Chapter Text
He dislikes the girl at first sight.
Or second, if he thinks about it. He saw her two evenings ago, rushing onto the bus and swearing in heavily accented English when she found out it was the wrong one.
Taeoh presses close to the rooftop railing, watching aloofly as the girl—Kim Seri, Inha had screeched in terror—calls Inha 'fuckface' while shaking him by the collar, accusing him of shoplifting from someone named Suah's store.
He flails his arms. "I didn't! I didn't do it!" He swears, "You can ask Han Taeoh. He saw me. Didn't you, Taeoh?"
Taeoh doesn't feel like interfering. He reluctantly nods though she doesn't seem to care much for his opinion. She's taken an instant dislike to him as well. "Whatever." She has a slight accent when she speaks Korean. Her features, he realises when he pays attention, are a little mixed. "You better pay Suah's dad for everything you stole," she hisses, letting go of him and begins to leave the rooftop.
A darkness Taeoh doesn't expect flickers through Inha's eyes. "Bitch," he mutters.
"Orphan," she shoots back angrily.
Taeoh is taken aback for a second. He assumed these two to be friends with how familiar they were acting. The corner of Inha's mouth twitches. "I have a father," he defends firmly.
Kim Seri gives him a very pointed onceover. Her mouth presses into a thin, unimpressed line. "Mm," she raises her eyebrows as if calling him out on his bullshit, "You definitely do."
•✧•
"Who, Kim Seri?" Inha hoists his helmet on his hip and scratches his cheek. "She's the English teacher's niece. Moved here a couple of months ago with her dad. Kim Seri is her Korean name. Her real name is…" He screws up his face, trying to remember. "Shin-something. I peeked at her documents at the school office out of curiosity. I dunno…she's Irish. Half of her, anyway."
Taeoh pauses, the gate to his temporary house half-open. With a tilt of his head, he guesses, "Sinéad? Like Sinéad O'Connor?"
"Who?" He rolls his eyes at Inha's overexaggerated confusion. "It's the name with the thing over the 'e', right? Wah, that's pretty spot on." He leans against his bike and scowls, "She's so damn annoying. Sometimes, I feel I could run her over with my bike."
Taeoh nods. He can understand why Inha would dislike her. "I thought you were friends," he says honestly, "It's a surprise that you let her get away with cursing at you."
"She's tolerable but still annoying," he answers, "Goes to the Kangoh International School for Girls. I'm civil with her because she's Mr. Kim's niece. He might flunk me in English if she talks shit about me." Inha swings back and forth on the balls of his feet like a child. "You know what's weird, though?" He grins to himself, like he's hiding a secret. With a twinkle in his eyes, he says, unprompted, "She told me to be wary of you."
•✧•
She's on the wrong bus again.
Taeoh watches her from three seats away. The bus is just about empty but Kim Seri is still standing. She talks animatedly on the phone, in the same accented English that's too quick for his ear, gazing out the windows but not really looking.
What stands out about her is the light shade of brown her hair is. It's tied in a tiny ponytail with a parted fringe over her forehead. Maybe dyed, Taeoh thinks. She has multiple piercings in her ears—he counts six in one and seven in the other. Her face is square but not harsh or pointed. Thick eyebrows and brown eyes. Lips not too thin. Under the denim shorts, the band t-shirt and jacket, she's curvy compared to the usual slenderness in the women here.
An old man stares pointedly at her as he leaves and she stares back, all the way till the doors close and the bus begins to move. Taeoh hears her mutter that sounds suspiciously close to 'wee fecker'. Doubt creeps up her face and Kim Seri hangs up when they reach the last stop. Taeoh gets off, minding his own business because he's still tired from his part-time job and would love to go to bed.
"Excuse me!" Much to his annoyance, she runs up to him into the narrow alleyway. It's illuminated by a single yellow bulb. If she recognizes him under the light, it doesn't show on her face. Kim Seri holds up her phone. It's all in English except the address. "Could you tell me where this place is?"
She's overly polite with her speech. Taeoh raises a brow at her. "Weren't you trying to protect Kang Inha from me?" He accuses.
Kim Seri frowns in confusion. "Chicken?" She asks slowly for clarification.
"No. Protect. Pro-tect," he repeats in English. Then, with an exasperated sigh, says, "Nevermind. The address you're looking for is six blocks away. You should've taken bus number—"
"I know which bus I should've taken," she cuts him off and it somewhat infuriates him. "It's just…I'm still learning to read Korean," she grumbles, taking her phone back. She inhales deeply, reeling in her temper, and meets his gaze. "You're Inha's friend, aren't you? I'm—"
"Kim Seri," he interrupts her, "I know." Her eyebrow twitches in irritation. It's satisfying to watch. "I'm—"
"Han Taeoh," she mimics his tone. "I know." There's an aura of obnoxious superiority around her. Like she believes herself to be better just because he doesn't belong to the demography she's from. It's different from the superiority that comes from being a chaebol in this country but it's still superiority nonetheless. It grates his nerves. There's a childish urge to shove her into the gutter. He finally understands why Inha wants to run her over with his bike. Kim Seri puts her phone away and, with the same obnoxiousness, says, "It goes both ways, by the way."
Taeoh creases his brows.
"I warned him about you before I heard your little speech on major-league-minor-league, though half of it went over my head. You and Inha," she buries her hands in her jacket pockets and swings on the balls of her feet like he'd seen Inha do a few days ago. "You're a bad combination of friends. I have no idea what kind of a person you are but he's not what you think him to be. He's…" She struggles to find the right word in her limited vocabulary then says, "Weird."
Taeoh takes a step away from her. "Right," he says dryly, because he can't be bothered with what she thinks. What does she know, anyway? "I can make my own choices, thanks."
A shadow of scorn passes over her so quickly that Taeoh barely registers it. "Yeah," she shrugs, turning around, "I'm sure you know best."
He watches her walk down several paces before turning his back on her. Over his shoulder, he calls, "You're going the wrong way!"
•✧•
In her mind, she's still Sinéad Keating. It still takes her a moment to remember that when someone yells 'Kim Seri', they're referring to her.
Sure, the Asian side of her family called her that but only during the occasional phone call to the family or during the holidays. But her parents had to get divorced and she had to move out of the country with her dad because their hometown Donegal wasn't far enough from Dublin for the inconsolable man. It would've made more sense if they had moved to some big city in Korea. But Sinéad's dad, the Irish grandchild of Korean immigrants, decided to drop everything and come live with his cousin in this shithole of a village where everyone was up in everyone's business.
Sinéad—or maybe she should start calling herself Seri for the ease of it—hates everything about this village. The houses, the neighbourhoods, the people. The fascination she had towards this place had diminished with each holiday trip and now that she's seventeen, she makes it known that she wants nothing more than to take a flamethrower and set everything ablaze.
Too emotionally unstable and at his wits end, Flynn, her dad, finally cut her a deal. "Finish school here and then go on back home," he had said.
"Sure, because finishin' school here is too damn easy," Seri had snapped because she had taken one look at the eleventh grade maths textbook and promptly burst into tears.
There was no way she was going to juggle school and after-school school while catching up to the obvious gap between what she studied back home and what she needed to study here. But Seri doesn't think much of it after a point. She decides to do what she has to. It's just a few more months.
She's going to leave the damn country once she turns eighteen anyway.
•✧•
It's the middle of the night and she's going through English-to-Korean translations of terms related to human anatomy when she remembers seeing Han Taeoh before. Back on the rooftop, he had been covered in too any bruises for her to correctly place his face. Her uncle had called her one afternoon, when he was still in school, asking her to bring over some papers he had forgotten on his table.
Seri had walked through the gates and towards the school quad when one Han Taeoh had bumped into her while sprinting out of the building. Knocked to the ground, with the papers strewn around her, Seri had yelled curses after him because any civilised human would've stopped to help her. He hadn't bothered sparing her a glance and, instead, had gotten into a taxi that sped away, leaving dust behind.
"Dick," Seri mutters to herself, feeling the antagonism towards him rise, and turns the page.
•✧•
When she's got nothing better to do and he's not hanging around Taeoh, Kim Seri and Kang Inha spend time together. They're not each other's first choice but he's the only one who doesn't care that she fumbles around the levels of speech and she's the only one who keeps him on his toes. But Kim Seri and Han Taeoh go out of their way to avoid each other. The hate-at-first-sight, it seemed, was mutual.
"Here again?" Inha mocks when he finds her sitting on the swing in an empty playground, "I'm beginning to think you like me."
"Are you stupid?" She retorts with an eyeroll, "You're the one approaching me."
He gestures at her shorts before sitting on the swing next to hers, "Aren't you cold?"
"No."
"Where's your 'Suah-unnie'?" Inha mimics her but really, he taunts her by making his voice unnecessarily high-pitched. Seri doesn't sound like that. Nor does she call Suah 'unnie'.
Seri digs the tip of her sneaker into the dirt. "On a date with Wonderboy," she grumbles. 'Wonderboy' is Han Daeyang, a decent college-goer from the neighbourhood whose family isn't stupid rich but still rich enough to disapprove of his girlfriend for being a poor grocer's daughter. Seri has no problems with him. He's a kind person who walks her home upon Suah's request when she finds herself lost in the village or gets off at the wrong bus stop at night. Her problem is that Suah and her boyfriend have started to date far too seriously. So much so that Seri almost always gets stood up. Yeun Suah is three years older and Seri's only friend in a country where she'll never belong. Naturally, Seri can't help but resent Wonderboy Daeyang.
Inha picks up on the bitterness. He tilts his head and grins, "Why, are they planning on getting married and leaving you all by your lonesomeness?"
Maybe. "Maybe," Seri says, "Would be nice, though. They're cute together."
"You'll be lonelier." It's like Inha's deliberately rubbing salt on her wounds.
"Yeah, but that doesn't mean I should be selfish about it," she replies like it's obvious, "I'm sure we'll work something out. Besides, I won't be here for long. I'll go back to my mom the minute I turn eighteen."
Inha quietens for a minute or two. Then, he casually says, "I'm here too."
It's not a confession at all. No, instead, it's a seemingly straightforward way of him telling her to count him as a friend too. But Seri can't help feeling a warmth creep up her neck. Her gaze flickers to the beauty spot under his eye and she swallows dryly. "Yeah. I suppose." Her answer sounds very half-hearted but it's not.
Inha gasps, mock-offended, "You don't like being friends with me?" He talks as if they haven't yelled death threats at each other at all.
"No…I do like it," Seri swings lightly and tries to play it cool, "It's just…you get on my nerves." Quickly, she adds, "I know you do it on purpose." He does do it on purpose. He enjoys being acknowledged and having the spotlight on him so that he can flex the power that comes from his last name, her uncle had quietly told her over tea one evening.
Inha doesn't deny it. His mouth curves into a smile Seri has seen before. It's the one that makes her believe that maybe, just maybe, she won't regret liking him. "It's fun," he says, "Getting on your nerves." Then, he shifts, twisting his torso to face her, "Hey, you can count Taeoh as your friend too—"
"No fucking way," Seri snaps, feeling her blood pressure rise just at the mention of Han Taeoh. Inha twitches a bit in surprise. "I can't stand him," she continues, gripping the rope tightly, "I couldn't stand him from the moment I saw him. His—his…what's the word? Arrogance? Cockiness? Yeah, that. There's something about the cockiness with which he looks at me that makes me want to smack it off his face."
"Is that so…That's sad to hear." He doesn't look sad at all. If anything, Inha looks mildly pleased that she doesn't like Han Taeoh. She bites her tongue and doesn't comment.
Kang Inha is cute. Attractive, even. But Seri should smother the crush she's developing on him while it's still early. Especially because there's something very, very off about him and his overly bright demeanour.
•✧•
Seri realises that she's gotten on the wrong bus the second she spots Han Taeoh at one of the window seats. "Ah, fuck," she curses, startling the whole bus. Taeoh scowls furiously at her and pulls his hood up. It's not until she gets off at the next stop and is halfway home that she wonders whether he thought she was swearing at him and not at the situation.
•✧•
Inevitably, Inha invites Kim Seri to his condo to study together. What he doesn't tell her is that Taeoh is already there at the dining table with his textbooks and notes spread around him. They glare at each other and Inha pretends that nothing's wrong, ushering Seri to sit across Taeoh. Taeoh is impressed by how efficiently she teaches Inha physics. Saying it out loud, or even letting it show on his face for that matter, is out of the question. He raises his brows while looking into his own assignment, and acts like he couldn't care less how smart she shows herself to be. Or acknowledge her show of intelligence.
Their study session doesn't last very long. Less than two hours later, Inha cries about his brain melting and kicks them out politely. Seri and Taeoh walk out of the property in what is the most uncomfortable silence of Seri's life. She clutches the strap of her school bag and casually asks, "So, which way are you head—"
Han Taeoh has already turned away from her, walking towards the bus stop. He can't bring himself to care about her in any way. They're not friends. Seri feels a surge of anger at his behaviour because she's trying to be civil. "Well, fuck you too, then," she scoffs in English.
What is meant for her own ears accidentally comes out as half a shout. Taeoh stops short and whirls around, eyes turning into slits from rage. "What is your problem?" He demands.
Seri feels bad that he heard her. She doesn't know how to respond but doesn't want to not respond either. With a contemptuous raise of her shoulders, she meets his eyes challengingly.
Taeoh looks away once, smiling humourlessly to himself. To him, she oozes with an ill-placed superiority complex. But, to him, she's only superior in being dull and stupid. "Your arrogance is too damn annoying," he snaps.
"You're one to talk, mushroom-face," Seri retorts. She turns around with a hmph and adjusts her bag over her shoulders. What a pity that he's good-looking. "I hope you get hit in the head," she curses.
Taeoh doesn't think he's a bad person. In fact, he goes out of his way to be morally and ethically good. But this time, he doesn't stop himself from wishing that she gets hit by a car or vanishes into thin air. Not vanishing from kidnapping, of course, because the kidnappers would probably drop her off at her house and hand her poor father money to make sure she never leaves her house again.
He watches her strut down the opposite direction and contemplates whether or not he should say it. She is regrettably pretty. Once she's far enough, he calls loudly, "You're going the wrong way!"
•✧•
Her brother, Liam—William—is home for the weekend from uni and is kind enough to call Seri to give her a break from going mental. "How're ya keepin', Nade?" He yawns into the phone. He's four years older, studies Physics in Trinity, and has dark blue eyes that he inherited from their mother, Louisa.
Seri hangs half off the sofa, twirling the landline cord around her finger. "Gettin' by, as you do," she replies, "I feel worse for uncle, though. He's puttin' up with a lot, what with da getting drunk and moping around as often as he does." She wonders how much the phone is going to blow up with the number of international calls she and her dad have been making lately.
"Ach, sorry to hear that."
"It's that soju stuff he's been on. I'll tell ya, that stuff's actually like juice." A pause. "How're you?"
He yawns again, this time letting out a noise that sounds a lot like Chewbacca. "Grand," he says, "Not too bad. Thinking of a PhD. Ma's not keen on my plans."
"How's she?" Seri calls her mother every week without fail to keep up but her brother can actually see how the woman's doing after the divorce.
"On a honeymoon high but if honeymooning was for a single person."
"That's an awful analogy, Liam."
"Y'know what I mean. She works. Goes down to the pub with the girls. Flirts. Comes home. Works. Pub. Flirts. And so it goes. Connor's brother—you know, the fella moved to work as a bartender once Ronnie's started to pick up business—aye, I ran into him at the dairy section at a Tesco when he told me, so he did. Don't think she's dating anyone, though."
Seri's mouth curves in disgust, "For Christ's sake, I hope she's not. It's too soon, isn't it?"
"I think she's just enjoying bein' single at the moment. I know she misses da. Heard her grumbling about the car keys today. How's school?"
Seri doesn't have a lot of friends. The girls that she had attracted on the account of being a foreigner had dispersed quite quickly when they found that she wasn't white enough, didn't have any unique features, and spoke an accent of English that they found difficult to understand. It's not bad, she tells her brother, at least she's not getting bullied like they show in the dramas she's started to watch during breakfast with her uncle.
"No pretty lads in class to pass time?"
"I'm in an all girls." Still, she thinks of Kang Inha. Unfortunately, and to her horror, the face that comes to her mind is Han Taeoh. Seri suppresses a shudder.
"No," she insists, scratching her arm, "Everyone's an eyesore."
•✧•
After a particularly difficult day of looking up words and using the wrong level of formality, Seri drags herself back home to find Han Taeoh at the dining table with her uncle. They look up from the stacks of exam papers in unison.
Her uncle, an ever-jolly face with thinning grey hair, waves at her, "Fun day?" Sometimes, he still talks to her like she's eight, bless his bachelor heart.
"Shite," she answers, leaning against the wall and slipping her socks off. She saunters past them to the small utility space behind the kitchen and throws them into her pile of laundry. "What're youses up to?"
"He's helping me mark the ninth graders' papers," he explains, pointing at Taeoh who refuses to look up from his lap. Seri's uncle doesn't notice and continues to grin enthusiastically at the notion of having his work halved. "Ah, you haven't met him, have you? This is Han—"
"We've met," Seri and Taeoh echo dryly. Taeoh's gaze briefly flickers over to her. It falls to the framed picture of her and Yeun Suah on the crockery cabinet.
"He's an intelligent student. Ranked in the top 0.1%, you know?" Her uncle still doesn't notice the hostility between the teenagers. "He's my classmate's son," he finishes happily, sifting through the pile of sheets in front of him.
The bit of information is useless for Seri but Taeoh's head snaps up. His eyes widen and he visibly struggles to speak for a fraction of a second. "How do you know that?" He asks quietly. The wonder in his voice reminds Seri of a child. "Saem?" Taeoh adds hurriedly to avoid upsetting Seri's uncle.
He puts his reading glasses on and uncaps a red pen. "You moved into Jisook's childhood home, didn't you?" He hums, circling a word on one of the answer sheets, "The village chief told me. Not many remember Sookie, to be honest. She moved out to another town to study further once her parents died. Even at school, she kept to herself like you do." Seri's uncle laughs to himself, "Bet you inherited her brains too. She was clever, that one. Clever and kind hearted. Used to help me and a few others with our homework."
He shakes his head pityingly, "Never saw her after our highschool graduation. But…" His somberness disappears, replaced by his usual cheer, "I saw her face in yours and recognised you immediately."
Seri's taken to lean against the kitchen counter, with her uncle's back to her, and watches Taeoh's reaction. He's too careful with his emotions, she observes, but there's a shine in his eyes and she thinks he's going to cry. "Right," she says loudly, breaking whatever trance he was in, "Thanks for the story, uncle. I need to go lie down."
As much as she hates Han Taeoh, she recognises his want to be by himself after listening to her uncle. Her room's the farthest one from the kitchen—not that the house is grand and spacious.
"Don't worry," she hears her uncle say softly, "I'm not going to pry. And I'm not going to talk. You can breathe now, Taeoh."
•✧•
She doesn't smoke very often. Her parents don't mind but her father had lectured her during their 18 hour flight to Incheon airport about being caught with cigarettes by her uncle. Or any of the villagers. As a result, there aren't a lot of places where Seri can smoke when she's utterly stressed after spending the whole night memorising new vocabulary for her biology class.
She sneaks out of the house before 5AM and takes a walk towards the outskirts of the village. There's an abandoned railway line that acts as a shortcut but is rarely used by the villagers because of how inconvenient it is to traverse over. Seri sits down on the track, humming a pop song she had heard on the radio, and lights her cigarette.
It's peaceful and it's calm and she almost forgets that she was contemplating drowning herself in the lake instead of studying for her exam. But she's barely taken three drags when she hears the crunch of gravel heading towards her.
"Little early to smoke, don't you think?" Han Taeoh looks down at her, hands shoved in the pockets of his dark blue hoodie.
His tone is lighthearted, like he's trying to be civil with her. But she's not in any mood to entertain his friendly advances. He should've been decent with her the first time she'd been nice to him. Seri spitefully blows the smoke out through her nose and glances up at him. "Little early to piss me off, don't you think?" She shoots back.
It's the angle from which she looks at him that makes her mind play tricks on her. The handsome cut of his face hardens venomously and she curses herself for finding him attractive. They are alone in a deserted spot at dawn, and he hates her and she wants to kneel in front of him with her fingers slowly creeping up to the waistband of his jeans.
Seri looks away with a click of her tongue. If he wasn't such an asshole, she would've tried to fuck him. But she's better and smarter than him so she won't. But, Christ, he's hot, she'll give him that.
"Right," he says, shaking his head as if she is a lost cause, "Why do I bother?"
"You shouldn't."
"My mistake."
"I'm not surprised. Your judgement isn't exactly sound."
If there's something Seri has caught on about Han Taeoh, it's that he can't stand it if she belittles his decision-making skills. His mouth twitches. She wonders whether he'll pick up a rock and smash her head in. He doesn't look like the type but you can never tell with men. He settles for a flimsy 'Go to hell' that makes her chuckle. Seri dusts the cigarette ash off her pyjama pants and watches Taeoh walk past her.
Her eyes stay trained on his undercut and the back of his neck. She takes another drag, wondering what his throat would feel like against her lips.
•✧•
Though he doesn't have time for it, Taeoh has a clear definition of love. It's about being kind and fair and understanding—a soft feeling. It's everything he has never seen between his mother and his step-father.
Naturally, Taeoh is appalled by himself when he senses that the unwitting attraction he feels towards Kim Seri takes the shape of something aggressive and full of hate. He fears that he has begun to mirror his father's pugnacity. But his conscience is arguably in control. He hasn't given in to the urge of winding his fingers through Kim Seri's light brown hair or kissing her so hard that her mouth bruises. He hasn't gotten close enough to touch her. That's good. Again, she's admittingly pretty—though not his type—yet, the thought of just their hands brushing makes his skin crawl.
He prides himself for his patience but with Kim Seri, he's hit the cap. And somehow, the intense dislike and repulsion and disgust has given rise to a horrific feeling of lust that he realises when he looks down at her sitting on the train tracks. There's an involuntary sense of smugness he feels when he sees her below him.
This is bad, he thinks and picks up his pace. Han Taeoh is a decent human being and the desire to fuck Kim Seri to show how much better he is than her is alarming and, frankly, shameful of him. It's a side of him he'd rather never discover. He has grand dreams to achieve.
But Seri is tearing him apart without doing any physical damage to him. Taeoh, who has supreme control over his thoughts, loses the reins and pictures the dip of her waist while he takes out a water bottle from Inha's fridge. When he tries to explain Inha a set of graphs, he recalls Seri smoking under the lavender sunrise and thinks of the tight curves behind her white shirt.
"How dehydrated are you?" Inha cocks his head to the side, watching Taeoh chug another bottle to quench his parched throat.
"Just…" Taeoh doesn't know what to say. He's afraid of how Inha will respond if he confesses that Kim Seri is toying with him without actually doing anything. "My stress is making me see things."
•✧•