. Our breath becomes visible in the mornings, grass crunching underfoot.
One morning before first period I sit with Jiae on the stands near the athletic field.
I drape my coat over her shoulders and she tucks herself up against my side as I lean down and kiss her softly, taking my time because nobody’s around and the cold makes everything feel slower and more private.
When I lift my head, Ryowoon is standing at the edge of the field.
He’s with Haeil and a cluster of the rougher boys from our year, the ones who hang around the back lot during breaks.
They’ve stopped walking. Haeil’s saying something to one of the others, not paying attention, but Ryowoon’s looking at me.
Not just looking—staring, his mouth set in a hard line, his eyes narrowed.
I’ve seen him look that way at plenty of people in our lives.
Teachers who pushed too hard. Older kids from rival schools. His father. But never at me.
I frown. Ryowoon holds my gaze for another second, then turns away, his shoulders stiff, and keeps walking.
He gives me the cold shoulder for weeks after.
Yet he does it so it’s not obvious to anyone but me.
He still shows up, still sits with the group, still talks to me when I talk to him first. But there’s a wall now.
He’s gone before I can catch him after class.
He doesn’t wait for me at the cross streets in the morning.
It’s like trying to hold water in my hands.
I corner him after school one day, catching his arm outside the gate, asking him what the hell his problem is, why he’s been acting like this.
He yanks free and says he doesn’t have a problem.
I say bullshit, you’ve been avoiding me for weeks.
He says I’m imagining things. I say I’m not and he says then maybe you’re just paying attention for the first time in months so sharply I jerk back.
We end up shouting at each other on the sidewalk while Jinwon tries halfheartedly to calm us both down and eventually Ryowoon just walks away, hands jammed in his pockets, and I stand there seething, not understanding what I did wrong.
Winter settles in. I find Ryowoon and Haeil at the back of the school one afternoon, tucked into the narrow gap between the gymnasium wall and the storage shed where the cold wind can’t reach.
I pick up the sharp, acrid, unmistakable smell as I approach.
Ryowoon leans against the wall with a cigarette between his fingers, smoke curling from his mouth.
Haeil has one too, perched on an overturned bucket.
“Where’d you get those?” I ask.
Ryowoon takes a drag, exhales through his nose. “Swiped ‘em from my dad. He’s got cartons, he won’t notice.”
I watch the cigarette travel back to his lips. The way he holds it tells me this isn’t the first time. Not even close.
After that Ryowoon always has cigarettes on him.
In his jacket pocket, his school bag, tucked behind his ear sometimes, which makes Mrs. Nam swat him every time she sees it.
One afternoon on the school roof in our usual spot, the six of us sprawled across the concrete with the harbor spread out below, Ryowoon pulls out a pack and lights up and I see two more packs bulging in his pocket.
“What’s with all of those?” I ask, nodding at them.
Haeil answers for him, picking at a scab on his knuckle without looking up. “Relax, Seyeon-ah. We’ve been selling them to some of the second-years. It’s just business.”
I look at Ryowoon. He meets my eyes with a flat, unblinking stare, daring me to say something.
“You’re selling cigarettes to kids.”
Ryowoon’s jaw shifts. “They’re the same age as us. And we’ve gotta pay for lunch somehow. Unless you’d rather we just don’t eat.”
I can’t say anything. Because I know Ryowoon’s father drinks whatever money comes through the door, his mother sent whatever she could in the beginning but that stopped over a year ago, and school lunches aren’t free. Haeil’s family isn’t much better off. I bite my tongue and I keep quiet.