Chanbaek Short Stories

Everyone is Really Dumb (Chapter 2)

The taxi dropped us off in a small neighborhood right on the outskirts of the heart of Seoul called Gangdong-gu.
The sky was dreary despite it being August, yet the air was still warm. As a result, the occasional flash of lightning lit up the sky following with a deafening boom.
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I have not had a good day. To say the least. But now I'm settled down in my new house, in my new room, staring out the window at what is going to be my new city for at least the next year. So other than my future plans (what were my future plans) you know nothing about me.

Hi, I'm Byun Baekhyun. I'm not extremely brainy, but I'm also not half-autistic like my mother. I think she actually has autism so I can say that. I really miss our tiny apartment that was settled on the banks of Lake Oswego back in Oregon. I was in band, I played flute and violin. You might want to peg me out as the loser kid now that I said I was in band, but band was kind of a big deal back in Lake Oswego. Really, anything artsy was sort of like at the top of the food chain at my old high school. It was nice.
I wasn't lonely, I had lots of friends because I was really involved in school life, and I have a bad feeling that's all about to change. I'm pretty used to havin-

"BAEKHYUN COME DOWNSTAIRS!"

Fuck.

I picked myself up off of my window sill and trudged downstairs.

"What."

"Hey don't give me that. You'll love this. You have some time to get settled in, school doesn't start for like another 2 weeks, but you're all signed up forrrrrr, drumroll please, Daigaku High!" she said triumphantly.

"That literally means nothing to me."

"Oh Hyunnie, you should be so proud of me. I did my research and everything to make sure my favourite little boy goes to the best school around!" she bubbled.

I would cringe internally, but I've done so much of that over the last 17 years of my life that it kind of lost it's effect.

"Great, thanks, sounds great. Is that even a Korean school?" I asked.

"Yeah, it sounds a little Japanese to you, right? That's what I thought, nonetheless, it has a great foreign student program. It says that it gets English speaking students speaking fluent Korean in only 6 months! I feel bad for throwing you here, so I want you to have all the advantages possible," she exclaimed.

"Yeah, can I go back upstairs now?"

"Ugh fine, you're so boring," she said as she flipped her dark tousles over her shoulder, turning back towards her suitcase.

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No matter how much I wanted to go back to Oregon, there was still a small part of me that always loved adventure, always loved going someplace new.
And even that joy was squashed because we got at least 3 boxes of our stuff shipped to us a day, so I spent the next 2 weeks unpacking all our shit and jamming it into the corners of our even smaller flat that we didn't have room for.
My mother had so much shit at our last place, there is no way it's all going to fit here. She's already had several breakdowns about having to sell some of her stuff.
"It's ok mom, we can just buy some other, more compact stuff at Korean IKEA."

"FUCK KOREAN IKEA!"

"THEN WHY DID YOU WANT TO COME HERE?!"

"YOU'RE THE MOST UNSUPPORTIVE SON I'VE EVER HAD!"

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So finally it was the first day of school, yes I just said that. Deal with it.
I got a letter from Daigaku a few days ago stating that all foreign students were to report to the auditorium on the first day. Then the letter spelled out auditorium in Korean so we'd know what to look for in the hallways.
Daigaku was big compared to my last school, but not huge. It should be easy enough getting around.
After finding the auditorium, I found a seat that was sort of secluded. After about 2 minutes, some dark-skinned girl with big eyes sat down next to me.
"Hi! I'm Ozette. My full name is Ozette Clear-Water, like the lake I was named after, but that's just if I want to be extra about it and claim "I'm special" points," she said.