left for dead | all of us are dead

one

"if you let me borrow a kiss i promise i'll give it right back."

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    "I'm going to skip school tomorrow," Seo Mi-hwa says to her twin sister. Seo Ye-ji looks up from where her head is buried inside a book. Today's book is Emergency Medicine: A Comprehensive Study. Last week her selection was a series of first-aid manuals. The month before was a wide variety of philosophy books. She never questions her sister's book selections but doesn't know how Ye-ji can stay awake reading those books.

    "Are you sick?" Ye-ji asks.

    "No," Mi-hwa tries to ignore her twin's calculating stare on her back while she sweeps the classroom floor.

    "Are you pregnant?"

    "What the hell? No!" Mi-hwa tries to hide the red flush that creeps across her face. She's never even kissed a guy before, her sister has gone crazy.

    "Well, I'm just trying to figure out why you would want to skip school when you've never done it a day in your life." Ye-ji closes her book to give her full attention.

    "I just— My anxiety has been bad since they switched my medication so I just want to stay home and watch movies in bed all day." Mi-hwa has struggled with anxiety her entire life. It became manageable after Ye-ji argued about the benefits of medication to their parents. Her twin read multiple books on anxiety disorders and even made a PowerPoint presentation when explaining to their parents that what Mi-hwa was going through was real.

    No one would have noticed but Mi-hwa as Ye-ji's eyes soften. She could read her sister's expressions like the back of her hand. Even the slightest change in movement and they both could tell when something was wrong.

    "Just make sure you tell your boyfriend that you're not coming tomorrow. I don't want him following me around asking where you are," Ye-ji returns to her book, ignoring Mi-hwa when she chokes on her spit.

    "He's not my boyfriend," she hisses.

    "Are you sure? He follows you around like a lost puppy, wait—" Ye-ji gasps dramatically, "maybe he's a stalker."

    Mi-hwa scoffs, throwing the broom towards her sister. "He is not. He's my— he's just Su-hyeok."

    Ye-ji catches the handle of the broom without dropping her book, "You have hearts in your eyes, gross."

    Mi-hwa flashes her middle finger before leaving the classroom with a trash bag. Students mill in and out of classes, cleaning up at the end of the school day. She smiles at Dae-su and Wu-jin as she passes them.

    Making her way outside, she turns the corner to go to the back of the school. Another hand suddenly comes and lifts the trash bag out of her hands. She can't help the smile that creeps onto her face knowing who it is.

    "Hey, lover," Lee Su-hyeok whispers, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

    "Hi, handsome," she grins up at him.

    They walk side by side to drop off the trash. On-jo and I-sak wiggle their eyebrows and send her a smirk when they pass by. She knows what most of the school thinks by now. Ye-ji has definitely recounted every time someone has asked her what was going on between Mi-hwa and Su-hyeok.