First Blood
The blazer smelled like a department store—that crisp, chemical newness that clung to fabric before a single body had ever worn it. Seo-yun stood in front of the cracked mirror nailed to the back of her bedroom door, turning the collar down with careful fingers, as if too much pressure might tear the illusion apart.
Navy wool, gold piping along the lapels, a crest stitched over the heart in thread that probably cost more than her mother's monthly grocery budget. HANEUL INTERNATIONAL, the emblem read, a phoenix rising over an open book. She traced it once, feeling the raised thread beneath her fingertip, and tried to convince herself she belonged inside it.
The apartment was one room and a half, if you counted the kitchen nook behind the folding screen, and every sound traveled through it like a confession. She could hear her mother's slippers shuffling against the linoleum, the kettle beginning its low whine, the television murmuring the morning news to no one in particular. Outside the single window, Seoul was already awake and roaring—delivery trucks idling, someone's dog barking three floors down, the whole gray sprawl of the city stretching itself out beneath a sky the color…
