Once Upon A Time With Him

The Talent

I wept once I closed the door. I wept for my dead father, wept for my mother who left me in this school and ran off to who knows where, wept that I have no future ahead of me.

I woke up to the knocking of my door. Without thinking, I rushed to open it. A kindly lady was standing at the threshold. At the sight of her face, everything that happened in the past few days all came flooding into my mind. The lady was Mrs Lee. I bit my lip, struggling not to cry for what seemed like the millionth time.

"Good Morning, SeoMyeon! Did u sleep well?" Mrs Lee's kind and smiling eyes seemed to make holding back my tears easier.

"Yes, ma'am." Did I just hear my voice waver?

Apparently, she didn't take notice of that and replied, "Good! Get changed into your uniform and come outside. I left the clothes in the drawer before you came yesterday."

I nodded and got changed. When I came out of my room, Mrs Lee handed me a timetable full of abbreviations, "This will be your timetable for classes every week. The time and location of the lessons are all written here. You'll be starting classes in an hour, in the meantime, let's have breakfast shall we?"

"So, new girl huh? Well SeoMyeon, do you have any talents?"

"I... Umm..." Being cornered by the popular girls of the class was not a very good position to be in.

"Anything interesting happening here, girls?" a tall and gangly man strode into the class. Everyone skitttered back to their seats.

"Nothing much Mr Yoo. We were just finding out more about the new girl." the girl that "interrogated" me just now was tall and slim with bouncy curls and big, round eyes. Totally popular material and from a rich family, I predicted while twirling a lock of my straight hair around my finger. I've always wanted curly hair.

"That's actually not a bad idea, TaeYanggie." I snapped out of my reverie. Not a bad idea?!

"Come up front and show us what you can do, SeoMyeonnie!" Mr Yoo called out. I stepped shyly to the front of the class and saw the teacher nod at me at the corner of my eye. What can I show them? Then, I thought of when people just sang as a back-up plan. So, I squeezed my eyes shut and started singing and heard gasps of praise and awe.

After I finished my mini performance, I pried my eyes open slowly and expected my classmates to laugh at my awful tune.

"Whoa...." said TaeYang, wide-eyed. I raised my brows. My classmates started clapping like crazy and Mr Yoo wouldn't stop whooping. I was confused. All my life I had thought that I had no talents, no skills, and no gifts. I had tried drawing, painting, writing etc etc but I had never succeeded in anything. But now, apparently, singing was my talent!

Drama was next, after english. I stalked across the hall silently. Even after that event, I still had to be careful not to stick my nose too high in the air for fear of offending anyone in this new school. After succeeding in slinking past a group of girls from the previous class, another group of girls were along my path to the drama studio. I spotted TaeYang in the middle and marked her mentally with a huge "CAUTION" sign.

I was halfway past them when I heard TaeYang call out, "Hey! SeoMyeon!" I flinched. In a moment, I was surrounded by five girls adorned in jewellery on all four limbs and too much makeup, TaeYang was the only normal one. Not too much makeup, and only a simple necklace.

"Er.... Hi... Girls..." I felt a drop of sweat roll down the back of my neck.

"Nice singing in English just now." she grinned at me. Why does everyone in this school have pretty smiling eyes?

"Oh thanks." I looked at the too-much-mascara girls staring at me in awe and shivered inwardly.

"Come on, lets go for drama." TaeYang started making her way towards the studio and all the girls dispersed.

"How was my singing nice just now?" I struggled to catch up with her long-legged stride.

"You mean you've never heard yourself sing before?" she stopped mid-stride.

I shook my head.

TaeYang just shrugged and continued walking, "Your voice is really pretty. But sadly, its almost impossible to pursue a career in performing arts here."

"Why?"

"Well, entertainment companies hardly come here to scout for talents. Sacred Hearts is more of an art school than anything else. If you really want to pursue singing and dancing, you'd have to attend their auditions yourself, which was set up mainly for foreigners in the country." she stopped in front of a wooden door with a brass "Studio" on it.

"Oh." my small hope of being a star that was built up from the past hour diminished at once. I shook it off, knowing that I had no future ahead of me anyway and asked TaeYang, "By the way, how did you know that I'm having drama next period?"

She regarded me for a while and said, "Cos I found it out from my father."

"Who's your dad?" I asked, expecting her to reply that her father was the chairman of the school.

After hearing my question, TaeYang hesitated for while, but said in the end, "My father... Is Mr Yoo, our English teacher."

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