"I'm scared, manager." Ophely muttered as they got in the car, the boys having already wished her the best for the day.
"It's going to be alright. It's only the second week of school since the start of the year. You won't be the only transferee." Ophely could only nod, her tummy was in turmoil. She was really scared to start this year. There wasn't going to be Flora waiting for her at the front door. The stress was making her unable to answer. She thought that if she'd open her mouth tears would start trickling down her face. Having red eyes wouldn't be the best look for the first day of school.
Ophely fiddled with the tie of her uniform, not used to wearing one. Especially one this fancy. Shirt, sleeveless sweater and a blazer as well as a skirt and tights. Ophely hated skirts. So that did not add to her comfort. It only increased the stress she was feeling.
Her leg bounced as she sat there, her mind racing. From everything that could go right, to how such a wonderful situation could go wrong.
"How much longer?" She asked the older man quietly. He looked at her for a short second, seeing the girl tightly holding her skirt. He could see how nervous she was;
"Not much longer." He replied, continuing to drive carefully through the busy streets of Seoul. He had been requested by the company to act like Ophely's guardian with the school. So he was there to accompany her there and finish the details of the paperwork that couldn't be done by distance.
Once they arrived, he parked the car in the parking lot associated with the school and slowly walked with the girl in two towards the reception desk.
"Hello." He said calmly, Ophely could only look from behind him at the stern woman sitting behind the desk. "We are here for the enrollment of Sojeu Opely." The old woman only looked up at that moment Ophely felt the need to stand beside her manager so she could be seen.
"How would you write that?" She asked the man, who could only turn towards Ophely, foreign names were not his forte.
"In English letters?" She asked to make sure. The woman didn't bat an eye, but didn't correct her. So Ophely started spelling her name. "For my surname - S, A, U, Z, E; and for my name - O, P, H, E, L, Y." The woman typed on her keyboard for a few minutes, not saying a word to either people in front of her desk. She did the same thing as before. Typed quietly on her computer without even addressing a gaze at the two in front of her. That was until some papers were printed and she pulled a line phone from beside her and talked into it.
"Hello, can Sim Hanbyeol come to the reception? Thank you." And then she hung up. They waited quietly in front of the reception desk for a few minutes, Ophely sending a few glances at the manager, trying to know if he understood the situation better than she did. He did not.
It was only a few minutes later that a girl who looked to be around Ophely's age showed up, she looked like the perfect student. Clean in her uniform and polite. She bowed towards the two as she arrived, Ophely did the same toward her.
"Good morning ma'am. You called for me." The woman finally looked up from her computer screen and diverted her gaze to the newcomer.
"Yes." She stood up and made her way over the desk with a few papers in her hand. She handed them to the girl. "Please bring mister to Mrs Kwon on the first floor, and then you can tour the school for Miss Sojeu here, she will be in all of your classes for the year."
"Okay. I will do it well." Holding onto the papers with both hands and bowing down to the woman in respect the young girl finally looked at them. Once the older woman sat back down in her seat, Sim Hanbyeol talked again. "Please follow me, I will show you to the administration to finish the completion of your folder." She smiled up to the manager and Ophely before turning around and walking up the stairs next to the entrance desk. The two followed quietly.
Ophely was unsure of what to do, so she followed the girl and her manager in silence, looking all around her, observing the foreign building. It was a bit weird because Ophely could clearly see that it was a high school, yet something told her, many thighs actually, that she wasn't back home in France but in a different country. So many small things that she didn't really know what it was that made it different.
She didn't realise that they had arrived at the door, that her manager had gone in and that she was left with the other girl watching the trinkets on the wall.
"Hello," She cut her off in her thoughts, "My name is Sim Hanbyeol. I'll be showing you the school today." She smiled at her, her hand out for a handshake.
"Nice to meet you." Ophely said and shook her hand politely, bowing a little too. She hadn't actually met anyone her age other than Jeonghan's sister. So she didn't really know how to act with Korean respect. "My name is Sauze Ophely." She had yet to know why Hanbyeol had laughed at her until the other one spoke.
"You don't need to bow, we are the same age here. And it's nice to meet you too. I'll show you the building now, and your locker too." She smiled, walking along another corridor. Ophely quickly followed with light steps, there was noone in the corridor but them. Classes must have already started. "I'll be showing you the student entrance at the end of the day after our lessons end here."
"Thank you."
The school was just like any other, except the fact that Ophely had to change into indoor shoes once they were in the student section of the school. Hanbyeol had quickly explained that it was to reduce the clean up process. Since students took part. Not as much as Japan, but they cared about cleanliness.
She watched from the windows the inner courtyard, though quite small, it was pretty and well kept. In the classrooms they passed were students studying with the teacher lecturing from the front.
"These are the toilets closest to the classroom."
"The classroom? Like one only?"
"Yeah." Hanbyeol looked at her weirdly. "We only have one classroom." Like that was evident, not at all for a girl who came from a system where the students were the one to move from one room to another.
"Sorry." Ophely excused herself, even if it was useless. She didn't want to seem bad in front of the girl.
"It's okay." She could tell from miles away that the smile was fake.
Ophely wasn't dumb, she could see when someone acted fake to her. She was just like her previous bully. High school seemed to be the same wherever she was. But she let it go. And continued to follow the girl down the corridor and down a pair of stairs, where at the bottom stood many lockers. Hanbyeol handed Ophely a key with a number attached to it. "This is your locker. It's over there." She pointed down a small alley where other lockers stood. "By the door. You can leave your shoes there."
"What else should I put in? Do I need my whole bag?" Ophely asked, not knowing how the locker and classroom system worked yet, she hadn't even gone to a single lesson thus far.
The girl gave her what Ophely could only describe between a scowl and a disgusted face. "Why would you do that?" She commented, turned around ready to leave for their destination. "Just keep your bag." Her perfect student image was already slipping away the more minutes Ophely spent with her. Had she not been chosen by the reception lady because of her good persona? Ophely didn't have a question to that then. So just shut her locker quickly with her outdoor shoes and shoebag in there. She tucked the key in her blazer pocket quickly and scampered to the girl nearly at the end of the corridor already.
"We are in the third year of high school," She said, "So we're on the third floor."
Ophely didn't say anything else as she followed the girl up the stairs and down the corridor, counting up every pair number, until she stood in front of the room that had attached to the top of the doorway the number thirty-six.
Sim Hanbyeol knocked gently on the door, and waited for an answer from inside.
"Come in." She slid the door open and bowed to the teacher, who wasn't surprised to see her back before the end of the lesson, it didn't take more than half an hour to take a turn of the entire school. Maybe fifteen minutes sufficed. But what she was surprised about was the new foreign face behind the student, wearing the very same uniform as Sim Hanbyeol, one of the students attending Apgujeong High School.
"Hello, Ma'am." She bowed, Ophely following suit, unsure of how to act in this new establishment. "Mrs Jim must have told you about the transferee." And without much more information to the teacher, Hanbyeol gave her the paper she was holding on and went to sit down in her own seat in the middle of the class.
"Ah, yes." The teacher looked at Ophely with a small smile. "I was told about a timing inconvenience with the start of school, so you would arrive a week late." Ophely could only nod at that. She didn't know, once again, what to say to that. She only stated facts. "May you remind me of your name, please?"
"My name i- is Sojeu Opely." Ophely pronounced as distinctively as possible towards the older woman, nervous about her suddenly dry throat.
"Ah, yes, I see." The woman pulled up the sheet of paper from where she had put them on her desk seconds before. Looking down at the foreign name on the paper with pursed eyebrows, "Sojeu Opely." She looked back up towards the teen, and her embroidered name on her blazer jacket. It was awkward and quiet for a few seconds as the teacher ruffled between her papers on the desk. Ophely could only stand still as she waited for someone to say something. She felt anxious, watched by all of her classmates.
"You can sit down by the window over there." She said, Ophely looked up to her in surplused, having not expected the woman to talk this loudly compared to her soft voice from before. It startled Ophely out of her anxious state in the middle of the class. "I want to continue on with my lesson." It was a subtle and polite way of saying that there was no time for introductions. Ophely only bowed down towards the woman and made her way towards the empty seat by the window at the back of the classroom.
When she was down and had taken out her pencil case and a jotter, the lesson started again.
Looking up towards the blackboard, Ophely saw that the teacher was currently teaching Korean history. Something that she definitely had no previous knowledge in. This was going to be hard.
And it was, not only because it was a subject she had no prior knowledge in, but also because it was in Korean. As well acquainted with the Korean as she was, Ophely still didn't know many words, and there were so many that she missed because of the teacher's rapid speech. Actually, she could say after three more classes that morning, it wasn't the rapid speech but simply the fact that the way they spoke was much more refined than the ones she had been accustomed to with the boys. It wasn't poetic nor slang, but just extremely formal and factual.
It was hard to follow but she made do. Ophely was someone who usually adapted quickly to her surroundings. So she took as many notes as she could, knowing that the first day was going to be the hardest of them all, and that the coming week would be the hardest of them all. It was only going to get better with time.
Before she knew it, it was time for lunch. And she knew nothing of how that was going to happen. The boys had told her not to pack anything, saying something about free canteen. She didn't know what to expect, as France was known for their school lunches, she frowned a little when she saw that their lunches were served in those kiddy alveolated platters.
She hadn't eaten lunch with teachers watching over her class, or simply group of friends, since she had finished primary school. And it seemed that she wasn't the only one to feel the teacher's gaze off putting. Especially when she saw other teachers in the corridor leaving their classes alone, giving her teacher a little wave. Ophely concluded that there was someone in the room that had to be watched. That was the only answer she could come up with.
"Hey, are you done?" Hanbyeol came over to Ophely's table, where she had clearly finished her platter, since there was nothing left on it. Ophely could see the words on the lips of the girl as she looked down at her from her standing position. She was pretty sure she was looking at her and saying that she was a pig over and over in her head. The girl had nothing better to do either than judge her. "You can put your platter with the others. You are not on the cleaning list today but we'll add you for the next time. Just see what they do and copy it when it's your turn."
"Where are you from anyways?" The girl asked her while she was putting her tray away with the others, carefully putting the cutlery in the bucket at her disposal.
"France." Even more questions came to the girl's mind concerning the new foreigner in her class. What was a French high school student doing in a public high school?
"What do your parents do?"
"I don't have to tell you."
Ophely didn't like the way that Sim Hanbyeol was looking at her. Nor the way she was addressing her. Like she cared one second, and the next she couldn't care less if she were to die in a ditch. She was saved by the bell, where the girl was going to push her answer she couldn't anymore as the next teacher entered their classroom
The lesson that followed was as hard as the previous ones had been , but with no more complications from Hanbyeol, who Ophely couldn't was either very dumb or just 'rebelling'.
It was during the afternoon pose that things seemed to go southwards for Ophely's first day at school, everything had been too good to be true. Too good for nothing bad to happen. She knew that there was going to be one thing that was going to ruin her good mood.
"She's just an idiot, doesn't understand anything about our culture." Ophely heard Hanbyeol mutter to her friend as she came back from the toilets, while the teacher wasn't there. What a surprise. "The Waekuk of course, who would I be talking about?" She jabbed her elbow in the girl next to her. But Ophely could only hear her loud talking. "If she moved here then her parents must have money, why isn't she in another school? She's from France too, like she would know English. She's just too dumb for international schools." By then, Ophely had enough of the slander, she stood up quietly. Made her way to Hanbyeol, and gently tapped on her shoulder.
"솔까말," Ophely said calmly, using the typical slang phrases she often heard the boys use on the daily. "I don't like you." ("To be honest,")
The girl could only look at the previously silent girl with a frown. "What you doing?"
"Saying you're a 씨발년." Ophely let out a little smirk at their shocked faces. "And maybe you should wait a little before judging people like you just did. Would you also like for us to converse in English too? To make sure I'm good, no?" Ophely lost her sarcastic smile when the girl didn't answer her. "And you must be as poor as me if you can't go to a better high school." Ophely wasn't usually one to attack others, or even get angry when people talked behind her back. She was used to it by not being able to go back home as soon as her classes ended, and for being from a poor family. Her parents lived far from the city and were farmers. She didn't have the budget others had. She didn't really know why she had reacted then. ("Saying you're a fucking bitch.")
Ophely walked back to her seat and sat there silently, taking out her jotter for the next class.
"Come back here you bitch!" Hanbyeol called back to her, standing up from the seat she had been sitting in, taking a dangerous step towards.
"닥쳐." Ophely said, again subtly telling the girl that she understood Korean much more than she thought. "The teacher is coming." ("Shut it.")
"왜 이래?" There was no need to understand the expression for Ophely, the tone the girl used was enough for her to know that it was along the line of 'what the fuck she was doing'. Suddenly the nice girl that welcomed her into the school earlier that day was gone, instead was a sensitive scumbag who thought she was better than others. "You gonna hit me?" She asked loudly leaning over the girl's desk, her face right into Ophely's. Her voice was sarcastic, accusatory and overall demeaning.
"Sim Hanbyeol." A voice called out from behind the intimidating girl, who turned around frozen in place at the voice.
"Told you." Ophely muttered as she looked back at her jotter, seeing the page folded haphazardly by the leaning hands of the girl standing in front of her desk. She too looked up to see their teacher against his desk at the front of the room, eyeing the girl between them.
"I was told you were to care for the new girl today, not offend her the moment the teachers are away." It looked like that man had known about Hanbyeol's attitude. He lazily leaned onto the desk closer to them. His arms crossed and gaze fixed on the girl straightening up, fixed her blazer and looked only at the ground in shame. "You already have ten offences on your record, and that was only since you moved here last year. At fifteen you are out, you know that?"
-
"How was your first day?" Manager asked her when he went to pick her up that afternoon, at around four in the afternoon. It had only been two hours since Sim Hanbyeol had been reprimanded by the teacher. From what she gathered during his lesson, he was pretty young and was the teacher crush of every single girl in the school. Though apart from that every student loved him because he was pretty chill, something that Ophely got to experience first hand.
After he found out that Ophely was new he welcomed her in and made everyone tell her their names and something they liked about his subject (maths) until it was her turn and she got to have a pretty good image of each of her classmates. "Yeah, it was eventful. I didn't expect school to be like this in Korea. But it was good." She smiled up towards the man as they walked towards the bus. In all, it was a good day. It could have gone way worse, she could have humiliated herself, or even made herself the victim to anybody that wanted it. Thinking back at lunch time, she did good by standing up for herself. People weren't going to walk all over her. At least, she hoped so.
Seventeen's manager smiled back down towards her, seeing how she actually was quite happy with how the day had gone. Not entirely, but most of it.
And then they were on the bus for twenty minutes, that one taking her the closest to the Pledis building in the same district of the school. It wasn't the same as the boy's dorm, but it was closer than nothing. Ophely took note of every stop they passed, seeing how the line, so she could take it the other way round the next morning to go back to school.
And then she was back in the Pledis building and the boy's practice room. Like she had done for a whole month before they started promoting their song. She knew the building like the back of her hand, so she thanked the man who drove her there and made her way upstairs to see the boys.
She wasn't ready to see the boys with a cake with candles on top as she walked through the door. Nor had she been ready for the cheering the boys called for her as she stood there, in front of the door with confetti falling on her.
Suddenly she laughed, she had been slightly stressed with how the day had ended but the surprise party the boys had created for her was all she needed to let it all out.
Ophely continued laughing as she was brought into a tight group hug by most of the members.