Chapter 5: Sweat and Stares
The gymnasium air was a stale soup of chlorine, old rubber, and adolescent desperation. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting a sickly pallor on everything, leaching the color from skin and turning movement into a series of jarring snapshots. Jennie stood at the service line, the rough nylon of her PE shorts itching her thighs. The jersey was a too-large tent, but she felt hideously seen, the fabric whispering against her small breasts with every shallow breath. She hated the exposure. Hated the communal sweat. Hated every pair of eyes that wasn’t his.
Then she found him. Leonid.
He was on the opposite side of the net, laughing at something his teammate said, his head thrown back. The fluorescent glare loved him. It made his pale skin gleam like marble, caught the sheen of sweat on the tendons of his neck, made the dark ink of his tattoos—a swirling, philosophical chaos she loved to trace with her tongue—stand in stark relief. A simple gray tank top clung to the defined planes of his chest and back. His athletic shorts hung low on his hips. Every vein in his forearms was a raised map she had memorized.
Her heart didn’t flutter. It swelled, a painful, beautiful pressure that made her fingers go numb. The noise of the gym faded to a distant hum. All she could hear was the wet smack of the ball against palms, the sound of his breathing from twenty feet away.
The game began. Jennie moved through the drills with robotic efficiency, her body performing while her mind worshiped. A perfect pass. A soft set. Her eyes never left him. He moved with a lazy, predatory grace, conserving energy until the moment required explosion. When he jumped for a spike, his body became a line of taut muscle and intention. He hammered the ball past a blocker. It hit the floor with a deafening thwack.
He landed, turned, and his dark eyes scanned the court. They found her. A slow, effortless grin spread across his face, just for her. It was a shard of sunlight in the fluorescent wasteland.
The possessive heat that coiled in her gut was so intense it bordered on nausea. Mine. Every cell in her body screamed it.
Then the honey-haired girl stumbled.
She was on Leonid’s team, playing front row. A clumsy receive sent the ball sailing wild. She backpedaled, colliding with Leonid as he moved to cover. Her hand flew out, grabbing his bicep to steady herself. Her fingers—long, tanned, vulgar—dug into the muscle Jennie considered sacred territory. The contact lasted two seconds. Three.
Leonid nodded, courteous, detached, and stepped away.
Jennie’s smile, fixed in place since his grin, did not change. But behind her eyes, something tectonic shifted. The warm, melting adoration flashed into a cold, crystalline hatred so pure it clarified her vision. She saw every detail: the girl’s flushed cheeks, the flyaway strands of that honey-brown hair, the faint smear of lip gloss. She saw the ghost of her touch on his skin.
The ball came to her on the next rotation. A high, lazy serve from the other side. It hung in the air, a white leather moon. Time didn’t slow; it focused. Jennie calculated angles, trajectory, force. The honey-haired girl was drifting toward the net, unaware, turned to say something to a friend.
Jennie’s body coiled. She wasn’t thinking of points or games. She was thinking of correction. Of erasure.
She met the ball not with an open palm, but with a closed fist. A savage, punching volleyball pass, driven not upward, but straight forward. A missile.
It crossed the net in a blur. It wasn’t aimed at the open court. It was aimed at a face.
A sharp, wet crack echoed. The girl crumpled, a gagging cry tearing from her throat. She fell to her knees, hands flying to her nose. Blood, shockingly red, instantly welled between her fingers and dripped onto the polished wood.
The gym went quiet for a single, suspended second.
“Oh my god!” someone shrieked.
Jennie’s hand flew to her mouth, her eyes wide with perfectly simulated horror. “Oh no!” she cried, her voice a feather of distress. “I’m so sorry! It just—it slipped!”
She was already moving around the net, the picture of concerned kindness. The coach blew a whistle. Leonid was kneeling beside the girl, his expression concerned. Seeing him touch her shoulder, even in aid, sent a fresh wire of fury through Jennie’s veins.
“Here, let me help,” Jennie said, sweetly insistent, edging Leonid aside. She pressed a clean towel from the bench into the girl’s hands. “Apply pressure. It looks bad. I feel terrible.”
Her eyes, however, were not on the girl’s eyes. They were on her hair. That specific, honeyed shade. So similar. An affront. A pattern.
The girl was escorted to the nurse’s office, leaving a small, dark trail of spots on the floor. The game disbanded. The locker room was a cacophony of showers and chatter, steam fogging the mirrors. Jennie waited. She showered quickly, the water scalding her skin. She dressed with deliberate calm.
She found the girl sitting alone on a bench in a quiet corner by the lockers, holding a wad of paper towels to her swollen, purpling nose. Her eyes were red-rimmed.
“Hey,” Jennie said, her voice soft as sinking into a bath. She sat down, not too close. “How are you feeling? I really am so sorry. It was a complete accident.”
The girl glanced over, wary. “It’s fine,” she mumbled, nasally. “Just a nosebleed.”
“It’s not just a nosebleed. I might have broken it.” Jennie leaned in slightly, her expression drenched in sympathy. “You have such a lovely face. It would be a crime.”
A faint, confused flicker in the girl’s eyes. A flush of pleasure at the compliment from Jennie Kim, the student council president. The perfect one.
“Thanks,” the girl muttered.
“And your hair,” Jennie continued, her gaze lifting to the damp, honey-brown strands. “It’s really such a beautiful color. So unique. Is it natural?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought so. It’s stunning.” Jennie’s voice was a hypnotic murmur. Her own fingers, resting on her knee, twitched once. A subtle, involuntary spasm. In her mind, they were not empty. They were curling around the smooth, weighted handle of a knife from her family’s kitchen, a blade so sharp it parted reality without resistance. She could almost feel the tensile give of a ponytail, the clean snick as it separated from the scalp.
The memory was visceral. The Park girl’s hair in her locket was a dull brown compared to this vibrant gold.
“You should be more careful,” Jennie said, her tone shifting ever so subtly. It was still sweet, but now it held an edge, like the fine rim of a crystal glass. “The world can be so… sudden. So violent. You never see it coming until it hits you in the face.”
The girl stared, the paper towel freezing against her nose. The warmth in Jennie’s dark brown eyes had vanished, replaced by a flat, mineral observation. The air between them grew cold despite the steam.
Jennie stood up smoothly, her smile returning, bright and empty. “Get well soon! Let me know if you need notes from class.”
She walked away, her footsteps silent on the damp tile. The encounter settled inside her, a stone dropped into a still pool. The gym incident was a impulse, messy. But the conversation… that was a blueprint. A rehearsal.
The honey-haired girl was now a symbol. A test subject. Jennie’s mind, cooled from the heat of the game, began its methodical work. The family’s rules: don’t be messy, don’t get caught. The river had been a statement, but it had drawn scrutiny. This required artistry. An accident that was no accident. A disappearance that would be a quiet sigh, not a scream.
She pushed open the gym door. She needed to see Leonid. Needed to fold herself into his smell of smoke and cheap detergent and feel the solid reality of him to quiet the humming thing inside her chest. Her love for him was the only thing that made the chaos in her mind ordered, beautiful, right.
Everything else was just maintenance. And she was ready to begin.