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JAKE ──────────── ' the blame game '
— JAKE remembered his first week in Korean High School more vividly than he recalled his own phone number. It was the most self-defining seven days of his life. His parents had barely given him a three-days notice before thrusting him into the most stressful environment he'd ever been in.
The first day was horrifying. His uniform felt too tight in some places and too loose in others. He could barely speak the language, let alone read and write. He was sure students would be laughing in his face or shoving him to the ground all day. Never before had he been so petrified of something he once loved.
But then he walked into class, and all of those worries floated away.
Jay Park was sitting at the back, his uniform far from up to code and a lollipop hanging from his lips. The sight of the boy was enough to make Jake cry— he didn't, but he sure as hell could of.
He didn't even hear the teacher introduce him, but soon enough he was being pushed towards the empty spot beside Jay.
"Jackass," Jake murmured as he pulled his notebook out.
Jay just laughed. "C'mon, if I had told you that I go to the school you're starting at, you wouldn't have gotten the true new kid experience!"
Jake's typical "new kid experience" (as Jay put it) was stripped away by lunch when Jay had introduced him to his friends, giving Jake a full friend group barely halfway into his first day— Plus some additions later that weekend, including a Japanese exchange student living with Jay.
Jake didn't know how Jay's circle had stayed intact from middle-school until the present, but it had.
Jake appreciated that group more than he could verbalize. So, it stung even more when he couldn't be transparent with them about his current affairs.
His issues with Saya had started to seep into other people's lives, and the last thing he wanted was to pull people into his boat. He had to do something, he just had no idea what.
Jake had spent more time than he'd like to admit practicing what he would say to Saya if he ever say her again. He would apologize, explain, confess— the catch being that he never expected to actually see her again.
Jake had blacked out at that dinner. He'd only taken one sip of beer but he was sure he was piss drunk. He knew Saya was there, sitting across from him, somehow looking more beautiful than he remembered, but his brain didn't actually process that Saya was there. It was all just an extremely lucid dream to him.
But then she kept showing up. Everywhere.
Jake had stopped dreaming of Saya so frequently about six months after leaving. There was no way, nearly four years later, that she was becoming a reoccurring character again.
