( sooner or later you'll bare your teeth )
"houses in yongsan need more people like you," the doctor comments, off-hand, and laughs to himself like she's not thirteen.
there's patience in this kind of suffering, she knows. she's tried counting, she's taken deep breaths, but at that moment the cobbled up composure binding her insides together snaps. the sheer will that put her through the blood tests, the breast exams, cameras and injections, twists and cracks until she snarls, snatching off her shades. he balks.
she smiles thinly, pale and cold in an open hospital gown with clammy, trembling fingers smearing prints across the lenses of her glasses. he must have assumed she was only photosensitive. but aside from the scare it gives, she feels far from vindicated. i won't be a whore, thank you, because i look horrific. the punchline needs work.
sooyeon has taken every type of fertility test the city can scrape together. in an era desperately short on resources, she thinks it's a revolting waste, but there are ideals her father refuses to relinquish. he pushes and pushes for a vision she will never fulfill or understand, until his own expectations overwhelm him and make him sick. she's less sorry than angry when he dies months after she turns fourteen.
( remain in your place for your season )
"you are an idiot," she says cheerfully, knuckles rapping smartly at the side of soojung's head. soojung clutches her book protectively and makes a face. she laughs and amends, "my favorite idiot."
"don't mess." she leans back as her fingers fly up to her frames. they swallow up nearly half of her face, but she likes it that way. they're safe and dark, and it's the closest she can get to seeing life the way soojung does. soojung frowns, and she offers a smile. this is the last year that sooyeon will be taller than her. she flicks lightly at her forehead.
"the carrots didn't grow." she picks at the vegeation, thoroughly disappointed and up to her knees in dirt. soojung peers over her shoulder at the pile of underdeveloped roots. "it's okay," she adds, since soojung is there. "we can eat the tops." the leaves are tossed into stew that evening and they come out bitter. she shouldn't be asked to cook.
"think i'm bored," she says, when soojung asks her to play. her mother's voice travels through the greenhouse aisles, they need to start cutting the scallions. scallions are popular. sooyeon thinks they look like unkempt weeds.
sooyeon used to like spending time at the greenhouse her mother is assigned, but soon realizes she's of little help - she overwaters everything. she starts staying late after classes. she starts boarding trains to the ends of the city, thinking she needs to be alone, while all the same thinking she's being foolish. another growing cycle ends. her mother harvests tomatoes and tells her to do what she wants next year. it feels like a crime to not know what that is.
( they've left the gate open wide )
wordswordswords
sooyeon justifies when she offends, while someone with more tact and less pride would apologize. sooyeon thinks what makes her happy should make everyone happy, because the way she prioritizes is the way that's right. sooyeon is a poor judge of character with a faulty perception of others, but she doesn't know that yet. sooyeon
tries, and she thinks that should count for something.
( sooner or later you'll bury your teeth )
wordswordswords
more words
mutation:
(1) sooyeon is sterile, from radiation-induced ovarian failure. the only way it will be a hindrance is if she lets it be. (2) her hair is lighter than it was. "honey," "wheat brown," "coffee," "meh," all circumvent the vague equivalent of, "less than black." (3) she learns from her sister and others who develop such centralized conditions that there's just something about eyes that makes them so, so delicate. hers look a wreck. burns, bumps, scars knot up that area of skin, the primary reason she wears sunglasses of the darkest tint. (4) her eyes themselves are subject to subacute angle-closure glaucoma. she's not at the stage that requires surgery, but it's a shaky road. experiences mild eye pain, headaches, and spells of blurred vision that eye drops only sometimes curb.
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