North - South

First impressions

Trigger warning: verbal abuses in the first part of the story. Plus, gaslighting, and suicidal thoughts in the second part of the story. Please skip from "Yoon Mansion" if you think it could be unhealthy for you. It's not an essential part of the story, but feel free to comment or DM me if you want a recap.

Pyongyang, November

Pro number one of Pyongyang: living in the city rather than in the countryside meant chats after school, sharing the street together with some mate of with the guys Se-ri had met at the Ministry's party.

When their schedules matched, they had indeed gotten into the habit to gather out of their schools and going along a piece of the road together. All the five guys, including that annoying Ri Jeong Hyeok.

Well, he probably just walked. Like: he seemed to walk with them just because the street was the same, but he was always silent and one step back from the group. If possible, the mutual dislike between them had even increased.

Se-ri couldn't forgive him for having her humiliated to tears, on the night of the party. Of course, it wasn't just because of him. It was that receiving harsh words so constantly was tough to bear, and her jar was often full. That night... she had already had enough, and his words had been the proverbial straw.

He probably didn't even know it, how could he, but Se-ri had decided to keep the distances. She didn't need more roughness in her life.

"Se-ri wait, let us help!" The guys hurried to take her backpack and two banners she had brought to school for a group project. "Then?" Ju-meok questioned.

"We killed it. First!"

"Wow! You have to run home then, your mom will cook you something special!"

Se-ri just shrugged, "Yeah...mhm..."

"What do you mean?" The guy insisted, his big smile confidentially conveying his prediction: it was sure, she would have received a special lunch, "you girls killed it!"

"Let's see when I'll tell them, if they'll be happy to see me winning or if they would have rather wanted me losing it."

As it often happened, the words slipped off her lips naturally, like an obvious matter of fact. Jeong Hyeok's ears snapped up, though.

He didn't like Se-ri. He hadn't liked her since the first moment they had met, and through the last two months, he had learned to like her even less.

She was a tease, often inappropriate in dressing. On one night – it was late afternoon, actually – he had seen her walking along the Potong. The guy didn't know why, but his feet had automatically moved, following her. Or maybe yes, he knew it. Her skirt was too short, it wasn't a good thing. As a Young Pioneer, it was his duty to make sure that all his dong-mu would have been decently attired, and even the young strangers were, somehow, under his responsibility.

When he had reached the girl to warn her about her skirt, though, she had plainly warned him back to mind about his and his dong-mu's business, and that she wasn't one of them.

Jeong Hyeok would have wanted to protest, but right at that moment a guy had reached them and had taken her by her arm to walk together. It was the same guy he had seen with her at the mall, and the same who he often saw in front of her school, always doing the same gesture of taking her arm.