Let's Dance the Night away | Dahmo

Let's Dance the Night Away

Kim Dahyun was a transfer student two years my junior. Despite our age gap, it didn't take me long to notice her out of the hundreds of students in our school. She stood out from the crowd in more ways than one.

She was loud. Not in the obnoxious or rude kind of way. She seemed to always have a joke to crack or laugh about and no matter how many times I passed her from the shoe lockers at the front of the school into the halls of classrooms, I would always find myself drawn to the familiar sound of her hearty laugh and the bright nature of her voice.

She had a legion of friends that seemed to hoard around her as she talked in the mornings. I have never seen so many junior high school students gather around one person before. She must have been so popular. The crowd always caught my gaze as I walked past her into the halls, and it would always be that smiling, laughing girl in the thick of them all.

Her body language was so expressive. You could almost guess what emotion she was feeling in every word she spoke. Hand gestures and expressions were the centre of her talk, everything she said becoming just that little bit more interesting as she expressed it. Sometimes I thought that most of the fun from her stories would come out of her dramatic expressions and frantic movements.

And then there was her hair. She'd only transferred a year ago, but it seemed like she had been here for longer because I couldn't count the amount of times, she had dyed her hair on one hand. It was almost as if her hair was just as expressive as the rest of her body. Every new colour brought a slightly new feel to the aura around her. She'd gone from blonde to green to bright pink, to sea blue and among a crowd of dark hair, she stood out. She was like a walking rainbow.

In conclusion, it was impossible not to notice Kim Dahyun even when I never saw her in class.

Watching her every morning and afternoon became a habit in the first year of her transfer that my best friend Sana began to call creepy.

"Wouldn't you be weirded out if someone you didn't know just stared at you every day?" She would say and then drag me off to class. Every day it was the same. I would look for the little walking rainbow and be disappointed as Sana dragged me away and her laughs faded into the drone of conversation.

It was her hair that made me finally pluck up the courage to go up to her.

It was simply a normal day. I placed my shoes in my locker, pulled on my slippers and stood, looking around the room as I usually did in search of Kim Dahyun. But no matter where I looked, I couldn't see her. In fact, the entire day consisted of me searching for the girl. She was nowhere to be found.

When I had finally given up and Sana had stopped bugging me about being a creepy stalker, it was the end of the day and time to leave.

I actually didn't see Dahyun for the rest of the week. It was only when my walking rainbow had disappeared that I was able to see Dahyun again.

The next week, she returned to school. I knew she had returned because the crowds had returned. The laughter was here again, but I couldn't for the life of me pick her out from the crowds. Had she recoloured her hair again and I just couldn't recognise her?

All of a sudden, I found myself walking toward the crowd at the lockers. I heard Sana calling me, but I didn't listen. When I had walked most of the way there, I spotted her. I was right. She had recoloured her hair... or she had gotten rid of the colours all together. She was her same happy, smiley bubbly self, but her hair was its natural dark brown hue.

I was kind of shell shocked and stared at her, probably with my mouth wide open like an idiot. She made eye contact with me just as she was about to make her way to her class. I don't think I ever saw her eyes properly before. They were dark, like her natural hair colour, but in a different way. They seemed to be full of emotions she wasn't ready for anybody to see. In that brief moment when our eyes met, I knew that I wanted to be the person she would open up to.