Archive of Our Own ^beta

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. 

Chapter Text

Seoul, June 2016

Now playing — SpringYouth_2016-06-03_scene03_take01_CamB_v01.mp4 

[Hak and Yona are on cleaning duty by the school’s outdoor swimming pool. Each of them holds a hosepipe connected to a nearby valve.]

Yona: Getting stuck on pool deck duty is a scam. It’s so long. No one even uses it besides the swimming club anyway. Why don’t they clean it?

Hak: What, is cleaning the pool deck beneath you? Guess you’ve earned that title of Princess. 

[Yona stops spraying water on the deck to glare at Hak.]

Yona: Of course not! I would’ve just preferred… I don’t know, sweeping leaves or something. 

Hak: Now that doesn’t really help your case. Sounds like you’re trying to get off scotch-free. [He tuts.] In case you haven’t noticed, it’s summer. There’s no leaves to sweep. 

Yona: Just shut up and get back to work, Hak. 

Hak: Oh, now you’re really treating me like a servant. I’m wounded. And how about you get back to work? I’m not the one whose hose is off. 

Yona: Whatever. 

Hak: Keep up the positive attitude, Princess. We’ll need it when we get to cleaning the pool. 

Yona: Cleaning the pool? But we’re already doing that…

Hak: Not the deck. The actual pool. We’ll need you to get in there and scrub the walls, maybe even vacuum the floor… 

Yona: Me? But I can’t swim! You do it, Hak!

Hak: [shaking his head] Shirking your duties already? Do you want a tiara to go with that attitude of yours? 

Yona: PD-nim! He’s lying, right? We don’t need to clean out the pool, do we? 

[She receives no answer.]

Yona: PD-nim, please! If I drown we’ll have no documentary to film!

[There are muffled sounds of the staff laughing behind the camera.] 

The first time Yona saw the love of her life, she had flowers in her hair. 

It was a spring morning in March, the start of the new school year, with a chill in the air permeated only by the delicate sunlight rising over the horizon. Mundok had told her to catch the bus to school, as to avoid the cold, but Yona resolved to walk to school today. She’d read an article online the week before that walking to school improved health and helped students learn about pedestrian safety. It did not matter that the article was aimed at parents with children. Because Yona was technically still a child. Her father’s child?

In any case, Yona was a lover of the environment. She would do her part the best that she could. 

There was quite a bite to the air, as expected, but Yona thought she was adequately prepared to combat the cold. She had worn her light jacket (black with small daisies sparsely dotted over it, skilfully snatched up under the watchful eyes of those viewing the item on the second-hand website by Tae-woo, the only high school student with too much time on their hands), and the new tights she had bought for the new year. (No daisies on them, unfortunately. It would violate the uniform policy.) Yona had considered donning a light scarf, but even that seemed a little overkill for her. She was walking to school, not traversing an arctic tundra. 

Her route to school was rather easy. Once Yona wound out of her neighbourhood, she only had to follow some familiar main roads before she was at school. 

Familiar as they were, though, that did not mean Yona would have the smoothest trip to school. 

“Hey!” 

Yona tried to keep her voice down, considering it wasn’t even 8 a.m. yet, but there was a panic rising up her throat that clouded her better judgement. She struggled for a moment against whoever was pulling her hair, but her assailant was relentless and would not let go. Damn, they were really pulling hard. Her scalp hurt. Tears began to build in her eyes. I might die here, she thought. I’m going to die and they’ll discover my body with a bald patch. What was the last thing I said to Hak? 

In hindsight, she probably should have tried to hit them more, or elbow them. Instead of thrashing her head around like a banshee. Or tried to scream for help instead of being considerate of those sleeping in the early morning. (It was a school or work day anyway? She doesn’t know what she was thinking.) But finally, the grip on her hair loosened and Yona sprang forward. She felt her hand around the back of her head. 

Oh, thank God. 

Her hair was still there. No bald patch scares today. 

Except her relief was short-lived. Now, there was a very menacing furrow in her brow. And this was a telltale sign that Yona meant business. You see, Yona had been reading another article online—from this teenage beauty tips forum, so that’s how you know it’s all true—that said frowning causes wrinkles. And Yona was a big fan of her face. She did not want wrinkles. From then on, she avoided aggressive frowning at all costs. (It was a weird phase, she’ll admit. She overlooks the fact that it was not that long ago.) But, someone had tried to yank her hair out of her scalp. Yona had become a big fan of her hair. She could not let that slide. 

Yona whipped around on her feet, ready to belabour the offender with her fists, a belabouring that she held back—and definitely did not forget—before, only to find the road empty. Desolate. Devoid of life. She could almost imagine a tumbleweed scuttling across the concrete, despite the fact that she didn’t know if they were even real or just in American movies. The silence at that time was resounding, and Yona patted herself on the back for being heedful enough to not wake up the whole street. Perhaps she had been fighting with a ghost. 

A wind blew through the street. A tree branch grazed the top of her hair with the breeze.

Oh. Perhaps not.

Yona looked up at the offending tree. It had begun sprouting blossoms, white and delicate, an array of flowers that looked like clouds on a trunk. How could something so pretty have such a deadly grip? She would have been the first person to experience death by cherry blossom branch. 

And so she continued on her merry way to school, patting down her hair, grateful that no one had been around to see her fight with a tree.

By the time Yona reached school, the gates were just closing. She narrowly made it through and began pacing through a shortcut to the school’s auditorium. Today was the first day of school, and thus there was an opening ceremony that all students must attend. Yona was not a tardy girl. She would not be late to her first day as a second year.

There was usually no one in this shortcut, just the trees lining the fence and the ground beneath her feet. But that day was different.

That day, a backpack and blazer came hurtling from the sky.

Yona did not scream, of course, she was a lady. She only jumped a little bit from the surprise, stopping in her tracks. She felt as though she had just witnessed a supply drop being delivered, like in those battle royale games she never got the hang of. Tae-woo and Han-dae, Hak’s cousins, always tried to rope her into playing, but shooter games had never been her forte. She was sure that she was not bad at aiming, game controllers were just too finicky. Not her fault. 

She approached the backpack and pulled off the blazer that had been wrapped around it, flapping it around to get the dust off of it. A beige blazer, the colour of their high school’s uniform. Whoever had done this must have been very irresponsible. Letting your blazer roll around on the dirty ground on the first day of school? That was not something Yona would ever let happen. Once she was satisfied, she turned the blazer around to get a look at the nametag.

Jae-ha. 

It was beautiful, but she couldn’t recall anyone with that name. Yona was familiar with a lot of the students in her grade by then, having been amongst them for a year already, but she had never run into someone called Jae-ha. She wondered if he was one of the new first years, a new transfer, or perhaps someone from the grade above. Yona had never been shy of the older years in high school, but the opportunity to talk to them did not arise—

A boy had just come hurtling from the sky. 

Yona screamed.

She tried to recover from the shock, a hand upon her frantically-beating heart—the hand holding the blazer—but she thought she might just faint at the sight in front of her. 

Jae-ha was also a very beautiful man.

After vaulting over the school fence, he had landed with his side to her, in a crouch that looked almost practiced as if he were a comic book superhero. Yona could have drooled at the shape of his jaw. It was very defined, sharp, and Yona wondered if he’d ever tried cutting butter with his jawline alone. And then he turned in her direction, and, oh, she thought she might actually faint for real. 

All of his features were sharp and beautiful and looked like they had been finely sculpted from marble. The closest Yona had ever been to sculpting was carving grooves into the tree in front of her house with Hak, but she thought, just then, that she might take up sculpting as a career. His face was too beautiful to not be preserved in a museum. 

“Miss, you’re not going to tell anyone, are you?” he said, eyebrows raised, holding a finger to his lips. His voice was silky smooth, with a slight purr that almost made Yona shiver. 

“O–of course not,” Yona replied. She internally winced, berating herself for stuttering. Yona had not stuttered in front of anyone for a good while. It had been a very long time since she was that nervous middle school student. 

The boy smiled, the slight surprise melting away from his features to leave a smirk. Yona’s throat felt tight. Jae-ha had a very beautiful smile. 

He sauntered over to Yona as if he hadn’t just pulled up late on the first day of school having escaped South Korea’s acrobatics national team and stopped a pace in front of her, surprisingly close. She had to crane her neck to look up at him, and she thought that now her throat was in imminent danger of malfunctioning. 

His blue eyes were piercing, downturned and bright. He looked even more beautiful up close, if that was possible, despite half his face getting obscured by his bangs. Which were this strange, dark colour, almost unnaturally green. Perhaps Jae-ha was a frequent offender of the uniform policy, and thus did not care if it collected dust on the floor. 

“Yona-dear, is it?” he chirped, dragging his gaze from her nametag to her eyes. She swallowed. Her name sounded nice in his beautiful voice. “Let’s keep this a secret between us two, shall we?” 

Yona was about to reply (even though she was sure no words would come to her tongue) when he suddenly reached a hand into her hair. His touch was gentle, like a feather, fleeting and light. 

Yona stilled. Jae-ha winked. 

And then, in one turn, he swiped the blazer out of her hand, picked up his backpack, and began jogging in the way of the auditorium. And then he was gone.

Yona looked to her feet.

There, left on the red-brick pathway, were soft, white petals.

Hak whistles. “You’re a good shot, Princess.” 

Yona looks across the shooting range to the target, where her arrow has embedded itself in the first red ring from the centre. An eight. 

They’re in one of the small courtyards within the school’s grounds, an unused stretch of grass where the archery club has taken up residence. It’s not a perfect square, rather a slightly narrow rectangle, but long enough to set up for target archery. The archery club doesn’t have a club room like all the other clubs do, nor do they have a designated place on the vast school field for their club activities. Which is why, Yona supposes, they ended up nestled in the space between classrooms with patches of dead or dying grass as their only greenery. 

The club was already in this dismal state by the time Yona joined it at the start of her second year. The members, if they were even present, didn’t seem to care that they were shoved into some random space for their club, for they didn’t seem to care for archery in the first place. Yona believes it to be a sheer miracle that the club is still standing today, because by the end of the club recruitment period for this year they only ended up with five members including herself—barely scraping the minimum amount of members required for a club to remain. They’re all first-year boys, who Yona thinks joined the club because they thought archery looked cool, not because they liked the art of it. 

She gets it. Archery does look really cool. But it’s no wonder that they’ve never been able to graduate from pathetic excuses for club facilities and equipment with a lousy member lineup like this. The boys hardly show up for “practice” (they have nothing to practise for, because they are a lousy archery club from a high school and no one cares about high school sports, and even if they did, Yona is sure they would never be able to qualify for a competition in a million years), which is only once a week anyway, and they have a club teacher who cares even less than they do. 

Every club in the school requires a teacher that overlooks their activities. And they have one—one of their PE teachers, Kan Tae-jun—but Yona is surprised he even agreed to supervise the club with how lousy he is about doing it. He hardly shows up for practice either, which is fine, because club teachers aren’t necessarily needed for that. 

But he does not care about the affairs of the club. At all. 

Yona remembers she had to beg him just to put in a request for funds so that the club could have proper arrows. They were a high school archery club, however unimportant. Why did an archery club not have proper arrows? 

Kan Tae-jun is not all bad, however, much to her great surprise. He did eventually acquiesce to Yona’s request, and even seemed a little ashamed that it had taken incessant badgering from a second-year student to provide the archery club with arrows that actually had a proper head, instead of flimsy arrows tipped with neon-orange suction cups that she hadn’t seen since elementary. 

The club did, fortunately, already have proper recurve bows, and sometimes Yona still thinks she ought to track down the previous members who had dropped the club to focus on their third year and find out whatever the heck they thought they were doing. She does not know how long they went on using those elementary-grade arrows with their bows, the ones that always sat awkwardly on the arrow rest. It was like using a pen to play a fiddle. 

Yona also—much to her great chagrin—owes a little to Kan Tae-jun. Or a lot. However carefree he may be about his supervision duties, he does know his way around archery to a slight extent. Which is to be expected, because he is a PE teacher, but Yona hadn’t expected it from him. Archery is a sport that requires discipline, and Kan Tae-jun did not seem like the sort of person dedicated enough to relinquish himself to the craft. He seemed more suited to playing around with flimsy foam javelins, or making his classes do stupid drills in the cold while he stands there in his padded jacket. 

Yet, he’s the one who had taught Yona the basics of archery. It was in their first session as a club—probably one of the only times all five club members were present at the same time. A real miracle. He taught them all the correct stance for archery, the correct posture, how to nock an arrow, how to draw a bow—and his expertise ended there. 

In a way, he doubles as their archery coach, because there‘s nobody else to do it and no one in the school cares enough to do anything about it. 

Coupled with their inexperienced coach and lacking facilities, it means that Yona has no way of making progress. 

Archery is a sport of repetition. It does not have the wild highs and lows of sports like hockey or football, nor is it as physically demanding as judo, for example. It is demanding in its own right. It’s a game and test of patience. Experience is priceless, but it also breeds familiarity. With no guidance on how to move forward, Yona feels like she’s been stuck in a limbo in this club. Like she’s already reached the peak of her average capabilities, and there’s nowhere higher to go. 

Yona pinches the fletching of an arrow between her finger and thumb, pulling it out of the quiver on the ground. “Of course I’m a good shot. I’ve been doing this for three months.” 

And by ‘this’, she means mindlessly shooting at the target for the entire duration of their club practice. No real coach to fix her form, no directions on how to refine her technique. It feels like any other week, except this week her best friend has joined her and there’s cameras filming them both and Kan Tae-jun has actually showed up to practice for once. (Yona knows it’s because he wants to leave a good impression on the production staff.) 

Hak watches her slide the arrow onto the arrow rest. She fixes the nock onto the string, which satisfyingly clicks as it settles into place at the nocking point. 

“Do you want to go further with this, do you think? You’re pretty good. You could join a club in university.” 

Yona pulls the string back, her hand nestling underneath her chin, her bow hand straight and unyielding. Then she lets go, and the arrow shoots forward. 

Another eight. 

Yona turns to look at Hak. “Me? Go somewhere with archery? I’m okay at it, but I’m not that good. There’s no way I could compete at university level, even if I continued until then.” 

Hak leans on the bow he’s holding. They had both changed into their PE kits and put on chest guards, but Hak hasn’t made a shot of his own yet. He’s just been watching Yona take hers. “Then what do you do archery for?”

What does Yona do archery for? She started it because she wanted to try something new. And new it was. Yona had never been a sporty child, her athletic experience limited to whatever they do in PE lessons, and let’s just say—

Yona has certainly never been first pick when it comes to choosing teams in class. 

When she saw the lonely table where the third-years were halfheartedly trying to get new club members three months ago, she found her heart inclining towards the club. Out of pity, or intrigue, she still doesn’t know, but she does know that archery has become something precious to her. Not exactly irreplaceable or essential, but something that she would miss. She knows she would miss the satisfaction of landing good shots, the calmness as she takes shot after shot, the familiarity of the bow in her grip. 

“I do it for fun,” Yona decides. 

Hak nods. Yona knew he would understand, given his long history of club-jumping. Hak feeds off of doing sports like it’s breathing air, for no greater purpose but himself. A grin on his face, passion carrying on the wind. He’s never done it out of aiming for glory or success, though she supposes end goals can change over the years. 

“What do you want to do in the future, then? If not archery?” 

Yona laughs at the sudden question. They haven’t talked much about the future at all, and the first time Hak brings it up in a while is when they’re being recorded for a documentary that’s going to be broadcasted on national television. They don’t have microphones hooked up to them yet, as the camera crew only wanted to record them for now, but it’s funny nonetheless. She wonders if she’ll finally be able to ask him about that sporting career Lee Geun-tae had alluded to. 

“I haven’t given much thought to it. Going into archery would be cool, but I don’t think I could make a career out of it. Imagine what Father would think.” 

“And what does he think now?” Hak asks. He’s still ostensibly leaning on the bow, but Yona hopes he’s not putting his weight onto it. Who knows how long it would take to get a replacement recurve bow from Kan Tae-jun?

“He doesn’t even know I’m in the archery club. I haven’t spoken to him properly in a while.” Yona leans down to retrieve another arrow from the quiver. “And stop leaning on the bow, you oaf! You’ll break it.” 

One of the biggest mysteries in the world is what Yona’s father possibly does on a daily—and nightly—basis. He has a typical office job, like much of Seoul’s working population, but she doesn’t know exactly what he does for it nor what he spends his evenings doing. He’s become a spectre of the house of sorts, only making his presence known when she least expects it. The only evidence of his residence are the bills that are always paid and the groceries allowance he always leaves. And the only evidence she has of him coming home are the disrupted sheets in the morning, which is the only thing she rearranges for him in his room. 

The rest is collecting dust. They should try making a documentary on that, she thinks. Maybe they’ll finally get to the bottom of this mystery.

Hak readjusts the bow in his hand, gripping it like a staff and digging it into the ground. He rolls his eyes. “Would he be mad? I don’t think I could ever imagine your dad getting angry like that.” 

Yona holds back her smile. She’s plenty familiar with Hak’s opinion of her father, as he’s never been shy of speaking his mind. Hak had once called him a bubbly little liar (after Il bailed on the dinner he’d said he would cook for Yona), resulting in a knuckle to the head from Mundok. Hak didn’t mean anything malicious by it, they all knew, but they all tended to skirt around the topic of Il’s regular absences as if they were sheltering under a narrow awning from heavy rain. A present solution, narrowly avoiding the imminent downpour, but it’s still there, hammering down and announcing its presence, boisterously clear until it passes over. 

“You’re right. You know how Father is, he just wants me to be happy.” In his own absent, bubbly little way. Yona slides the arrow into the arrow rest and nocks it. “But he also thinks that a woman’s greatest happiness is in getting a good job and a good husband. I don’t know where archery comes into that.” 

Hak sighs resignedly. His shoulders slump, as if cowering under the weight of the words he wants to say. But he doesn’t say anything, lips sealed, so Yona turns her attention away from him. She lifts her bow up to begin aiming.

“You might be getting that husband sooner or later, I guess,” Hak eventually says. 

Curiosity sparks under her skin. “What do you mean? How?” 

Hak, who insists that boys never look in her direction. Hak, who’d laughed when Yona turned beet-red after seeing a boy her age walking towards them, only for him to ask her where the restroom was. That same Hak is now saying that Yona will be getting a husband at age seventeen. 

“Don’t think I didn’t see you making googly eyes at Droopy Eyes.” 

“Who?” 

“Jae-ha.” 

Yona lets go of the bowstring. 

“Oooh, Princess, really? A four? You can do a lot better than that.” 

Yona gets the sense that Hak’s not talking about her shot. 

“Hak! What’s wrong with Jae-ha?” 

Hak raises his free hand in false innocence. “Hey, I didn’t say anything. But since you asked…” 

He looks off into the shooting range, clutching the bow like it’s his old man walking stick. He strokes his non-existent beard, fingers sliding down the smooth skin on his chin and catching on nothing. 

“He’s sleazy, always flirting, his hair looks greasy—” 

“His hair looks great!” 

“I’m sure he’d be happy to hear that, Princess. But it does not. It kind of looks like sewage water. I didn’t know you were into that.”

Yona wants to fold her arms, but she’s still holding her bow, so she settles with a hand on her hip. “What kind of sewage water are you looking at?” 

“The greasy kind,” Hak says matter-of-factly, and finally bends down to pull an arrow out of the quiver. Hak’s got his own quiver, full of the flimsy elementary-grade arrows to appease Kan Tae-jun’s unease. Hak doesn’t seem to be perturbed by this, even as he fails to slide the flimsy arrow onto the arrow rest on the first try. “Anyway, I don’t think Father Il would approve of him as a good husband.” 

Irritation bubbles up her throat. “How would you know? You don’t even know him!” 

“I know him a lot better than you probably do. He’s my…” 

Hak lifts the bow and starts pulling the string back in one sweep, all the while his face is scrunched up in hard thought. He slowly nods to himself as he’s thinking.

“...friend,” he finishes.

The flimsy arrow plops a few feet away from them, a sorry landing in the dying grass. 

“How rude, Hak! You can’t say all those things about someone you’re supposedly friends with!”

“What? We say this stuff to each other all the time. You don’t understand guys. It’s how I greet him in the morning.” He shrugs and retrieves another arrow. “I just think you deserve someone a lot better.” 

That pricks at Yona’s skin. I just think you deserve someone a lot better. As if Jae-ha isn’t already good enough? And who let Hak be the judge of that anyway? The first time Hak finds out about one of her crushes and he’s already sticking his nose into things! 

“Excuse me, I do understand guys!” 

“Really? Name one guy other than me.” 

“Jae-ha.” 

“And what exactly do you know about him?” 

He has blue eyes, a nice smile, weirdly dark green hair. And nice eyes.

And a nice voice! And his hair is long… 

Oh, and he’s in the same class as Hak! 

…What else? 

“Hak, your stance is awful. Let me help you.” 

“Ha, see! You’re changing the subject.” 

“No I’m not. I’m just focusing on what’s more important right now. Like your awful stance. It’s laughable, really. Look there, Hak.” Yona points at the camera crew, tucked in the small corner of the courtyard with Kan Tae-jun hovering around them like a haunted spirit. “Those cameras are recording. This could become your dark past.” 

Hak doesn’t look convinced, but he smiles and goes along with Yona anyway. “Uh-huh. Teach me then, Coach.”

Yona places her bow on the bow rack behind them and walks over to Hak. “Firstly, I don’t know why your feet are so close together like that. Doesn’t it feel hard to aim?”

“Well, yeah, shoot me, this is my first time doing archery.” Yona’s sure he’s about to roll his eyes again, but she can’t confirm with how she’s still looking at his feet. “Cut me some slack.” 

Yona laughs. “Sorry. Make sure you pay good attention. This is your free masterclass.” She positions herself so she’s standing in line with him. “In archery, we have a stance called the square stance. It’s where your feet are parallel to the shooting line. We don’t have a shooting line drawn on the ground here, but I indicate it using the cones at either end.” 

Yona points to the cone near them on the left side of the courtyard. Then she points to the one on the right side, near to where the camera crew are. The cameras all follow where she’s pointing, and this is the first time she truly registers that their every move is being recorded here. She’s gotten used to cameras following them around doing their mundane tasks at school; they’ve become like background noise to her, like the ceaseless buzzing of a fly you’ve given up on chasing out. Yet now, she feels slightly unnerved, even though she had teased Hak about the cameras a minute earlier. 

This archery setup is not ideal, as shooting lines are typically painted onto the ground in other shooting ranges, but she doesn’t know if the school would approve of defacing their ugly courtyard for their dismal archery club. 

“Put your feet across the shooting line shoulder-width apart.” Yona demonstrates, and Hak follows suit. “Now, your feet, hips, and shoulders will all be in line with each other. This stance is good for alignment, and it’s easy to rest the bow on your foot before you get into position. But really, it’s the only stance I know.” The only stance Kan Tae-jun knows. 

Once Hak has nailed the stance, Yona moves closer to Hak. They’re close enough to bump into each other. This sort of proximity is not unusual for them, bumping into each other as they bumble home or bicker or talk, but she feels oddly conscious of it now. Must be the pressure of the cameras, or the unsettling sensation of Hak’s full attention on her, or a combination of the two. 

“You won’t be used to the feeling of releasing an arrow, so I’ll release it for you this time. But you’ll want to hold the string in the first joint of your three fingers. Watch how I hold it.” 

Yona pulls back the string of Hak’s bow and he starts to lift it up, but it’s awkward because (a) Hak is infuriatingly tall, and (b) they’re both right-handed. She’s awkwardly standing on his left side, her head in line with the elbow he’s drawn back. 

“When you’re pulling the bowstring, you want your hand to be underneath your chin, flush with your neck.” Hak’s right hand moves into perfect position at her instruction, even though he has no hold on the string. “Exactly like that. You’re so annoying. Why are you so good at this first try?” 

“I’m a natural, I guess. Care to tell me what you like about Droopy Eyes so much?” 

Can you ask me this question when I’m not two inches away from kissing your elbow? Or preferably, not at all? 

She decides to ignore him. Boys have pea brains and small attention spans, he’ll forget about it as they move onto something else. “Your grip is wrong. Don’t hold the bow like that, it’s a bow, not a staff. You’re gripping onto it like it’s bike handles. Your thumb pad should be on the grip, but don’t wrap your hand around it.” 

Hak follows her instructions correctly, but his mouth doesn’t seem to pick up on her silent cues. “So what is it about him?” 

“Why are you so hung up on my love life? Now’s really not the time,” she says, gesturing in the direction of the cameras with her chin. 

“Can you blame a guy for being curious? I’m sure everyone wants to know why the resident princess has a crush on that sleazy douche.” 

Heat flares in her cheeks. She wants to see whatever annoying expression Hak has on his face right now so she can wipe it off, but he’s looking directly at the target. “No, everyone does not want to know! And they don’t know! Keep your voice down.” 

Hak sighs, and Yona’s sure he looks super annoying, probably rolling his eyes again. He’s going to roll his eyes out of his head at this rate. “We don’t even have mics on.”

“Still! And I don’t think it’s fair you get to poke fun at me for my love life. You don’t even have a crush! How is this an even playing field?” 

“I do have someone I like, actually.” 

And the breath gets knocked out of Yona’s lungs, the string slipping from her fingers.

The neon-orange suction cup lands with a smack on the window of the classroom behind the targets, the arrow shaft wobbling around like jelly.

“Yona!” 

Kan Tae-jun’s shrill voice jumps up several octaves, and Yona breaks from her daze to see her lousy PE teacher begin to have a breakdown next to the camera crew. Which instantly sobers Yona up, that there’s at least three different cameras pointing at her right now, taking in her breathless expression, mouth agape like a fish, cheeks flushed pink like salmon. She jumps up and executes a succession of several bows in the direction of her teacher. 

“I’m sorry, seonsaengnim! I’m sorry! It won’t happen again!” 

Hak laughs behind her. “Guess you’re not the best coach, Princess.” 

Yona whips around to face him, but he’s already jogging across the grass to pluck the arrow off of the window. 

Hak has someone he likes? Why didn’t he tell me?

Who is it?

“Just look at them. Without a care in the world. Their greed… it disgusts me. I think I feel queasy. Get me a bucket.” 

A number of students are scattered across the school’s large field, an expanse of bright green with no dead grass in sight. Shouts and airy laughs carry across the field, several after-school clubs having set up now. They’re all warming up for their respective sports, some clubs jogging laps around cones and some following a strict regime of stretches. Some have even started practice already. Most fascinatingly, none of the clubs run into each other, all seemingly sectioned off in neat little squares on the field, like there’s some sort of invisible force field keeping them apart. Even more fascinatingly, is that there’s a very large stretch of field that remains unoccupied. No one makes a move to use it, nor does anyone even step into it. Must be the invisible force field. 

So much space. 

Unoccupied.

“What are you muttering about?”

Hak sits beside Yona on the small hill next to the fence, picking at the grass. He’s trying to look bored, she thinks, but he looks anything but, eyes following his teammates that are deep within a baseball practice game.

Yona points towards the field through the fence. “Look. Look at how they’re taking all that field space for granted… I bet none of them have even gazed upon dead grass in their lives. Do they know how lucky they are to do their club activities without the cage of classroom walls around them? Do they know how lucky they are to be surrounded by real human activity?”

Yona had never noticed how eerily silent her archery club sessions are, tucked within the school’s walls in that small courtyard. Here, as it’s Yona’s turn to attend Hak’s club activities like he’d attended hers two days prior (club swaps — fun content for the documentary, yay!), she finally gets to experience the real charm of after-school sports. Laughter on the wind. Coaches barking out orders. Teammates cheering each other on. The distinct crack of water bottles being opened. The existence of human life in all its forms. 

“I guess I’ve never really thought about it,” Hak replies, a hint of confusion in his voice. 

“Of course you haven’t.” Yona shakes her head. “You guys… you guys are the worst of them all. Your greed knows no bounds.” 

The baseball club has a section of the school grounds all to themselves, prettily sectioned off with a green fence that boxes up the baseball court. 

It’s not a part of the school field, not really, the low, green hills lining the side of the fence ending in a sand-clay mixture that lays the ground for the baseball diamond drawn on the court. They have painted lines, crisp and so bright that Yona would have believed it’s a fresh coat had it not been for the rigorous activity taking place on the court. They even have a home plate, if Yona remembers what it’s called correctly, and a very low mound where the pitcher stands. A similar white plate sits beneath him too. 

The school maintains dusty mounds so that boys can swing baseball bats and hit balls, but the archery club can’t get a single white line painted? 

So greedy. 

Unaware. 

Ungrateful. 

“I’m sorry, Princess,” Hak says, but he doesn’t sound sorry at all. “Maybe the school will finally spare a glance in your direction when your club starts producing some results.”

So unaware. So ungrateful. Yona wants to whack his stupid white baseball cap off his head. “Results? With what team? I’m lucky if Kan-seonsaengnim is my company for the session. I think I’m starting to forget my clubmates' names, and there’s only four of them.” 

Hak attempts to offer her a reassuring smile, but it looks more like he’s trying to hold back his laughter. That baseball cap would definitely look better rolling around in the grass. “Maybe you’ll have more newcomers?” 

“Three months into the school year? With that ugly club site? Wow, Hak. I didn’t know you were such a dreamer.” 

“Says you. Dreaming about Droopy Eyes.” 

Yona tries to jab him with her elbow, but he darts to the side. Stupid football-fencing-judo-baseball-and-more reflexes. “Shut up, Hak. I bet you’re dreaming about your mystery girl too. Who is she? You can tell me, you know! I won’t tell anyone.”

“Oh, would you look at that?” Hak narrows his eyes, squinting at the court with a hand to his eyebrows like a salute. “They’re nearly done with the first practice game. When this first batch of members are off, we’ll be up. You’ll be playing against your precious Jae-ha.” 

“Really, who is she? Why are you being so secretive about it? Do I know her?” Yona looks to the side of the court where the members who just finished their game are lining up. “Wait, who is she?” 

Standing by the opposite fence is a girl with pretty light brown hair. She holds a clipboard in her hand that she’s scribbling on, while she speaks into a small mic held by a taller boy with blond hair — a rare sight in their school. The boy nods at her vigorously, invested. 

Hak notices Yona’s change in tone and follows her gaze to the pair across the court. “Oh, they’re from the broadcasting club. They go around all the clubs trying to report sports news, but they end up at our court most of the time.” 

“Why? Do they have nothing else to report?”

Hak shrugs. “Beats me,” he says, and turns his head away.

The coach blows his whistle and shouts to call the second batch of members onto the court. All of the boys get up from their spots on the small hill and jog over to get into position. None of them even glance in the direction of the camera staff that are set up in two corners of the court, which Yona thinks is nothing short of impressive. It’s their second week of filming and Yona has had so many eyes on her she feels like she can rival a reality TV show star. 

After a particularly gruelling filming session in the school’s cafeteria at lunch, Yona has managed to categorise the students of her school into two types. 

One: students who glance at the camera crew curiously, because they don’t know what they’re here for. They’re just students who have come to beeline for the cafeteria’s tuck shop, for example (which Yona completely understands, by the way — the school has an exquisite selection of confectioneries), or whatever it is they’re doing, and have ended up in the line of multiple cameras. Yona and Hak both know that everyone besides them who end up being in the shots will be blurred out (though that hasn’t been happening because the crew is good with things like that), but the students who are trying to go about their school day do not. 

Which brings her onto type two: students who do know what’s going on, and don’t actually care and are nosy and want in. She can’t blame them, in all honesty. If there were cameras poking around my school, I’d want to see what’s going on too. But some of their stares linger almost uncomfortably, a chilling sensation, like the coldness of water that seeps into your shoes. Luckily, the worst of those stares were endured during their lunch filming session, and she doesn’t think the producer wants to shoot any more of those. Otherwise, she doesn’t really care, because having loads of eyes on her is something that she did bargain for when getting into this documentary. 

The members of this baseball club fall into some secret third category: those who don’t care for the camera crew at all. Yona would have fallen into this category today too, but she currently feels hyper-aware of the several cameras as she gets up to make her way onto the court. 

Yona is not experienced in hitting things other than Hak, much less hitting things with a bat, or running, or pitching, or catching balls, or doing anything remotely resembling a workout. Which is funny coming from a member of a sports club, but sometimes Yona is so stationary during archery club sessions—glued to the spot and taking shot after shot—that she thinks she might become a statue. 

The cameras are everywhere. This could become her dark past. 

Hak finally stands up too, and she momentarily wonders how his butt didn’t end up green from sitting on the grass for this long. All of the members wear their baseball kits, all white including their caps, but it all remains pristine. Untouched. As pure as snow. What kind of magic material are they wearing? 

“Do you want to look the part or something, Princess?” 

“What?” 

Hak takes off his cap and she spies its impending descent towards her head, like debris in freefall to earth. 

She swats away his hand. “Hak! Stop! You’re going to ruin my hair!” 

Hak returns the cap to his head with an annoyed look. “I don’t think there’s much left for me to ruin anyway.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“Nothing.” Hak begins walking down the hill, and Yona follows behind him. “You ready for your first day on the court?” 

Absolutely not. “Of course I am!” 

“Word of advice out there,” Hak starts as they walk to the bottom of the diamond, suddenly sounding serious, “facing someone on the court is the best way to get to know them.” 

Yona frowns. “What, because they have a baseball bat?” 

“Just think about it. You’ll know.” 

Okay. Hak is getting oddly philosophical before a baseball game. She’ll know, just as how Kan Tae-jun had instructed her and said that she would know when her shot is aimed correctly, that she would feel it in her heart. Whatever that means. 

Hak begins the line for the batters, so Yona takes her place behind him. He looks down at Yona as she approaches and steps to the side. 

“Ladies first.” 

What? No. I don’t want to go first. The cameras… 

She flashes him her biggest smile. “How about you show everyone how it’s done? I’m sure I’ve got a lot to learn from you!” 

Yona even bats her eyelashes as much as she can without Hak getting suspicious or asking her if she’s got something in her eyes. He’ll like that. Stroke his ego a little… 

“No, I insist, Princess.” Then quieter, he elaborates, “I’ll get a front-view seat for your first shot.” 

“Excuse me? I’m sure you can see just fine from anywhere else on the court. Aren’t your eyes trained to look for balls and everything?” 

Hak nudges her to the front of the line. “Princess, just take it. Let me look like a gentleman.” He nudges her shoulder. “The cameras are rolling, after all.” 

Oh, how gentlemanly of you, Hak! Letting your best friend humiliate herself in front of the whole nation. The height of chivalry! The pinnacle of virtue! 

“Fine.” Yona crosses her arms. “Just don’t come crying to me when I give you a run for your money and you’re kicked off the team.” 

“That won’t be a problem. I’m sure Tae-yeon wouldn’t turn a blind eye to his dear hyung’s sufferings. I’ll be sure to put in a bad word for you when he’s comforting me.” 

The coach blows his whistle again, which is the only thing that stops Yona from crushing Hak’s toes with her foot. They’re playing six a side, as opposed to the usual nine, and the rest of the batters on her team continue the line behind Hak. The opposing team have already taken their positions across the court. Not that there’s as much space as an actual baseball field, though. As blessed as the baseball club is to have their own court, they are still confined to their boxed-in perimeter, but they somehow make it work. 

The only person who hasn’t taken his place is the pitcher, the small pitcher’s mound vacant. 

Then a familiar figure saunters onto the court, with a pep in his step that suggests he does not care that he’d been holding up the rest of the players. 

Jae-ha. 

Yona’s hands suddenly feel clammy. That stupid bat is going to slip right out of her hands at this rate. 

Yona knew that she would be playing against Jae-ha, but amidst Hak being annoying and the cameras looming and the school’s unoccupied field taunting her, she hadn’t had the time to fully process what that meant. It was easy to imagine the opposing team as distant, mere specks in the background running after the ball as she tries to run around the diamond’s bases, but she’d forgotten that the opposing team pitches too. The opposing team will be right in front of her, lobbing a ball to her face, possibly casting her to her doom as the entire nation of South Korea watches her fail to hit the ball horribly. 

This is the worst thing that could ever possibly happen. 

This is completely fine. Yona is technically an athlete, however out of practice in running she may be. And how different is baseball to archery anyway? They both require aiming to a degree. She just needs to think of aiming her bat to hit the ball the same way she aims her bow to shoot. They’re practically the same. She's fifty-percent a baseball athlete already. She is not going to humiliate herself in front of the public.

Yona picks up the bat from where it’s strewn on the ground and steps forward. It’s kind of moist under her grip. That must be her hands.

Jae-ha is tossing the ball around in his hands, as if he’s some circus act. Yona tries to ignore the way he looks in his baseball kit—the bangs hidden underneath his cap, how the white shirt fits across his chest—so she can focus on the ball instead, but he’s still juggling it like he’s determined to break the world record for one-balled juggling. Yona wills him to stop. That record is hardly impressive enough to chase. 

But he doesn’t stop. So Yona focuses on her soothing mantra instead: 

I am not going to humiliate myself. 

The camera crew hovers in the corner of her eye. Hak dawdles somewhere behind her. Distant voices can be heard from the field. The bat is heavy in her hands. Jae-ha notices what’s in front of him at last and Yona cannot process the flash of recognition that passes across his face with the furious beating of her heart. His resulting smirk melts her insides a little bit. She wants to melt into the ground a little bit. 

The whistle blows. 

I am not going to humiliate myself. 

Jae-ha holds the ball firmly in his hands, calculating, before he draws his arm back. Yona silently prays the bat doesn’t slip out of her hands. 

Jae-ha finally releases the ball. It hurtles towards her like a missile. 

Pain explodes in her stomach.