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“I told you to get out of my way,” Miyoung warned. She could feel her control breaking.

“What do you think you can do to make me?” Jaegil ran a finger down her cheek.

Miyoung slapped it away.

Jaegil’s eyes flashed, a rage she could recognize. The look of someone who’d been battered by life. And she wondered if Jaegil was more a kindred spirit than she wanted to admit. After all, they had both given in to their violent natures. Jaegil lifted his hand. A windup before the strike.

Then his body flew away from hers, sliding across the tile floor.

Somin stood between them like a shield protecting Miyoung from the dazed bully on the floor.

“Ya, Lee Somin. Nappeun gijibae!” Jaegil yelled as Seho rushed to his side. A door down the hall opened, and a second-year teacher poked his head out.

“What are you kids doing out of class? Who’s your homeroom teacher?”

Jaegil and Seho took off, well-practiced in the art of escape.

Somin and Miyoung were not as lucky.

•••

The disciplinary conference room was a stark square space with white walls and half a dozen desks. The teacher sat them back to back with sheets of paper to write apology letters.

Miyoung stared at the blank page. She made small black dots with her pen, unable to form a coherent thought.

“If you’re going to stand up to a bully like Jaegil, then you better be prepared to follow through with your fists,” Somin said behind her. “Guys like that only respond to brute force.”

Or you could kill him, it’s what you do best,a taunting spirit said in her ear.

“Leave me alone.” Miyoung spoke to her blank paper.

“What?”

“I said stop worrying yourself about my personal business.”

“Sure,” Somin said, her tone flippant. “I always conduct my personal business in thepublichallway.”

Miyoung finally whirled around. “I didn’t start it.”

Somin was already facing her, straddling the chair backward, her uniform skirt bunched over her gym pants. She poked a finger into Miyoung’s forehead. “Ah, there’s that fighting spirit.”

Her heart-shaped face was mischievous and watchful. The type of girl Miyoung would definitely have avoided in the past.

“Do you know how to land a punch?” Somin glanced at Mi-young’s hands. “You look like you’d break your wrist on your first try.”

“I can punch,” Miyoung mumbled.

“Didn’t look like it,” Somin said.

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t.” Somin crossed her arms. “And I do. I just hate that Ahn Jihoon was right.”

“Excuse me?” Miyoung asked, confused.

“When he said I should have stopped Baek Hana in the bathroom. I’m just as much to blame as she is for bullying you. I’m trying to say I’m sorry,” Somin said. She sounded more annoyed than apologetic.

Miyoung couldn’t seem to digest the words. Someone apologizing to her felt so foreign.