#sometimes i wonder if i should have taken the bubble tea barista job at the mall at the beginning of september | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

247krp · 7 years

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— Rejoice, little lambs! We have recovered our own Jo Eunae, spotted prancing about in the Northwest Side. I don’t remember seeing her with any clique back in high school, but I’m not here to spill yesterday’s tea. So straight to the rundown: can you say cautious and inconsiderate? Apparently now she spends time as a photographer and a barista at Hello Stranger, and keeps skeletons buried at Bukdong Apartments, 102. But those won’t stay hidden for long, if you and I have any say on it. Welcome back, Wallflower; we missed you so.

In case you don’t remember the devil’s name, here’s to refresh your memory:

Back during the era of Gossip Girl, Eunae was seen as the smiley girl. Everyone saw her remarked on how happy she seemed, even if for a large part of time the smile was faked. But no one ever noticed, because Eunae never talked.

Her quiet nature made her an asset to most people. Eunae never had a clique. Instead, she floated in and out of groups, making friends with everyone but truly friends with no one. She was a friend of proximity, the person you talk to because they’re close by, not because you actually like them.

Those who got Eunae to talk noted that she was smarter than she seemed. She always had something to say about everything, and many people realized that they should never mention politics, gossip, nor art around her, lest she go off on a long and boring tangent.

After Gossip Girl revealed her secret, Eunae become a social pariah. She still tried to be nice to people, but it was never the same. No one ever trusted her again. Why would they?

Nevermind the memory lane though, the present is always the ripest fruit:

Eunae is still quiet now, but she doesn’t smile anymore. After leaving the Seoul bubble, she’s been able to see the world and the pain that comes with it. People who see her note the way she often seems to stare past a person she’s talking to, how she’s always thinking about something bigger than them, bigger than herself. Eunae these days is an enigma. No one knows where she went after Cheongnam, and no one is close enough to ask.

But Eunae still tries to be polite and nice. She greets everyone with a subdued smile that disappears a second too quickly, and a “how are you?” that actually seems sincere. After traveling the world, Eunae is trying. She’s taken a barista job to feel a sense of stability. She wants to be happy, and she’s not going to let Gossip Girl take that away from her.

But we are nothing if not open books – my job is to ensure you get to the best pages:

No one could have predicted for Eunae to make the kind of splash that she did. On September 10, 1995, she was born into a modest, middle-class family in Seoul. Her father was an accountant, while her mother was a stay at home mom.

As a child, Eunae was happy, but quiet. Her relatives and neighbors noticed that she almost never cried, nor did she ever laugh. One could always find baby Eunae smiling at nothing in particular, though her parents did find that she had an affinity for looking at the various paintings that decorated the home’s walls, along with the fashion magazines that came in the mail every month for her mother.

As Eunae grew, she stayed quiet. It seemed that she could slip in and out of a room without anyone knowing she was there in the first place. People often said that she had a dancer’s grace when it came to that sort of thing, and they were right.

Afraid that their daughter’s quiet nature would hurt her, Eunae’s parents pushed her into dance and gymnastics classes, hoping that their daughter would feel comfortable putting on a performance, and as a result, speaking up. Eunae found ballet too strict, but she liked doing modern dance and rhythmic gymnastics. However, Eunae quickly found that her true love wasn’t performing but taking pictures of the performers.

On her tenth birthday, Eunae’s father had gifted her an old, yet perfectly functional film camera. Eunae took pictures of everything she saw; she looked at the world with absolute wonder. She often convinced her friends from dance and gymnastics to model for her with their lithe, flexible bodies.

By the time Eunae was thirteen, her father had made friends with some very powerful businessmen who depended on the accountancy firm that her father worked for. One of these powerful businessmen was unable to have children, and saw Eunae as the little girl he’d always wanted. A sensible man, he knew that he couldn’t have her, but he saw the potential Eunae and her photography had. He wanted to help her, and it wasn’t until several years later that he figured out how.

Eunae was fifteen the first time she had entered Cheongnam high school. She had a different situation that the other students; her parents were not rich chaebols paying tuition, nor was she a poor scholarship kid whose parents were barely getting by. Eunae was average, plain, and she faded into the background so easily again.

She did well in school. She wasn’t at the top of the class, but she made good grades and her teachers liked her. She was a photographer for the school newspaper and a valued member of the school gymnastics team. She wasn’t popular, but she had friends. She was happy. Life was good.

That is, until Gossip Girl reared her ugly head. Eunae’s friends were all wilder than her. They danced at parties, while she stood by the wall and took pictures of body crashing together under the neon lights. Gossip Girl began targeting members of Eunae’s social group, calling them names. But Eunae wasn’t worth mentioning for a while. When she was, she was called “Wallflower”.

For the first time, Eunae was not content to fade into the background. She saw her friends panic every day about being caught in a new scandal. She saw her friends smile every time Gossip Girl sent out a blast that was almost sympathetic to them. Eunae wondered why Gossip Girl thought she wasn’t worth talking about, and why Gossip Girl would only say something about how lame Eunae was for not participating in her friends’ antics the few times Eunae did get mentioned.

The truth was, Eunae cared a lot about the way people thought of her. Studying at Cheongnam was important to her. It opened so many doors, and she knew that if she got caught in any sort of scandal, her dad’s friend would pull the tuition money and Eunae would have to leave Cheongnam. Sure, Eunae was always more comfortable behind a camera than in front of it, but there was also the worry that if she was ever the subject of a picture, her life would be ruined.

Eunae wanted to matter to Gossip Girl, but she also wanted to keep her place at Cheongnam. It was an unhealthy conflict. She realized that. As the months past, Eunae began being more experimental with her photography. No longer were her pictures beautiful and staged. She took faceless pictures of her fellow students, sometimes in scandalous positions. Once those pictures were printed out, she ripped them up, splattered glue and red paint all over them, and called them collages. They were meant to be commentary on the nature of scandal, a criticism of Gossip Girl’s work.

Her art teachers praised the passionate work, and Eunae submitted them to art and photography competitions. She got praise from real artists all over the world. Eunae was doing good. Her parents and her benefactor were proud of her.

However, at the end of 2010, everything came crashing down. Gossip Girl sent out a blast that revealed who Eunae had taken pictures of, and how she had used all of them to better her place in society. Eunae tried to explain that the pictures were all faceless, and that she never meant to hurt anyone. But no one would listen. To her fellow students, she was almost as bad as Gossip Girl, using them for fun and then spitting them out. A few students even started a rumor that Eunae was working for Gossip Girl, and after Eunae stepped out of line, Gossip Girl retaliaed. Most of Eunae’s friends abandoned her.

Eunae wanted to leave Cheongnam, but she had a couple of years left before graduation, and she wasn’t about to let Gossip Girl win. She stayed at Cheongnam. She spent her lunches in the library instead of with friends. She focused on her studies, and her grades became better than ever. But she faded into the walls more than ever before.

By her final year, most had forgotten that Eunae was ever there, but she didn’t care any more. With her good grades and stellar photographic talent, she had gotten into Brown University. She was going to leave her pas behind and find herself.

But, before she could escape, her world crashed down. Eunae’s benefactor and her father had a disagreement, and her benefactor refused to pay Eunae’s steep Yale tuition after that. Her family had saved up a little money, but not enough to go to Yale. But Eunae wanted to leave. Seoul had become too small for her to stay.

So, she took what money her family had saved and left. She went to New York City and slept in terrible motels. She took pictures of people on the streets. She posted her work on the internet. She got noticed by magazines and famous photographers and celebrities. Her life had turned around. Eunae wasn’t exactly in the spotlight, but she became a bit known in artist circles for her thought-provoking work. For years, she traveled around the world, but a week after Gossip Girl returned for good, Eunae came home. Half of her missed her family too much, but the other half needed to find out who was behind ruining Eunae’s social life.

#247: accepted

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