S1 E1: Pilot (1)

The moment I opened my eyes, pop star Britner Spirits was staring down at me from the poster on the wall.

Looking closer, I saw that one corner had curled away where a pushpin had fallen out, and the sunlight slanting through the blinds lay across it in a thin stripe.

"...?"

Still blinking blankly at the poster, I slipped a hand under my pillow on pure reflex, groping for my phone. There was no phone — just a thin cord winding around my fingers. I gave it a tug, and up came an old pair of headphones with black foam padding over the earpieces, the cord running down to a silver CD player beside the bed.

"...What the hell."

My voice sounded wrong. I cleared my throat and tried again — same result. Since when did sleeping in make your voice this young?

When I pushed myself upright, a room I had never seen before came into view. A ceiling fan turned lazily overhead. On the desk sat a monitor with a bulging hump of a back, CD cases stacked high beside it, and among the videotapes filling a whole shelf I spotted more than one wearing a Blockbuster sticker.

I climbed out of bed and walked to the desk. The circuitry inside a transparent telephone showed clearly through the plastic. A pencil had snagged in the coiled cord, so I freed it, then flipped over the mouse lying nearby — there was a ball set into its underside, and when I rolled it with my thumb, dust came away on my skin.

I'd seen rooms like this on the internet — people who bought up old electronics and posted photos of them under the banner of "Y2K aesthetics." But this place was far too lived-in to be a staged set. Eraser dust was wedged under the monitor, and a pair of socks lay draped across a little tube TV.

I picked up one of the CD cases. Instead of cover art, a slip of paper had been tucked inside, handwriting scrawled across it.

Beside the words was a drawing that looked like a skull. Honestly, it looked more like a potato with holes poked into it — but there was no reason anyone would draw a potato here.

I stopped halfway through setting the case back down. There was no scar on the back of my hand. I'd gotten it as a kid, breaking a glass, and now it was gone without a trace. I rubbed the spot a few times — the skin was perfectly smooth. And come to think of it, the hand itself was small.

I went straight to the mirror on the closet door. An Asian boy in pajamas was looking back at me. His black hair was matted flat with sleep, and while the arms hanging out of his baggy T-shirt carried some lean muscle, the overall silhouette ran skinny. When I touched my cheek, the boy touched his.

"Fuck."

The curse came out in a young voice. I leaned in close to the mirror. It was a face I felt like I'd seen somewhere before.

The last thing I remembered was lying in bed, watching a teen drama set in the late '90s and early 2000s. I'd seen it so many times that I knew the next line of every scene by heart.

And then I fell asleep...

I pinched my cheek. It hurt, so I let go — then, on the off chance pain could happen in dreams too, I pinched again. This time it even brought tears.

"Junwoo!"

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

A woman's voice called from outside the door.

"If you're up, come down and eat!"

I turned toward the door. That's Mom's voice.

The thought surfaced all on its own, and with it the kitchen below the stairs painted itself into my head. The rice bowls lived in the cabinet left of the sink, and the fridge door had to be shoved hard to close all the way — Dad had been promising to fix it for ages, and it was still broken. I was reminiscing about a kitchen I had never once set foot in. Then a flood of memories came pouring in all at once, my stomach lurched, and I braced a hand against the desk.

My name was Junwoo Park — Andrew "Andy" Park in English. A Korean-American, born to a couple who had immigrated in the early 1980s. At home I was Junwoo; at school, Andy.

With the name came a memory of doing homework at the laundromat. When I sat at the counter, Dad told me to keep my hands off the customers' clothes, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and after I knocked a stack of them to the floor one day, even sitting there was forbidden. These were definitely not my memories. And yet if anyone asked, I felt like I could describe them as if they'd happened yesterday.

"Junwoo, did you hear me?"

"Yes! Coming!"

I answered first and caught my breath after. Even once the hallway went quiet, I couldn't move for a while. Then a photo pinned to the corkboard on the desk caught my eye.

The boy from the mirror stood there among friends. A good-looking Black boy with a bright, easy smile was holding up bunny ears behind the head of the person next to him, while a red-haired girl glared at the camera through thick horn-rimmed glasses. I knew at a glance that these two were Malcolm "Mac" Carter and Eileen Callahan.

I pulled the photo off the board.

"...!"

I knew these faces.

I turned slowly back to the bookshelf. A yearbook with a dark green cover sat there, the year 1999 stamped on its spine. I opened it to a red brick building — ivy climbing the walls, the school's name carved into the arch above the front doors. Briarwood Preparatory Academy. The building I'd seen to the point of nausea in the opening credits.

I flipped through until the student photos began. The moment I found the female lead, Cassidy Monroe, beaming her brightest, my fingers tensed. A few pages on came the male lead, Trey Calloway, and there was Cole Maddox too. Character after character smiled out of those photos. And then, at long last, there was Andrew Park. In the picture, I was smiling meekly at the camera.

"This is real."

I had transmigrated into the American teen drama I'd been watching right up until the moment I fell asleep — as one of its Asian side characters.

The first time I watched Briarwood, it was for English study. An American teen drama set at a private school in Texas, where the students fell in love, fought with their friends, and rebelled against their parents.

At first, it was a familiar story. There was a pretty girl in love with a handsome boy, and another handsome boy in love with her. Who danced with whom at the school festival was a matter of grave importance, and failing to get invited to a party was treated like the end of the world.

But as the seasons wore on, the kids got strange. The season one finale went out with a bang — literally, a mass shooting — and by season two, one girl was pregnant and agonizing over an abortion while another was getting her hands on drugs. The couple torn apart by a cheating scandal each ended up dating the very people they'd cheated with, and come season three, as if gun violence alone weren't enough, the show rode the anxious post-9/11 mood of the times straight into an attempted bombing by the Muslim kid.

The kids themselves soaked up the show's atmosphere and curdled along with it — the girl who'd cried her eyes out over a botched exam early on was coolly lying to the police a few seasons later. Critics scored it more stingily every year, and fans cursed the writers' sanity, calling the show racist and slamming it for reaching for ever more lurid material. And yet, supposedly, the viewership only climbed with each season. Watching it nearly twenty years after it aired, I cursed it too — and pressed play on the next episode.

I finally understood why people who watched Korean morning soaps got angry when you asked why they bothered with such garbage. That girl was, at this very moment, sneaking into some other guy's car behind her boyfriend's back — how was anyone supposed to turn off the television?

In the end, if you asked me whether Briarwood was the best teen drama I'd ever seen, my answer would be complicated. Was it the most entertaining? That much was true — of everything I'd ever watched, nothing delivered dopamine more reliably. Enough that it never got old, no matter how many times through.

The moment I finished the ending, I started over from the beginning. I watched it over meals; I watched it before bed, and when a favorite scene came on, sleep could wait. Exaggerating only slightly, I watched it nearly a hundred times that way. Thanks to that, I remembered even the extras who had names.

The docile, timid, good little Asian model student, Andy Park, was one of them. Andy was a character built by taking the first stereotypes that popped into the producers' heads at the words "Asian student" and pouring them in as-is. Good grades, obedient to teachers, physically incapable of saying no when someone asked to borrow his homework, a taekwondo black belt, and the good kid who single-handedly swept first place in the entire grade. Most of his screen time came bundled with Mac and Eileen as the Nerd Trio.

Mac at least looked funny on sight, had undeniable presence, and got a steady stream of comedic lines, while Eileen had her own niche fanbase among the people who liked nerds and gingers. Andy just laughed beside them or stared down at his notebook. He didn't appear at all in the episodes where the leads wrecked parties — he'd been using that time to study, after all. In the later stretch, as the tone turned grim and the plot slid further into train-wreck territory, he barely showed his face, and his story was wrapped up with a single line about getting into an Ivy League school.

A smooth, admirable life. From a parent's point of view, he was probably a hundred times the son any of the leads were. Whether I could live like that was another matter entirely.

For starters, unlike Andy, I liked being loud. And I had no faith in my ability to keep my nose out of other people's love lives and quietly study. Even through a screen, the moment Cass started one of her stunts, I'd pause and curse first — if it happened right in front of me, how was I supposed to keep my mouth shut?

And of all the places I could have landed, it had to be my favorite drama. I was going to be living in this entertaining town for years, and I had no intention of ending them with nothing but library visits. Though for now, I supposed, I had to start by getting used to the face in the mirror.

"Junwoo Park!"

The voice flew up from the bottom of the stairs.

"I said come eat — what are you doing!"

I closed the yearbook. A Korean parent at the tail end of the twentieth century, and the kid wouldn't come down after being called to the table three times? The fourth call would come with a beating.

"Coming right now!"

The Y2K aesthetic kept right on going after I opened the door. Family photos lined the stairwell wall, and every one I passed came with a memory of when it had been taken. There was the barbecue with the folks from the Korean church, and the trip where Dad took a wrong turn and it turned into a full-blown fight between him and Mom. Looking at a man I'd never laid eyes on and thinking, honestly, he should've quit being so stubborn — that was a deeply strange experience.

When I stepped into the kitchen, Mom was setting plates on the table.

"Up half the night, and now you finally crawl out of bed."

"I slept badly. My head's still foggy."

"That's why I keep telling you to go easy on the computer."

I took my seat. Next to the rice sat a bowl of soybean paste soup, with a rolled omelet and pan-fried Spam for side dishes. A huge jug of orange juice sitting beside the kimchi container struck me as a little foreign, but one whiff of the food and my stomach took over. Outside the window, a white man in shorts was mowing his lawn. I knew he was the next-door neighbor the instant I saw him. I picked up some Spam and kept watching the show outside.

"What's so fascinating about the neighbor? Did he get something on his face?"

"No reason."

"Our lawn could use a mowing soon, too. I'll have a word with your father."

Mom sat down across from me. Her gaze stayed on me a beat too ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠long. I busied myself re-gripping my spoon.

"What's wrong with your face?"

"Sorry?"

"Your cheek is all red."

It was the spot I'd pinched earlier.

"I guess I slept on it funny."

"Doesn't look like a pillow mark to me."

Mom studied me with a doubtful look, then pushed the soup bowl my way.

"Bed early tonight. You're not getting up this late again tomorrow."

I stopped with my spoon halfway to my mouth.

"What's tomorrow?"

"School, obviously."

Mom said it like it was nothing, snapping the lid back onto the kimchi container. I looked at the fridge. Beneath a magnet printed with the laundromat's name hung a notice from the school, and on the calendar beside it, the words "First day of school" were written in red pen.

"School starts tomorrow?"

Mom lifted her head.

"What's gotten into you? You had your bag all packed yesterday."

At that, I remembered the backpack standing beside the desk, and a hazy memory of slipping a pencil case inside came with it. The kid was well prepared. Would've been even nicer if he'd prepared to show up a day or two late.

"So summer break's over already."

"Already? You've had plenty of time to play."

That might have been true of the original Andy Park, but I'd only arrived today, and it felt a little unfair. Stirring the soup with my spoon, I checked the calendar again. August 1999.

Transmigrating in the day before school starts — isn't that a bit much? If you're going to send someone, send them when summer break starts.

"Mom."

"What?"

The word came out more easily than I'd expected, and Mom looked at me like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Can I finish off the rest of the omelet?"

"Finish it and put the plate by the sink — I'll be washing up."

Mom waited until I'd cleaned my bowl, then got up from the table. Water began running at the sink. I looked over the living room beyond it. There was a family photo beside the television, and a shirt — as if Dad had just shrugged it off — hung over the arm of the couch. Near the front door, clothes bound for the laundromat hung in their plastic wrap. The original show had only ever mentioned that Andy's parents ran a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠laundromat; their home, as far as I could recall, had never once appeared on screen.

I popped the last of the omelet into my mouth. Just then, the phone rang in the living room. Mom dried her hands and picked up the receiver.

"Hello?"

Mom, who had been speaking Korean moments before, switched to English without missing a beat. There was an accent, but for an immigrant it was more than respectable English.

"Oh, it's Eileen. How have you been?"

I looked up. I didn't have to strain to understand a word. The meaning landed instantly, the way Korean always had. I liked that. Though the me who'd first put on that show to study English would have felt cheated if he knew.

"Yeah, he's up. One sec."

Mom cupped a hand over the receiver.

"Junwoo, phone. It's Eileen."

I swallowed the rice in my mouth and stood. As I crossed the room, the face from the photo came back to me — the thick glasses, the red hair, even the glare she'd aimed at the camera. Scenes of the original Eileen Callahan caught on film surfaced right along with it.

I took the receiver from Mom. This was my first conversation with a girl I'd only ever seen through a screen, and I'd had my opening line picked out since the moment I remembered that face — the one the red hair suited so well.

"Good morning, MJ. Out looking for Spider-Man first thing in the morning?"

Mom shot me a look on her way back to the kitchen. Not a sound came through the receiver. I wound the phone cord around my finger and let the corner of my mouth curl up.

After a long moment, Eileen finally asked.

"...Is this really Andy?"