#2jisoo

The day starts at the ass-crack of dawn, the sky still dark. Hardly anyone will be in the school, and his job begins here. He’ll clean up stale un-flushed faeces. Fix up the insides of the toilet bowl backing, ensuring smooth, proper, flushing mechanism – so that no student claims he didn’t flush because it was spoilt. Wipe off the appalling cream-coloured stains across walls of the corner bathroom stall in the boys’ toilet. Restock the toilet paper. Empty and cleans twenty sets of six sanitary bins per level.

By seven-twenty, students will start to stream in. The squeaky clean floor will get slightly marred. Joshua will rush to erect mustard-coloured stands that scream “Caution! Wet Floor” at the entrances of toilets he’s not done with.

But human nature is bound to repeat itself. Someone will go in anyway. Someone will fall. Someone with muddy shoes will spread ugly streaks of dirt across the tiled floor. When assembly starts and when the kids clear out, he’ll mop that part up again.

“Same shit, different day,” he mutters when he re-mops up the communal area in the boys bathroom on the level where freshmen classrooms are located. He laughs to himself when he realises he is essentially dealing with the same shit everyday, but of course, no one hears. It’s a lonely job. His only friend he’s made on campus is the fifty-six year old gardener who tells him urban legends about a haunted bathroom on the sixth floor and about the locked storage room near the band room where some guy supposedly died. It’s nice, really, talking to him, but if Mr Kwon’s going to retell the same stories he’s heard of as a high-schooler every time they meet, it’s bound to get exhausting.

The air from the girls’ toilet is musty with the smell of cigarette smoke, and it’s not really his shift yet – it starts at two fifteen. But Joshua heads to the fifth floor bathroom anyway to check on the pipe leak he’d tried to fix with cheap replacement parts and duct tape. Before he enters, the sound of girls talking travels to the entrance, and he stops, almost ready to back off and wait.

Against his better judgement, he stays, his cleaning supplies leaning against the wall, his head against the pink “Female” signboard.

“What, you thought sneaking up on my ex would give you some kind of place in my society? I’m sure Hoseok’s just keeping it in. If only he knew what a worthless bitch you were, Seo Jisoo.” From the corners of his eyes, he makes out a girl whose skirt’s exactly the length needed to be acceptable.

Wow, tea. Could I be bothered, though? Being a janitor is a thankless job. Joshua knows better than to barge into a bitching session amongst female high school seniors. This is where they touch up their illegal makeup. Complain about others. Panic about blood stains on their skirts.

“He’s just my desk partner, Sojung. I didn’t ask for it,” someone pleads.

“Uh-huh. That’s why we saw you staying back to talk to our homeroom teacher last week. Telling him you can’t afford glasses so you needed to move to the front,” a girl with a higher-pitched voice chips in. Her prefect badge glints in the dim bathroom lights. “Look at this lying bitch. You know what happens when you lie, right?”

“I really can’t afford glasses, but I didn’t want to sit with Hoseok either,” the same pleading voice from before says, voice getting softer.

“Oh, so now you think you deserve better than Hoseok? You’re so funny. If you can’t afford those glasses, why don’t you steal it? Don’t act like you haven’t done it before. Bet you’ve got something up your sleeves.”

“Sojung please, I’ve got nothing. Just let me go today, I’ve got a project submission today and I’ll send you my essay tonight okay-“

“And would you learn your lesson? You wouldn’t. Dumbasses like Jung Hoseok only tolerate you because they haven’t realised what you are. A fucking piece of trash that tries to steal everything because she knows she’ll never have them on her own. He knows nothing. You think you can make friends with him? His stupidity is why I broke up with him. But newsflash: he’s not as dumb as you are. Soon, he’ll realise. So, roll up your sleeves.”

One month and one paycheck into his job, and Joshua’s used to hearing insults floating around the girls’ bathrooms. It’s the survival of the fittest, the food chain of youngsters, and only those at the top, and those too irrelevant to be detected under the radar of the former survive. But honestly, he hasn’t been around long enough to hear this amount of misplaced malice.

“Still struggling? Joohyun, help me out. We have to punish those in the wrong. Roll up her sleeves. Don’t scream, Jisoo.”

Something sparks from the bottom of his belly – you know the gut instinct that tells you when shit’s about to happen? Yeah, it hits him hard and he stumbles into the door of the girls’ bathroom, steadying himself against a mop, adjusting his janitors’ cap. The girls look up and roll their eyes, and the one backed up against the wall looks visibly shaken but relieved.

There’s one moment of awkward silence where the only sound comes from the dripping sound of water from the broken pipe. And then, the two girls with prefect badges drag the other up, smile plastered on their faces as they pass him, their hands pulling down the dishevelled sleeve on the latter’s right shoulder.

Joshua thinks he sees a glimpse of angry, red dots and similar shaped scars on her shoulder– her, being the girl who he presumes to be “the worthless bitch, Seo Jisoo”. He thinks he sees Sojung throw something into the toilet bowl in the third cubicle before leaving.

(He also thinks he heard Joohyun saying, “what a fucking pity,” as the trio leaves.)

High school drama is sure one hell of a mess. He knows of boys being beat up in the bathroom. Boys gaming in the bathroom. Boys talking about girls and boobs and hot teachers in the bathroom. But until he took on the job, he’s never known what goes on in the female bathroom.

When he gets to the toilet bowl of the third cubicle, the evidence is already gone, the last seconds of the toilet flushing being the only thing left in its wake.

This, is the first time he meets Seo Jisoo.

  This time, it’s actually his shift. It’s the fifth and final shift of the day in fact, and it’s eight at night.

Technically, students are supposed to have cleared out. He goes into the sixth floor bathroom whistling, until he realises that he isn’t alone.

Someone’s crying. Something. Is it a someone?

He feels the misery in the tears and it’s tearing him apart. A chill runs down his spine – this is the supposedly haunted bathroom, and no one ever uses it but daredevils and kids who know nothing about the story surrounding the bathroom.

According to the story passed down generation after generation, sans the changes made to the storyline after every year, the bathroom was where a high school student threatened his then-girlfriend to abort their accidental baby, and when she refused, he stabbed her in the womb. You know, the typical story concocted by teachers to scare students from pre-marital sex. Joshua had never believed it throughout high-school, and one year after graduation, he doesn’t either. Not when he cleans this bathroom every afternoon.

Today, he may just change his mind.

“H-hello?”

The crying stops.

“Are you okay?”

No response.

The gardener’s voice rings in his head on repeat. “Rumor has it that if you come to the toilet at midnight, you can hear the cries of the teenage mother. And if you’re a guy, and she thinks you’re her ex-boyfriend slash murderer, well, I’ll pray for you safety.” It’s not even midnight but paranoia’s seeping into his veins.

Against his better judgement, again, he stays. His cleaning supplies abandoned at the sink, his feet taking him towards the end cubicle where the door’s locked.

He knocks on the door. The person inside sniffles.

“I’m not your boyfriend!” he blurts out in fear, and Joshua wants to die, here and now.

“As I I’d ever have one,” the person locked inside mutters, syllables barely audible. Her voice is familiar, yet he can’t pinpoint where he’s heard it. He almost feels bad for sighing in relief at the fact that it’s a someone that’s crying, not a ghost.

“Well, uh, school’s closing now, it’s better that you come out.”

He can’t comfort others. Oh god.

The door unlocks. “Sorry ‘bout that,” a girl comes out of the cubicle, backpack slung on her left shoulder, jacket slipping off her right. Even in the dark, he makes out red, blood stains that cause the fabric of her white blouse to stick against her right shoulder.

It’s this moment that he realises that she’s the Seo Jisoo the girls from class 6A were talking about this afternoon. The one that Kim Sojung allegedly caught stealing from convenience stores after school. The one who copied her history essay from Bae Joohyun. The one who  purposely burnt them with hot soup when they were at a restaurant.

The one that Sojung and Joohyun cornered in the fifth floor bathroom last week.

She hurriedly tries to leave but Joshua catches her by the forearm.

“What happened to your shoulders?”

She resists in his grip, shouting “It’s none of your business!” as she’s released, running away from the bathroom and bounding down the stairs.

And maybe she’s right. He’s left standing there, one hand on the door handle, one hand dangling limply by his side. He doesn’t know why he cares. He’s heard tons of kids bitching about others, he’s seen kids punching others in the bathrooms but he’s never cared. Never asked. He’s only reported them, or sent them out, nothing more, nothing less.

He’s just a janitor. But even as a janitor, Jisoo’s story as per Joohyun and Sojung’s concoction doesn’t add up. And those marks and blood stains on Jisoo’s body don’t look like petty self-harm either.

Whatever ,he thinks, as he scrubs the floor with brute force, the plastic end of the mop scratching against the tiles, like he’d stub his curiosity about Seo Jisoo like this. He’d better finish up soon to make it on time for his second job at the clinic tonight.

“Sorry, I couldn’t buy you food today,” Jisoo says as she closes the door and locks it. The door rattles behind her, and Chan grunts from his corner of their one-room flat.

“It’s alright, noona. I ate food in school. Why are you home so early though? I thought you were supposed to be working at Daejang Restaurant?”

Jisoo looks down and pretends to take a call. Chan rolls his eyes, turning back to his video game on his phone.

“You done with your homework, Chan?”

He shrugs.

“You gotta do it though. Don’t end up being a loser like me. Get a good job. Get rich,” she nudges him, urging him to roll over so she’d be able to lie down on their shared, battered mattress.

“You’re not a loser, noona,” he says, probably empty words uttered to pacify her as his eyes are trained on his digital troops marching across his phone screen, shit blowing up in the background. A notification from pussy_destroyer017 pops up on screen; “FUK THEM N00BS UP YUS”

… and Jisoo laughs; hollow, empty, meaningless. She turns to the side of the mattress where her back’s against Chan and her eyes stare into the opposite wall that’s probably a few square feet away but it feels like a thousand miles. The peeling plaster stuck pathetically to the wall sums up her emotional state – dead, shrivelled up, hopeless but still trying to cling on – and failing. One day, her body, her mind, they’ll fail her. One day they’ll give up.

Almost the whole of their cohort knows about her stealing the microwavable food packs home – they were for her and Chan, and yes, she’s a thief. Was a thief. It was before she had a job – before she lost it again today.

She had been working at the restaurant but Joohyun and Sojung had found out about it. Jisoo had tried to ignore their existence since they hadn’t ordered in almost twenty minutes. But when she passed their table, hands carrying hot soup for the regular customer two seats away, Sojung had stuck her foot out.

It’s not that hard to imagine what happens next.

Initially, her boss had kept wanted to keep her. But a phone call after school, just before she was going to set out for work, told her otherwise – the man telling her that feedback from anonymous diners informed him about her past as an iljin, causing him to have no choice but to fire her. Of course, figuring out the identities of the anonymous diners weren’t an issue.

This was the start of her world crumbling before her eyes.