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CHAPTER ONE ( Malignant Tongues )
PRESTIGE IS AMONG the words Hyosan High School considers when choosing their attendees, which makes it a miracle that such scum litter their hallways. Scum like Myeong-hwan, Yoon Gwinam, and those little cockroaches that have no other use for their hands other than to put them where they don't belong.
Although perhaps Lee Eun-byul shouldn't put too much spite into her words, because in the ever so small world of intricately crafted gossip at Hyosan, she is clustered along their ranks as the lowest class.
Such a feat is inevitable, because Lee Eun-byul is woven by the incessant need for bloodshed and the crunch of bones beneath her scarred palms. Or so they tell each other in hushed whispers when she passes by, music blasting through her headphones and shoelaces lingering half-tied against the pristine floors.
She drags mud in like a mutt with no home, hardly human enough to call a girl yet not enough of a monster to be completely feared. Lee Eun-byul is an outcast, and they spit on her legacy and scorn her negligence.
When she first arrives at Hyosan High, it is with the stuffy imprints of bruises on her wrists and pale brown eyes that look too grey to belong on anything other than a marionette. The halls reach out to her in an all-consuming manner, and Hyosan thinks it has the right to drown her at her worst.
Hyosan's scum learns that they cannot mess with the flames that surround Lee Eun-byul, and they choose to exile her instead.
She drowns by her own merit, sinking into indulgences to satiate the emptiness within herself that no one seems to be able to fill, until her fingers scar with the print of ashen cigarette butts and her teeth stain with the malignant skin of her own tongue.
And then Lee Eun-byul meets Han Gyeong-su. He is unbelievably annoying to a fault, and she hates that she can spite the world for abandoning her, but she cannot spite him.
The snaggle of his tooth burrows itself into her heart, and for some strange, strange reason, Lee Eun-byul finds that the world grows brighter when she looks at it through the lens of Gyeong-su's eyes.
Hyosan can spit on her grave for all she cares. Eun-byul is used to all the vile words and condemnation. She only craves the warmth, and she will chase it to the ends of the earth if it means never waking up from her vain dreams.
EUN-BYUL AWAKES THIRTY minutes before the first bell, and it takes everything within her burrowed bones to haul herself out of her pile of blankets and into the shower.
