adora • lookism

8. Daniel Park (1)

This included people like Logan, whose sheer physical presence dominated your attention even before you could witness his force of personality. This included people like Daniel himself, whose physical weakness and emotional vulnerability drew predators like hyenas sniffing blood. This included people like the lady from the convenience store, whose striking appearance transfixed the eye in the same manner as a sunrise on the horizon.

And it also included people like Ari.

Daniel could not say that he had particularly noticed Ari during that very first day, as a fresh arrival to the Fashion Department of Jaewon High School. Overwhelmed by the novelty of the unknown environment and people, as well as the fact that Zack was his new seatmate, Daniel had hardly noticed her among the sea of faces that had peered out at him during his introduction. Maybe if he had, he would only have noticed that she was very pretty in the same thoughtless way he had noticed that Zoe was pretty.

What pulled Daniel's attention to Ari at first was not Ari herself. After all, it was hard to notice someone you could neither see nor hear. Ari had her head down on the desk whenever class was not in session, and was blocked from his view by Zack's larger body whenever it was. And unlike many of the others in class, she hadn't thought to introduce herself to the new kid in class; he suspected that she had been too preoccupied with sleeping to even know he was there.

What Daniel noticed first, though he hadn't known it was related to Ari at the time, was that Zack always switched seats whenever he wanted to hang out with his followers during breaks. This had puzzled Daniel at first, as Zack could fully remain at his desk and do the exact same thing there, instead of snatching someone else's seat. With their noise-making, it wasn't as if the group seemed to care whether or not anyone was listening to them. And this had continued to puzzle Daniel until he saw one of the few occasions where everyone gathered round before Zack had the chance to relocate, and he heard their normally raucous voices soften by about ten to twenty decibels in volume.

Maybe that had piqued his curiosity, because what Daniel noticed next was the sheer number of people who looked for the girl in the desk next to Zack's. Although it was hard to recognize at first, when he began to pay attention, Daniel realized that there was an endless stream of female visitors to Ari's desk throughout the day. They'd talk to her, share tidbits of gossip, ask her opinion on things, or, should she be sleeping, leave small notes or gifts of snacks, stationery, and other goods. Whether she was awake or not, they'd hug her or pat her head, sometimes to be rewarded by a sleepy little smile. They would pass little messages to her in class on scraps of paper, gesture towards her from across the classroom, and wrap their arms around her arms and waist as soon as she arrived in the morning. Occasionally, a male classmate might also bypass both Ari's two guards and the constant procession of girls to speak a friendly word or two to her.

Ari had a lot of friends in class. Or, more accurately, it seemed as if almost no one in class wasn't her friend, or didn't at least think well of her.

When Daniel finally got his first good look at her, awake and speaking and protective, he hadn't known what to think. Her mildly exasperated face as she told him, "You're not even fighting the right person," had immediately triggered a pang of shame over the victory he had felt for defeating Zack, followed by confusion and frustration.

He's the one who wanted to fight! he had thought, agitated. If he's not the right person, who else would I fight?

Daniel had, at that moment, been fully prepared to dislike Ari. She hadn't even bothered to speak to him once before then. What did she know about him? What did she know about what Zack had done to him in his other body? She knew nothing at all.

And this feeling had lasted all the way until evening, when she shambled into the convenience store, looking like she would rather be anywhere else.

First thought: She looks pretty in casual clothes.

Second thought: She's going to treat me like a worm.

"Your change is 700 won," he said, passing her the change. Their fingers brushed, and he cringed internally in preparation for her disgust or disdain.

"Yes, thank you," Ari said, pocketing the coins. She smiled politely, looking at him with the same cordial expression as she might have had with any random person on the street, and then strode over to the back of the convenience store to get hot water for her cup ramyun.

Daniel had been shocked by the normalcy of the encounter. He had been even more shocked to see that she had come into the store this late at night to do homework, of all things, and that having her there in the background was actually quite nice, especially when the store had no customers for long periods of time and would have felt very lonely otherwise. She didn't even judge him when she saw him doing exercises behind the counter as she went to throw out trash, beyond telling him that, "I hope I'm not overstepping, but when you're doing push-ups, it's best to try to keep your body straight. Imagine you're pulling your bellybutton to your spine; that helps to train core strength. Good luck!"

And he had been shocked most of all to see her standing up for him, someone whom she had just met, against the three bullies he'd assumed were her friends. It wasn't like Ari knew that Vasco was just around the corner or that they wouldn't actually hit a girl when she chewed them out. But she'd done it anyway.

After that, Daniel really just couldn't stop noticing her.

And what he finally concluded, upon finding his eyes lingering on her when she was napping and trailing after her when she was awake, was this:

He didn't know if Ari liked people. But what he did know was that people liked Ari.

And no wonder.

Ari had a way of understanding someone without the weight of either pity or judgement. You could tell her anything without feeling afraid that she was hiding condemning thoughts of you in her mind; often, you didn't have to tell her anything at all, because she had already noticed without you saying a word. And if she didn't like something that you had done, which was rare, she would plainly tell you so with a manner that was straightforward but not mean.

If Zack was something like a sun that others revolved around, helplessly gravitating towards his strength and fearful of his wrath, then Ari was the moon whose comfort they sought in the dead of night.

So no wonder that Ari was beloved by this many people.

Which made it stranger that no one actually seemed to know all that much about her. When he had asked, no one really seemed to know what her parents did, which area she lived in, if she was originally from Seoul or not, why she was so sleepy all day long, or what kind of work she was doing to make her so difficult to get ahold of after school. Very careful observation revealed that Ari did not confide in anyone but Jay, who hoarded this knowledge like he hoarded his own words.

In many ways, Ari Lim was still a mystery to Daniel. But if there was one thing that he knew about her, it was that she was kind.

So Daniel wanted to be friends with Ari. Though she barely paid him any mind now, he'd keep at it until she was willing to call him her friend too. For something so important, he was willing to be patient.

___

[ Author's Note ]

I thought about it long and hard, and Eugene would be too heavy and too revealing for this early on, since he knows Ari better than almost anyone else. someone suggested Daniel and i liked that suggestion, so let's go from light to heavy :)

tbh if you'd given daniel another 5-10 mins he would have remembered about duke too. daniel is a very good child