Ryujin has her fair selection of bad decisions, like everyone else does. Perhaps she has a few that are worse than the average person, and perhaps it's even worse that Ryujin doesn't regret making them, but what's the fun in being a good girl when you could create trouble and mess your life up?
Maybe she'll make her entire life a collection of mistakes.
A series of beautiful blunders.
~
She supposes her very first mistake in life is really, knocking over her mom's favourite vase when she was barely three and excitedly running around as she was being chased by her older brother. But her brother took the blame for that.
So she guesses she can skip the twelve, very boring, first years of her life, and move on to the real first mistake– looking out the window of her room.
It was hectic that day, with her family settling into their new home and unpacking an endless array of boxes. They've, of course, set up most of Ryujin's new room first– she's their little princess, after all– and Ryujin was only left to unpack two boxes of clothes before she's fully settled in. It's a relatively big apartment, on the second floor of a modern apartment building somewhere in Seoul. She had just moved from America and she hadn't really gotten accustomed to Seoul, and she'd be damned if she even attempted to because she could barely pronounce 'hello, I'm Ryujin' without sounding completely white-washed.
She looked out the window– it's only 4 pm, but they'd halted their unpacking for her mother to do some grocery shopping to cook dinner. They hadn't figured out how delivery worked, after all.
The atmosphere was different to the one in her hometown in New York, but Ryujin didn't mind. Across the street was a convenience store, and a bunch of different shops with names written in Korean– she'd only learnt how to spell her name in Korean, and her address, for safety reasons– and Ryujin was about to walk away from the window when she heard a, loud, shrill voice yelling, "Mama, this is so delicious!" in perfect, accented English.
She looked across the street to see the source and saw a girl who looked just her age, holding bread in her hands as she walked alongside an older woman. The girl had a wide grin on her face, biting and chewing the bread excitedly, and Ryujin watched as the girl entered their apartment building.
And thirteen-year-old Ryujin was excited to make friends with the other girl in the apartment building.
~
Her second mistake came the following Monday– the day she had to be transferred into school.
It was terrifying, to say the least. Ryujin who was barely thirteen and barely knew any Korean, had been tasked to go to an ordinary, neighbourhood middle school, where she had to learn in her mother language she barely understood. Sure, it was everyone's first year in middle school, but it was now somewhere halfway into the year, and everyone had their own friends already.
She'd wished to meet with the English-speaking girl she saw when she moved in– maybe she'd be able to survive with her around. But Ryujin hadn't spotted said girl at all when she was summoned into her homeroom that morning, and Ryujin could only guess that she was supposed to introduce herself when she found herself face to face with her entire homeroom staring, wide-eyed at her, in complete silence after the teacher had stopped talking.
Ryujin's month of practicing the pronounciation of Hello, I'm Ryujin went straight out the window as she instantly felt the pressure of all those eyes directed at her, and she'd wished that maybe her friends back in America would save her, or even the English-speaking girl she'd spotte—
"Excuse me," someone stopped her thoughts, in smooth, silky English.
Ryujin's eyes caught the source, and she felt herself calming when she noticed the girl at the very back, hand raised high as she continued, in a language that Ryujin found comfort in due to her complete understanding when the girl smoothly said, "She's asking you to introduce yourself."
And Ryujin wanted to tell her that she knew. She knew that she had to introduce herself. It's just that she forgot how, and Ryujin doesn't do well with strangers, and—
Ryujin found herself face to face with the girl when her eyes shot open– she didn't even know she had them shut– when she felt warm fingertips grazing across her knuckles. The girl gave her a warm smile, muttering, "What's your name?"
Ryujin let the girl take her hand, and stuttered out, "S-Shin Ryujin."
The girl nodded, moving to Ryujin's side and announcing something to the class in Korean, but Ryujin recognized her name, and Ryujin looked over at the girl, who gave her a small smile.
When the girl took her to the back, where the girl was originally sitting, she pulled out the seat next to her, patting it gently, "Sit."
Ryujin nodded, settling herself next to the girl, and she sat stiffly, eyes directed to the front and hearing the flurry of Korean from the teacher jumble around her brain nearly made her cry. She turned when she felt a tap on her arm, and the girl slid over a piece of paper– their schedule for all the days, in neat English.
Ryujin raised her eyes, just about to say "Thank you" when the girl cut her off.
"I'm Choi Jisu, my English name is Julia, so you can call me Lia." the girl said, with the same warm smile, "Nice to meet you."
And that was how Ryujin met her first pitfall.
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mistakes, i can't help it | jinlia
Fanfiction[completed] She fell in love with her bestfriend. Ryujin can't say her life is falling apart, but it certainly feels like it is. She has her fair selection of bad decisions, like everyone else does. Perhaps she has a few that are worse than the aver...
