Heart&Seoul || jjk/kth/bts

Chapter 4: Angels and devils

Bridget

Six months and a ridiculous amount of signed papers later, my feet are officially touching the concrete of South Korea. The number of forms I had to fill in was insane, and so was the amount of tears I shed because I feared I wouldn't live up to the expectations everyone has on me. Am I going to survive in a Korean university? Have I underestimated the difficulty of this radical change? The only way to know is to face it. I don't know what lucky star I have to thank for this, but I'm beginning to think that life does smile at me from time to time. I'm grateful to have this opportunity. I just hope reality won't slap me in the face too violently.

Everything here looks so different from good old Leeds. Not even the ticketing to Taylor Swift's concert could've prepared me for the frenzy I'm seeing in Seoul. All I hear is a continuous high-pitched ringing, together with the sound of my blood pumping at crazy speed in my arteries as if I were chased by a fucking lion. More likely, a tiger, the national animal of South Korea.

I used to believe crowded cities made me at ease until I took my first walk around here. The streets are ten times more colourful than back home, the people composed and polite, but still too many to count, and obviously everywhere I look, I can hardly understand any damn thing. I wish I'd started learning more Korean by myself before my arrival. I've only had six months to teach myself the basics, and even though it's a decent amount of time, I was also studying for other exams and, well, living my everyday life. I couldn't focus on this new language properly.

"Bridge, this way" my uncle raises his voice over the urban noise. I stopped paying attention to him for one millisecond and lost him in the crowd. Throwbacks to the times I got lost in supermarkets because candies were more important than my mum's warnings begin to hit me in confused waves. The feelings are the same, except... I'm not a child anymore. Or rather, I shouldn't be. My uncle is now crossing the street to my right, so I rush past a group of people on the sidewalk and run up to him.

"Sorry" I mutter. I'm not used to this, Seoul has 9 fucking million inhabitants. Leeds only has less than 800.000. It's insane really. Nine million people... My head gets dizzy at the thought of so many souls walking around the same city. They each have different stories to tell, someone might be healing, recovering, worsening. Some could be exchange students like me, and I wouldn't even know. There could even be my potential soulmate out here, perhaps they've just walked past me at this very moment...

All I can register for now is, Wave was right. I am struggling to tell people apart. Their features are so different from ours, it may take me a while to get used to it. I'll try my best to memorise names and associate them with the right faces, but there will surely be some epic fails along the way. I am so gonna embarrass myself by not recognising the people I'll meet. Jeez, I already feel like an outcast.

I landed in Seoul three days ago, but have never left my uncle's apartment until today. This is my first official day in the city. Am I allowed to say I already wanna go back inside, where it's just me, Uncle Pete, Hyun-joo and their dog Baddie? I'm getting nauseous, my head is spinning like crazy and I can barely follow my uncle. He's leading me to the nearest underground station, which will then take us to Sungkyunkwan University. The Department of Natural Sciences is located in Seoul, whereas Social Sciences students have a separate department in Suwon. I'm starting to regret my choice. Maybe if I had chosen a different faculty, I'd be living in Suwon instead of Seoul, which only has one million inhabitants. It would've been far more bearable. But it's too late for these decisions now. What's done is done, every paper has been printed, signed, sent and archived. There is no way out. This is going to be my home for this year and I'd better adapt soon. I know I can, I just... need time?

When my uncle hugs me goodbye in front of the campus, I get weak in the knees. I used to feel like this when my dad dropped me off during my first year of primary school. I was a kid back then, now I'm supposed to be an adult, and yet I wish Uncle Pete didn't have to leave me. I know I can make it on my own, but having someone by my side would be a much less stressful alternative. Unfortunately, I don't have a choice. My uncle is off to work and since I'm an adult - at least my ID says so - I'm expected to walk into my new university by myself. I say goodbye to my human lifeguard and let out a shaky breath. It does indeed feel like primary school all over again, actually all of this makes it seem like I haven't grown up at all and these tortuous years of improving myself have been in vain. It's painful.