Chapter Text
Seoul, May 2016
Now playing — SpringYouth_2016-05-30_interview01_take01_CamA_v01.mp4
Producer (PD): What was your first impression of Yona?
Hak: That she looked like a princess.
Yona: Hak, that’s really embarrassing. You can’t just say things like that.
Hak: You didn’t let me finish. She looked like a spoiled princess. Bratty. She had an obnoxious tiara, a pink poofy dress, and she had so many toys I thought her house was a toy shop.
Yona: Hak! That’s not true!
Hak: How would you know? You don’t even remember.
Yona: And how would you remember? You were only, like, four.
Hak: And still older than you, Princess. Personally, I’d trust the word of a four year old over a three year old.
Yona: PD-nim, can we cut this out?
PD: We can start over, if you like.
[Yona looks at the crew behind the camera before looking at Hak and sighing.]
Yona: No, it’s okay. Sorry.
PD: Sounds like there’s a lot of history between you two.
Hak: [pretends to shiver] Too much. You know, I used to help this girl with everything. Her shoes. Her clothes. With her math homework. Science homework. Probably even her PE homework. She should be thanking me that she’s even here in high school today. She used to work me like a servant.
Yona: Hak, shush. I’m smart. I would have gotten here just fine without you. PE homework isn’t even a thing, are you stupid? No one should believe you.
[Hak points at the producer behind the camera.]
Hak: PD-nim, are you hearing this? Maybe you should cut this out. Everyone’s going to see her bullying me.
PD: I think it’ll be okay. I like how natural you two are. It’s like you were always meant to be together.
When Yona is called to the staff room, there are two possibilities that run through her head.
One: her uniform violates the school’s uniform policy. But she looks at her uniform as she paces down the school hallway, and everything is in the right place. Her tie is where it should be. So is her blazer. And her skirt looks correct too. Her hair is neat and clean and never been dyed (yes, the red is all-natural, thank you very much), nor does she ever plan to. She’s too scared of something going wrong. What if she’s allergic to hair dye? Or her hair falls out when she tries to bleach it? She would have to come to school with a bag on her head and she thinks that would probably violate the uniform policy too.
Two: the school received her unconventionally-composed email requesting—well, begging—the school to let her into the student council. She could’ve sworn she never ended up sending it. She shivers thinking about her teachers reading that email. There were far too many grammatical errors, and it was probably written in the wrong tone, and she vaguely recalls tacking on a ‘plzzzzz plz plz’ at the end. In her defence, she’d just gotten her wisdom tooth out, and while sitting in the hospital bed coming off of anaesthetic it had seemed like an appropriate course of action at the time.
Admittedly, it was not. Hak and Mundok had to grab the phone out of her hands once they realised what Yona was up to. Yona did not receive her phone until the following day, despite her insistence that she was fine.
Yona’s palms begin to sweat by the time she reaches the staff room. She’s not a naughty student by any means, but this is the first time she’s been called here without reason. The last time she came to the staff room, she’d been accompanying their art teacher by carrying a box of supplies. Yona remembers how she’d thanked her with a small nod and a smile on her face, saying, Our Yona, always so polite! I didn’t even need to ask you to help me. This is what a real role model of our high school looks like…
Anyway, Yona is standing outside the door of the staff room. It’s a nice door. There’s no window in it like all of the classrooms’ doors. She reads the sign above the door again just for good measure. Yep, definitely the staff room. She wipes her hands down on her skirt. Consequently, she cringes at the feeling of her moist hands against fabric. She wonders whether she’d get in more trouble if she just dashed it back to the classroom now. She inspects the door again. Yep, definitely a door.
The door begins to slide open.
Yona scuttles back a little bit like a beetle.
“Ah, Yona, I was waiting for you!”
Yona fights back the urge to sigh a deep breath of relief at the face that appears in the doorway.
It’s their English teacher, Lee Geun-tae. He’s Korean-Australian, married, and has a lot of love for his wife and young son. There’s an unspoken understanding among students that the easiest way to get out of doing English classwork for the day is to set Lee-seonsaengnim off on a tangent about his son. He takes the bait hook, line, and sinker each time. It’s a method tried and tested. The easiest cheat in the book. One day, Yona asked for an encore of his story about his son trying tteokbokki for the first time (one of his personal favourite narrations) in perfect English, and he was too happy to oblige. He always tells his stories in English too, so it’s not like they were wasting lesson time. She only asked out of the best interest of her class. It’s good practice to get accustomed to the Australian accent.
In any case, Yona feels that she and Lee-seonsaengnim have reached a camaraderie of sorts. She, for one, is always on top of her English homework. She also consistently gets good marks in their English exams. And most importantly, she is always thoroughly invested in his stories. So, Yona is confident that he has not called her today to get her in trouble. She can breathe easy.
“Hello, seonsaengnim,” Yona says, bowing her head and entering the room. “What do you need from me?”
“How confident are you in front of cameras?”
“What?” The question is so unlike what she was expecting that she forgets what she’s doing there for a moment. “Um, well, it depends, do I have my makeup on? I look fine without it, but if I am to be recorded, I would like to look my best. Not that I’m wearing makeup right now though, I always follow the uniform policy, of course. Anyway, I’m usually fine with talking in front of cameras, though I guess it also does depend on who I’m talking with. Or are we just talking photos? This is a very broad question, seonsaengnim.”
“You’re perfect.”
“Thank you,” she replies, wondering if that’s appropriate for her teacher to be saying.
“No, I mean you’re perfect for this. Honestly, I was a bit surprised when he put your name forward for this, since I haven’t taught you for that long. But I guess he would know you better than me anyway.”
“What’s happening? Did you receive my email after all? I’m surprised you managed to get through that…”
In all honesty, Yona did not anticipate her student council ‘request’ to be sent in the first place, let alone be accepted. She can ignore the mortification that arises from realising her teachers read the slop that her anaesthetic-addled brain came up with since it has a reaction like this. You’re perfect for this. Wow. Really, she always knew that being on the student council was her calling.
Not to blow her own trumpet, but Yona thinks she’s one of the more outspoken students in her class, or perhaps if she’s feeling ambitious, the whole grade. Once, she was at a fast food restaurant with her classmate and her burger came with pickles. Her classmate did not like pickles, and had asked for none, but she was totally an ‘I’ so she was too shy to tell the workers that. Yona, being the outgoing girl she is (she’s an ‘E’, by the way), stepped up and announced, “Excuse me, she asked for no pickles.” It was a really proud moment for her.
“What? What email? No,” her teacher says, a crease in his forehead and looking as if she’d just asked him if she could skip school.
Well. There goes her chance. What would the student council do if they’re ever at a restaurant and needed her expertise? Their loss, she supposes.
“Actually, the school was approached by a production company a while ago,” he continues. “They’re doing a documentary on the springtime of youth. They want to follow two students at our school.”
“That’s really cool,” Yona nods. She doesn’t think ‘documentary’ and ‘cool’ ever belong in the same sentence together, but it’s the first thing that comes out of her mouth. “I haven’t heard of something like that before.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Yes. But there’s a problem, seonsaengnim,” she says, threading her fingers together.
Her eyes wander around the staff room. Lee Geun-tae folds his arms and waits for Yona to continue.
“It’s nearly summer.”
He sighs, plopping down on his desk chair and wheeling himself behind his desk. There are disordered stacks of papers and paraphernalia all over it, which Yona politely ignores. “It’s just a figure of speech. For the romantic, blissful period of adolescence. Hey, do you know what ‘springtime of youth’ is in English?”
Yona pretends to think about this a little, but a translation doesn’t come to her. She wonders if Lee-seonsaengnim will be disappointed by his (self-acclaimed) star student. “Sorry, I don’t think I do.”
“Perfect. That’s homework for you, then. You can tell me what you find at the start of next lesson,” he says, looking smug with himself, as if he doesn’t get duped out of lesson time by his students on a daily basis. Yona nods politely, indicating that she’s mentally noted this task of great importance. “In any case, I think you two will do really well together. If you accept, that is. I don’t think it’ll be a lot of work for you two either. Just cameras following you both everywhere at school.”
So her teacher wants her to star in some schooltime documentary with some mystery student. Yona’s not quite sure what she wants to be in the future yet, but maybe this documentary will be her breakthrough into showbiz. If it even gets views.
“If I do accept, who am I going to be doing this with?”
“Son Hak, from the grade above you. Class 3-3.”
Yona feels her eyebrows jump up her forehead. “Hak?”
“Is there a problem? I heard you two knew each other well.”
“No, no! There’s not, seonsaengnim. It’s okay.”
Yona does know Son Hak very well.
Too well, actually.
They’ve been friends since they were young, and have always been inseparable. Their friendship, she thinks, is one of the constant and unchanging things in this world. Something that’s always been there, an indisputable history, an undebatable fact, like the meteor wiping out the dinosaurs millions of years ago, or Lee-seonsaengnim’s son finding the chewiness of tteokbokki amusing. Hak has just always been there. So much so that Yona would not be surprised if it turned out that her first word was Hak.
The first time Yona remembers seeing Hak, they were in a playground with two slides and two swings and monkey bars and a sandbox.
Yona had grown tired of the slides and swings (and her mother said she wasn’t allowed to try the monkey bars because she wasn’t a big girl yet), so she had resigned to a life in the sandbox. The sand was soft under her knees. She sat poking holes in the sand and running her finger through it, watching as it left faint lines in its tracks.
As she began to draw a smiley face in the sand, the other kid in the playground joined her in the sandbox. She looked towards her parents, who were sitting next to an older man (that she would later come to know as Mundok) and they beckoned her to say hello. So she did.
“Hello.”
“Hello, Yona. It’s Hak.”
As it turns out, her first memory of Hak is her first memory of Mundok. And as it turns out, her first memory of Hak is one of the only memories she has of her mother.
Anyway, the rest was history.
And a recent development recorded in their history is that Hak is not allowed to talk to Yona at school. A simple, effective, and above all, necessary rule Yona implemented after she followed Hak into high school. It’s been a year and a couple months since Yona started high school, May of her second year, and they’ve both been following the rule diligently. Starring in a documentary together would have all their hard work crumbling away, like bricks of an obsolete castle cracking in decay.
So there is, in fact, a problem.
“I just think it’s a great opportunity for you both. Hak especially. That guy’s destined for greatness, I’ll tell you.”
“Hak is?”
Lee-seonsaengnim looks up from the photo frame he’s fiddling with as he speaks, looking confused. Yona guesses it’s probably of his son. She politely ignores that too. “Do you disagree?”
Does Yona disagree?
Yona almost blanches at the question, her stomach reeling, as if offended that her teacher had ever entertained the thought.
Does she not think that her best friend is destined for greatness? Hak, who is endlessly thoughtful, the boy who used to build pillow forts for her on the nights she was lonely and sad? Hak, who is caring to a fault, the boy who swapped out his boots to tiptoe around in Yona’s small flats just because she was uncomfortable? Her unrelentingly talented Hak, the boy who, despite the enormous devotion and time he gives to his family, still thrives in everything at school? Who always gives his all at every sports club he’s in?
Of course she thinks he’s destined for a lot more than this. He deserves the world and some.
“Of course not. Hak… he’s really great.” Yona squirms slightly on her feet. However annoying he may be sometimes (which is stupendously), ‘great’ doesn’t even begin to encompass it. “How does this documentary help him?”
“Well, that boy has been in every club under the sun since starting high school. Football, fencing, judo, baseball, you name it. He’s an ace. I mean, I don’t know a lot about sports, I’m just a simple English teacher,” he shrugs, shoulders reaching his chin and with an expectant look on his face that has Yona thinking he’s waiting for some refutation. And Yona does have reason to doubt him. He certainly does not have the build of a simple English teacher. He could pass as a seasoned warrior, in her opinion, with his extremely broad shoulders and large muscles. Not that Yona checks him out, though. She just hears enough from the girls in her class squealing about him. “But as far as I know, no one really pays attention to high school teams. There’s barely even a league. But if he can attract the attention of sponsors now with this documentary, when he gets to university… he’ll be unstoppable. I know I’ll be seeing him bring home gold for our country one day.”
“Really? A high school documentary can help with… a sporting career?”
“I’m not an expert,” he stops here as if awaiting refutation again, “but sponsors are always looking for someone who’s good for their brand. That’s half of what being an athlete is, you know. The sports, and then looking good for the public. If Hak can capture the hearts of the general public here, well… It's certainly a good headstart. And a good opportunity, especially since third years are going to suspend all their club activities soon. He’s already agreed to it. We just need his co-star now. That’s where you come in, Yona.”
Yona hadn’t known that Hak was interested in pursuing a sporting career. It’s not unexpected, of course, as she herself always thought Hak could go professional with his skill. In whatever sport he wishes. He really is destined for something great. Something more. The sky is blue, the grass is green, and Son Hak is destined for greatness. It’s something she’s always believed, inherently, like knowing you’ll wake up in the morning once your head hits the pillow.
But Hak’s never mentioned wanting to make a career out of it, or out of competing, at least. The most he’d ever talked about the future was about trying to find a job as soon as possible after he graduates high school. And Yona’s never questioned it. She knows how much he wants to help out Mundok.
At her silence, Lee Geun-tae continues. “You don’t need to give me an answer straight away. Speak to your guardian about this. Filming will begin soon, but there’s no rush.”
He says this all with a sceptical expression, which leads Yona to believe that there is indeed a rush. As he had said, third years are stopping their club activities soon, so the production company probably wants to start filming as soon as possible. She doesn’t know what else could be classed as the springtime of youth if Hak didn’t have a club to go to. Would they just film him going to his classes, cram school, and supplementary lessons?
They’re already at a disadvantage, deciding to produce a documentary of all things (Yona doesn’t even know if the general public watch those anymore — the last one she’d seen on television was about unearthing the world’s mysteries, boldly titled You Can’t Look Away: Discover The Universe’s Darkest Secrets!, but she clicked away less than two minutes after the title card), so subjecting the viewers to however many hours of a student studying seems like some sort of medieval torture method. It doesn’t sound very romantic, or blissful, if you ask her.
“I’ll ask him, seonsaengnim.” She will probably not have a proper conversation with her father until a couple business weeks, but Lee-seonsaengnim doesn’t need to know that. “I’ll let you know my answer as soon as possible.”
“Thank you, Yona,” he says, with a smile on his face that would have her friend Lili fainting. He doesn’t say anything else, so Yona takes this as her cue to bow and leave.
She doesn’t know how she feels about breaking her number one rule to star in this company’s possible mind-torture documentary, so she’s planning to ask Hak what he thinks as soon as she can catch him.
As she’s about to exit the staff room, her teacher’s voice comes again.
“And Yona?”
She turns around. He’s half-twisted in his chair as if Yona was the one who called him to attention instead.
“If it helps, you will be paid for participating in this, by the way.”
Yona stills in the doorway.
Why hadn’t he mentioned that earlier?
It very much does help. That money would be good for Hak.
She’s almost about to accept the offer right there and then, but Mundok had always taught her to ‘not be brash in making decisions’ and ‘to think about the bigger picture beyond her actions’ (she got this particular lecture again after The Email Incident), so she decides she’s going to demonstrate her new mature approach to life. She needs to deliberate with Hak immediately, since they’re due for a discussion in terminating their school rules.
She bows at her teacher once again, and makes her way back to her classroom.
When Yona finally joined Hak in middle school, she was ecstatic, despite her anxieties. She was finally in the same school as her best friend again, after being doomed to forever lagging behind Hak due to the small crime of being one year younger than him.
That happiness soon dwindled after she realised what being Hak’s best friend in school entailed.
Middle school was a big deal. The middle school she went to was larger than her elementary school, which meant it was gigantic, because her elementary school was huge. She had to start wearing a school uniform, which consisted of a navy blazer and skirt and a cute green tie that she, at the time, hated. Because she thought it looked gaudy clashing with her red hair, and she was, at the time, awfully conscious of her hair. She spent a lot of her time running her fingers through the wild curls, trying to fashion them into a style that made her look cute, wishing that her mother had been gracious enough to pass on her black, silky hair to Yona.
But she had not. So Yona started middle school with a mixture of happiness, security, anxiety, and self-consciousness, which all bubbled around like soup boiling in her stomach.
Happiness, because she was finally with Hak.
Security, because she started school with one friend in her roster by default — Son Hak, ever-present, who made it his duty to hang out with Yona during every breaktime.
Anxiety, because, well, it was a new school, and she didn’t know anyone but Hak. She hadn’t quite come out of her shell yet, so she was anxious about making friends.
Self-consciousness, because she looked stupid with her red hair and green tie, looking like Christmas had come early. She played with her hair so much that Hak had taken to taunting her with threats of balding. But what was she to do? No one would approach her if she looked weird. She didn’t want to spend her whole middle school career chasing after Hak.
Those worries were extinguished when girls began to ask Yona to lunch. Girls in her class, and girls from other classes alike, all shyly approaching Yona to invite her.
And, of course, Yona was over the moon.
She sat with them at lunch, hung out with them at breaktime from time to time (to Hak’s displeasure), and became very good friends with them. They did all that friends do. They went to the convenience store together in the mornings and bought matching strawberry milks, the ones with the cute Doraemon leaping across the packaging. They exchanged notes from lessons and studied together in the school’s library. They added each other on KakaoTalk and sent each other cute stuff. Yona was ecstatic. She was finally in the same school as her best friend, she had a nice group of friends, and she was absolutely breezing through middle school. It was like a walk in the park.
However, like all good things, that came crashing to an end.
“So, Yona, is Hak single?”
“Yona, I’m going to confess to Son Hak. Please help me!”
“What does Hak like? Do you think he would like chocolates? Handmade?”
After they had passed into what she had thought was a comfortable, real friendship, these girls who used to laugh and hang out with Yona all the time would only ever ask her about Hak. Gone were the Doraemon strawberry milk convenience store runs. Gone were the cute pictures on KakaoTalk. Left in their place was this infuriating, never-ending barrage of questions, like talking plush toys set off in the shops that would never shut up. Son Hak this, Son Hak that, I think the handsome sunbae looked at me once, do you think he likes me?
Yona didn’t know what made her more uncomfortable: the fact that these girls had only befriended her to get to Hak, or the fact that they were trying to get to Hak. There was a bizarre sense of… protectiveness that buzzed at the back of her head whenever she thought about these girls confessing to Hak, the kind of possession that overrides you when you catch an unruly neighbour trying to claim ownership of the stray cat you had taken to caring for. Hak was her best friend. What business did these girls have with him?
Would Hak have time for his clubs and his studies if he went gallivanting around with a girlfriend? Would Mundok even allow it? She thought not. There was absolutely no way she was helping any of these girls get close to Hak. She was being a dutiful best friend.
Her constant rejection only ever made the girls try harder. She didn’t understand why they expended all these efforts trying to play middle-man with her, instead of heading straight for their target. Surely, out of the myriad of girls lining up to try their luck with Son Hak, someone would have taken initiative and approached Hak by themself?
But Hak had never gotten a girlfriend, and the girls kept coming to Yona.
Yona was only free from this hell when Hak moved onto high school, leaving her behind once again. She would have never thought that she’d be relieved at the fact, but she was. She didn’t know if that made her a bad best friend. But they saw each other all the time out of school anyway, as Yona ended up at Mundok’s house more evenings than not, so she decided it would be a good settlement. They didn’t need to see each other twenty-four seven (they still did) to be best friends. Absence makes the heart fonder, and all that. And she did not want to go through all of that again. There’s only so much chocolate talk Yona can take before she starts to go a little insane from it.
So when Yona started high school, she made a genius plan.
A genius plan in the form of a contract, which had one rule.
This agreement, made on the twenty-fifth day of February, in the year 2015, is between Yona and Hak. This agreement will begin on the second of March, 2015, and will continue until its termination date, twenty-third of February, 2017. (HAK GRADUATION DAY!!!!!!)
The terms of this agreement are as follows:
- Both parties are not to interact at school. (EVER!!!)
Violation of these terms will result in dire consequences.
Yona doesn’t know where that contract ended up, as it was drafted on a small My Melody post-it note she had snagged from a cute stationery store. But she supposes it doesn’t matter now.
Because she is about to violate the contract.
“What’s a second year doing here? Do you think she’s waiting for her boyfriend?”
Here Yona stands, unflinching, outside Class 3-3.
It’s the end of the school day, and students are milling about in the hallways ready to go home. Some of them stand and do a double take at Yona, but she keeps the same polite smile plastered on her face. It’s not weird that she’s waiting outside a third year classroom, on a floor she’d made it her life’s goal to avoid. This is her school. She has the right to be here in this hallway as much as any other student does. This is not weird at all.
Hak is sure taking his time to leave.
Yona jerks her head towards the door whenever she can see a tall guy leaving from the corner of her eye, but none of them are Hak. They continue the double take at Yona trend and amble down the hallway, leaving Yona outside the classroom to continue her wait. She’s almost tempted to peek through the windows of the classroom, but she’s just waiting for her best friend, not trying to spy on the students of Class 3-3. Someone might start a second year stalker rumour.
She’s watching the view outside the window to the courtyard when she sees a familiar flutter of dark green hair in her peripheral vision. Yona turns her head so quickly she fears it might come loose from her shoulders.
Jae-ha?
Jae-ha’s in the same class as Hak?
Maybe she should have accepted the documentary offer on the spot.
Jae-ha, tall, beautiful, with a shock of long, dark hair that has a peculiar green hue to it that Yona still can’t discern is natural, leaves the classroom, joining the crowds of students in the hallway.
“Hello?”
Hak follows Yona’s gaze to the retreating Jae-ha and frowns, before schooling his face into neutrality.
Oh, Hak is here. And her cheeks are warm. Her cheeks are warm? She hopes she doesn’t look like a tomato. She just needs to talk to Hak. This is their first public interaction since last year, and the world is still spinning and pigs have not yet taken flight.
This is our first interaction! Say something, Yona!
“Hello, sunbae…” Yona nervously laughs, before coughing. Yona does not nervously laugh in front of Hak. Actually, he’s supposed to be a stranger to her right now, so maybe she does. She nervously laughs again. Hak frowns, presumably at the ‘sunbae’ (she’s never called Hak that in her life, despite the fact that he is perpetually her sunbae), and he makes a show of checking out the nametag clipped on her blazer.
Wow, maybe Hak should be an actor instead of an athlete. He’s really trying to sell the stranger act.
“Sorry to bother you, sunbae,” Yona says, and the polite smile has returned to her face.
Hak’s frown only deepens.
“It’s okay,” he says, looking down at Yona and readjusting his bag strap that does not need to be readjusted. He nods at her, then begins walking down the hallway towards the stairs.
He doesn’t look back to check if Yona’s following him, probably because he knows she will anyway, and she realises he’s trying to get them away from the rest of his classmates as discreetly and stranger-like as he can. Yona smiles. Hak’s serious about this contract thing, even if he was the one to vehemently disagree when Yona first proposed it.
Yona thinks she ended up looking like a stalker anyway, silently trailing behind Hak as they wind through the hallways to the school’s exit.
When they’re a safe distance across the school’s courtyard, Hak finally speaks.
“What was that about, Princess? Did you miss me that bad?”
Yona glances from side to side to see if anyone had heard him, but the students are dispersed far across the courtyard. “Hak, you idiot, don’t call me that here!”
“So what? Maybe you should’ve thought about that before waltzing up to my classroom.”
“That—that’s different!”
“Hm, I still think it’s a direct violation of the rules. There was… what was it again?” Hak stops walking to lean in close, their faces inches apart. “Dire consequences?”
Yona scowls, pushing forward and away from Hak, but he catches up in a few strides. Stupid long legs. “You know what this is about, Hak!”
“Do I, now?”
“Um, yes. The documentary? Did you forget you agreed to it?”
“Oh. They asked you about it already?”
“Yeah. I think it’s really cool.” She’s still on the fence about documentaries actually, but she doesn’t want Hak to shy away from participating. “What do you think?”
“They said there’s no extra work for me. So I said yes.” He stretches his arms behind his head as he walks. “I’m still surprised that they wanted me first though.”
“Well, I’m not. Must be all the, you know—”
“—Clubs. Yeah.”
“I’m more surprised that they asked me. What are the chances that we end up in a documentary together?”
They exit the school gates and begin the route to their neighbourhood. It should feel weird, she thinks, walking home together after more than a year of acting like strangers at school, but it feels like they’ve fallen into a normal routine. Like it’s a random Tuesday. Which it is.
“I asked for you, actually.”
Yona stops walking. “What?”
“They said I could put forth suggestions for my co-star,” Hak says. He stops and looks at Yona. “So I said you.”
So that’s what Lee-seonsaengnim had meant when he said someone put her name forward. She’d forgotten to ask what he meant by that, distracted by all the documentary and sporting career talk (which she still needs to ask Hak about, by the way). She doesn’t know if she should feel annoyed that he broke the rule first or flattered that he’d thought of her first.
“Why did you do that?” she asks, looking at the ground as they pick up their pace again.
“I missed you.”
It’s flattered then, she decides.
“You see me nearly every day,” Yona says, but a fluttering happiness still warms her heart. Hak doesn’t say cute things like that often.
“That’s not the same. This is the last year we’ll be high school students together. I didn’t know when we’d get a chance like this again.”
“You’re right. And I think it will be a lot of fun. Doing this together. It’s probably the most fun you’ll have in a long while…” Yona teases, with a bounce in her step. “They’re going to have you drowning in lessons to prepare for exams soon.”
“I don’t know why you’re laughing now, Princess. That's going to be you next year.”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. Anyway, what’s this about ‘dire consequences’ ? It seems that this was all orchestrated by a certain someone in the first place…” Yona says, hopping onto a low brick wall lining the sidewalk.
Hak holds out his arm, gesturing to her bag, which she slides off and hands to him wordlessly. He moves it up and down like a dumbbell for a few seconds and raises his eyebrows, indicating its light weight, before adding it to his shoulder alongside his.
“If we both violated the contract, then I guess it cancels out. No dire consequences for either of us.”
“I don’t think that’s how the law works, Hak.”
“There was nothing lawful about that contract, Princess.”
She considers this for a moment. Lawyers probably don’t use Sanrio post-it notes to draft up their contracts. “Okay, maybe not.”
“Are you mad, though?”
Yona hops off the brick wall as it ends. “No. I don't think it’ll be weird for us to meet in school anymore if we’re supposed to be starring in a documentary together.”
“That’s true.”
They reach Hak’s house, the cream paint of the walls as familiar to her as the back of her hand. Hak opens the gate to his house, which groans its familiar groan as it swings open, and he takes this moment to retrieve their mail. He takes out two letters, which Yona can’t see, but she does see a small darkness pass over his face.
Her heart sinks. It must be more bills.
They enter the house and take their shoes off at the entryway, where Hak tosses the two letters onto an empty shelf.
Hak peers into the living room. “I wonder where Grandpa’s gone. He better not be round the back smoking again. Just because he’s getting old doesn’t mean I can’t take him in a few rounds.”
“Hak! You know he’s stopped now.”
“I know, I know.” He drops their bags by the entryway before entering the living room. Yona follows. “But I can just never stop feeling like he’s gone back to it every time he’s gone for a little while. It’s not like his health is getting any better.”
Yona feels her heart wilt like a flower. Mundok, Hak’s adoptive grandfather, is one of the nicest people Yona has ever had the grace of meeting, and will remain among her top ranks for the rest of her life. Despite already having adopted grandchildren—Hak and, later, his adoptive brother Tae-yeon—Mundok had never turned Yona away on the countless lonely days and nights she came crawling back to Hak’s home, sick of being in an empty house.
Instead, he welcomed her with open arms, claiming that he wanted another grandchild anyway. And so Yona became a regular at the Son household, which in turn made Mundok joke that she should just move in. She’s still not sure if he was serious about that or not.
In spite of his deep loyalty to his family and unwavering sincerity, Mundok still had loyalties lying elsewhere. Loyalties that saw a cigarette to his lips often, and a mighty cough racking his lungs. He began to smoke less after he started to get sick, and stopped when Tae-yeon was adopted into the family, but that didn’t stop the coughing fits, the shortness of breath, the laboured wheezing.
She wishes he had never picked up a cigarette in his life. That he didn’t have to suffer with this awful ache in his chest. The appointments. All the medication and bills. Because when a cough rattles Mundok’s chest, something breaks in Hak’s.
And something breaks in hers, too.
“He’s a strong man, Hak. I don’t think he’ll slip back after so long.”
Hak sighs, sitting down on the sofa. It’s artificial leather, but clearly worn, with patches of the leather peeling off. Tae-yeon in particular likes to pick at it, and if Yona joins him sometimes—well, that’s just a secret between them. “You’re right. I’m getting paranoid.”
“Tell me I’m right again,” Yona says. She sits down on the sofa beside him. Hak has a small frown on his face that she doesn’t like, and she has the urge to reach over and smooth his forehead. “I like it a lot.”
“No. We don’t need that big head of yours getting any bigger.”
“Excuse me? I do not have a big head!” She jumps up and rushes over to the mirror in the living room, pushing up her bangs. She’d read an article about the horrors of receding hairlines and how to prevent them, and with the many hairstyles Yona likes to try out, it left her feeling a bit spooked. “Well, I’m not sure about my forehead, actually… I’m scared it doesn’t look good…”
Hak watches her from the sofa. “What are you talking about? I meant it metaphorically. Maybe something’s wrong with your head after all.”
“Say that again and I’ll clobber you with my fists.”
“Relax, Princess. You look good. Stop touching your hair.”
“Oh, thank you. Seems like there is some kindness under all that ugly personality.”
“Noona?”
Yona turns around at the voice that comes from the doorway. Tae-yeon stands peeking out from behind the wall, his short light brown hair falling across his face softly.
Yona sees him basically every other day, but she still feels her heart squeeze like the first time every time she sees him. He’s the cutest thing she’s ever seen in her entire life, with his adorable cheeks that are always some shade of pink and his adorable little voice.
“Tae-yeon!”
“Why is hyung being mean? I think you have a lovely head.”
Oh, he’s so adorable. I want to hug him forever.
“Your hyung doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Yona makes it to Tae-yeon’s side, and she kneels and pulls him into a side hug. She squeezes his cheeks with a hand beneath his chin. “Look, Hak, you should be more like my Tae-yeonie. He’s so nice. He knows how to speak to a girl properly.”
“I know how to speak to girls.”
“Oh yeah? Basically eighteen years of life and you’ve never had a girlfriend!”
“You want to go there? Seventeen years of life and you’ve never had a boy even look—”
“Who’s getting a girlfriend?”
Mundok suddenly appears behind Yona and Tae-yeon.
“Grandpa Mundok!” Yona gasps.
“Yona, my dear! You’re here early today,” he smiles, which makes the deep-set wrinkles around his eyes more prominent. She hadn’t heard him approaching, even though he’d probably come down from upstairs. She stands up and greets him properly.
“Haha, well, I walked home with Hak today.”
His good eye widens in surprise. “You did? It’s been a while.” He then turns to Hak. “And no getting a girlfriend. You have to focus on your studies. Besides, I’ve already chosen my granddaughter, and she’s right here.”
Mundok ruffles Yona’s hair, which she would be annoyed at if it was anyone else (Yona takes very good care of her hair. Cute hairstyles don’t appear out of thin air, you know!), but she smiles.
“Yeah, Hak. Focus on your studies,” she taunts, but Hak’s not looking at her. He seems to be holding eye contact with Mundok. A silent conversation passes between them, and his face morphs into a weird expression. Like he’s embarrassed? She swears his cheeks are starting to redden a little bit.
Mundok moves past them to the open kitchen, where he starts to check the rice cooker on the counter. They all follow him into the kitchen. Yona starts to set out the plates and bowls, while Hak takes out some side dishes from the fridge, and Tae-yeon settles himself cutely at the dining table.
“So why did you walk home together today? I was under the impression that there was an… agreement going on.”
“Oh, Grandpa! You’ll never guess what happened. The school chose Hak and I to star in a school documentary together.”
Mundok looks at Yona from where he’s setting the rice on the table. “Documentary?”
“Yeah, about student life. They said it won’t distract us from our studies,” Hak jumps in. He’s omitting all of the springtime of youth explanation, but Yona knows he doesn’t want Mundok to think they’re horsing around in school. “They’re just going to observe us in our natural habitat at school. Shoot some interviews. Go to our clubs.”
“Like a lion,” Tae-yeon breathes, eyes sparkling.
“Yes, Tae-yeon, like a lion,” Yona agrees, nodding.
Tae-yeon must be the only person on the planet that actually enjoys documentaries, let alone the only seven year old. He only ever watches those wildlife documentaries, the ones with slow, cinematic shots and a calm, monotone voice that she thinks is more suited to being featured in therapy videos than guiding viewers through a savannah. But her adorable little Tae-yeon would probably branch out to a different genre for her, right? Now she knows they’ll at least have one guaranteed viewer if their documentary flops.
“That sounds nice. I guess you’ll be coming home with Hak more often now, Yona?”
“Yes, noona, please!” Tae-yeon exclaims. “I like it when you come home early. Or else we don’t get much time together before bedtime…”
“Of course. I’ll come home with Hak now,” she says. “I think accepting this documentary is going to be a good decision.”
Yona tells Lee-seonsaengnim yes the next time she sees him.