1996 | Y.Jw

| 2 |

Miss Hopkins picked up her clipboard that hung beside the door in my solo session room. Sending me a quick smile she sat down across from me, a small squared table dividing us.

"Now, let me first ask you. Is there anything you need Jiyeon?" miss Hopkins started and I fiddled a bit with my hands under the table, trying to find a way to ask properly. I pulled the sleeves of my shite t-shirt down over my hands, picking at the hem with my fingers.

"I'd like a new notebook," I quietly stated and she hummed before quickly scribbling it down, "and uhm... I was thinking if... Lin, Emi and I really want to go outside on the first day of the snow, if that would be possible."

"Is that so?" she questioned and looked down at whatever she was writing, not looking up at me once.

"Yes," I hummed, "we have only been seeing the snow through our windows for years now. We'd like to know how it feels to walk in, and to touch. Our books say it squeaks when you walk on freshly fallen snow and that it melts at the smallest contact of human warmth. We'd like to test it if possible."

"I'll see what I can do," miss Hopkins smiled her tight smile with a small nod as she looked up at me, "and your dreams? How are they going?"

"Only every second night," I admitted and she nodded in return, "if possible I'd like for another bed to be moved into my room, and one of the others to sleep by me."

"You know that's not a possibility," she interrupted me as she shook her head with a sugar sweet smile, "if you kids spend too much time together you'll be too drained during the day to learn new skills. Especially now that we'll start electric wave testing on you soon."

"I'm sorry, when was that put into place?" I questioned and adjusted how I was sitting, blinking a few times as my eyebrows furrowed, "I thought it was only the mindwave skills that had to do that. Lin and Sunoo."

"Don't worry," she shook her head, "Jungwon will have to start on it soon too. We'll make sure to put your tests at the same time, so you won't be gone at two different times. Like we do with Li Yang and Sunoo. Of course we don't know how you'll react to the testing, we see extreme exhaustion in our female students compared to our male students, as you might've noticed with Sunoo and Li Yang."

"Lin says she feels sick," I shook my head at her, "not exhaustion, just sick."

"That might occur too," she hummed with a small nod, "the tests will only last for a year or so, once a week. We might be lucky to eliminate those nightmares of yours too. Now, if you don't have anything else you think is essential for us to talk of Jiyeon, I'd help you back to your room and you can wait until your curfew ends and you can talk with the others."

"I uhm... I need-" I paused to try and drag out the time I could spend outside my room.

"Yes?" miss Hopkins hummed as she looked at me with raised eyebrows.

She clicked her pen, ready to write down something more on her clipboard. It was clear she was impatient by the way her hand shook the pen back and forth between her thumb and pointer finger. I had learned to ignore that impatience when it came from her - when she first became my consultator I was too nervous by the action and always answered right away, now I ignore it.

"I'm growing out of my underwear, and I only have one hair elastics left... socks too," I excused and she nodded at me, "just uhm... I think a size bigger than what my last were."

"Underwear, socks and hair elastics," miss Hopkins nodded with a small hum before sliding the blindfold goggles across the table towards me, "if you'll wear these I'll escort you back to your room."

I hated those goggles. I knew I had to wear them because it was harder for me to use my skills. It seemed like a way to ensure for them that I didn't harm anyone or break anything, as if I couldn't control my skills.

"I want to see my parents," I spoke up and miss Hopkins paused in her writing, slowly looking up at me, "I know I have some. Everyone does. So the books say."

"Your parents are dead Jiyeon, that's why you're here," she calmly reminded making me immediately look to the goggles, "we are your family now. Please put on your goggles."

I sighed as I grabbed the goggles from the table and dropped my feet down from my chair, letting my white socks come in contact with the solid and cold floor, which was everywhere I had ever been in the building. I carefully slid the goggles onto my face and pushed them up my nose.

Miss Hopkins pulled me up on my feet and began pulling me along. In the beginning when they figured out my skills had developed and I had to wear the goggles, I stumbled whenever I was pulled through the hallways, but now I walked calmly. I knew the route back to my section by heart. I knew it too well.

It was two turns to the right and I would get onto an elevator. I had to walk out the opposite side of the elevator than where I had entered, and then I had to turn left. Exactly 27 steps were from the elevator to my room after I get out of the elevator.

"You can take off your goggles now," miss Hopkins stated and I immediately did so and handed her my goggles.

I took exactly two steps into my room and listened to the door creaking behind me, just waiting for miss Hopkins to close my door.

"Dinner will be served in two hours," she reminded me.

That meant at least three hours before I would see any of the others again. Three hours I had to myself in my small room. With my white clinical bed, white desk, chair, notebook, closet. Only one thing in the room wasn't white. The pencilcase standing on my desk, which contained all my pencils. Oh, and the books I studied in, they also had color, but I hid them in the closet because I hated looking at them. Because I hated our teachers and learning whatever they wanted us to learn.