The Secret Only I Don't Know
At Byeolbit Elementary, in third-grade Class 1, Hana had become the talk of the school among the boys.
The ones who had come sneaking over for a look at the rumored transfer student each drifted back to their own classrooms already nursing a crush.
First. Her looks were strikingly pretty, pretty enough to set the hearts of boys her age racing.
Large, bright eyes that called to mind someone from the West; a nose so straight and high it looked as if she'd had work done; a small, round, egg-shaped face; and, child though she was, legs so long they were hard to believe at a glance, set against a short little torso.
People were slaves to beauty, and children, being purer still, needed no exception made for them. In the modern world, looks were a stat that only improved the higher it climbed. It wasn't the sort of stat that soured or fell off once it got too good. It was the sort that poured out love without limit.
Whenever a boy with intentions tried to sidle up to Hana and start a conversation, Yumi or Jiyu, forever at her side, would swoop in with uncanny timing and shield her for all they were worth. It was a creed with them: keep their little Hana safe from those wolfish boys.
Even so, Jiyu and Yumi couldn't hold an iron defense forever, and now and then someone did manage to talk with her. Speak with Hana, and unlike the other kids her age, she carried a scent that was strangely, deeply familiar.
At first the boys had even gathered to debate what this unfamiliar-yet-familiar air around her actually was.
She was clearly a girl... so why did she give off the exact atmosphere of visiting the main family house at Lunar New Year or Chuseok? They found the reason soon enough. For a ten-year-old little girl, Hana had a remarkably old-fashioned way of thinking.
Set aside her love of Little Magician Rumi, and she reminded them of the uncles who holed up in their rooms like unemployed bums every time the family went to the main house. Hana wasn't an uncle, of course, but the peculiar atmosphere she gave off was uncannily like those uncles'.
"Still, she's just unique, right? It's not like Hana's a bad person."
"I wish I could actually talk with her..."
"Last time Siwoo tried to set a confession-ish mood with her, and it didn't do a thing, remember?"
"I mean, Siwoo, that guy's trash, right?"
"?"
Second.
Hana's behavior was, every so often, incredibly bold—the same kind of bold as boys horsing around with one another.
Talk with her for any length of time and the physical contact came often. She seemed to do it without a thought in her head, but for the boys on the receiving end it was enough to turn their faces red. The sort of thing that came back to you once you got home and lay down in bed.
And, like some annual festival, her walking into the boys' bathroom was a bonus on top of that. She used the girls' bathroom more often, of course, but for some reason Hana would wander into the boys' room now and then. Then their screams would ring down the hallway. However lenient people might be about a girl stepping into the boys' bathroom, the mere fact of her coming in was enough to drag a shriek out of them.
Third.
For all her airheaded, screw-loose look, she was absurdly good at studying. They'd heard this midterm had been pretty hard, and Hana had planted herself at the top of the whole school without a hint of shame.
And with a decent gap over second place, at that. People said that if you married a woman, pretty looks lasted three years and a good personality thirty; in Hana's case, throw in a bonus and you could probably live off her face for ten. They also said a smart head meant three generations prospered, and since Hana was smarter still, maybe five? A few of the girls and boys who actually buckled down felt a stab of inferiority beside her.
How good an environment did you have to grow up in to look that outstanding?
And how good a cram school did you have to attend to study that well?
And yet the kid named Hana seemed never to have been seen with her parents. The only one they'd ever spotted was a young-looking woman she called her older sister...
At any rate, whatever Hana herself thought as she drifted through school without a care, the boys of Class 1 were keenly, constantly aware of her.
"Ugh, I want to go home."
I slumped back in my chair and stared blankly into empty air. Times like this called for a glass of beer in hand... Going to school was fine, but sitting through class was pure misery.
Honestly, learning addition and subtraction, how was I supposed to keep from feeling pathetic? A glance was enough for the answer to appear, while the kids around me scribbled numbers into their notebooks and calculated one digit at a time, working hard to solve what was in front of them. From the side, the difficulty was enough to drag a hollow laugh out of me, but there was nothing to be done. How impressive could third graders really be?
It would be ten years before these kids took their first steps into the world. Korean and English were the same. From the standpoint of someone who had scraped through university on grades that weren't excellent but weren't terrible either, the problems were so easy they made me yawn.
It felt as if I'd turned into one of those people who hid how strong they really were, and my conscience jabbed me now and then. Proud of showing off among little kids, are you? Something like that. Still, I had no choice. They'd said that if I didn't take first on the midterm, they wouldn't buy me the Little Magician Rumi transformation set.
If getting Little Magician Rumi meant coming in first, then I'd swallow my tears and do it. The difficulty, of course, was easier than twisting a child's wrist.
"Hana. How do you solve this?"
Yumi asked from the seat beside me. Jiyu, who had built a wall between herself and studying, never brought me homework questions, but Yumi was different—the model-student type you could find anywhere. I picked up my pen and walked her through the problem she didn't know.
Third-grade problems were easy enough to solve with my feet anyway. Explaining the process was harder than solving them. In my head the answer appeared the moment I looked, but ask me to lay the steps out loud and I stumbled a little.
People who made a living as teachers, or in any job that meant teaching others, were impressive, I decided. Even easy problems drained this much mental energy; spending eight hours a day teaching them to other people was, from where I sat, jaw-droppingly hard.
Anyway, once I'd taught Yumi the problem, I got bored again. It was break, so I pulled out my tablet and searched for the anime that had just come out.
Tap, tap!
"I really think you're smart, Hana. Do you study at home? I don't think I've ever seen you study at school."
I flinched.
Yumi had stabbed me right where it hurt. At school I hardly studied at all. I didn't exactly goof off, but to anyone watching I looked like someone who had basically thrown studying away. Yumi said I looked as if I studied even less than Jiyu.
"Th-that's right! I'm the type who's more comfortable studying at home."
I lied, because admitting I didn't study at home either seemed like it would get tiring later. I did study at home, of course, just not very much, and mostly the memorization subjects. Korean, English, and math I could handle on basic skill alone, but memorization subjects were different—without the knowledge, even a professor, never mind a college student, couldn't solve them.
"Let's study together at home sometime! I want to see what you look like when you're studying!"
"Sure!"
I had no idea when we would actually study together, but for now I tossed out an empty promise. From behind me, Jiyu peered at the anime on my screen and said,
"This is childish. It's not even fun!"
"What did you say?"
Childish?! As expected, a third grader's eyes could not be trusted. Calling a story this tearful and moving childish. I decided I would have to give Jiyu a special education later, on just how good the content of this anime really was.
"That's because you don't have an eye for it, Jiyu! I could talk all day about how fun this anime is!"
Blaming her unrefined taste, I chattered on in my small mouth about the anime's fun and its greatness. Listening, Jiyu's eyes seemed to spin in circles. I hadn't even been going for a few minutes when she clasped her hands and said,
"Listening to you, it does sound like a fun anime! I'll watch it when I get home!"
The moment she said it, my mood lifted. I felt as if I had guided another believer onto the righteous path today. I thought I understood why religious people went out proselytizing. The pleasure of leading someone off the wrong road and onto the right one was simply too good.
"Yumi, you too..."
I said it with a sidelong glance at Yumi. But she went pale and shook her head back and forth.
"N-no! Hana, I'm sorry, I don't really watch anime!"
"Oh?"
Well, I had no intention of forcing someone who didn't like anime to sit through it.