two sides of the same moon

adolescence: the one thing that sucks more than the dmv

Reader discretion is advised. TW: Eating disorder/encouraged disordered eating 
In the quiet of the morning, only three things could be heard: the sounds of the bird making love outside the window, the sprinklers keeping the lawn squeaky green, and the grumbling stomach of a starved teen. Eunsuh awoke to the gnawing and gurgling of her well-emptied belly, one that only cried faintly but often. The teen's stiff fingers slid beneath her silken camisole, resting below her ribcage. Her fingertips circled around her bellybutton in a futile attempt at soothing the comforting pangs of hunger - a promise she would be smaller than the day before. Sluggishly, the girl dragged her legs to the edge of the bed, forcing herself to sit up before finding her feet into her house slippers. She was thankful she actually remembered to put them near the edge of her bed this time - the hardwood was unbearable during this time of year. 

It was then that Eunsuh's routine began with her first look in the mirror. Shaggy hair framed her face and even tumbled down her shoulders and back. A common dark brown verging on black - everything typical of virgin Asian hair. Her mother had admonished the idea of changing it considering how healthy and beautiful it was, but she couldn't help but argue against its boorish simplicity. The frankness didn't go over well. The argument was seen as disrespectful, and soon, the reprimand turned to her ill-mannered temper and her intentional inability to control herself. Knowing Eunsuh, one can only imagine how much that set her into a silenced rage. 

 Her eyes drifted beyond her displeasing mop of hair down to her shoulders. Her collarbones jutted out as if to flaunt their benign presence, something that the teen was particularly fond of. Even if it was played off as just genetics, she got the phenotypic upper hand compared to her competitors at school. She didn't even have to work to get what she wanted, it just was. But going any further...Well, even her chest ostracized her. 

 It wasn't that the boys weren't ogling her well-endowed chest tissue, and it wasn't that her chest wasn't their fantasy. It was more that the girls saw her chest as a literal target - a means of making fun of her because with larger breasts came larger other features. They said her hips were wide as an ox's yoke, her backside big enough to suffocate one of her classmates. All, save for her two closest confidants, couldn't help but laugh as one called her a brute, another wished her death, and yet another wondered whether, under all her clothes, she was hiding a pregnancy. Their insidious whispers of indecent behavior during curfew spread lies like bedbugs until one unfortunate bedbug ended up in the administrators' offices. The headmaster grew to know her name, and no longer for her good grades or for her twin's hard work in sports. 

To keep the namesake of the school out of the news, the administration had her taken to the nurse's office and tested the fabrication during school hours. They'd even had the audacity to call her mother at work to inform her of the potential incident that might have occurred. It was one thing to be humiliated by a bunch of teenagers, but for the degradation to proceed with esteemed administrators to her family...Everything about it brought unnecessary scrutiny and shame to them. Eunsuh wouldn't hear the end of it for weeks, verging on several months. 

 Yet the rumors were so powerful, even her twin wasn't certain she was telling the truth. 

Everything appeared negative. Of course, she wasn't stupid enough to let a dumb teenage boy inseminate her before she could properly care for it. She wasn't even sure that she wanted a child in her lifetime, but she could never bring herself to even risk the possibility of letting it happen. And while the incidence was swept neatly under the rug by the higher-ups, that didn't mean all the rest of the torture ended there. Her image was constantly under siege, and no matter what she did to try and combat it by conforming...She could never create the beauty she craved. 

Even now. 

 As she meticulously inspected her milky-light skin, fingertips tracing over the bones of her ribcage and the curves of her stomach, there was still visibly more that could come off. She wasn't her target weight. It wasn't good enough to stop here. Though her mother noticed how little her daughter ate each meal, she was secretly proud her daughter was excelling at keeping a good appearance. And if there is one thing that teenagers love more than to pick catty fights and fuck each other up, it was to gain approval in any which way possible.