Chapter 1: Arrival

Sometimes, for unexplainable reasons, two misfit people are brought together and find happiness together that defies logic. This is a story about two such people.

Park Eun Bin lay in her hotel room and did not get a wink of sleep, dreading the fact that she would be starting high school at Surval Montreux the next day. As usual, her parents were too busy to accompany their daughter on the 5,500-mile journey across Asia and Europe. A company assistant had escorted her as far as the hotel, then disappeared back to Seoul on the next flight.

Her father was founder and CEO of Taeyang Group, a multinational corporation with interests spanning electronics, construction, and finance. Her mother occupied herself with charity galas and society functions. Both were perpetually absent from Eun Bin’s life in any meaningful way.

At fourteen, Eun Bin still looked eight or nine years old. She had reached menarche and developed small breast buds that barely showed beneath her camisole, along with a sparse sprinkling of pubic hair. Then everything had simply ... stopped. The doctors had explained it with terms like “premature ovarian insufficiency” and “growth hormones cessation,” but what it meant in practice was that puberty had abruptly stopped halfway through at Tanner stage two and was permanent with no way to finish the process of maturing to an adult female.

Middle school had been a horror. The bullying—both physical and emotional—had been relentless. Boys mocked her flat chest. Girls excluded her from everything, treating her like a child who’d wandered into their sophisticated teenage world. She’d had her blouse ripped open more than once to expose her undeveloped body to laughing crowds.

Her parents’ solution was to send her away.

At 4’9” and 85 pounds, wearing children’s sized clothing and size 4 shoes, Eun Bin knew she looked like someone’s little sister who’d gotten lost. She just wanted to be invisible.

The late afternoon sun filtered through the half-open blinds of room 204, casting golden stripes across two bare mattresses and empty desks. Simone Devereaux arrived first, her athletic frame filling the doorway as she hauled in a massive duffel bag. At fifteen, she was a year older than most freshmen. Ten years of Taekwondo and competitive soccer had given her a solid, muscular build at 5’6”, with the kind of confidence that came from knowing exactly what her body could do.

She dropped her bag with a thud and surveyed the space. Two beds, two desks, one bathroom. It would do.

Back home in Paris, everyone knew Simone was gay. The guys at her old school would look at her and mutter, “What a waste.” Her parents—her mother a physics professor at Institut Polytechnique, her father a renowned neurosurgeon—were progressive enough to accept her sexuality. They just weren’t around enough to actually know their daughter. Money was easier than presence.

She was claiming the bed nearest the bathroom when the door creaked open.

A tiny girl slipped inside, almost swallowed by her oversized backpack. Simone straightened up and stared.

The girl was small—not just short, but genuinely tiny, like a middle schooler. Glossy black hair fell past her shoulders, partially hiding her face. She wore an oversized sweater that hung nearly to her knees and jeans that bunched at her ankles. She dragged a single rolling suitcase behind her and stopped just inside the doorway, as if afraid to come any farther.

“H-hi,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “Ee bahng-ee ee-baek-sah-ho yeh-yo?” She caught herself, cheeks flushing pink. “Sorry. I keep forgetting. English. This is ... room 204?”

“Yeah, that’s us.” Simone stepped forward with a warm smile and extended her hand. “I’m Simone. You must be my roommate.”

The girl took her hand tentatively. Her palm was tiny and cold in Simone’s grip. “I’m Eun Bin.”

The contrast between them was almost comical. Simone felt like she might accidentally crush those delicate fingers.