Where Pan Mang River Flows

7: Library

The class was in the next geography lesson.

"I'll announce the groups after class," said Mr. Tierra Plana, well aware of how the students would feel about that.

It was an agony of a lesson, Jae Hee had trouble listening attentively to plate tectonics anyway (they were already working on another subject, but she didn't realise that). The words did not form a coherent whole when they entered her head. When she heard 'orogeny', she wondered what ear surgery had to do with geography.

After an agonising hour of class, the moment had finally arrived. Jae Hee had successfully completed her mission in the staff room, but her legs were still shaking with nerves. What if someone had seen her? What if Taekyung noticed that something was wrong? Luckily, only the teacher was allowed to read the ballots, Taekyung wouldn't get to see the fake paper.

"Okay, so as is the case every year, it turns out to be too difficult for some people to just write down three words," Mr. Tierra Plana began, already blowing out his breath, "Do Hwan, empty, Gyong, blank. So you two go are forming one group."

He held the list in his hand. The whole school was hanging on to the window that connected their room and the corridor, as it was ten-minute break.

"But for those who can follow simple instructions: Bo Xiang goes with Suka, Ilhoon with Mew, Fretchen goes with Maren, Pegina with Ghurbert, ..."

"What!?" Pegina jumped up and walked out of the classroom with Fretchen and Maren by her side.

"Okay, that's all." Mr. Tierra Plana had finished naming all the other classmates, but neither Jae Hee nor Taekyung had heard their names. The bell rang, the next class was about to begin. The students who had been standing in the corridor watching were dragged along by their teachers. The class began talking excitedly to their chosen partners and soon found themselves in a state of murmuring.

Mr. Tierra Plana beckoned Taekyung to come to him. Her classmates were too distracted to notice, but not Jae Hee. She had her full attention on the two people at the front of the class. The teacher and Taekyung were talking with serious facial expressions, it didn't seem to be a pleasant conversation. The teacher rubbed his index finger and thumb together, like you would gesture 'money'. Jae Hee pricked up her ears.

"...My daughter to an amusement park..."

The words were completely random to her. 'Why are they suddenly talking about an amusement park?' she wondered.

"...shoes for my wife..." She was distraught. Taekyung said a few more words and then walked back to his seat, annoyed. The teacher hung the list up on the board from the front. As soon as he was gone, Jae Hee sprinted towards the sheet. At the very bottom of the list, she saw 'Taekyung - Jae Hee'.

***

Gyong stepped up to Do Hwan.

"I'll do the whole assignment by myself," she said. She was disgusted by the idea of having to work with him. She had left her sheet blank because Jae Hee wanted to be with Taekyung so badly. Besides Jae Hee -and Ilhoon, but she knew he would go with Mew- she couldn't think of anyone she would necessarily want to be in the group with. But she hadn't anticipated this. Now she regretted her decision, she would have preferred to go with any other classmate.

Do Hwan reacted neither to her presence nor to her words, she might as well not exist. Gyong stepped back just after her words, to preserve her reputation at the school.

***

"Say you love Einstein. If he asks you a question, I can probably answer it," Gyong said, sitting on her bed with a packet of chips looking at the ceiling. Every time Gyong put one in her mouth, Jae Hee cringed slightly, the sound deafening and distracting. Jae Hee stroked her hair forward to keep the earpiece unnoticeable. She sat with Taekyung in the school library to work on the geography assignment. She had never been here before. It was a clean, pleasant room. But it wasn't nice enough to ever come back here alone, it was still a library after all.

"Einstein...is great...", she said unconvincingly. She heard Gyong's facepalm through her earpiece. Taekyung didn't show it, but he found those words very hard to believe. He decided to test her, for his own pleasure.

"Prove somehow that you know what the special theory of relativity is all about," he said in a scornful-teacher tone. Jae Hee panicked; she recognised the name but had no idea what it meant. Her friend quickly came to her rescue.

"Just say the following: time dilation, length contraction and simultaneity," said Gyong.

It was too many words for Jae Hee to remember, but there was no way she could make that clear to Gyong. She went over what Gyong had said in her head and took her chances.

"Time lactation, long contracts and equality," she said confidently. Taekyung looked up from his geography course and stared at her in silence for a few seconds. He tried to gauge whether she was being sarcastic or not, but then he saw Jae Hee's big eyes. He let out a laugh, but quickly stopped himself with difficulty.

"What?" she said. Jae Hee had seen the corners of his mouth curl upwards for the first time. She watched the dazzling sight with fascination, but the minuscule smile had disappeared as quickly as it had come. When she landed back on earth, she felt slightly hurt.

At the other end of the line, she heard Gyong laughing loudly at her.

***

Taekyung and Jae Hee completed the geography assignment together, for which they spent hours on end in silence. Jae Hee hated silence, she couldn't be in the presence of another person without talking about anything, but strangely enough Taekyung's silences felt pleasant.

One afternoon Taekyung was already thinking of the next math problem to discuss over dinner, but stopped when he saw Jae Hee sweating.

"Don't you like doing maths?" he asked. Jae Hee was startled, afraid that he could read minds. "Yes I do!" she lied, "I'm just not very good at it..."

"You had invited me to dinner at your place once, didn't you? Then maybe I could tutor you... If you want."

Jae Hee chuckled inwardly at his suggestion and immediately agreed. Her hard work had finally paid off. Becoming friends with Taekyung had started to feel not like a duty, but a pleasure since a certain moment.

"Tonight? My brother is making chicken today."

***

Pegina felt uneasy, Ghurbert had not taken his eyes off her for a second.

"Euhm...what do you want to write about?" she asked.

"Whatever you want is fine," he grinned.

"Yes, but...I asked because I don't know myself."

At that moment, Taekyung and Jae Hee walked past them into the library. Pegina cast a mischievous glance at her. Jae Hee did the same, sticking out her tongue rudely. Pegina wasn't stupid -she thought- she realised that something was wrong. She didn't know exactly what Jae Hee had done, but she knew that she had cheated somehow. The only revenge she could think of was to tell the whole school. It seemed that everyone already hated Jae Hee for hanging out too much with both Ilhoon and Taekyung. The tradition in this high school was to take one clear side and stay loyal through all the years. But none of them dared to touch her because she had apparently been seen once with Do Hwan. Not only did Jae Hee not receive any consequences, although she had clearly cheated, but in the end, she wasn't even bullied.

"Guber?"

"... Yes?"

"I'm better than Jae Hee, right?"

"Who's that?" Pegina immediately felt better.

"Nobody. Can you go buy me a lollipop? I'll already start on the assignment."

Ghurbert nodded and sprinted at lightning speed to the nearest shop. A few minutes later he ran back into the library with a lollipop in his hands.