Hyun-ju knew she was... different.

She was aware she wouldn't be accepted. Not for who she really was. Not for who she had always been. Most people only really saw her as the body of the person she had been stuck in, or the person she had tried to become. But she hadn't just tried. Hyun-ju was who she had always wanted to be now. And she was used to the judgement. She was used to the comments. She was used to the things she never should've had to have gotten used to.

She knew not to expect any of that to change when she joined these games. She knew it wasn't going to, not with anybody that even glanced at her too closely. Hyun-ju had most of her surgeries done, but not all of them, there were still a few left. That was mostly the reason why she was there anyway. To get the money, and to pay for her surgeries, and to move somewhere where people didn't judge her. That was all she had ever wanted.

Nobody really outright spoke to her before, during, and after the first game. She tried to ignore the glances she got, the words she sometimes heard. She had bigger things to worry about, and that was surviving the games. She was just worrying about making it to the next day.

Hyun-ju met you in the second game. You were like some miracle, in a way. It was the pentathlon, where she would have to form a group with four other people to play these games in a race. Nobody wanted to team up with her, and she knew why. They only really saw her as a liability. She wasn't. She really wasn't. But perhaps it was best that way if she didn't team up with those types of people.

You were also wandering around, lost, it seemed. Like you were searching as well. At first, she just walked past you. Then she turned around. She couldn't just do that. So she did talk to you. She did ask you if you wanted to be on a team with her, and you did accept. More than that, you didn't even look at her differently. You didn't speak as though you were trying not to offend her, you treated her like you would treat anybody else, and even though that was just basic decency, it felt like you'd give her the world.

It was in that moment that she decided that she wasn't going to leave your side. That she couldn't. That maybe, you were worth more than the money in the games, and maybe, she had to focus on just making sure the both of you survived. She knew she was moving too fast, she'd only just met you, but you'd given her something no one else had, and like hell if she was going to let that slip away from her.

Before the time ran out for that game, you two did find some other players. That included, a mother and her son, Guem-ja and Yong-sik, and a young girl named Young-mi. Luckily, all five of you successfully survived the games, though it was a very, very close call. That didn't matter, it wasn't time to think about what could have happened, only what did.

Everyone who survived returned back to the dormitory for the rest of the day to rest. The five of you all stuck together after that. Hyun-ju was just happy she got a group. A group of people that treated her the way she deserved to be treated. She was just happy that she had you.

You were all making conversation, sitting on some of the bunk beds around eachother. You were talking about why you joined. Yong-sik joined to pay off his debts, Geum-ja joined to pay off his debts as well (they both didn't know that the other had joined), and Young-mi also joined to clear her debts, like most people. Geum-ja asked why Hyun-ju had joined. She explained why. She explained about her gender-affirming surgeries, about her plans to travel. It was nice to talk about it. It almost made her forget about everything going on around her.

"I want to go to Thailand. There are a lot of people like me there. I hear a lot of them are beautiful." Hyun-ju explained, as she looked at nothing in particular. She said it like she didn't think that she was beautiful as well. Like she didn't deserve that title as well. She did though. She really did. At least, that was what you believed.