You have your foils and I have mineKim Hanbin
Binnie ✖ #un.requited ✖ Freshman ✖ 18 ✖ October 22, 1996 ✖ Libra ✖ RUSHING ✖ Basketball ✖ Genetics Major; can be found in the science laboratory | |
|
"You gotta risk it to get the biscuit" | |
[VII]
One, two, three steps! Along a freshly wet street, post-rainfall, Hanbin rushes further ahead of his parents in jumps and skips of twos, threes. Puddles can't reach him in his black wellingtons. The faster he reaches the end of the block, the longer he could stop to take a look at the wiggling worms slowly making their way across the paved sidewalk. He scrunches up his face; his mother told him anything on the ground is dirty and never to be touched. But the fascination in the creature remains, even as his parents finally reach him in their stroll, and his hands are taken to be tugged along. It's a Sunday afternoon, and they just finished their service at the local church. The walk home isn't usually eventual, but rain changes the colours of his world, darkening streets and dampening leaves. (He thinks rain is magical.) [VIII] Her name means light, so he calls her Light. Light, Light. She smiles at the paper crane he folded, and asks to keep it. Hanbin at age eight, thinks he's in love. Hanbin at age eight also finds she doesn't like him back; but Hanbin still smiles when she smiles, and still waits for her when the bell rings. He still likes her even after she moves away, before the end of the school year, promising to write each other and keep in touch. She returns his paper crane, and his mother has a field day trying to coerce a single word out of him. He writes in his notebook instead, and continues filling the notebook, expecting to gift it to her once they reunite. (He never heard from her, and the notebook remains buried under new hobbies since.) [X] Crescent moon eyes and crooked buckteeth. "I'ms Bobby!" He looks at the new kid with disdain--from America, says Teacher. Hanbin is Teacher's favourite, but ever since Bobby's arrival, he had to share her attention. His environment changes, and he doesn't want to be friends with the culprit. Teacher wants him to be nice and help Bobby fit in, but Hanbin leads him to the girl's bathroom ('I didn't know he wouldn't notice the sign,') and runs when Bobby catches sight of him during recess. They tumble and fight in the sand box, needing to be separated. Hanbin thinks he really doesn't like him. "Is that a Mickey Mouse pencil?" The innocent inquiry follows after recess when they're all inside and writing in their class journals. He feels guilty (as a result of being scolded for the first time in his life) and points to the first thing that catches his interest on Bobby's desk. "Yeah, you want it? I got more, I got Daffy... Goofy... and-" Hanbin's shy smile doesn't compete with Bobby's enthusiasm, but he procures a bear-shaped eraser from his pencil case in the same affable desire to befriend the kid with the Mickey Mouse pencil. "Do you want my Pooh eraser?" "I LOVE POOH!" (The rest, as you say it, is history.) [XII] "Come say hello to Hanbyul. She's your sister." The minute size of her amazes Hanbin, not quite believing her to be the same as him and his parents. Is this magic, too? He decides to protect her from all the bad things (like the monster under the bed) when she grabs his finger. She speaks a foreign language only babies understand, but he thinks she said his name, and he greets her all the same. ('That's right. I'm your big brother, Hanbin.') [XVII] "Yonsei?" "Yonsei." (Decision making comes quickly with two best friends.) |
 | |