Anyway, ever since the joint musical performance between School and Aster School, the kids around them had begun pairing off one by one.
Hunter wasn’t blind. He knew Rex was fairly popular with the girls, though he had no idea why.
Hunter found girls irritating. When they chattered beside him, they were loud and annoying. If it had been a boy, he could have kicked him away and told him to fuck off, but he couldn’t do that to a girl. So whenever one looked as though she might start hanging around, he made sure to avoid her first.
Rex was no different from him in that respect. He would turn away and immediately forget whom he had even been talking to. But because he at least smiled lazily and pretended to listen, people mistakenly assumed he had a pleasant personality.
‘So that’s why even Ju Parker ended up becoming one of Rex’s groupies.’
Now that he thought about it, Rex never played cruel pranks on Jiyu. If anything, he treated her rather well. He had been like that when they were younger, and even now he acted much friendlier toward her than he did toward the other girls.
‘What the hell? Are those two actually dating?’
Disgusting.
The unpleasant question tickled the back of his throat, threatening to burst out like a sneeze, when someone struck him hard on the shoulder.
Hunter spun around with a murderous expression.
It was Rex.
He had momentarily forgotten the bastard was still trailing behind him.
“Hey, Triple. Didn’t you hear the music change?”
“Fuck off.”
Hunter slapped Rex’s hand from his shoulder and turned away coldly.
“It’s my turn, asshole.”
“Fuck off.”
Hunter spat the words without so much as glancing back.
Rex snorted, then leaned his head out beside Hunter’s shoulder with a broad grin.
“See, Liv? I told you I was right. If you don’t believe me, ask him yourself.”
Hunter frowned, wondering what the hell Rex was talking about, when Jiyu suddenly stared straight at him, her eyes wavering.
Rex dusted off his hands as though the whole thing were terribly amusing, then slipped behind the boy beside them and promptly stole his partner.
Just before the final song, Walter announced one last partner change.
Hunter silently jerked his chin at the boy approaching them, ordering him to fuck off somewhere else without saying a word. He still had something to ask Jiyu. He had no intention of letting her go yet.
But the scrawny, anchovy-looking idiot failed to take the hint and continued hovering awkwardly nearby.
Hunter pushed out his lower lip and blew a short breath.
“Hoo.”
The hair falling across his forehead lifted for an instant before settling back into place. He glared down at the boy.
Only then did the kid flinch and retreat.
Perfectly timed, the final song began.
Hunter loosened his shoulders, drew Jiyu close, and resumed the steps.
‘How the hell am I supposed to ask? Would it sound weird if I just asked whether she’s dating Rex?’
The girl who had been silently allowing him to lead her around suddenly spoke in a tiny voice.
“Hey, Hunter?”
“What?”
“Um… never mind.”
She shook her head and lowered her chin as though trying to hide her face.
‘Is Ju Parker hot too?’
Her cheeks looked faintly flushed.
“Spit it out. Why’d you stop halfway?”
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“If it’s nothing, then say it. Don’t make me curious.”
Hunter snapped at her.
Jiyu bit her lip, visibly hesitating, before slowly opening her mouth. Embarrassment and curiosity mingled uneasily across her face.
“So… this is just… you know, in case…”
“What already? Hurry up!”
She swallowed hard, her expression becoming even more complicated.
“You… you don’t like me or anything, right?”
Hunter missed a step.
The rhythm collapsed completely, and he brought his foot down squarely on Jiyu’s.
“Ow! That hurts, Hunter!”
Startled, he immediately stepped back.
“Me? Like you? Are you insane?”
He shouted the words, but his face burned and his heart pounded wildly beyond his control. It felt as though those slender fingers had closed around his throat, making it impossible to breathe.
Two years ago, when he had foolishly challenged an opponent whose UTR rating was four points higher than his and lost the first set six-love, he had felt something similar.
The realization that a nobody like Ju Parker had managed to fluster him this badly sent his mood crashing straight to rock bottom.
“Th-that’s not what I meant. Rex said—”
Jiyu stammered, her face turning bright red.
Hunter cut her off, forcing each word through clenched teeth as though mercilessly shoving them over the edge of a cliff.
“I hate this goddamn class, but I hate you even more, Ju Parker.”
Then, before the waltz had even ended, he stormed out.
Left standing alone on the dance floor, Jiyu went deathly pale.
Rex, who had been waltzing nearby, noticed her abandoned in the middle of the room and approached while glancing around.
“Where’d the troublemaker go?”
Jiyu stood there in a daze. She looked at Rex through tear-filled eyes and quietly shook her head.
“He said he doesn’t like me. He said he hates me even more than cotillion class. So never say anything that ridiculous again.”
Rex clicked his tongue.
“Tch. That’s not it at all… That stupid bastard. All he ever does is play tennis. Did his brain turn into muscle too? I served it to him on a silver platter, and he still couldn’t take it.”
At that moment, a thunderous gangster hip-hop beat exploded from the speakers.
While Walter and Megan scrambled about in confusion, the children erupted into laughter and cheers. The students who had been waltzing with bored expressions only moments before began shaking their hips vulgarly to the hip-hop music.
Jiyu remained alone in the middle of the floor, shriveling like a dried flower stripped of every last drop of moisture.
She hadn’t noticed while dancing with Hunter, but the heel of her foot, rubbed raw by her shoe, had begun throbbing unbearably.
That was why the tears would not stop.
With her head bowed, she quietly blinked her bloodshot eyes amid a crowd of Upper East Side private-school children shouting along to lyrics about the brutality and poverty of life in the ghetto.
***
Once a week, Jiyu attended math tutoring with Hunter in the after-school playroom.
Lauren had selected Jiyu to act as a pacemaker for her son’s mathematics studies. In truth, Rex would have made a better rival, someone capable of driving Hunter’s progress through direct competition.
However, Lauren had concluded that her son had not yet come fully under the influence of puberty. He already possessed a narrow emotional range, and because he devoted ninety percent of his waking hours to tennis, puberty appeared to be arriving somewhat late for him.
Rex, in contrast, seemed to have entered puberty in full force. Rumors circulated that he was rebelling fiercely against his father and causing trouble everywhere he went.
At an age when children were easily influenced by their friends, Lauren feared that pairing Hunter with Rex might expose her son to undesirable habits.
Jiyu, by comparison, was quiet, obedient, and academically gifted. Unlike many girls her age, she was not preoccupied with her appearance, nor did she awkwardly pretend to be an adult. Even if she surpassed Hunter in mathematics, the fact that they attended different schools meant she posed no threat to his grades.
In fact, there was nothing particularly bad about Jiyu being the stronger student.
It might stimulate Hunter’s competitive instincts and motivate him to work harder of his own accord.
Based on those calculations, the two children received two hours of tutoring every Wednesday from Dr. Shreya Patel, an Ivy League mathematics PhD.
She was one of the most sought-after tutors on the Upper East Side, charging four hundred dollars per student for a two-hour session, or five hundred dollars total for two students. Thanks to Lauren’s generosity, Jiyu paid only one hundred dollars to attend.
And just as Lauren had predicted, Jiyu had initially been ahead of Hunter.
Over time, however, the gap between them steadily narrowed.
The playroom itself had undergone several dramatic changes over the past few years.
The monkey bars and zip line had been torn down, and large pieces of exercise equipment now occupied the vacant space. Toys had been replaced by mats and foam rollers scattered carelessly across the floor, while a weight rack stood in one corner, its dumbbells arranged by size.
The library remained filled with books, but the beanbag chair that had once been Jiyu’s designated seat was gone. In its place stood a large conference table.
“Talk to me.”
The moment the lesson ended and the tutor left the room, Hunter spoke abruptly.
“……”
Jiyu silently gathered the loose notes and mathematics workbooks scattered across the broad table and stacked them neatly. Then she hugged them to her chest like a shield and rose from her chair.
The two of them had been engaged in a cold war for nearly two months, ever since the first cotillion lesson.
They did not speak. Even when they occupied the same room, they ignored each other as though they were complete strangers.
Strictly speaking, they had never been close in the first place, so calling it a cold war was almost absurd.
Jiyu had a fairly good idea what Hunter wanted to discuss. She had expected him to bring it up sooner or later, yet he had remained strangely silent until now.
Even so, she had no intention of agreeing to his request.
She had no intention of speaking to him at all.
Jiyu had decided that she would hate him every bit as much as he hated her.
There was no reason for her to do him any favors.
Pretending not to hear him, she lowered her head, pushed in her chair, and turned away. Her long, straight hair swung sharply before settling against her slender back.
“Ju Parker. I said I have something to talk to you about.”
Hunter called after her, his voice faintly urgent yet every bit as overbearing as before.