chips on his breath. “How did you break that store window?”
“I told you to get out of my way,” Miyoung warned. She could feel her control breaking.
“What do you think you can do to make me?” Jaegil ran a finger down her cheek.
Miyoung slapped it away.
Jaegil’s eyes flashed, a rage she could recognize. The look of someone who’d been battered by life. And she wondered if Jaegil was more a kindred spirit than she wanted to admit. After all, they had both given in to their violent natures. Jaegil lifted his hand. A windup before the strike.
Then his body flew away from hers, sliding across the tile floor.
Somin stood between them like a shield protecting Miyoung from the dazed bully on the floor.
“Ya, Lee Somin. Nappeun gijibae!” Jaegil yelled as Seho rushed to his side. A door down the hall opened, and a second-year teacher poked his head out.
“What are you kids doing out of class? Who’s your homeroom teacher?”
Jaegil and Seho took off, well-practiced in the art of escape.
Somin and Miyoung were not as lucky.
* * *
• • •
The disciplinary conference room was a stark square space with white walls and half a dozen desks. The teacher sat them back to back with sheets of paper to write apology letters.
Miyoung stared at the blank page. She made small black dots with her pen, unable to form a coherent thought.
“If you’re going to stand up to a bully like Jaegil, then you better be prepared to follow through with your fists,” Somin said behind her. “Guys like that only respond to brute force.”
Or you could kill him, it’s what you do best, a taunting spirit said in her ear.
“Leave me alone.” Miyoung spoke to her blank paper.
“What?”
“I said stop worrying yourself about my personal business.”
“Sure,” Somin said, her tone flippant. “I always conduct my personal business in the public hallway.”
Somin was already facing her, straddling the chair backward, her uniform skirt bunched over her gym pants. She poked a finger into Miyoung’s forehead. “Ah, there’s that fighting spirit.”
Her heart-shaped face was mischievous and watchful. The type of girl Miyoung would definitely have avoided in the past.
“Do you know how to land a punch?” Somin glanced at Mi-young’s hands. “You look like you’d break your wrist on your first try.”
“I can punch,” Miyoung mumbled.
“Didn’t look like it,” Somin said.
“Why do you care?”
“I don’t.” Somin crossed her arms. “And I do. I just hate that Ahn Jihoon was right.”
“Excuse me?” Miyoung asked, confused.
“When he said I should have stopped Baek Hana in the bathroom. I’m just as much to blame as she is for bullying you. I’m trying to say I’m sorry,” Somin said. She sounded more annoyed than apologetic.
Miyoung couldn’t seem to digest the words. Someone apologizing to her felt so foreign.
“It’s fine.” Miyoung shrugged off the girl’s kindness.
“It’s not,” Somin said. “With all of the rumors Hana is spreading, you know how mean the kids can be. I’ll teach you to fight. It’s the fastest way to get them off your back.”
“They’re not rumors. I pushed that girl off the bridge.”
It felt good to say the truth—freeing. Was this why Jihoon did it all the time?
Somin looked Miyoung up and down, taking her measure. “Was it on purpose?”
“Why does it matter?” Miyoung asked.
“It matters to me.”
Miyoung sighed. “No.”
“Okay,” Somin said. “Well, the offer still stands if you want it.”
It was not what Miyoung had been expecting. “Why would you do that when I told you what I did?”
“We all make mistakes. My mom says we should always get a second chance. How else will we make up for them?”
Somin’s words made an uncomfortable flush rise in Miyoung’s chest.
“I heard Hana tried to make you into a walking bindaetteok,” Somin said.
“Such a waste of good food,” Miyoung muttered.
Somin snorted out a laugh.
“I heard what Jihoonie did, too. He better not get hurt because of you or you’re dead.”
“Do you like him?” Miyoung blurted out the question before she could stop herself.
“Of course I do.”
“You know what I mean,” Miyoung said, annoyed at herself for starting this conversation. What did she care how Somin felt about Jihoon?
“He’s just my friend, nothing more. I love him like a brother. He’s my best friend. How else could I hate him so much half the time?”
Miyoung let out a bitter laugh. “Is that what being a friend is like? Then I have a hundred friends here.”
“The kids are just jealous because you’re so pretty and you don’t care