Episode 116: Friends
"Hey! Yumi, long time no see. Have a good break?"
"Yeah! Yeah! I had a great break, Jiyu. How about you?"
"Mine was great too, hehe. Over spring break I even went to the zoo with my dad. I saw this enormous tiger right up close! I wanted to see the giraffes, though, and some accident with a visitor got the exhibit shut down. Such a letdown."
"Really? I'm jealous... My dad keeps saying we should go watch baseball every single day. It's better now, at least, since it's the off-season and they aren't playing. I don't even care about baseball, and he still tries to drag me along."
"For real? Can't you just tell him you don't want to go?"
"I do, and then he says you'll grow to love it if you keep watching. I absolutely do not. What's the point of watching a team that finishes dead last every year?"
"Doesn't your dad root for Hanha?"
"Yeah."
Spring had come to Byeolbit Elementary, and the building hummed with the energy of little kids. Middle and high schoolers were mixed in among them, but nobody really had to pay them any mind. They were already trudging through that storm-and-stress stretch called puberty, and the aura rolling off them was damp, sticky, and thoroughly unpleasant.
Anyway, with spring break over, the elementary school was a cheerful racket. Everyone was catching up with friends they hadn't seen in ages. Sure, they kept in touch by phone even when they didn't meet over the break, but talking face to face had a flavor all its own.
Byeolbit Elementary ran on an unusual university-style system. Aside from the required subjects—Korean, English, and math—everything else worked on credits, so you registered for the lectures you wanted and took those classes. The first week was almost entirely like college: greeting the teachers you would be studying with, and trading a little small talk.
No teacher was tactless enough to launch into a real lesson at the very first meeting. Teachers were people too. None of them wanted to start by stacking unpopularity points with the kids they would be teaching from here on out, and these were still elementary students. There was no reason to grind them that hard yet.
There was a saying, of sorts, that you only had to get serious once you entered high school. It wasn't that elementary and middle school classes didn't matter. Maybe it simply meant this was the only stretch of a student's life when you still got the chance to play.
It was the first day back, and no one was about to shush the kids for talking their heads off. Clustering up and chattering like that would last a day or two at most. Give it a few days and they would settle back into being students again. That much was certain.
Outside, the snow was already piled deep. The kids in the classroom had room in their heads for exactly one thought—playing in it—and they were praying the lessons would end fast. Class had not even started, and they were already sipping the kimchi broth before the rice was on the table, picturing themselves out in the middle of the schoolyard in a snowball fight.
The classes had already been split up, even if there were only four of them. Korean, English, and math were taken with your own homeroom, so kids in the same class tended to grow closer. Still, with fewer than a hundred students in the whole school, everyone knew everyone else's face whether they shared a homeroom or not.
That was when a child with green hair stepped into the classroom. Dye jobs were common enough these days, but even a stylist who colored hair all day would have had a hard time producing a green like that. At first the kids had misunderstood, assuming Hana had simply dyed hers.
Green eyes paired with green hair was not a combination you saw often. Even if you tried to copy it on purpose, it would have been nearly impossible, and her looks could have stood beside any child actor's. On top of that she had transferred in during third grade, so of course she drew attention. The bag on her shoulder, though, dropped people's interest in a hurry.
It was printed with an illustration of Little Magician Rumi, the show all the kids were into lately. In first grade you bought a bag with your favorite anime character on it without a second thought, but by around third grade you were old enough to feel how childish that was.
Children grew up fast. That was simply how it went.
Look over the bags in the class and most of them were solid colors. Kids who still wanted to hold on to a little of that childhood sometimes hung an anime character on as a keychain, and that was as far as it went.
"Hi, Hana!"
"Hi!"
Yumi and Jiyu greeted her the moment she came over. The two of them had gotten close in a rush around the opening ceremony. Sitting right beside her as desk partners, and in the seat in front, they had hardly had a choice.
"Hi!"
Hana returned the greeting brightly, already turning over how she might cut out of school as fast as possible today.
Yumi and Jiyu were very close. Even at Byeolbit Elementary they were a famous pair, and whether they were coming to school or heading home, the two of them stuck together like glutinous rice cakes.
Close as they were, they squabbled now and then in a playful way, but they never fought for real. It was the kind of bickering you only saw between best friends.
That two-person combo had become a trio. Hana had wedged herself in. At first they had been a little wary, but once they actually talked, she turned out to be a slightly unusual kid.
She was clearly an elementary schooler, and yet something about her felt strangely like a middle-aged man. Watching how much she loved Rumi, you might have thought her mental age sat a little below other kids her age—but keep talking to her, and she somehow felt older instead.
Even so, just being next to Hana put them at ease, and before they knew it the two of them had let their guard down and decided to fold her into their pair. A comfort plush, you might have called her.
The fresh scent of clean air that clung to Hana did more than loosen the two of them, body and mind. It stirred something else too: the urge to look after her.
"What's class today?"
"I think we only have Korean and English."
"Whoa! I need to get home fast and watch Little Magician Rumi!"
"Yeah, yeah. You really do love Rumi, don't you, Hana?"
"She's my absolute idol!"
Yumi and Jiyu enjoyed their anime too, of course, but not to Hana's level of total immersion. The two of them had decided she was a little unusual.
"See you! See you tomorrow!"
Before I knew it, class was over. It was the first week, so there hadn't been much of a lesson at all. We had done something like a roll call, and with so many self-introductions it was starting to feel familiar. Maybe because I had come in as a transfer student, introducing myself was mandatory in every first class I walked into.
Thankfully the kids looked at me with warm eyes. I had been braced to get picked on like a stone that stuck out, but they were still elementary students, and there was none of that wariness toward an outsider.
"Bye, Hana!"
Yumi and Jiyu lived nearby, so the two of them headed home arm in arm. My house was a bit far, which meant I had to go by car. If Bora or Haru was too busy I took a taxi, but on ordinary days one of them came to pick me up.
Dismissal fell in the afternoon, which suited Haru and Bora just fine. It was a legal way to slip out during work hours, wasn't it? Fetching me wasn't exactly playing hooky, but once we were in the car we did stop here and there, and a little time did get wasted. That much was true.
I never objected to wherever Haru and Bora wanted to go. Ride with them, and there were always crumbs that fell your way.
"Hana, you made it through without causing any trouble, right?"
"Obviously!"
Bora and Haru both seemed to think of me as a walking disaster, but I was very much an adult. I never made the kinds of mistakes little kids made. Well—I had made mistakes up to now, but that couldn't be helped. My body was still a child's, and the mind follows the flesh, so there were parts of me I couldn't fully control.
Surely it would get better as time went on? No adult truly understood the child they used to be. All you could do was guess at why you had acted that way back then.
"Want to grab a chocolate shake on the way?"
"Yes!"
Vroooom.
Picking up a takeout drink before we left the city had become a routine before I knew it. There were cafés around the research institute too, but chocolate from downtown tasted more special. If you were going to live a school life, you needed a few falling crumbs.
I kept the choco shake Bora had bought me in my mouth and stared blankly at her as she drove. I had a license, even if it had been living in a closet, and I could drive...
If someone told me to drive right now, though, my short legs would make it impossible. Reaching the brake or the gas would mean moving my whole body. Even so, watching Bora behind the wheel sent the urge to drive boiling up in me.
If I could drive, getting through school would be so much easier... An elementary schooler at the wheel would make the news, though, so the thought had to stay inside my head.