literature

Just A Girl

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The day started with a headache and remnants of odd dreams from the night before, but there wasn't anybody to talk to in the house, so the occupant didn't bother to make much in the way of a coherent complaint, though she was working up to it. The girl, sixteen years old, threw her legs over the side of the bed and stretched on waking up, one hand rubbing at her forehead firmly. Her black hair hung in disarray down to her mid-back, strands of it sticking out in odd directions, a dark, royal purple showing at the base.
Her feet showed a good deal less animation as they shuffled underneath her off toward the bathroom in a dazed trance that a zombie would be proud of. Briefly, she directed her gaze toward the clock on the wall next to a picture showing a tall Korean man, his wife and a young boy. The girl confirmed that she had a good two hours before she had to be ready and out of the house.

"Ugh," she said, shambling into the bathroom.

The image in the mirror was the same as always. Dark hair, not yet tamed for the day, sleepy brown eyes and a furrowed brow that someone was going to tell her was going to wrinkle if she kept making faces like that. Her tall form was slender, almost skinny, with long arms and legs that had muscles just the right subtle level of definition from years of enjoying frequent sports without being too obsessed with them.

Satisfied that she hadn't grown a horn or something out of her head - it would explain the pounding - she rolled up the sleeves of her pajamas and started on her morning routine, while she slowly muttered her way into recognizable Korean.

"First day of school term, gotta be ready, Vice President is responsible for enforcement of school discipline. Why am I still Vice President after the coffeemaker thing, why can't they get someone else to do this job?"

The words given in a monotonous stream at a constant pace that had the muttering character most would have assumed would be filled to the brim with under the breath profanities, oaths or swearing of the most colorful variety. Once or twice she might have said something like "damn" or "hell", but for the most part she got through her morning near-conscious complaining completely without incident.

By the time she'd gotten out of the shower, the vocabulary had calmed down somewhat as she moved to the mirror again and started putting the finishing touches on her appearance. This last phase started with a comb, a brush and a steely glint to her eyes as she stared down, not her own reflection but that of her hair.

"Listen up, you damn rebels," she said grimly. "We're going to try this again. We're going to have a nice, simple, straight hair style. There'll be nothing out of place. No damn European curls trying to sneak their way in, got it? Bad enough I have to dye you to look normal. You will be straight and manageable. Understood?"

She paused for a moment and blinked.

"Wait a minute, am I acting like that when no one's watching now?" she asked.

In response, a long strand of hair, drying out from the shower, coiled upward and hung like a long spring. The girl's mouth twitched irritably at the display and she hung her head dismally before moving to the attack. The hair was straight and held back in long, simple tail tied off with a ribbon by the time she was done.

However, some of it was already curling back to its natural state.

Hanging off her closet door was her school uniform, a sort of off-white with grey threads that made it look silver and lined by purple highlights at the collar, buttons, cuffs, hemlines and stitching. Beneath that was a short skirt, it would have reached half-way to the knees of a girl with average proportions. On this girl, it barely reached two-fifths of the distance down her long, slender thighs. . It was made of the same shimmering off-white. Long, thigh-length deep purple socks were pulled on then, ending just four inches shy of the hem of her skirt.

Finished dressing, she opened the closet door and frowned into the mirror there as she took in her slim body shape.

"The one European thing I could have appreciated was the figure," she muttered as she considered her tall, slender form.

Grimacing she marched out of the bedroom to the front and the items set out there on the table: six unsharpened pencils in three separate colors, each set about an inch apart; a pad of lineless note paper; a thick hand eraser; a pair of black ink gel pens; her cell-phone and seven separate phone charms; a calculator, much abused; a metal back scratcher two feet long, much of the paint scratched off; a bundle of carefully folded gym clothes and towel; eight labeled folders, each with a bundle of notes and a manila envelope inside; money set aside in a specifically measured amount; a key ring with keys labeled each with a set of four numbers; and a brown leather shoulder bag.

The majority of these items were carefully placed in the bag in what appeared to be long designated spots, save for the backscratcher that was snapped up and leaned against her shoulder, tapping it a couple of times where it rested. Then she took several calming, centering breaths and strode to the front door and slipped into her silver school shoes before heading out into the streets, locking the door behind her.

Once outside, her slight swagger turned into a more proper, feminine glide as she headed out of the house and down the road. The smile on her face was one of sunshine and friendliness as she held onto her shoulder bag, letting it swing with her step, and twirled the back scratcher in her hand, humming a pleasant tune.

"Ah, good day Yooji," one of her neighbors said she passed.

He gave her a casual smile and turned back toward his car, about to get in.

"Morning, Mr. Davis," she replied in a light tone.

"Doesn't Bravura up there not start for a bit yet?" the man asked casually, gesturing up the hill along the path the girl took to reach Bravura Academy.

"That's right, but I have to walk," she said shrugging.

"Don't they have a dorm for you boarding students?" he asked.

"There was a sort of misunderstanding," Yooji said, a bit embarrassed. "So, I'm currently … banned from living on campus. My father and the school came to this…agreement with the school so I could keep attending."

"Can't imagine a girl like you would get into anything worth that," Mr. Davis asked. "Always a polite girl, doing the baby-sitting and the like."

"Well, I said it was a misunderstanding," Yooji said with a sigh, reaching her back scratcher down the back of her shirt.

It wasn't ordinarily a lady-like gesture, but the way she stood there with confidence and completely ignoring the oddity made most people overlook it. Of course, some of her neighbors were similarly casual in their manners. In any case, the itch scratched for now, she retrieved the scratcher and used it in something like a quick salute, tempered with a bright smile, and then continued walking up the hill toward school.

"Have a good one." Mr. Davis said as he slipped completely into his car and started it up to head off to his work place.

He was soon passing her up the street, waving by habit as he passed her, and she waving back for much the same reason.

Yooji paused about fifteen minutes later to take some of her carefully portioned out money and slip some coins into a vending machine at the shop. As she did so she took in the stock at the corner store, mentally noting any specials or deals for the day or new stock that she hadn't seen yet.

"Good day, Miss Jeon," the old woman inside the story said with a sort of teasing tone. "Off to school again I see. I suppose we'll be seeing you on the way back."

"Yes, Mrs. Grayson," she said calmly. "Any kimchi yet?"

"Oh, sorry, but it doesn't look like it," the woman said shaking her head idly in a manner that suggested that she had this conversation fairly often.

"Hmm maybe next time," she said. "We do have some right fine steaks."

"Uh … okay, I'll think about it," she said. "See you after school."

"Be careful with that coffee, Miss Jeon," the woman said with a bit of a snicker.

Stepping back out onto the road, Yooji only paused cautiously as she came to one of the roads leading up into the mostly derelict neighborhood on the edge of town.

"What were they doing up there?" the Korean girl wondered before taking up her walk again and walking the rest of the way down to her school.

She was barely past the gates, still very early, when the real irritations of the day started to become apparent.

"So, Schmidt," a smug sounding boy's voice said. "We were going to talk about your rent this week."

"My name's not Schmidt," a nervous, German accented boy said to the two boys around him.

"Whatever," one of the boys, the larger one, said as his friend snickered at his side, "Where's the money, Hanz? I've given you a week to turn it over."

Slipping her shoulder bag's strap so that it was now hanging off the opposite shoulder and wouldn't fall off easily, Yooji flexed one of her hands and tapped the backscratcher against her shoulder as she walked forward, the confident sort of swagger returning for the moment.

"I haven't gotten any money this month yet," the young teenager said nervously.

"Well, you'd better…" the smaller, giggling bully started to say.

"Ahem," Yooji said.

It wasn't a clearing of her throat or a cough. She simply made a point of saying the sound effect.

"Who the hell are…" the larger bully paled as he turned to find Yooji standing there.

Her arms were crossed, she already looked annoyed and she was tapping her backscratcher against her shoulder in time with her tapping foot.

"Uh, Vice President Jeon," the boy said nervously. "I heard you'd been expelled."

"I just live off campus now," she said in a cold tone, arms unfolding. "So what the hell are you doing, Jerk?"

"My name is Jacob," he insisted leaning over her to try to apply some of his greater height and mass over her skinny frame.

He received a hard whack between the eyes with Yooji's metal backscratcher. Stepping back away from her he rubbed briefly at the spot between his eyes, growling. He turned toward his friend with a bit of a nervous snarl.

"Are you going to just stand there?" he asked.

"I'm not lookin' to fight her," the other boy said nervously.

"Uh, what's going on here?" the German boy asked.

"Your third-year class vice president is laying down some law," Yooji said. "And the first law for today is thou shall not extort the other students."

"Listen you self-righteous little…" he hesitated. "You're not the high and mighty untouchable you used to be. Do you think the school is going to listen to one thing you say after the whole coffeemaker thing?"

"Yeah," Yooji asked. "And who do you think you should be more worried about, the school faculty or the person who caused the whole coffeemaker thing?"

She arched an eyebrow and just waited for him to say something that would give her an excuse to blow her top at him. The backscratcher tapped against her shoulder impatiently, but the boy stood there staring at her from his extra four inches of her own five foot seven height. His courage seemed to be wavering.

"Talk about tsundere," he muttered.

Yooji's eye twitched.

"What did you just call me," she demanded, thwacking him in the face with her backscratcher. "Did you just say tsundere, huh? Do you even know what language that is, huh?"

With each "huh" her voice rose another volume level as she leaned hostilely up into Jacob's face. The boy's friend was meanwhile trying to get quietly out of the area, but that ended when a finger was stabbed out in his direction.

"You, out of here," she snapped, the boy didn't need to be told twice, and then turned to look at the German boy and smiling in a friendly manner. "You can go ahead and leave too, sorry for the trouble."

"That's all right," the German boy said as he quickly left for the main building of the academy complex.

"So, now that's just you, me and my backscratcher," Yooji asked. "Can we talk about the appropriateness of calling any Korean girl by a name geeks and nerds use to talk about over-violent psychos on Japanese cartoons? Or are you going to apologize before I start getting creative?"

Yooji kept whacking him in the forehead with each question, keeping a firm frown on her face that did not waver an inch from its implicit promise of incredible pain. The bully met those eyes for all of a few seconds before turning his back on her and slinking off.

"I don't have time for th—urk!"

He gasped as the collar of his shirt and jacket were snagged with the backscratcher and he was pulled backwards, bending until he fell hard and flat on his back with Yooji standing over him.

"Before you leave you're going to say something to me," Yooji said backscratcher back against her shoulder.

"Are you crazy?" the bully demanded.

"Crazy!" the Korean snapped. "Who are you calling crazy, are you stupid or something?!  First you're trying to rob one of the freshmen and then you call me tsundere and then you call me crazy! Boy you are asking for a beating, aren't you?! Now! Repeat after me."

"Like…"

The backscratcher smacked his face, and a heel dug into his chest.

"Repeat. After. Me," she insisted, her weapon of choice in his face. "Mian hamnida."

"Wha…" he started to say before she raised her backscratcher up. "Mia ham need a!"

Yooji's eyes twitched briefly but she stepped off of him and stood off to the side, pointing with an imperial air with her backscratcher off toward the main building.

"Close enough," she said. "Get to class."

"But we still have thirty min…" the bully protested briefly before the girl turned back to look at him, and then he was scrambling off toward the main building.

As soon as he was gone, Yooji took several deep breaths, glancing around to make sure no one was watching, and then leaned against the wall clutching her heart and allowing a very relieved expression to pass over her face.

"You know, if you keep doing that," a new voice said, "you're going to have real trouble getting a boyfriend."

She just about jumped out of her shoes as she turned to look at the sandy blond girl next to her, smiling over at Yooji as she walked to where the Korean girl had just had her confrontation.

"Don't do that to me, Amber," Yooji said with a gasp. "And is that all you're worried about? I swear, one of these days, the whole badass thing is going to fall flat on its face and one of these giants is going to pancake me!"

"Oh don't worry about that," Amber said waving her hand. "I'm sure you have health insurance."

Yooji stared at the American teen in a state of combined shock and confusion as the girl slipped her arm through the taller Korean girl's and started strolling calmly up to the main building.

"So what's it like living alone in your very own house?" Amber asked excitedly. "Have you had any boys over, yet?"

"I don't have a boyfriend, Amber for the last time," Yooji said. "I'm like the only Korean person for a thousand miles or something."

"Yeah, but there are plenty of other guys," the American girl said. "From all over the world here."

Yooji sighed and shook her head in exasperation.

"Yeah, but they're not…"

"Excuse me, Miss," a boy said, walking up to them. "Which building do I receive my unit assignment from?"

"Unit assign…" Yooji stopped as she got a look at the boy talking to them.

The speaker was about sixteen, her own age, and stood about as tall as the thug she'd just taken to task, though he didn't have the coordinated excess bulk of that other boy. He spoke with an odd European accent and had dark hair, there was an odd half curving scar over the left eye and he showed none of the usual trepidation of new students to the academy, simply a cool request for information.

"Do you mean classroom assignment?" Amber asked. "Well, you're in luck, this is Yoon-Ji Jeon, Vice President of the Student Council at Bravura Academy."

"You're the secretary, you know," the Korean girl protested.

"Ah," the young man came to attention. "My apologies for wasting your time."

"No, no, my job is to help students," Yooji said. "Didn't they give you a packet in the mail?"

"The intelligence offered on the matter is unreliable," he continued, glancing at the packet of papers in his hand. "The registrar's office seems pretty clearly marked, but they have stated that I am already registered and they do not have the information of where I am assigned."

"Uh, you'll want the counselor's office," Yooji said. "All the new students get their room assignments from there. Then they'll send you to the auditorium for the orientation."

"Thank you," the boy said, nodding at her. "Might I ask where the security office is? I'd like to register a complaint about the checkpoint at the front gate."

"What checkpoint?" Amber asked, blinking.

"Exactly," the boy said. "As I understand it, the children of numerous VIPs attend this school, and the facility appears to be open for anybody who wants to come in."

"The gate is locked as soon as the bell rings," Yooji responded. "Besides, most of the students live on campus, so who's going to come in and out?"

"People that aren't supposed to be here," was the response.

Yooji frowned and tapped her backscratcher against her shoulder.

"What are you talking about," she said, tone of voice turning harsh. "It's a school, not a damn military base."

Amber, standing next to her blinked as her friend's attitude noticeably changed.

"But the students here should be kept safe in case…" the boy started to say.

"In case what?" Yooji asked. "The reason so many people send their kids here is because nothing happens here. No Iron Curtain, no McCarthyism, no piracy, no civil war, no tin-pot despots, nothing. It's quiet, and it's thousands and thousands of miles out of the way. The only thing trying to kill you around here is the damn continent and the animals on it. So just get yourself to the counselor's office and stop wasting my time!"

She pointed her backscratcher at him and frowned.

"Do you get it, mister?" she demanded.

To her surprise he snapped a salute, though she was almost certain that was sarcasm.

"Yes, Ma'am," he said sharply. "I shall attend to that right away."

"Then get to it!" Yooji snapped, gesturing with an imperial manner.

The tall boy clicked his heels together and marched off as ordered.  Exactly as ordered.

"I think this school council thing is getting to me," the Korean girl said with a sigh as she slumped again.

"So," Amber said with a smile.

"So? What so?" her friend asked as they followed down the path.

"So, you decided to pull out bad-ass Yooji," Amber said. "And he didn't end up reciting something Korean."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Yooji asked as they moved into the main building and through the hallway. "Oh you're not going to pull an anime thing out, are you?"

"I was thinking more Benedict and Beatrice," the American said with a smirk. "Your jaw was hanging open for a good long look before you started talking."

"That doesn't mean anything," she protested. "He's not even Korean."

"So don't mention anything to your evil stepmother," Amber said. "And you're fine."

"Don't call my mum an evil stepmother," Yooji said with a sigh.

They were in their classroom not much later, sitting down and waiting for the homeroom teacher to get in to start the day. The room was more or less bare as compared to many American classrooms, mostly because it was shared by several teachers and the students assigned to the room hadn't come up with anything to put on the walls yet.

"Well, first day, we get a free period while they induct the new students," Amber said in a relaxed tone. "Explain the whole one classroom thing. So you can tell me about living in your own house now."

"It's not my house," Yooji protested. "I think it's my Dad's, or someone's. There's supposed to be a chaperone and another student in there this term. Part of the agreement, I think."

"I wonder if it's that boy from before," Amber said in a gasp. "Could you imagine sharing a house with him?"

"Oh please, would you give up on that?" her friend protested.

Amber took a deep breath and shook her head.

"Yooji," the blond girl said. "Most of the school knows that you're the best person to go to when someone needs help with something, because if you can't help you can tell them how to find people who can."

"It gets them out of my hair faster," she explained.

"And almost as many people think you're totally the iron hand part of Student Body President Karl's silk glove regime," Amber noted.

"Yeah, until they find out I'm a big fake that's going to get my teeth punched out some day," she said.

"And now half the town thinks you're the person that closed the school for a week with a coffeemaker," Amber listed. "And you did it without getting expelled. Well, you got kicked out of the dorms, but you didn't get expelled, or lose your Vice President's status."

"Yeah, Dad pulled some strings," she said, she thought of another option. "Or Mom did."

"The one time we had a Korean kid here two months ago," the friend said. "You totally pulled the phantom boyfriend thing until he gave up. At this rate, you're going to get all the way to college without ever going on a date with the same guy twice."

The teacher came in then, looking somewhat nervous as he adjusted his tie and glanced out the door toward the hallway. Everyone wondered, as they adjusted their seats to the normal row and column classroom arrangement, just what had him so nervous and several students glanced toward the door suddenly imagining that a King Kong sized thug was about to walk into the room.

"Oh, time to meet the new students!" Amber said excitedly.

"Uh, right," Yooji said, watching the door nervously along with everybody else.

The teacher cleared his throat and started to address the class, eyes still fluttering out of the room.

"Good day," the teacher said. "We have two new students in this class starting this term. If you might come in to introduce yourselves."

Two teenagers walked in, one was the boy that Yooji had given directions to earlier and the other was a short girl with pale skin, long black hair and a pair of John Lennon sunglasses.

There was no doubt which of the two had disturbed the teacher. The pale girl smiled at them in a friendly manner and Yooji felt a quick shiver while she saw the kids around her visibly shuddering. That was, except for Amber who smiled and waved at the two newcomers.

"I am pleased to meet you," the boy said from a position of attention. "I am Damir Milos, a scholarship student who has recently come to this school to learn about socializing with the civilian population."

Yooji arched an eyebrow, looking away from the oddly disturbing girl towards the boy.

"Did he just say 'civilian population'?" she asked Amber, leaning over toward the other girl.

"Maybe he's from a military family," the other girl said, shrugging. "Sounds Eastern European, how mysterious!"

"I got that much from his accent," Yooji noted with arched eyebrow.

The pale girl stood there politely waiting and doing nothing worth the creepy feeling exuding out of her. Eyes kept looking toward her, but the oddness of the boy's introduction was currently drawing more looks.

"So, umm, where are you from?" someone asked.

"That's a good question," the teacher said, apparently eager to lengthen Damir's introduction. "Why don't you tell us some of the places you've lived, Mr. Milos."

"Very well," he said. "I've lived in countries such as Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Somalia, Rwanda, Colombia and Indonesia."

Everyone simply stared.

"Really, he just strung together a list of war-zones, didn't he?" Yooji asked, shaking her head in irritation. "He's going to be trouble."

"Uh, right," the teacher said. "Do you have any special skills?"

"I have a civilian class C upright operations license," he said after some thought and emphasizing the word civilian. "Which I have only used to perform construction work, and only in the last year."

"Wow," Amber said. "That's specific."

"And perhaps you might tell us if…" the teacher started to say.

"Excuse me, sir," Damir said, "permission to speak freely?"

"Uh, go ahead," the teacher noted.

"Should not Semezou now introduce herself?" he asked casually. "I believe I have adequately described my mission here."

Eyes shifted toward the girl in question.

"I can wait," she said sweetly with an odd sort of accent that Yooji couldn't place.

"No, I suppose we should get on with class," the teacher noted. "Please introduce yourself."

The girl nodded and then bowed respectfully to the class.

"Greetings, I am Eija Semezou," she said, smiling and flashing a perfect set of pearly white teeth.

"Hello, little Miss Dracula," Yooji said under her breath.

"Oh, I think she's adorable," Amber said, apparently the only one not affected by the creepiness the girl was radiating.

"I have also traveled greatly," she said. "I was born in Greece with my brother and sister, but Mitera, that is Greek for mother, took jobs in many places so we often traveled with her."

"So do you have any hobbies or anything?" the boy two seats ahead of Yooji asked. "Drinking blood or turning into bats?"

"Mr. Rhodes!" the teacher snapped. "Behave yourself."

Though it was the tapping of a backscratcher pointedly on a desk behind him that really made Mr. Rhodes swallow nervously.

Eija, for her part, didn't seem to notice the interchange.

"I like herbology and painting, actually," she said. "I do not have any shape shifting abilities nor do I have much use for blood rites."

The teacher and collected students took a long moment to stare at her.

"Did I say something wrong?" she asked.

"No, no," the teacher said quickly before looking around the room. "Why don't the two of you sit…ah, there."

He pointed and Yooji glanced, horrorstruck, to her side and the two empty chairs that were beside her and Amber.

"Miss Jeon and Miss Lot are on the Student Council, so they'll be able to help you," the teacher said.

"Excellent," Damir said as he started walking toward the back of the class where the girls in question sat.

Behind him the girl followed up, people trying to lean away from her as she passed. Yooji had all of ten seconds to think how to handle this as the two came closer. And quickly she had her answer.

"You can sit here, Damir," she said, gesturing sharply with her backscratcher to the seat right next to her. "It'll be easier to watch you that way."

"Thank you, Vice President Jeon," the European boy said, sitting down. "I shall endeavor to attend to my tasks efficiently."

Eija sighed ever so slightly and Yooji felt a pang of guilt stab deep into her as the boy sat down next to her. Apparently her attempt at being subtle had failed. And she found herself fighting the urge to apologize, something that came from within and in spite of the creepiness that the girl still radiated.

Though it didn't seem to be affecting Damir.

"Oh don't worry about her," Amber said. "She's always a bit bossy."

"I'm used to it," Eija said quietly with a smile.

Yooji flinched at the statement and looked toward Damir and Amber, hoping for some sort of vindication for her perfunctory assignment of the boy to sit next to her rather than the girl. Amber gave her a way out, in a manner of speaking.

"She probably just wanted to sit next to the hot new guy," Amber said dismissively.

Half the class and Eija turned to look at Yooji and wait for her response and the Korean girl had to summon every ounce of the ruthless and irritable badass-Yooji to avoid breaking into hysterical laughter or crying right there as she considered the choices in front of her.

She could either admit the hot guy was hot, Korean or not, and imply a desire to sit next to him.

Or she could confirm that the polite creepy girl unnerved her and kick the metaphorical dog again.

"Yeah, my prerogative," Yooji said shrugging and tapping her backscratcher meaningfully against her shoulder. "Any problems with that?"

The class turned to look at the teacher so quickly even Eija was surprised and impressed. Amber meanwhile quietly clapped her hands together and hummed to herself in a sated way.

"Excuse me, Vice President Jeon," Damir said in a whispered tone as everyone turned away. "Can you explain the term 'hot guy'. I assume this is some form of slang."

Yooji's only response was to drop her head to the desk.

"That's normal too," Amber said with a smile and a shrug.
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MidnightDragonAntra's avatar
nice story, i certainly like your style, being more of a fantasy person, i don't really dive into sci-fi, but this is really good. Keep it up :)