I was waiting at my pick-up location to get the ride back home, but when our car came it was Hana that got off from the passenger seat to greet me.
"Oh, Hana? What's up?"
"Miss, your mother sent me to accompany you. She was very concerned"
"Huh? What happened?"
"We can talk as we drive home"
I just shrugged and got into the car. Did I do anything wrong? Am I in trouble? Or maybe something happened to 'my' family?
I took the nice comfortable seat at the back and Uncle Tan greeted me through the room mirror. I beamed a smile back to him. He was a very nice guy indeed. Hana also sat at the back behind the driver's seat, presumably so we could talk on the way.
"Don't be too harsh on her, Hana", Uncle Tan half-jokingly warned before Hana could get started.
"You are just way too soft. No wonder the Ma'am asks me to handle these things"
"Hey, I'm just a driver now"
That made Hana chuckle for some reason but she soon straightened her face and started to talk to me.
"We have been informed that there was an incident at school today"
"Oh? What happened?"
"Miss, your teacher called Ma'am to say that you were kind of bullying your classmate during the lunch break today"
"OH, FOR FUCK'S SAKE!"
:Pffftt: Uncle Tan was trying to hold back from bursting out laughing.
"Miss, this is serious, and please don't swear"
"Okay, I'm sorry, but this is just absolutely ridiculous"
"Why don't you tell us then what really happened?"
"Er… how do I put this…? I just called this boy a pig?"
:Pffffttt: Another unsuccessful effort from Uncle Tan trying to keep quiet.
"What was the context? Obviously, he found it bad enough to report it to the teacher, who in turn reported to your mother, and it's only your second day today"
"The context - was that this boy was getting bullied and the bullies were calling him a pig"
"So you just joined in and called him a pig too?"
"It's not what you think"
"How should I explain this to your mother then?"
"Er-, I'll talk to her when I get home"
"She said she won't talk to you until you admit your fault and show some remorse"
"Gees, is she mad at me? How am I supposed to clear things up if she won't let me talk to her?"
"That's why I'm here, to mediate"
What was Hana's 'job' anyway? She was not a maid, she was not a secretary, she was not a caretaker, but she seemed to be involved in everything that happened in the house and the family, to the extent when mother and daughter had a problem she came to mediate in between.
":Sigh: I'm sorry. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing"
Of course, there was a lot more to it than that, but I wasn't going to get all philosophical about it now.
"Miss, it seems you have forgotten some things"
"What do you mean?"
"I would not like to tell you the details if you have really forgotten since the accident. It's not a pleasant topic"
"It's okay, just tell me"
There was a momentary pause as Hana seemed to be trying to formulate the best way to fill me in on some delicate issue that I, Jenn, had forgotten since the accident.
"Without going into specifics, let's just say that you have some history of bullying back in middle school"
"What?! Me? Jenn? Got bullied?!"
"So you've really forgotten"
"So what happened to me?"
"Miss, if you got bullied but forgotten about it, then that's probably for the better"
"Well, I guess"
"But the problem is that YOU were the bully in some incidents. And you should not forget that"
I felt like I got hit one the head with a sledgehammer and then stabbed in the heart. I felt dizzy and nauseous. It was physically sickening to hear those words.
"Miss, are you okay? Miss - "
Hana's concerned voice felt like it was echoing away from me as I fainted.
Later that night, I stood motionless in front of the mirror, looking at the ugliest version of myself in my short life as Jenn.
Maybe I should have known. Just because Jenn was beautiful, smart, talented in so many things, and probably very popular, it didn't mean that she would have been an angel with nothing bad about her at all. But I, as a boy who ended his life as a victim of bullying, was now someone who also bullied other kids until relatively recently.
I didn't faint for too long in the car. Uncle Tan and Hana rushed me directly to the hospital and the doctor found nothing wrong with me. I came around again just after an hour or so to be greeted by the welcome and relieved look of my mother. Hana stood behind her as she usually did, but didn't seem like her usual composed self. She wouldn't know why, but the timing of my fainting made it clear that something she said in the car triggered my breakdown. I gave her a little smile to show her it was not her fault, and she acknowledged it with a slight nod of her head.
I was able to come home right after that and the rest of the evening went uneventfully. I wanted to talk things through more with Hana to find out exactly what I, Jenn, did in middle school and how bad it was, but my mom insisted I go back to my room and sleep early to get some good rest. It was a compromise because I stubbornly refused her suggestion that I miss school the next day to recover.
Of course, what Jenn did back in middle school had absolutely nothing to do with me. There was no reason for me to feel bad or guilty about what Jenn did before. It made me instantly dislike her in a way I never did before, but even that was no big deal in the grand scheme of things. I am Jenn now and I'm not who Jenn once was. No reason to hate 'myself' for what happened before. That was literally 'in another life'.
However, it was precisely that which horrified me. Sometimes we look at our past such as our childhood and feel like that was a lifetime ago. We may remember the things that we did, and things that we felt, but those are just memories and might as well have been something we just watched in a movie. Heck, after a long time, people actually do get their memories mixed up with something that really happened and something that they imagined.
That's when it dawned on me.
I will never ever forget my suffering from getting bullied, although I was determined to make this life a better one and move away from what happened before. However, the bullies themselves, will 'grow out' of this phase at some point. They will graduate, get a job, get married, have kids, whatever. As they move on to the next phase of their lives, what came before will feel like something that happened in their previous life - they will feel as detached from their wrongdoing of today as I did about Jenn's past. In my case, it was literally 'Hey that wasn't really me', but considering how people grow up and change that's probably how these bullies will feel about their past too in hindsight.
I looked into my eyes again in the mirror. So far I mostly felt that I was 'released' from my pathetic previous life. But today was the first time I had a strong feeling of being 'trapped' inside Jenn's body.
Could I live as Jenn without owing up to Jenn's past? Could I move on from my previous life without resolving my own past?
I might have escaped death before but I knew I would not be able to escape from answering these questions sooner or later.