swxtched. | jhs

ONE, to her left.

GREEN WAKES UP to her alarm blaring away at an ungodly hour.

Her brother used to tell her that if she woke up on the wrong side of the bed, she should listen to her favourite song to lighten her mood. But he's not around anymore to tell her that. She hasn't done that in years.

The air feels cold for a morning in March, appearing a bit foggy under the dim light of her phone. At six a.m., which never fails to feel too early, Green drags her feet across the room and turns on her bathroom light to penetrate thick layers of darkness. The house's default: brooding and empty and cold. 

Green's tired of this mundane feeling as she washes her face, brushes her teeth, and gets dressed for school, tugging a sweater down her head to fight the chills— all singlehandedly, as her other hand is uselessly on her desk until she grabs it and attaches it to her elbow.

She sighs. She isn't used to this. It's been like this for months now. Still.

Downstairs, Green notices a sticky note on the counter. Her parents have gone off on their business trip. Their flights were at five in the morning, so they probably left at around two. She has to be thankful they made breakfast as their goodbye.

She must seem pathetic to her parents. On top of her apparently "failed" brother, her potential is pretty much wasted. They invested so much in her physical capabilities and academic fortitude, only to see her nearly fail all of her classes in her first year of high school and break her arm in an unfortunate accident to the point where it had to be amputated.

She swings her prosthetic arm around and fumbles with her fingers at the plastic-rubber hand, the metal bone structure peeking through the translucent coating. She takes a long look at it and frowns. 

It's hard to look away, from the gleaming discolouration to the harsh cutoff slightly above her elbow. Ugly, she thinks. 

Even with insurance, that limb cost her way too much. Hundreds of thousands of won— breaking her parents' banks. You'd think her friends would've set up a campaign or something for her, or at least pay a visit at the hospital, but she remembers she moved. Away from those "friends." Far enough that it feels like a chore to visit.

Green grumbles to herself, taking an aggressive bite out of her toast and glaring at the ceiling. She should be grateful to have a prosthetic limb at all. And it's one of the more functional, expensive kinds too. A year went by when she had nothing, having to wait for her arm to heal and going in and out of the hospital for what felt like an eternity. Not having anyone visit her but her parents. Not even her brother. 

Which she's not planning to forgive him for.

Green spaces out before her food. She's lost her appetite.

It's a simple walk to school. Fifteen minutes. Straight with two left turns. Green gets out the front door and in the school hallways ten minutes early, trying to memorise the routes to her classes as she was told before, yawning all this time. 

Blinking doesn't help the bleariness of her sight. Maybe it's the atmosphere that's all hazy. Or maybe it's just her. 

All she can do is pretend it's okay.

When she enters her homeroom, the students who are already there lower their voices and glance not-so-subtly in her direction. She plays dumb, nonchalantly heading to her seat. Guess I'm popular, she thinks, feeling the dragging weight of anxiety pressing hard and fast against her lungs.

They aren't staring at her. Not her pale face or her dark, dark eyes. Not the typical Korean features, because those don't stand out at all. She can guess she's ordinary that way.