In the realm of dreams

Part 5 - One month

Baek Yoona

I can't believe we are already one month into the school year! Sports day is soon. I have been training every day after school which meant I was one of the last students to leave the school premises. I love having my own personal gym space. I have a well-established routine now – I change into my PE gear, put my music on loud on the portable speaker, run a few laps, practice long jumps and endurance circuits. When I am done I take a quick shower and change into casual clothes and walk to the bus stop. Some days I find Choi Sooho at the bus stop – I guess he gets delayed because of his class president duties. It's nice having a travel buddy on my way back home. Although Sooho isn't super talkative he is a very good listener and very attentive. One day I told him I was craving strawberry jelly cups, the next time I saw him he took two jelly cups out of his pocket and gave them to me as though he always has a stash of those!

'Did you get these specially for me?', I'd asked.

He blushed so easily! It was fun teasing him. 'No, I just happened to see them in the snackshop today.'

I am trying to educate him in K-pop as he seems a bit clueless. Sometimes I offer to lend one of my earphones to him to make him listen to my favourite songs. I think he feels a bit shy when I do that, he always turns his face away from me. He tends not to offer too much information about his life but there is only so many times he can evade my questions.

'It's just my mom and I at home,' he said one day after some persistent questioning.

'Oh that's funny because at our house it's just my dad and I,' I replied.

At home Appa pesters me to join a hagwon, cram school, for Maths. My grades have been slipping a bit. But I don't know if I will have the energy for hagwon after training. English is still my strongest subject, thanks to my voracious reading of poems and novels.

I was chatting to Soobin and Jisung about sports day and what to expect when Sooho came to fetch me.

'Mr Yoo wants to see you. And me.' He said.

Drat, that didn't sound too good! 'Banjang, do you know what it's about?'.

'No.'

I followed him to the teachers' room, mentally preparing myself to be admonished about my slipping grades. But then why was Banjang also coming? Surely, his grades was more than fine!

Choi Sooho

'So what I am proposing is you guys do some exchange sessions. Sooho goes through difficult maths problems with you, and you go through some English chapters with Sooho. I think both of you will benefit from this exchange.' Mr Yoo said, handing us our latest test papers back.

'Banjang, I'd rather be tutored by you than go to a hagwon', Yoona said to me as we made our way back to the class. Someone ran past her almost knocking her over. I held out my hand instinctively and stopped her fall with my body.

'You okay?'

She nodded. Our faces were quite close for a fraction of a second. Up close her eyes were lighter than their usual coffee-colour. Did I see a flicker of something other than abundant energy in them? A sadness perhaps? Her hair smelled of coconut and something citrusy.

'We have a deal then, we can start with two lessons a week. What time is good for you?', I asked her.

We agreed to have lessons every Tuesday and Thursday after school. On those days she would train after our lessons, meaning I will not have a chance to go home on the same bus as her. Instead I am gaining two hours with her exclusively, so not a bad deal after all.

During our second lesson she told me about poetry. What she found intriguing, how it invoked a unique kind of feeling in her. She seemed so happy talking about her favourite poems.

'I love Pablo Neruda and Walt Whitman. Listen to this Banjang, this is Neruda:

"I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz

or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved

in secret, between the shadow and the soul."

Isn't that so deep?'

She recited the poem in English, the unfamiliar words creating a symphony unlike anything I have ever heard. Her perfectly-shaped lips moved to make each word pirouette and float as they left her mouth. I don't know whether the poem itself was beautiful or whether it was her cadence, so full of yearning and passion, that made the poem sound like the most romantic love song ever written.

I cleared my throat, 'Yes, very good. When did you first start liking poems?', I asked.

She folded the corner of her notebook, 'I turned to poems to deal with the enormous pain I felt. After my eomma passed away. I was ten years old.'