Chapter Text
A-na.
Three letters and a dash.
The person Juun has despised her whole life.
She hated her overly positive and bubbly personality. She hated the way she would turn everything into a joke. How she would never take anything seriously and just mess around with everybody.
Pure hatred.
Though Juun does not know when this hatred for A-na began. Was it fourth grade? Was it middle school? Or was it in kindergarten, when Juun would purposefully break A-na's crayons in front of her face?
Juun does not have any good memories of A-na either. The two had known each other since they were four years old, so Juun remembers enough of A-na. Even in the hundreds of memories, Juun cannot find a single good one.
Guess it did start when they were young.
Though Juun has countless memories of her and A-na as the littlest kids, one stuck with her vividly...
*
The school bell rang, a loud sound interrupting absolutely nothing but pure silence around the school. What seemed like hundreds of children sprinted out of the school, the peaceful silence of nature disrupted by high-pitched screams and laughs.
Among those little children ran tiny A-na.
Juun hated her. Always have, despite only being five years old. She doesn't know why, but every time she made eye contact with her, a powerful feeling of pure anger rises in her.
Was it her way-too-bright smile? Was it her annoying voice? Was it the way she would pretend she and Juun were friends?
Tiny Juun shook her head. Waste of time to worry about this. Time for the usual lunch break ritual: play, avoid A-na, somehow have A-na spot her each time and then try to put up with her.
Today, Juun decided to skip right to the third step. She was going to search for A-na by herself.
"Juun! Where are you going?" a high-pitched voice reached Juun. It was tiny Yuha, Juun and A-na's classmate, who somehow was friends with everybody.
"None of your business", Juun screamed back, sassy against the small blonde girl.
She scurried over the school playground, desperate to find A-na, feet moving fast, almost like A-na was actually her friend.
Finally, after five whole minutes of sprinting across the school playground, A-na came into her vision.
She thought about it for a second.
Was this wrong?
"Nothing is wrong when it comes to A-na", she muttered, waiting for A-na to also start running.
She did.
"Juun!" A-na hurried towards Juun, moving like she had not seen her in ten years, and this was the first time they would meet again.
Juun moved a little bit to her right side, the movement not even noticeable to A-na, who was too busy getting to Juun. She stuck her left foot out, slightly, just enough to trip A-na.
"A-na, watch out! She's gonna trip you!" somebody screamed, a fraction of a second late.
A-na didn't hear.
How unfortunate, Juun thought.
A-na had not looked down while running to who she considered a good friend.
How unfortunate.
Just as she came running, arms spreading out wider than an ocean to hug her friend, Juun stuck her foot out higher, making A-na trip.
A-na gasped, putting her hands out in front of her to catch herself, but it was too late.
She fell to the ground, left arm hitting the ground with a loud crack. Her whole body flopped forward, head smashing against the concrete. She screamed in pain while rolling onto her back, exposing her badly scraped knees and arms. She grasped her left arm, took a quick look at it and started crying.
Juun hesitated to look over, but did anyway.
She wished she had never done that.
A-na's lower arm was slightly bent to the right, just a little bit, but still enough to make people feel unsettled.
Juun gasped, tears forming in her eyes in guilt. She felt like she could not do anything but stand there in shock.
Another kid pushed her from the right, making her fall. The left side of her body smacked the ground hard, knees and elbows scraping painfully against it.
"You idiot! You broke A-na's arm!" he shouted.
Tears pricked at Juun's eyes.
She stood up quickly, trying to stand her ground while holding back tears.
That did not work.
She started crying.
Not loudly, actually rather quietly, tears flooding silently from her eyes and falling down her puffed up and slightly scraped cheek.
Two kids ran to get a teacher already, the others either crowded around A-na or stood in a tiny circle, muttering unkind things about Juun. Juun could hear everything they said.
She did something she thought she would never do.
She bent down, hissing at the painful sensation on her knees as she sat down beside A-na, who was sobbing loudly while holding her broken arm in place.
"I'm so sorry, A-na."
Her voice was shaky, trembling heavily with guilt. The fact she was crying only made it worse.
A-na stopped crying and looked up, eyes rimmed red, face wet from tears. There was a bad open wound on her face, bleeding relentlessly, making large streams of blood stream down her temples.
She opened her chapped, bloody lips to say something.
"It's al–"
Then she got interrupted.
Ms. Kim, third-grade teacher, and Ms. Choi, teacher of Juun and A-na's class, came sprinting towards A-na at a speed so high Juun was scared they would trip as well.
Ms. Choi immediately crouched down beneath A-na, holding an ice pack in her hands. Ms. Kim stood in front of Juun, towering over her with a furious face.
"Kim Juun."
Her whole body shivered hearing her name being called like this.
"Did you just do this?" the woman half-asked, half-screamed, furious at Juun. Her teeth gritted and she looked down angrily at Juun, still crouched down next to A-na.
She looked at her briefly: she pressed an ice pack firmly against her arm, now crying quite loudly again, while Ms. Choi cleaned the wound on her head with a wet towel, stained red with her blood.
"Answer me."
Juun looked up, her eyes bigger than her courage. She started crying again, trying to choke out an answer.
"It was a mistake."
Juun recognized A-na's voice.
Did A-na just tell Ms. Kim Juun accidentally tripped her?
"I promise," A-na confirmed, almost incomprehensible through her sea of tears.
"Oh really?" Ms. Kim asked, brows furrowing, somehow looking seriously confused and angry at the same time.
"Y-yes," Juun stuttered, so shook she almost couldn't get the words out of her mouth.
She turned her head swiftly, making eye contact with A-na. Her forehead was swollen at the spot where her wound was, and her face was covered in dry blood. She was still sobbing, though now less loudly as she looked at Juun.
Juun looked her up and down: she had stopped holding the ice pack against her arm, and it was now visibly deformed. Her elbows were lightly scraped, not bleeding, but her knees were almost fully skinned. She almost threw up in her mouth. It was not a nice sight.
Beside her, Juun heard her teacher on the phone, muttering something about a small collision resulting in a broken arm and a wound on the head.
She sighed.
How did she get away with this?
A-na didn't come to school for the remaining three days of that week.
Juun also was not worried about A-na at all.
She hated her after all.
When A-na entered the classroom the Monday after, her left arm was in a cast and her knees were both bandaged securely with gauze.
For a second, an ounce of guilt and worry sparked up in Juun.
She brushed it off.
*