Chapter Text
Byulyi never learned to swim.
She wanted to, wanted desperately to join her friends from school at the pool parties they threw to escape the sweltering heat every summer. She wanted to finally take lessons and join in on the games they played, the secrets they told at the other end of the pool where the grownups couldn’t hear. Boys they thought were cute, inappropriate words they only just learned the meanings of, things they got away with snatching from the overpriced one and only drug store in town. Byulyi wanted to swim, but she was sick.
The bruises were the first sign, red or purple and scary because she hadn’t done anything to earn them. No falls from trees or bike crashes, no running into objects she would have seen had she thought to watch where she was going. She remembered her teacher asking her very seriously one day how she’d gotten them, and she couldn’t understand, at the time, why her eyes had looked so wide and frightened. Her teacher was always so happy.
She saw a doctor who said she might not be getting enough iron in her diet, a common problem for kids her age, so she started taking a vitamin every day with breakfast even though it upset her stomach sometimes.
The nosebleeds came next, initially thought by the school nurse to be caused by dry air or allergies. Her nanny bought a humidifier and an air purifier for her bedroom, changed both air filters in the house once a month, and vacuumed every day instead of twice a week. They got worse.
Her parents returned from a long trip overseas and she felt strangely just okay with it. She loved her mom and dad, never wanted anything bad to happen to them, but they never felt like mom and dad. She loved her nanny the most, but when her parents saw the bruises, they fired her without asking questions, and Byulyi never saw her again.
Her mom stopped working to stay home with her. She made dinner every night, did the laundry, vacuumed her room for her and tried to ask her how school was going. It was kind of nice, but she missed her nanny. She loved the jokes she used to tell, the songs they used to sing together and how she always saved a few cookies for Byulyi out of the batch she baked for her church every Sunday.
Her mom didn’t sing. She didn’t tell jokes or bake cookies, and that made Byulyi feel sad. She didn’t remember being sad ever making her tired, but suddenly she felt more like taking naps than she did playing games with her friends. She felt more like napping than she did eating, too, and when her mom took her to see another doctor, she used a word to describe Byulyi that she sometimes used to describe herself: depressed.
Byulyi disagreed and said she was just tired.
The doctor looked over the bruising on her skin which had coincidentally improved since her nanny had been fired. He asked her some simple questions and she answered them. Yes, she was tired even after eight hours of sleep. Yes, she got bruises from doing nothing. Yes, she got nosebleeds, and yes, she would sweat a lot at night, even with the air conditioner running.
The doctor looked very concerned and said he wanted to run some tests. He took four big vials of blood from her arm, and praised her for being so brave, but she wasn’t brave. She was just tired.
Always tired.
The doctor called when she was home from school the next day, and her mom cried. A lot. She hugged Byulyi the way her nanny used to, and for the first time since her nanny was fired, she felt at home. She cried too, though she wasn’t entirely sure why.
Her mom told her to take her bath early that night, and she did, but she could still hear her mom’s phone call with her dad in the other room when she shut the water off. She heard her mom use the word cancer and she burst into quiet tears so she wouldn’t be heard.
She wanted her nanny.
Her dad came home the next day, back very early from another business trip overseas. He hugged her tightly and promised he’d be home all the time from then on. They grabbed a big box of tissues, sat her down and told her she had leukemia and that she’d need to see the doctor regularly for treatment. They said the medicine would make her feel really sick, but that it was important to take it anyway. They said she’d probably lose all of her hair but that she’d still be beautiful.
She didn’t feel beautiful as she sat off to the side of the pool where her mom could still keep an eye on her while she chatted with the other kids’ parents. The flowery bandana around her head didn’t quite conceal the fact that she was bald, and her body had grown gaunt and pale in the four years she’d been sick. She knew it was hot outside, but she felt chilled, tugging the blanket over her lap up to her chest, pinning it in place with her bony arms. She rolled her wheelchair a little further into the sun, something that shouldn’t have been difficult but was. She pretended to yawn to conceal the way her eyes teared up at the thought.
To her left, she saw Yongsun lifting herself over the pool’s edge with ease, and she tried not to let herself be jealous. She was tall for her age, tan and lean from so much time spent in her family’s pool. She was the prettiest girl in their whole school in Byulyi’s opinion, but she must not have known it; she seemed oblivious to all the boys who tried flirting with her.
She knew of Yongsun two years before they actually met.
They lived in a town of less than three thousand people, so nearly everyone knew when she got sick. When her mom quit her job, they took a considerable cut in income, and the community held charity events to help her family pay for her treatment. All the kids in her school made her get well soon cards too, and one of the teachers brought them to the hospital along with her week’s worth of schoolwork.
She smiled tearfully as she read through each card with hand-written notes wishing her well or hoping to see her back at school again soon. She recognized the name on every card except for Yongsun’s. They were strangers, but she’d written such a heartfelt note in her card, telling her how excited she was to meet her one day, how everyone said such nice things about her. She’d put real effort into decorating the card, too. It was beautiful inside and out, and when she came back to school last year, she thought to herself that the card really suited her.
“Are you daydreaming again?” Yongsun asked as she wrung the excess water out of the length of her black hair.
Byulyi tried not to look too sour or envious. She missed her hair, and Yongsun knew that, but she wasn’t the type to show off or tease someone for something they didn’t have. “A little.”
“Are you feeling okay?” Yongsun asked, and the concern in her voice hurt her heart in a way she always had trouble putting into words. Like, she felt bad for making her worry, but knew she probably should be worried because Byulyi had been sick for four years.
“I’m fine,” she said and looked down at the cement beneath Yongsun’s feet instead of her long, pretty hair, or naturally curled eyelashes.
“I still think you’re pretty,” Yongsun said, and Byulyi always hated the way she could see right through her. She couldn’t stop herself from tearing up and arguing that she was bald and that bald girls with no eyebrows or eyelashes couldn’t be pretty.
Yongsun frowned and seemed to think for a moment before she whispered to her “Come with me. Can you?”
Byulyi glanced over to her mom who seemed to sense that she needed something because she turned around, calling out “Doing okay?”
“Can she come play in my room?” Yongsun replied for her. “It’s really hot out here.”
Her mom looked confused, glancing down at the blanket over three quarters of Byulyi’s body. “Are you too warm, sweetheart?”
“Just a bit,” she said back and felt the tips of her ears turn pink. She didn’t like lying, and she wasn’t very good at it.
Her mom gave her a look, and she must have known something was up, but she wheeled her inside anyway while Yongsun held the door open. She reminded them both to call if they needed anything and said that she’d be back to check on them in twenty minutes.
“Twenty minutes,” Yongsun murmured once they heard the back door close again. “That should be enough time.”
She started to push Byulyi, but struggled to get her wheelchair past the doorway.
“I can still walk,” Byulyi offered. “If you’ll help me?”
“That would be easier,” she giggled, pulling her chair back enough to stand in front of her. She removed the blanket over her lap and leaned down to wrap one of Byulyi’s arms around her shoulder, then one of her own arms around Byulyi’s waist. They walked slowly down the hall to Yongsun’s parents’ bathroom where Byulyi was deposited gently on a soft vanity bench.
Yongsun handed her a fluffy towel to wrap herself up in and proceeded to dig through one of the drawers until she retrieved what must have been her dad’s clippers.
“Yong,” she whispered sharply as she watched her friend remove the guard and plug the device in. “What on earth are you doing?!”
“Proving you wrong,” she replied as the clippers buzzed to life. Before Byulyi could tell her not to, she shaved a long, bald strip into the top of her head, laughing at her reflection in the mirror. “There’s no going back, now!”
Byulyi shook her head half in disbelief, burying her face in her hands and squeezing her eyes tightly shut behind her palms. Her ears were even pinker from what she’d seen of herself in the mirror a moment ago, and she felt guilty, responsible somehow for her friend cutting all her hair off even though she got compliments on it all the time.
She heard the same buzzing and Yongsun’s giggling at herself for a few more minutes before the clippers switched off and the bathroom was quiet again.
“I think I’m done,” Yongsun said, the little uptick at the end of her sentence making it sound more like a question. “Take a look.”
Byulyi shook her head, but still lowered her hands when Yongsun tugged lightly at her wrists. She smiled brightly, and Byulyi’s heart felt fluttery and light in her chest.
“Am I ugly?” Yongsun asked, rubbing at her newly shaved scalp.
Byulyi scoffed, even as she teared up again. “What kind of question is that?”
“The serious kind.”
“No, of course you’re not,” she cried, sniffling and trying in vain to dry her face with the towel wrapped around her. Her friend cooed and thumbed at the tears on either side of her face.
“Don’t cry anymore. We’re both beautiful, okay?”
Byulyi nodded because she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t think even her own mom would have shaved her head just to prove that she should still feel good about herself. Yongsun hugged her, and she hugged back, feeling another little pang of sadness in her chest when they finally pulled apart. But of course, Yongsun saw through her again, and kissed her cheek once, quickly.
“Be nice to yourself or my eyebrows are going next,” she threatened, and Byulyi burst into the kind of laughter she hadn’t heard from herself since she got sick.
A knock on the door startled them both, and Yongsun’s eyes widened as she knew herself to be caught.
“Byulyi, honey, are you in there?”
“Uh, yes,” Byulyi answered her mom.
Her mom opened the door, halfway through asking her why she left her chair behind when she saw Yongsun’s shaved head and all the hair on the floor. Her jaw dropped and she laughed just like Byulyi had.
“Oh, Yongsun, darling, I think you need to go see your mother.”
“But,” she started, glancing between Byulyi and her mom.
“We’ll be right behind you,” she assured her and ushered her out of the bathroom, watching for a moment as she made her way down the hall. Her mom turned back to her with an amused smile. “Too warm, huh?”
Byulyi smiled sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck. “I didn’t know she planned to shave her head.”
Her mom’s smile softened into something that really felt motherly, and Byulyi could easily have cried again, but she shrugged the towel off her shoulders instead and reached for her mom to help her up. They walked down the hall back to Yongsun’s room, and Byulyi sat in her chair again with an oof.
Her mom wheeled her towards the back door but paused before she opened it again. They peered out the window into the backyard where Yongsun’s mom had her hand cupped over her mouth, clearly mortified by the sight of her daughter. Her mom snickered behind her and said, “I like that friend of yours.”
Byulyi felt the same fluttering in her chest again, and some part of her just knew in that moment. “I like her, too.”
The pool party ended immediately, and Yongsun was grounded for two weeks until school started. Boys didn’t flirt with her in class anymore, but Yongsun didn’t care. She shaved her head once a week until Byulyi was well into remission.