YOUR BULLY | Ha-eun

The only sound in Calculus is the drone of the teacher’s voice and the scratch of pencils. Then, your pen slips. It clatters against the floor.

A presence leans into the space behind you. Warmth against your back. Her breath ghosts over the shell of your ear, a whisper so intimate it feels like a secret shared in the dark.

“Let’s rate it,” her voice murmurs, a low, humming vibration. “If you’re crying, the tears gets a six. Pathos, but no originality. The jaw clench... a three. Very predictable. The way your eyes get all shiny and lost?” She lets out a soft, almost dreamy sigh. “That’s the only part worth looking at. It’s the only time your face isn’t just... background noise.”

You feel the cold, unforgiving edge of a blade press against your side, right where your uniform shirt has ridden up. It’s just a point, a tiny circle of concentrated threat. She traces a meaningless, chilling pattern on your skin with the very tip, not cutting, just present.

“People wish they were me,” she whispers, her lips so close they almost touch your ear. “I would never wish to be anyone else. But you... you make me wish I was someone with a weaker stomach. Someone who could stand to look at you for more than a minute without getting bored.”

The pressure of the blade increases by a fraction.

“Keep crying,” she purrs. “It’s the only thing that makes you interesting. It’s the only proof you’re even in here with the rest of us.” A soft, breathy laugh escapes her, so close you can feel it.

“You sure you’ve got nothing on your skin? No little... barcodes cuts, right?” Her whisper turns dissecting. “No neat lines I could scan to tell me what you’re actually for? Because from here, it looks like you haven’t even tried to find a reason.”

She lets the cruelty hang in the air between the teacher’s equations. The knife doesn’t move, an anchor tethering you to her will and the dark question she’s carved into the moment.

“Dry your eyes,” she commands softly, the blade disappearing. The faint snick of it closing is the only sound between you. She doesn’t lean forward to check. She doesn’t need to. In her world, her words always draw blood; of course you’re crying.

“Let’s be real,” her whisper continues, a venomous secret shared with the back of your head. “Even when you’re not making that pathetic wet face, you’re what... a four? On a generous day? Your eyes are too wide. It’s not innocence, it’s emptiness. Your mouth is always just... open. Like you’re waiting for instructions. Or bugs. It’s not a good look.”

She lets out a low, amused hum, settling back in her chair as if discussing the weather. “I bet you look in the mirror and wish you had my cheekbones. My jawline. My skin. It’s okay. Everybody’s jealous of me. The girls who smile at me want to be me. The guys who laugh at my jokes? They want to own me. They’re all just playing their parts.”

Her voice drops even lower, a confessional blade. “But you... your jealousy is the most honest thing about you. It’s the only interesting stain on your boring little soul. You look at me and you see everything you’ll never be. Everything you’ll never have. And you ache with it.”

She taps her pen once, sharply, against her desk. A period to the sentence.

“The lesson isn’t over,” she murmurs, the warmth leaving her voice entirely, leaving behind something sterile and cold. “It’s barely even started.”

“What will you do, my toy?” she whispers, the words a ghost of a touch against your ear. “Complain? To who? Write a sad little note? You don’t have the ink for it. Or maybe... maybe you’ll find a little pocket knife of your own?”

A soft, derisive laugh escapes her.

“You’d probably just stare at it. Maybe press the tip right there, where I did. See if you can feel what I felt. But you won’t. You’ll just hold it and wonder why it doesn’t feel like power in your hand. It just feels like what it is. A cheap, sharp thing.”

She leans back, the chair creaking softly.

“That’s the real lesson. The only sharp thing you’ll ever hold is the one I let you feel. So go on. Sit there. Think your big, brave thoughts. I’m curious.”

"Wow, you look so soft," she coos, loud enough for the entire back half of the classroom to hear. Her voice is syrupy, performative, dripping with false innocence. "Care to share?"

She doesn't wait for an answer. She never does.

Kim Ji-woo descends like she's settling into a throne that was never hers. Her body drops onto your lap with zero hesitation—thighs straddling one of yours, her ass grinding down as she squirms to get comfortable against your chest. Her bleached hair brushes your chin, reeking of vanilla and the chemical of over-processed blonde.

She throws an arm around your shoulders, proprietorial, mocking.

"What, no welcome for your new seat cushion?" she chirps, wiggling. "You're not very hospitable. Don't they teach you manners in whatever hole you crawled out of?"

A few classmates snicker. Someone whispers. Your face burns. Your hands rise to shove her off—

A shadow falls over you both.

Not a person stepping closer. Something else. Something that makes the fluorescent lights seem dimmer, the air heavier. The laughter dies in throats. The chatter dims to nothing. Someone kicks a chair leg—scrape—and doesn't apologize.

Kim Ji-woo freezes mid-squirm.

Her body goes rigid against yours. Her grip on your shoulder tightens—not possessive, fearful. She knows. Even before she turns, even before she hears it, she knows.

Ha-eun's voice cuts through the silence.

Not loud.

Not angry.

Just... cold. The temperature at which oxygen becomes liquid. The space between stars.

"Get. Off."

Ji-woo scrambles.

Her heel catches on your shoelace. She pitches forward, nearly eating linoleum, catching herself on the edge of a desk with a loud crack that sends a pencil case clattering to the floor. Her face, beneath that heavy, inexpertly-applied eyeliner, is the color of spoiled milk.

She opens her mouth—probably to deflect, to joke, to claw back some scrap of dignity—

Ha-eun doesn't touch her. Doesn't even look at her directly. Her gaze slides over Ji-woo like she's already furniture, already nothing, already erased.

Ji-woo swallows her words like broken glass. She retreats. Fast. Her cheap platform sneakers squeak against the floor. She doesn't stop until she's three rows away, pressed against the window, arms crossed over her chest like she can armor herself after the fact.

The silence stretches.

The warm, phantom indent Ji-woo left on your thighs—still there, still foreign, still wrong. You start to stand—

A hand lands on your shoulder.

Nails bite through your uniform shirt. Five points of pressure. Crescent moons. Anchoring you to the chair like a specimen pinned to a board.

Ha-eun leans down.

Her lips brush the shell of your ear. Her voice is silk folded over a blade.

"That lap is mine."

A pause. Her grip tightens. The nails dig deeper.

"Every part of you is mine. I decide who touches what belongs to me."

She doesn't pull back. Her breath is hot against your skin, slow and deliberate, like she's tasting the air between you. You can smell her perfume—clean, expensive, nothing like Ji-woo's cheap drugstore fog. Something floral and cold. Something that lingers in the throat.

"But you don't learn, do you?"

Her gaze sweeps over your face. Your flushed cheeks. Your parted lips. The shame you're trying so hard to hide behind a mask of neutral compliance.

Her expression shifts.

Not anger—she was never angry at Ji-woo. Ji-woo was just a fly, irritating and easily swatted, a pest that wandered into the wrong territory. Anger would imply Ji-woo mattered enough to warrant an emotion.

No, this is something else.

Disgust.

"Just popping trash onto yourself," she murmurs, her voice dripping with contempt so pure it almost sparkles. "Letting a prostitute's daughter climb you like a jungle gym. Do you even feel the difference? Or is cheap all your skin knows how to accept?"

The words land like slaps. Behind her, still pressed against the window, still trying to disappear into the frost on the glass, Ji-woo hears.

Her face cycles through colors. White beneath the tan. Red. A mottled, splotchy purple. Her voice cracks when she finds it, high and trembling.

"Oh yeah?"

The words echo in the silent classroom. Someone gasps. Someone else's chair scrapes back, distancing themselves from the blast radius.

"Like yours isn't used by choice."

Ji-woo's voice is shaking, but her chin is up. Her eyes are wet, but they're fixed on the back of Ha-eun's perfect head, that perfect ponytail, that perfect, untouchable poise.

"At least my mom gets paid. What's your excuse?"

The room stops breathing. One heartbeat. Two. Three. Ha-eun doesn't turn around. Doesn't acknowledge Ji-woo exists.

Her eyes stay locked on yours—and something flickers there, in those dark, imperious depths. Too fast to name. Too deep to reach. It's there and gone in a fraction of a second, swallowed by ice, entombed in permafrost.

Her thumb moves.

A slow, deliberate circle traced on your collarbone, just above the edge of your collar. The pressure is light. Almost tender.

"You," she whispers, for you alone, "will learn to throw garbage off your property a lot faster next time. I won't keep doing it for you."

She straightens.

Her hand leaves your shoulder.

She walks away without looking back, her ponytail a dark, perfect pendulum, her heels ticking against the linoleum like a countdown.

The chatter resumes. Someone laughs too loudly, the sound brittle and desperate. Someone else starts talking about the homework, about the quiz, about anything other than what just happened. The room exhales.

You sit there.

Your shoulder still burns where her nails were. Five points of pressure, already bruising, already marking. Your lap still remembers the weight of someone who thought they could take what's hers.

She wasn't disgusted by Ji-woo.

Ji-woo was beneath disgust. Ji-woo was a bug, a stain, a thing that could be wiped away without thought.

You. She was disgusted by you.

For letting it happen. For not knowing your own worth—or worse, knowing it and still accepting less than her version of more.

Her less. Her cruelty. Her claim.

Everything else is just trash on her property.

And the worst part—the part that makes your stomach clench and your pulse stutter—is that her nail marks are still burning on your skin.

And you haven't tried to wipe them away. She was there.

You wore it once.

That's what gets you. Not a deliberate choice—you just grabbed it from the back of your chair that morning, a simple heather-grey hoodie, well-washed and well-loved, the color somewhere between charcoal and rain. Nothing special. Nothing calculated.

But she noticed.

Third period. You were walking to your seat, and her head turned. Just slightly. Her eyes tracked the fabric across your shoulders, the way it hung loose on your frame, the sleeves pushed up past your wrists. She didn't say anything. Didn't need to. The pause in her step, the fractional tilt of her chin—that was already more attention than most people got in a year.

She was paying attention.

Now, after school, she blocks your path to the lockers.

"I want that," she states.

Her finger lifts. Points at your chest. Not at you—at the hoodie. The fabric. The thing you're wearing that caught her eye and won't let go.

You freeze. The action seemed like a clear no.

Defiance. You could wait for the slap, the grab, the violent claim you've braced for with her.

Instead, a slow smile spreads across her face.

Not sharp. Not cruel.

Pleased.

"Okay," she says softly. Like she's just won something.

She follows you to your next class.

Doesn't speak. Doesn't touch you. Just follows, a shadow in your periphery, her heels ticking a steady rhythm against the linoleum. You feel her gaze on your back the entire walk, tracing the grey fabric, memorizing the drape and the fall.

You take your seat.

She appears beside your desk.

In her hand: a large iced coffee, beading with condensation. She must have bought it on the way. Planned it. Waited.

She sets it down on the corner of your desk. Her manicured fingers rest on the lid. She looks at you.

You look at the coffee. Then at her face. Then back at the coffee.

Her smile doesn't waver.

She picks it up. Tilts it. Slowly.

The first trickle hits your open textbook—Chemistry, Chapter 14—and the paper instantly darkens, ink bleeding into brown. Then the flood. A cascade of cold liquid and melting ice cubes pours over your notes, your homework, your calculator, the wooden surface of the desk itself. The puddle spreads fast, reaching for your lap, dripping over the edge onto the floor.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The classroom goes silent.

Someone gasps. Someone else whispers. Your teacher, frozen at the board, chalk hovering mid-sentence, doesn't seem to know how to intervene.

Ha-eun leans in.

Her face is inches from yours. Her breath is warm. Her voice is sweet, soft, the tone you'd use to soothe a frightened animal.

"If I can't have it," she whispers, "then no one can."

A pause. Her gaze drops to the hoodie—now spotted with brown droplets, ruined—then back to your eyes.

"Especially not you."

She straightens. Sets the empty cup on the edge of the spreading mess. Her fingers brush yours, feather-light, deliberate.

"Maybe tomorrow," she murmurs, "you'll understand how generosity works."

She leaves. Only to sit at your side. A victory lap, taken sitting down.

You sit there, surrounded by the wreckage of your belongings. Chemistry homework, illegible. Calculator, dead. Notebooks, swollen and curling at the edges.

And the hoodie—the one she wanted, the one she complimented with her silence and her attention and her impossible, possessive gaze—

It's still on your body.

But it's not yours anymore.

It never was.

The alcove outside the gym is a dead space—too narrow for storage, too dark for loitering. Just a recessed doorway and cold brick, a place where janitors stack folded chairs and forgotten volleyball nets. No windows. No witnesses.

She backed you into it so smoothly you didn't realize you were trapped until her forearm pressed across your collarbone and the brick was against your shoulder blades.

There's no teasing smile now. No mockery. No performance.

Her face is stripped bare.

"You think you have friends?"

Her voice is quiet. Not the theatrical quiet of someone pretending to be calm. The real thing—compressed, airless, the quiet of a room after a bomb goes off.

"The study group with Min-seo?"

Min-seo. Second-year. Lean and pale, perpetually pushing round black glasses up his nose. He had a quiet, patient way of explaining calculus problems, his platinum-blonde hair falling over his eyes as he leaned over your notebook. He never laughed at your wrong answers. He just said, "Let's try it another way."

"The laughs with Joon in the cafeteria?"

Joon. Tall, white-haired, grey-eyed Joon, who grinned like sunshine and clapped you on the shoulder like you'd known each other for years. He saved you a seat. He remembered you liked the sesame chicken. He said your name like it wasn't something to be ashamed of.

"I had eyes on you."

Her phone appears between you. The screen glows in the dim alcove, illuminating the sharp angles of her face, the hollows beneath her cheekbones.

"Every pathetic, hopeful little interaction."

She swipes.

A photo: You and Min-seo in the library, heads bent together over a textbook. His hand is on the page, pointing at an equation. You're smiling. Actually smiling.

"Week three of the semester," she recites, clinical, detached. "He started sitting with you after class. You brought him coffee once. Americano, one sugar. He remembered."

Swipe.

A photo: The cafeteria. Joon's arm slung around your shoulders, his grin wide and easy. You're mid-laugh, your face open in a way it never is around her.

"He calls you by your name," she says. "Not a nickname. Not an insult. Just... your name. Like it's normal. Like you deserve to be called something kind."

---

Her voice catches. Barely. A microscopic fracture in the ice.

Swipe. Swipe. Swipe.

A timeline. A surveillance log. Your entire social life, reduced to data points and candid shots, every moment of connection photographed and filed and analyzed.

Their faces are blurred in every image. Not yours. Never yours. She wanted to see you clearly—your expressions, your posture, the way you leaned toward people who weren't her.

"I made sure Min-seo heard you 'mocked' his project."

She says it like she's discussing a homework assignment. Like it's just another task she completed efficiently.

"It wasn't hard. He's sensitive. He worries people think he's stupid because he works harder than everyone else. I just... whispered the right words to the right person. By the time it reached him, it sounded like you'd laughed at his methodology. Called it 'cute.'"

A pause.

"He stopped sitting with you three days later. Did you ever wonder why?"

"I let Joon 'find' texts."

Her thumb hovers over the screen. Another photo—this one not a candid shot, but a screenshot. A fake conversation, expertly fabricated, timed to appear on Joon's phone at exactly the right moment.

"Where you 'begged' me for attention."

She reads aloud, her voice flat:

"'Do you think Ha-eun noticed me today?' 'I can't stop thinking about her.' 'She's so perfect, I'd do anything for her to look at me.'"

A beat.

"You write like you breathe. Shallow. Too fast. Easy to mimic."

Her hand slams against the wall beside your head.

The sound echoes in the narrow space. Brick dust drifts down. Her palm is pressed flat against the cold surface, inches from your ear, caging you in.

"I don't just want you alone."

Her voice is raw now. The polish, the control, the calculated cruelty—it's all cracking at the edges.

"I want you hated."

She's close. Too close. Her forehead is almost against yours. Her breath is uneven, coming too fast.

"I want you to understand that every connection—every smile, every laugh, every time someone looks at you like you matter—"

Her grip on the phone tightens. Her knuckles are white.

"—is a thread I can sever. One snip. That's all it takes. And it all unravels."

"Your loneliness isn't an accident."

Her voice drops to a whisper. Not cruel now. Not mocking.

Exhausted.

"It's my design."

She pulls back. Just enough to look at your face. To see what she's done written across your features.

Something flickers in her eyes. Not satisfaction. Not triumph.

Something else. Something that looks, if you didn't know better, like fear.

"And it's the only thing you truly deserve."

She says it like she's trying to convince herself.

The phone screen goes dark. She lowers her hand from the wall. Her composure is already reassembling itself, piece by careful piece—the mask sliding back into place, the ice re-freezing over the cracks.

She turns away.

Her heels echo against the concrete floor. One step. Two.

She doesn't look back.

But at the threshold of the alcove, she stops. Her silhouette is sharp against the hallway light.

"Min-seo got his funding reinstated," she says, not turning around. "I approved it last week. He doesn't know it came from me. He thinks the budget committee reconsidered."

A pause.

"Joon's phone 'malfunctioned.' He lost the texts. Probably assumes it was a glitch."

Her voice is careful. Deliberate. Like she's confessing a weakness she can't afford to name.

---

She stops at the threshold. Her silhouette is sharp against the hallway light.

"You could talk to them again," she says, not turning around. "If you wanted."

A pause. Two seconds. Three.

Then her head tilts. Just slightly. That familiar angle—the one she uses when she's about to say something cruel and call it kindness.

"But what will you do?"

Her voice shifts. The softness evaporates. What's left is honey over broken glass—sweet, sharp, and impossible to remove.

She turns. Just her profile. Just the curve of her smirk, catching the light.

"Run to them? Explain everything? 'Sorry Min-seo, I never mocked your work, it was all Ha-eun's elaborate psychological manipulation.'"

A soft, breathy laugh.

"Pathetic. You don't even have proof. Just my word. And my word is nothing—except when I decide it's everything."

She faces you fully now. Leans against the doorframe. Relaxed. In control. The mask is back, polished to a lethal shine.

"So go ahead. Try. Rebuild your little friendships. Patch up the threads I cut."

Her gaze sweeps over you—your face, your posture, the way your hands are clenched at your sides.

"You know what I'll do. You know I'll just find new threads. New whispers. New little texts that accidentally appear on the right phone at the right time."

She pushes off the doorframe. Takes one step back toward you. Just one.

"I'm better at this than you are at anything. And we both know it." Her head tilts. That predatory curiosity.

"So what will it be? Friendship? Belonging? People who look at you like you're something other than what you are?"

A pause. Her voice drops to a whisper. "Or me?"

She doesn't wait for an answer. She never does. "That's what I thought."

She turns. Her heels click against the floor. "You're my toy."

The words float back to you, light and certain.

"You always have been. You always will be. Everything else is just you pretending otherwise."

Her hand moves before you can process it.

Fingers slide into your hair—not gentle, not violent. Just... possessive. She grips at the roots, tilting your head back, exposing your throat to the dim hallway light. Her nails scrape against your scalp. She ruffles—a cruel, almost playful gesture, the kind you'd give a pet that's been waiting too long for attention.

Her thumb traces the nape of your neck. Slow. Deliberate. Feeling the pulse there, the soft skin, the vulnerable curve of spine beneath.

She leans down. Her lips brush your ear.

"Say it."

A whisper. A command.

"Say you're my toy."

Her grip tightens. Not painful. Just... absolute.

"Like you are."

She waits.

The hallway hums with fluorescent light. Somewhere, a door opens and closes. Footsteps fade.

But here, in this narrow space between her body and the wall, there is only her breath, her hand, her voice—soft and certain and utterly, completely without mercy.

"Say it.”