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WHENHyun Sohee wakes to the sound of her alarm blasting through the room on Wednesday morning, she's filled with nothing but dread. She doesn't move for a good minute, not even bothering to hit the snooze button as the horrible sound fills the room, reminding Sohee that she does actually have to get up at some point. Preferably before her mother sends someone in to make sure that her daughter is still alive.
She drags herself out of bed, still buried in her blankets like a burrito, hair sticking out at odd angles when she stops in front of the mirror to take in her appearance. She sighs, before shuffling over to her wardrobe, where he uniform is hung up, taunting her as she stares at it, a constant reminded that Sohee is so close to graduating, but not quite there yet. Sohee scowls as she moves towards the bathroom to get ready for the day.
Sohee's not even fully awake yet, just sluggishly moving around like a zombie, trying to pull a brush through her hair without pulling a large chunk of it out of her bed. She nearly crashes into her bed post as she's trying to pull up her socks, then manages to do all the buttons of her shirt wrong, and to top it off, she gets her arm stuck in her blazer and has to flail it around trying to fix it as she stumbles into the kitchen.
Hyun Sohee really isn't a morning person.
Especially not on Wednesdays, when she's expected to be ready by eight o'clock when Han Jisung arrives to pick her up and drive her to school, the brilliant solution that her mother came up with after her yoga classes clashed with Sohee's classes every Wednesday morning. Which wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the fact that Sohee and Jisung absolutely hate each other, and really shouldn't be left alone for long period of time, in case one of them ended up dead or severely injured.
Funnily enough, Sohee and Jisung got along the first time they met. Well enough for Sohee to let him hold her beloved bunny rabbit toy that she'd never let anyone else touch. Then, three weeks later when Jisung's mother rocked up on the Hyun family doorstep with her son in tow, Jisung had loudly announced that Sohee had cooties. Four year old Sohee hadn't been pleased with that, and proceeded to push the boy down the one step that separated the dining room from the living room, and the pair have hated each other ever since, much to their parents' dismay.
("Why don't you spend more time with Jisung?" her mother tries to suggest all the time, and Sohee says, "No.")
She's sitting at the kitchen table by herself when her mother walks in, looking far too cheery considering it's 7:45 in the morning, but her expression changes when she spots her daughter still eating. "Jisung will be here soon," her mother scolds, and Sohee bites back a scowl at the reminder. "Don't keep him waiting like you did last week."
"I didn't keep him waiting that long," Sohee protests.
Her mother gives her a look. Sohee just shovels more food into her mouth.
Mrs Hyun looks ready for the day ahead, dressed nicely for her weekly brunch in some upper class cafe across town where the meals are more expensive than they're worth. Her hair is pulled back neatly, and her makeup is applied perfectly. Sohee wishes she looked like that in the mornings, but her eye bags take excessive amounts of concealer to cover, and she almost took her eye out with a mascara wand that morning because she wasn't paying close enough attention.
She scrolls through her social media feeds, taking her time with breakfast, because she still has at least ten minutes before she needs to leave, but her mother isn't having any of it, constantly eyeing her daughter from across the kitchen where she's nursing a now empty cup of strong coffee. Honestly, Sohee thinks her mother finds her aversion to being within five feet of Han Jisung amusing.
"Don't keep him waiting too long," her mother warns again, washing out her coffee cup before placing it beside the sink, then kissing her daughter's hair fondly. "Otherwise you'll have to start catching the bus again," she adds, before she's walking off towards the garage where the family chauffeur is probably waiting to take her to brunch, her heels clicking against the tiled floors.
Honestly, Sohee would rather take the bus. (That's a lie, Sohee hates the bus more than anything).
She remembers the days where she'd be stuck taking the school bus one a week, stuck with all the public school kids who think that they're so much better than her because their parents aren't paying their way through high school. Well, Sohee thinks the joke's on them, because at least she doesn't go to a school where the desks are older than her parents, and the facilities are falling apart because they're so old.
Her mother's already left by the time Sohee finally makes her way down the front steps of her house towards the driveway where Jisung's car is parked, the boy himself still sitting in the front seat. The car is shiny and sleek, and it's a bright red, which is different from the black one that Sohee's used to seeing, but she also knows that the Hans have more cars than the family of four could ever possibly need, and he could probably rotate through a different car every week if he wanted to.
Sohee makes herself comfortable in the passenger seat of his (expensive) car. Then she fiddles around with the air vents on the dashboard in front of her, changing the temperature controls, because Jisung likes to keep the inside of his car at subzero temperatures. And then, because she's petty, Sohee flicks through every single radio channel, ignoring the look Jisung sends her.
"Are you finished?" he asks, his tone sounding slightly amused as he pulls out of the driveway, looking over his shoulder to make sure there's no oncoming traffic. Sohee doesn't answer him, instead choosing to cross her arms and lean back in her seat, frown etched across her features. It annoys her that no matter what she does, no matter how petty she is, he never seems to lose his patience and she doesn't get the satisfaction of pissing him off.
She only huffs, and doesn't say a word the entire seven minute drive to the front steps of her school, ignoring the way that Jisung begins to belt out the lyrics to every song on the radio that plays whenever Sohee changes the channel (she's positive that he does it on purpose just to annoy her even more). By the time he pulls up in the drop-off zone outside her school, Sohee's ready to tear her hair out.
She stalks up the front steps of the school, not bothering to look back at Jisung's car as he drives off, continuing down the road to the all boy's school across town. People steer clear of her as she marches through the front doors, a glare etched upon her face, her blood still boiling. Han Jisung tends to have that effect on her.
