
I’m sixteen, which in Korea means I’m almost a finished product.
That’s how it feels, anyway. By your third year of high school, people start talking about your “specs”—test scores, clubs, volunteer hours—and your face like they’re items on the same checklist. At cram school, the girls trade math tips and moisturizer samples. On the group chat, we swap past exams and plastic-surgery clinic screenshots. When adults ask what I plan to do after graduation, they mean both college and whether I’ll “fix” anything. It’s said kindly, like asking if I’ve bought a new backpack.
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