The First Session
"I'll be counting on you, then."
Barely five seconds had passed since I'd given my answer when Mr. Jo Guk-hyeon, as if he'd been waiting for this exact moment, pulled a file folder from his desk drawer and set it on the table. The words Counseling Records were printed large across the front of the yellow folder. Which meant it had already been prepared — before I'd even agreed.
"What were you going to do if I hadn't said yes?"
"Keep asking until you did."
"...I should've held out longer and squeezed more benefits out of you. So what's this?"
"Your first client."
"...Already?"
"What do you mean, already? You start after school today."
Hold on. What did he just say?
"Starting today?"
"That's right. Today."
"I agreed less than a minute ago."
"Which is exactly why we need to hurry."
"Can't it wait until tomorrow? Or at least later this week?"
"No. It has to be today."
"Why?"
"Strike while the iron's hot."
"That's just a proverb."
With a perfectly straight face, Mr. Jo set a key on top of the folder. A little tag dangled from the keyring, labeled Counseling Room.
"The deadline's tighter than you'd think. If we want the budget, we have to show that the program is actually up and running. A stack of paperwork with no sessions behind it isn't a program — it's a joke."
"Yeah, but I need time to mentally prepare—"
"Prepare for what? You said you learned this stuff back in middle school."
My own words came flying back and smacked me in the back of the head. This is why you keep your mouth shut around adults.
"And don't worry. I honored the condition you set."
"Condition?"
"You said you wouldn't take any hardcore delinquents. So I picked someone you already know as your first client."
"...Someone I know?"
"That's right. Easier to talk if you already know each other, isn't it?"
Someone I knew, as a counseling client. I flipped through the faces I knew at this school, but nobody jumped out.
"How would you even know who I know?"
"It's all in the records. Look at the middle school they came from. Paperwork exists for a reason."
He slid the folder across the desk toward me. With a vaguely uneasy feeling, I picked it up and flipped to the first page. An ID photo stared up at me, personal details printed neatly underneath.
Name: Won Seo-jin
"...Huh?"
Won Seo-jin. Won Seo-jin?
No, wait. It had to be a different person. It wasn't like there was only one Won Seo-jin in the world. Except the middle school listed in the form was my own alma mater. And no matter how long I stared at that photograph — it was the Won Seo-jin I knew.
My mind went blank for a second.
Won Seo-jin had first been my classmate in second grade of elementary school. After that we ended up in the same class in fourth grade, then again in first year of middle school, and again in second year. It was as if some invisible thread of fate kept assigning us to the same homeroom; just when I'd almost forgotten her, there she'd be. We spent years getting used to each other's faces and learning how to talk, and then, in second year of middle school, we actually got close. That year, every time the seating chart changed, we somehow ended up as desk partners — more than once.
We did project groups together, borrowed each other's notes, grumbled side by side about the cafeteria menu, and compared answers after every exam. None of it was anything special, but pile up enough unremarkable days and you end up as the kind of friends who can crack up over nothing.
That didn't make us anything more than that, though. Good classmates. That was the whole of it. When our classes split in third year, we drifted apart the way people do, and after graduation we hadn't so much as texted each other once.
But one thing I remembered with absolute certainty. Won Seo-jin was good at studying. Exceptionally good. She placed near the top of the school every exam season, and in third year there were even rumors she was prepping for an international high school. So of course I'd assumed that by now she'd be wearing that uniform.
So why. Why was that Won Seo-jin at this dump, Ido High?
"Um, Mr. Jo? Why is she a counseling client?"
"I can't tell you that."
"What? You're the one telling me to counsel her."
"The reason for counseling is something you hear from the person herself. Read a few lines on a form and start acting like you already know someone, and from that moment on it isn't counseling — it's an interrogation."
The unexpected soundness of that argument left me with nothing to say.
"Anyway, be in the Counseling Room after school. I'll let Seo-jin know."
"Wait — I still haven't mentally prepared—"
"Lee Sian."
Mr. Jo set a hand on my shoulder. Then, with the most serious face in the world, he said:
It was the most irresponsible pep talk on earth.
And just like that, I was herded out of the teachers' office with a file folder in one hand and a key in the other.
Back in the classroom, the guy in front of me spun his chair around.
"Oh, you made it back alive. What'd he say?"
"Nothing much. He said he had some paperwork to check."
"Aw, lame. I thought you'd become our class's first recommended dropout."
He lost interest just as fast and slumped back over his desk.
I honestly don't remember how afternoon classes went. The writing on the board never made it to my eyes, and the teacher's voice came in one ear and went straight out the other. There was only one person occupying my head.
Won Seo-jin had been at this school?
A month since enrollment, and I hadn't run into her even once. Then again, the boys' and girls' classes were separated, so I'd never had any reason to walk down the girls' hallway to begin with. Not running into her wasn't strange. Still — why Ido High? Had she not gotten into the international school? I'd figured there would be a few kids like that mixed in on orientation day, but I'd never imagined one of them would be Won Seo-jin.
And what was this about her being a counseling client?
The Won Seo-jin I remembered was the last person on earth who'd need counseling. Sharp, put-together, so airtight it was almost annoying. The kind of girl who'd solve a problem on her own before it ever became a problem. Her, in counseling?
Was two years enough time for a person to change that much?
Questions piled up like a mountain. Why was she here. How had she been. But not a single one of them felt like something I could just throw at her on day one.
"Hey, Lee Sian. You sick or something?"
"Huh? No. Why?"
"You've been staring into space this whole time. Haven't written a thing."
"...I just haven't fully woken up yet."
If the guy in front of me was asking about it during break, I must have been pretty obvious.
The thoughts kept chasing each other's tails, and not one of them turned into an answer. The person holding the answers was someone else.
After homeroom ended, I stood in front of the Counseling Room with the key in my hand.
The hallway after school was a different creature from the one in daylight. Once the thunder of departing footsteps faded, what remained was a quiet so complete it felt almost awkward.
The Counseling Room was at the end of the first-floor hallway. It must have been an empty classroom originally; a paper sign had been taped to the door in a hurry.
Unlaminated A4 printer paper. You could feel exactly how desperate this school's budget situation was just from that.
I slid the key in and turned it. The lock clicked, and the door opened.
The inside was in better shape than I'd expected. Not just decent — it still smelled new. One desk, two chairs facing each other, and even a small sofa tucked in the corner. So this was the one upside of a brand-new school: everything was actually new.
The athletic field was visible through the window. A pack of kids chasing a single ball around out there looked peaceful beyond belief. The problem, if you could call it one, was that as of today that peace no longer belonged to me.
The thought that this would be my hideout from now on was just starting to grow on me. The problem was the first guest.
I sat down, stood up, drifted over to the window, and sat down again. For some reason I couldn't settle. There was no reason to be nervous. It wasn't a stranger. It wasn't someone scary. I was just seeing an old classmate for the first time in a while.
So why was my heart making all this noise?
It's because it's been two years. Yeah. Just because it's been a while. Nothing more, nothing less.
The first words were the real problem. Long time no see? Too much like I was pretending nothing had happened. Yo, Won Seo-jin, how long has it been? Way too aggressive for a two-year gap. Welcome, how may I help you? That wasn't a counselor — that was a café barista.
There wasn't even a mirror, but I reached up and fussed with my bangs anyway, then quietly dropped my hand. What am I even doing right now?
A memory surfaced without warning. Second year of middle school, right before a presentation, me shaking like a leaf, and Won Seo-jin looking at me and saying:
"Why are you falling apart when you actually prepared? Leave the trembling to the people who didn't."
It had annoyed me at the time. Thinking about it now, she'd been right. Which was exactly why I was shaking. I hadn't prepared a single thing.
The peer counseling training had been two years ago. Today was my first time doing it for real.
...No. Was I really going in with nothing?
I closed my eyes and groped back through what I'd learned then. Surprisingly, the pieces came back one by one.
Counseling starts with listening. Don't interrupt. Hear them through to the end. While they're talking, don't sit there composing your next line in your head — that's pretending to listen, not listening. Empathy isn't agreement. Not you're right, but that's how it felt to you. Feelings don't come with a right or wrong, so don't start by judging; start by recognizing. Ask questions that can't be answered with yes or no. Don't interrogate them with why; ask them how it was. Why can sound like an accusation. Hold the advice. A counselor isn't someone who hands over answers. A counselor is someone who walks beside you while you find them yourself.
And above all else: confidentiality. Whatever you hear in the Counseling Room stays in the Counseling Room.
Going through them one by one in my head, I calmed down a little. All right. I wasn't completely naked. I was wearing the armor of theory, at least. The problem was that the armor was made of paper.
Ah — and one more thing. Rapport.
That was what they called the relationship of trust between a counselor and a client. I'd been taught that half of counseling was building rapport, and that if you were meeting someone for the first time, it could take several sessions just to get them to open the door.
But between me and Won Seo-jin, that was already there. We'd spent years knocking around the same classrooms. The starting point other people had to spend weeks building, I was walking in with for free.
And the other person was that Won Seo-jin. A girl who'd been one of the sharpest in our year wasn't about to have committed some enormous crime. At worst it would be some minor slip-up, or maybe grades, or maybe her future. Sit across from each other a few times and talk it through, and it would sort itself out.
Maybe this job will wrap up easier than I thought.
The seating was a problem too. Sit across a desk and it felt like an interview, not counseling; offer the sofa and that was weird in a different way. After some thought I went with the most ordinary option and sat facing the other chair. Ordinary was best.
I had opened and closed the poor folder I don't know how many times when it came.
Knock. Knock.
My heart skipped a full beat at the sound. I closed the folder and straightened in my seat, cleared my throat, and wrung out the most casual voice I could manage.
"Come in."
The door opened slowly.