I joined a non-mixed school for girls (Academic Branch) following my father's desire, in the same high school as Min Soo. And my first days were extremely horrible. Imagine a twelve- hours study day that begins at eight in the morning and ends at ten or eleven at night.
I was unable to read or draw anything for a whole month during the main school period which starts at eight in the morning and ends at five in the afternoon. The ten minutes break between classes was not enough to think of anything to draw.
Besides, the lunch break, which begins after four sequential lessons, was allocated to lunch and talking to the curious girls who keep asking me about my unusual features, my modest clothes, and the strange moves and bows (Islamic prayer) I do at the end of the classroom on a small rug five times a day. To be honest, for an introverted person like me, I was feeling as though I was forcing myself to talk to those girls in whom I had no interest.
And when the girls started to isolate me for my endless silence. I felt comfortable. The idea of being with people has always filled me with awe
After that, I used to hear them talking behind my back throwing their mean words at me. Even though those words were just like spears, I did not care about them. To me, a cadaver had not had a right to complain.
Whenever the main lesson ended at five in the afternoon, the supporting and strengthening lessons started to continue till eleven at night. That was a real hell, but I could not complain because my parents were paying an arm and leg for me to get that classy education.
The days were passing fast bringing the dreams of the girls to get high degrees to join Seoul National University, whose acceptance tests are tougher than those of Oxford and Cambridge. I was picking up their chattering during the breaks while scratching my drawing notebooks with sharp pens without drawing a thing.
I was not in the same class as Min Soo but that did not prevent her from joining me on lunch breaks. We used to meet frequently in the evening. It seemed that she was enjoying making me shocked by showing me the celebrities she follow dancing on stages half-naked, doing horrible moves. My shyness always succeeded in making my insane, geek friend scream happily. That girl is a real mess of media, she knows about most of the famous pop bands in Korea, though she only focuses on men's bands such as " 4 Men" " Boys Republic " " X-Five" and "BTS".
For years, she tormented me with their news, their newest albums, and the rewards they gained from Asian Musical festivals.
For a nerd like me, I preferred to spend my adolescence and school life studying history, science, and mathematics. That was why, the more she spoke about them, the more she discovered the gaps between us.
She was fond of them, she fancied and loved them so much. She was listening to their songs from her cell phone on our way home every day, while I fell overwhelmingly into a deep sleep on the subway listening to the Holly Quran.
In the first year of our friendship, I always felt that Min Soo didn't like
my introverted silent personality that lacked passion and vitality.
She was so festive, so delightful, so jolly, and so rejoiceful. She was the first of her kind, I smile each time I remember her running to the toilet to fix her makeup, or buying a bottle of Soju and drinking it on our way back home when her brother or my father do not come to take us home.
As she told me that she dreams to undergo plastic surgery to have the same features as mine, I was baffled. I had never seen her as someone who needed surgery to make herself prettier. Despite, her slick nature, her blossomed psyche and warm features were so gracious.
Even though she insisted many times that she loves me for unknown reasons, I did believe her, and could not believe her compliments about my unique features as she said it was not my sin, it was the voice.
The Buddhist girl did not stop criticizing my introverted life even though she had no close friends except this dissociable corpse. Yes, she was talking to most of the girls in our school but she never made a real friendship with any of them.
One day, she asked me with eyes filled with accusations more than questioning, after watching on YouTube some of the intimidation campaigns against Muslims: Am I obligated to get married to a man who has the right to have four wives?
At that moment, the voice inside my head roared instructing me to ignore her, but what I did was reverse the voice commands. I explained that that topic in Islam is not how other people think it is, it is optional for men that one woman can not satisfy them, but it is not an obligation. And Islam made this optional thing to prevent men and women from getting kids outside the family bond, for the sake of the kids themselves. And Most Muslim men settle for only one wife. She listened carefully and then said," Do you agree to live with a husband and three other wives?"
" No" I replied after a short pause.
" Then you reject some of your religious law? "
" I can't say that I reject it, but as a woman, I can't have a husband that can have another wife except me. Some women can, but I can't. God was seeking to establish order in society according to this law. As for me, I speak of my selfish personal whims. In Islam, children should not live without a father who takes care of them and provides for their requirements."
She was listening calmly without cutting off. The gleam in her eyes expressed her desire to know more and more about her only friend, me. So I went on saying consistently," Moreover, men in the past in the Arabian Peninsula used to get married to numerous wives, about ten or maybe more, and Islam ordered them to reduce their wives to four, but at the same time God told them in Quran that being satisfied with one wife would be better, that is why most of Muslims are satisfied nowadays with one."
" What if your spouse did get another wife despite your whims?"
I smiled as I heard that question.
" I will divorce him," I replied.
" for real?" she said shocked, " I think you will, you will. For me, I think I would just cope and accept the reality, just like women had done in ancient China."
For some reason I did not tell her that I would never get married, I would drown and die in the Han Kang River sooner or later, this was what the vision of the future told me.
" I don't care about what people say about you and your beliefs. To me, you are my closest friend, and this is all I care about." She announced suddenly to get me shocked.
I wanted to believe those words, but the voice inside my mind warned me saying: "You must go back to your loneliness, to your small shell. Close all the doors in front of human beings. You and this girl must be broken out otherwise you will be regretting it and you will see that yourself".
But Soo's smile forced me to ignore the voice back then.
In the end, Soo got used to my temper, my silence, and my sleeping habit, of resting my head on her shoulder on the subway going back home. As I got used to her drinking habits and her non-stop talks about young men. The days tied up our relationship more and more. The Buddhist girl began to learn so much about me, and I have learned many things about the Buddhist society which I did not know much about when I was living in my rural village.
On the first of October, neighbors moved into the building where my parent's apartment was. They bought the apartment next to ours. I could hear the owners chattering or see them when I stand on our balcony. The father was a dead smoking man who spent hours smoking on the balcony staring with a sad gaze at the traffic movement. His short temper sparked violent quarrels with his wife at every midnight. Min Soo and I occasionally meet him on the stairs while reeling with half-opened eyes, awful stink, and old dirty clothes.
Unlike the curious Min Soo, I did not have any interest in that family. But one morning she surprised me standing at my parent's door with a pretty elegant girl whose long black hair made her look like a doll. The girl was a member of a neighboring family which consisted of a housewife, a drunkard penniless father, a young son that studies at secondary school, and finally, an elder brother who worked in a prestigious place and was the one who bought them the apartment but he does not live with them. I expected that he was living with his girlfriend mimicking some Koreans who live the same Western lifestyle. However, most Korean adults whether Buddhists or Christians, and even those who do not follow any religion, represent fifty percent of Korean society live in extended families.
Back then, the three of us went to school together. Rena was the name of our new friend. She was more talkative than Min Soo. She could not stop talking about food and boys using profanity. Soo was enjoying her smutty topics and the photos they exchanged through their phones. I remained silent as a stupid ignorant coming from a rural village; I felt stressed, depressed, and bored and I was dreaming of a silent moment while jailing my mind in a dark bubble forever.
Who said that living in a developed country and a beautiful city gives happiness? was not this city the most beautiful in the whole world? Then why did its beauty fail to affect my deeps? And why did it fail in coloring the world inside of me? And why did Rena's words about her old boyfriend fail in attracting my attention? I did not care about her love story, nor her. It seemed that she did not care about my existence too. I was an unseen creature who got the ghosts' role in the story. No one sees them, no one cares about them and no one even believes that they are real. And that was why I felt empty, alienated, and depressed.
Rena made me discover foreignness inside of me. I was different from other girls of my age. I was more like the monster "Gregor" in Kafka's novel. I could not deal with anyone. Nothing appealed to me. My loner and my silence reflected a mind that works in a psychiatric hospital; as though I have accidentally fallen from a line of a classical story written by the fingers of nursing madmen.
The day passed as usual. But in the afternoon I went to the library, and stayed there for two hours reading a book about world war two; I discovered that I have an obsession with learning about European history, and I also discovered that my self-isolation started to create a terrible disturbance when someone interrupts me when I am so many miles away.
It was Rena who disturbed me by asking about the content of the book I was reading. Reluctantly, I answered her without raising my eyes. She looked at me for a while then left.
I wonder why I treat people who seek to approach me like this. I cannot understand myself. Does life go well with loneliness? I did not care because I loved my loneliness which was feeding my soul. But I still wonder what would happen if I let someone steps toward me in just two steps. Only two!
My eyes followed Rena leaving through the reflection of the sunlight of the evening on the windows. She looked like a doll in her school uniform, a doll that swims in orange clouds which were leaving slowly. I turned my eyes back to the book but I rapidly took them back to the corridor amongst the tables. There were blood traces on Rena's footprints stretching straight ahead.
I was frozen in my place for moments and then started running hoping to find her, but no one was there in the lobby. I turned around towards the library taking back my glances in panic. The red sun was drawing a Surreal plate on the tables drying the blood prints, leaving this writing, " Ten out of ten".