adora • lookism

8. Daniel Park (1)

"Damn sunglasses bastard ran off," snorted Zack, treading heavily into the nurse's room, where nearly everyone else was already gathered. Everyone except Vasco, who had decided to set off on a quest for the missing nurse instead of waiting.

"I'm seriously fine though," said Ari Lim, one eye squinting closed as Jay rubbed her cheek with a handkerchief. "Really, it's just a few bumps. It's not like I got a terminal disease or anything."

"That Hobin Jin," Zoe seethed, standing next to the bed clutching one of Ari's hands in both of hers. "He's the worst. Next time I see him, he's dead!"

"Don't be too mad, Zoe," said Ari, cutely nudging her shoulder into Zoe's side. "If you get mad right after eating, you'll get indigested."

"You know, my mom tells me that too," Mira distractedly added. She was holding up Ari's other arm, carefully examining the red mark around the elbow. "This looks like it's going to bruise pretty bad."

"I'm really sorry," said the boy named Duke, standing a few feet away with his head down.

"You don't need to apologize," Ari said. She smiled at him, easy and sincere. "You didn't ask to get kicked, either. Are you hurt anywhere, Duke?"

It was only then that Daniel recalled that yes, Duke had also taken a beating, hadn't he? And Ari, who should have been preoccupied with her own injury, was the only one who still remembered that and thought to ask after him, even though they'd all seen it.

Still looking contrite, Duke was unable to quite meet Ari's eyes. "I'm okay."

"Don't even worry about it," she insisted firmly. "It's not your fault. You didn't do anything wrong. He's the one who was wrong."

Seeing Duke glance up at Ari with widened eyes, before ducking his head again with a little nod, Daniel got the sense that perhaps she was talking about something more than just what had happened in the cafeteria today.

As someone who had been in Duke's exact position until very recently, Daniel thought he understood. When he was being bullied by Logan everyday, to the point that he was considering whether it was worth living, hearing someone say this to him would have given him a little comfort.

No---it would have given him a lot of comfort. Although it wouldn't have changed the physical situation, he would have given so much just to have another person plainly acknowledge that there wasn't anything wrong with him, that he wasn't being treated like this because he had, somehow, failed as a human being somewhere down the line. And maybe it would have sounded like an insincere platitude coming from someone else, but not when it came from Ari. There was just something about the way she looked at you that carried a genuine openness difficult to find elsewhere.

This was, Daniel thought, exactly why everyone in this room had leapt across the cafeteria when they saw Ari getting hurt.

••••

Daniel Park had moved schools in order to escape bullying. And what he felt after coming to this school was that certain things always remained the same.

For example, that bullying happened everywhere. For example, that power spoke louder than words. For example, that some people were just impossible to ignore.

It seemed to him that wherever you went, there were certain people who caught your attention whether you wanted them to or not, like planetary bodies that created their own gravitational force.