He looks like a pitiful puppy.

That was my first thought when I saw him.

He rarely showed any emotion. Most things neither delighted nor saddened him. Even when he was put to the test, he would only lift an eyebrow slightly or frown faintly in response. These movements vanished almost before I could register them. I sometimes wondered what his face would look like if he lost all composure.

Would he be more beautiful with his emotions laid bare? I would envy that beauty and hate him for it. Then I would hate him even more.

Did I dislike him? Yes. I did.

How could I like someone who saw me at my lowest — innocent and without malice — and witnessed my misery with such indifference? That was what made me wonder. If he were to be consumed by an overwhelming tragedy, would he still wear that same unfeeling expression?

I hope you’re ruined.

May misfortune befall you too — more than you can bear. May the ground beneath your feet crumble slowly and disastrously as you look down at me. May you fall forever, your once noble limbs flailing helplessly in the air. I hope your fingertips turn deathly white as you desperately try to reach out and grab something, anything, to hold on to.

When that happens, I hope I’m there to see your face. I want to stare at you just as you’re about to burst into tears.

I’ll make sure I am.

It was a twisted curiosity.

People said I would become a pr*stitute. Some days, I believed them. If my luck didn’t change, would that be my fate?

Did you think so too? Or did you hope that would be my fate?

Did you long for me to suffer as much as I longed for you to suffer? I wanted to ask you that at least once.

Secondary S*xual Characteristics

Subin pulled the chair in front of me closer and turned to face me. Every time her hair swayed, a pleasant scent drifted toward me.

“Haeju, have you thought about it?”

“About what?”

“What I told you last time. Our math tutoring group.”

With both hands resting on my desk, she drummed her fingers on it, as if urging me to answer. Unable to wait any longer, Subin cheerfully continued before I could say anything.

“We’ll have the perfect group if you join! You know Areum from the next class wants to join, but she can’t. Her mum calls our house every day. She says there’s only one place left between tenth and eleventh, so couldn’t we make an exception?”

“……I’ll give my spot to Areum.”

“You can’t just give up your place like that, you know. You know my mum isn’t very flexible. She and the new tutor agreed that only the top ten students in our year could join.”

Subin’s mother was so passionate about her daughter’s education that even those who paid little attention to school gossip were aware of it. We were only a few months away from starting our final year of high school.

She had hired a maths tutor who had graduated from a prestigious university, and they were organizing group lessons. They would meet every day for intensive tutoring during the winter break, and then two or three times a week once the school term began.

Around four students. The lessons took place at Subin’s house. The fee was an astonishing 2.5 million won.

For someone like me, who would agonize over spending even twenty thousand won, the idea was completely out of reach. I couldn’t even consider it, but other students were ready and waiting with money in hand for a place to become available.

The students here seemed to have never worried about money in their lives.

When school ended, cars of every kind were queuing outside the gates. The other students slipped into their chauffeur-driven cars as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I was almost the only person who walked past them to the bus stop. This spurred me on to work even harder to keep my place here.

It had always been that way. Perhaps it was my sense of inferiority that had driven me to this point.

“Oh, Lee Haeju. Don’t tell me you’re already getting private tutoring behind our backs?”

“What? No, I’m not.”

“You really don’t have a private tutor? Come on, let’s share our tutors, okay?”

I smiled and shook my head. Subin always seemed to suspect that I had a private tutor. Given my circumstances, the idea of expensive private tuition was unthinkable. However, I did receive help from university students who volunteered as tutors at the children’s home every weekend.

The young men studying mathematics education would sometimes give me workbooks that they had used as teaching materials. They must have felt sorry for me, but they also admired my determination to study despite my difficult circumstances.

“That short-answer question on the mock exam—the one everyone was talking about. You were the only one who solved it correctly.”

“……”

“Am I right? How on earth did you solve it? Who taught you? Hm?”

“I just got lucky. It was a slightly trickier version of a question on last month’s privately administered mock exam……”

“Oh. So you’re saying you’re a genius?”

“No, that’s not it.”

Subin pouted and gave me a playful sidelong look. The way her eyes curved was rather cute.

Despite being top of our year, Subin always seemed relaxed. Her cheerful nature helped her get along with the other students, and the light-hearted jokes she occasionally made in class won over the teachers.

Being around her showed me what it meant to grow up surrounded by love. She was bright and carefree, with no hint of trouble about her. Simply being near her seemed to lift my spirits. She was undeniably pretty and slender, but it was her friendly, easy-going personality that attracted so many boys. Whenever a special day came around, there was always at least one boy ready to confess his feelings for her.

“Let’s do well together, Lee Haeju.”

“You’re already first. Aren’t your grades far too much better than mine for you to say that?”

“And you’re the one who got a question right that I missed.”

She was pressing me again. I smiled, looked away, and opened my book.

I didn’t feel the need to share every detail about myself. I knew how frightening it was to let people discover my shortcomings. Growing up, people called me “that Yeongbowon b*tch” or “that Yeongbowon brat”. People always thought less of me because I was from an orphanage. But here, nobody knew that I had grown up in a children’s home. This made the place feel safer than anywhere else.

Things were just right as they were.

No one knew me well, and few people were particularly interested in finding out more. My grades weren’t exceptional, but they were high enough to prevent the other students from easily dismissing me. They also attracted a reasonable amount of attention from the teachers. I liked being seen as an ordinary girl, much like everyone else. That alone was enough.

Still, I would have to study a little harder from now on. Several other students with similar grades were about to start maths tuition with Subin. From that point on, I could easily fall behind.

I had held on to a dream for a very long time: at the very least, I would never become a pr*stitute who grew up in an orphanage. It was probably a dream that most of these students could never have imagined having.

“Take your seats. Open the windows and air this place out, you lot.”

That was when it happened.

Our form teacher walked in, waving the register. The bell hadn’t rung yet, which puzzled me. The students in the classroom began to return to their seats. The boys who had played football at lunchtime brought with them a strong smell of sweat.

“Give it some more thought, okay?”

Subin whispered and hurried back to her seat. The chair legs scraped loudly across the floor. I twirled my mechanical pencil around my finger. A tall, broad-shouldered boy followed our teacher into the classroom.

The pencil slipped from my fingers and fell onto the desk. It rolled across the surface and dropped by my feet. But I couldn’t bring myself to pick it up.

“We have a new transfer student.”