Transformation Story: Hahsni. Part 1

‘Hahsni’ is my phonetic translation of the Korean word for avatar.  I was unable to find a dictionary that could provide the word, so please excuse if it is not the way you would pronounce it.  This story shares a couple of common traits with many of my others.  First it features a change in clothing and appearance shifting a woman’s outlook and behaviour; a subtle form of mind control.  Second, one of the female characters featured in this one, particularly in terms of clothing, is based on an actual woman I encountered on public transport while travelling in the UK.  Seeing her coming on to a busy bus inspired this story.

Hahsni

By Tang

Part One

“My name is Heo Kwan, sorry, in the English style, Kwan Heo, Heo is my family name.”  A man’s voice beside Rachel said.

Rachel Mundy was on her usual bus heading to work.  Now she turned her head away from the window she had been gazing out of to see who was speaking.  As his name suggested, he was East Asian in appearance.  Immediately Rachel guessed he was a student and that he was probably in his early twenties.  She imagined that he was probably Chinese, because Beth at work had told her that the university in their town, like most across the country, was now recruiting lots of Chinese.  Though Rachel had never really looked at Asian men much before, this Kwan struck her as handsome.  His styling seemed to have been borrowed from the 1950s.  She was not certain if it had been James Dean or Marlon Brando, but she had a memory of a photograph of a man like this, dressed in a black leather jacket over a white teeshirt and wearing blue jeans.  His raven black hair seemed gelled into a Fifties style and it accentuated his angular but elegant features.  Maybe elegant was not the right word, but, for some reason, Rachel felt that, for all of his rebel style, Kwan was a gentleman in the making.

Rachel had been taught to be polite and interacting with the customers she encountered had further enhanced that tendency.  She did not consider that many British women of her background; from her age group, she was now thirty-four and who, like her, had rarely strayed from this town would have simply ignored the young man’s introduction.

“Hello, I am Rachel, Rachel Mundy.  Nice to meet you.”  Rachel said warmly, reinforced with a smile that came automatically to her lips.

“You are going to work?”  Kwan asked.  His voice was accented but not to the extent that Rachel could not understand him easily.

“Yes, I work in a building society.  And you: are you a student?”

“Yes, I have just started a postgraduate degree here; before that I was in London.”

“Oh, okay.  Do you like it here?”

“Yes, it is a nice place.  London is fun, you know, when you first come to the UK, but after a while it seems too crowded, too noisy, especially if you want to study.  Here it is twenty minutes on the bus, there it was an hour or more crowded on the underground.”

“And you, you are from China?”

Rachel realised she was asking standard questions but recognised that she had a genuine curiosity.  She had a small circle of friends, slightly smaller still since Robert had split with her last summer after three years of them sharing a house.  He had headed to Germany for work and Rachel had been unwilling to shift to another city, let alone to another country.  It had seemed that, as they had aged he had become increasingly adventurous and she had focused more and more simply on her local area.  Sometimes she wondered if she had been wrong in doing that.  Indeed, some days, especially when she heard the things some women who came into her branch came out with, she wanted to prove that she was not like them and that she could talk with someone from another country or culture without making them feel uneasy.

“No, I come from the city of Pusan, it’s in South Korea.  Have you been to China?”

“No, no, I went to Florida for two weeks once and a couple of times to Spain.”

“I have never been to Spain, I would love to see Barcelona.  Maybe this year I will.”

“Oh, I just did holiday resorts, places like Benidorm, Malaga, that kind of thing.”

“This town, it seems there are many things to see, in the countryside too.”

“Oh yes, we have a few bits of history, mainly churches.  The countryside is nice, well in the Summer.”

“And places for people to meet?  Where do young people go?  You know women, men?”

For a moment Rachel felt a sudden unease that all of this had been building up to Kwan somehow making some advance to her.  However, she quickly calmed herself.  She had to be, at least, ten, if not, twelve or fifteen years older than Kwan.  If he had already been living in London he presumably knew what was appropriate in this country.  Perhaps it was simply his tone that had misled her.  Was it any surprise that he was curious about where his contemporaries would hang out?  She just hoped students were more understanding of foreign visitors than some of the young people in the town she had heard about.

“Well, there are places, I guess around the university.”

“Yes, but those tend to be the places for the eighteen year olds, and sorry, but the English young people seem to drink a lot of beer and spirits.”

“Yes, yes, I guess that is the case.”

Rachel remembered that twenty-five, even twenty-two, was in fact a long way from eighteen.  For all the distinctive style he adopted, she guessed that Kwan was looking for something different to yet another alcopop promotion.  She remembered that the fifties-style diner that had occasionally had local rockabilly bands, probably ten years back, now she thought about it, had finally closed.  That was a pity, he would have fitted in there.

“Well, you know, there are some nice coffee places along that pedestrianised street there.”  Rachel gestured through the town centre to the area she was thinking of.  “I guess older students sit and talk about books and stuff; some of the pubs, they, well these days they have food and quieter areas.  Maybe one of the bookshops, they’ve all got cafes now and they have authors come and speak in the evenings.”

Rachel felt she was fumbling a little to come up with some answers.  If she had to be honest, she did not really have an idea where an older student would go, she had not really even given much thought to their existence, somehow seeing all students as if they were eighteen.  A lot of them behaved recklessly, especially with alcohol in the mix.  Perhaps it was not surprising: she had heard more than one report about how much the average thirteen year old drunk these days.  It was not the kind of behaviour she had been part of.  She had joined the building society straight from college and so university had never entered the equation.  Of course, back then, far fewer people went to university anyway.  These days everyone’s eighteen year old seemed to be off taking some course or another.  She remained dubious as to whether any of them would get better jobs as a result.

“Rachel Mundy, thank you, that is very useful.  I had not thought of that.  In London it is different.  I will look for the bookshops.  Usually, you see, I use the one at the university.  I had not thought these may be social places in the town.”

“Yes, yes.”  Rachel had been to a couple events with her work colleague Gill, though she had not known the authors and so had felt a little at a loss attending.  However, she guessed if Kwan picked the right event he might run into the kind of people he was looking to meet.

“Thank you.”

“Oh it’s nothing, just being, you know, welcoming.”

Rachel felt a little silly saying that; Kwan had been in this country for years, but she wanted him to feel that she did not consider him any different to any other newcomer to the town who asked her for advice.  For a moment she worried that she had sounded patronising.

“No, it is something.  Do you know how many English people just ignore me when I speak to them?  You know, look embarrassed, say nothing, move away.  You, well, you were polite, helpful.  I am very grateful.  You don’t know how good it is just to have a conversation without being looked at like I have just come from outer space.”

Rachel felt rather embarrassed at what Kwan was saying and was glad when she saw that the bus was quickly approaching her stop.

“This is me, my stop.  All the best.”  Rachel said, rising from her seat.

“Have a good day.  Thank you.”  Kwan smiled as he shifted to let Rachel by.

As she walked down the bus Rachel realised she had been a little hard on Kwan.  Sometimes, especially since the split with Robert, she had found herself feeling lonely and wishing she could get to meet and know new people.  She had found it difficult to do that and she guessed it was even tougher for an outsider like Kwan.  At the exit from the bus, she turned to look back at Kwan but he was now gazing out of the window.  However, as she walked past the bus, heading to her workplace she looked up and caught his eye.  He gave Rachel a warm smile which she returned, feeling pleased that, in some small way, she had made this man’s day seem a little better.  The bus pulled away and Rachel focused on the small cluster of her colleagues waiting for the door to their branch to be opened and for the working day to begin in earnest.

Rachel recognised the Korean man she had spoken to the day before.  He was a short way off from the bus stop where she waited, talking with a long-haired woman dressed in black.  Kwan, that had been his name, Rachel remembered.  As he gestured in the direction of the bus stop she saw that the woman was also Far Eastern, she guessed that, like Kwan, she was a Korean.  For a moment, Rachel found herself a little jealous of the woman because she, rather than Rachel, was talking with Kwan.  For an instant she felt she should give up her place and walk over and talk to him.  She stopped herself: she would lose her position in the queue and perhaps would miss the bus.  Then Rachel wondered why she had felt that way; had wanted to go over to Kwan.  He was a pleasant young man, clearly intelligent and certainly politer than many men you met these days especially on public transport.  However, Kwan had to be at least ten to fifteen years younger than Rachel and she guessed that, even if he remembered Rachel, he would think of her as nothing more than a nice older British woman.  She knew some young men liked mature women, but, of course, most preferred those of their own age or younger.  It also made sense that Kwan would associate with someone from his home country, no doubt it was good to be able to talk in his mother tongue.

The bus pulled up and Rachel made her way steady forwards as the people got on.  Then she saw the woman bid Kwan farewell.  For a moment Rachel found she was wishing he would come on the bus so she could chat with him again.  However, he set off in the opposite direction and it was the woman who turned and came Rachel’s way.  She could now see that the woman was Oriental in appearance and somehow Rachel knew she was Korean rather than Chinese or Japanese.  She was most likely nineteen or twenty, probably a student like Kwan himself.  That seemed to make sense, given as she had remembered, when talking with Kwan, that this was the bus that ultimately reached the university.   The young woman joined the end of the queue some places behind Rachel who concentrated on getting her ticket, wondering a little why she was suddenly so interested in the young Koreans.

Rachel found a seat and looked down the bus, trying not to think about the young woman but she found she was keen to see her step on and look over her at closer quarters.  As the student paid for her ticket and then made her way down the already busy bus seeking out a seat, Rachel studied her.  She had a broad forehead, a slender nose and a tapering chin.  She had almond-shaped eyes, a rich brown in shade and accentuated by elegant eyebrows.  Her skin tone was a little more tanned than the pale porcelain shade Rachel found she had expected.  Similarly, her mouth was broader too, not large but not the doll-like rosebuds of classic portrayals of Korean women.

As the woman approached, Rachel realised her clothes were not of the black denim or lycra that she had assumed, they were of leather.  The woman wore a black leather jacket that stretched to just beyond her waist.  Below it was a grey and white patterned baggy teeshirt and around her neck and over her shoulder a long white pashmina.  Her trousers were tight black leather showing of the sleek line of her legs and feeding into black flat-heeled over-the-knee boots detailed with long leather tassels running down the sides.  As a result, every step she took seemed to emphasise the leather she wore; the tassels seemed to lash her legs as she walked and, as she passed Rachel, the gentle creaks of her smooth, soft leather came from points around her body.

Rachel had not seen the young Korean woman leave the bus, but by the time Rachel got off, she seemed to have gone.  Rachel hesitated on the pavement to look along the bus to see if she could catch sight of the Korean for one last time.  Then she turned away, wondering why she had been so intrigued by the woman.  She was attractive certainly, but other attractive women got on the bus or passed her in the street without them fascinating Rachel.  She was Korean, but these days it seemed every other student at universities came from the Far East; every day scores of them must travel on this bus route alone.  Rachel wondered if it was the way the woman dressed.  Leather jackets and long boots were pretty common for young women these days, but the added inclusion of leather trousers seemed to make a statement: this was a sexy woman but not in an airheaded bimbo way.  The leather might be sensuous but it was also a form of protection, of armour, even.  This seemed to make sense, that the woman was a saying a great deal in how she dressed, in a fashionable way, but distinct from the crowd; in a sexy way but on her own terms.

The following day, despite her unease about what was prompting all of this, Rachel found herself looking out for Kwan and the young Korean woman at the bus stop.  She worried whether it was some kind of statement of how empty her life had become that she was filling it with thoughts about people she saw around the town.  However, she reassured herself that, in fact, it was no different to watching a soap opera or reading a romantic novel.  It gave viewers and readers a nice feeling to see the romance of two young people unfold.  Rachel guessed it was the immediacy of what she had seen that made it all that more interesting.  If she was honest to herself, she had to admit that she found the ‘leading man’ in this story very attractive and that helped.  As she thought about it too, she was quite coming to like the ‘heroine’ and, despite their age difference, to actually admire her fashion sense.  Perhaps, Rachel wondered, her unease was because they were Korean and so, looked different to the usual characters she saw in television series.  Rachel quickly excused her concerns and told herself not to feel guilty if she hoped to spot either Kwan or the woman and pondered about any developing relationship.

Rachel suddenly felt the urge to look up as if she had sensed the young woman’s approach.  As the day before the Korean woman was making her way to the bus queue but there was no sight of Kwan.  Rachel was content to look at the woman’s clothes.  Today, in the place of her leather trousers and long boots, were shiny black leggings and patent ankle boots.  Her leather jacket was replaced by a short black silk raincoat flared out from the waist and not stretching beyond mid thigh.  The dark shades were offset by a flame red scarf she wore, hanging over her shoulder and down her back alongside her long black hair.  Rachel wondered if she should try and talk to the woman, but then could not think of what she would say and the student may think her approach a little odd.  Rachel was worried that she was losing it a little, to be becoming fascinated by a female student, but again the reassuring thoughts soon flowed into her mind.  She was doing nothing wrong.  If the media stories were correct she had to imagine that most of the men on the bus would be fantasising about having sex with the women they saw on the street or were shown on the billboards they passed.  Rachel was not even thinking that, she had no desire to have sex with a woman.  If she was honest, she had to admit, some part of her simply wanted to be the woman; to be young, to travel, to be fashionable.

Rachel sat at the back of the bus so that she could see the young woman walk the length of it.  As she did Rachel realised that she had a lovely smile and, despite her sexy clothes, actually seemed pretty demure.  She took a seat a few down from Rachel and, as the bus quickly filled up, soon all Rachel could see of the woman was her shiny clad leg and, within a couple of stops, even that was obscured from view by standing passengers.  Now looking out at the shops as the bus passed them Rachel found she was telling herself that perhaps it was time to go on a bit of a shopping spree.  Autumn was approaching and it had to be the Spring since she last bought some new clothes.  Some of the mannequins were wearing outfits that might look good on her, or, at least, part of them.  She decided that after work that evening she would pop into a couple of shops and pick up something suitable for the coming season.  It was Friday and she could wear her new outfit the following day.

Though she would not really admit it, seeing the young woman had given her a real desire to get some leggings.  In contrast to the dull skirt she wore to work and the rather thick jeans she wore at weekends, there was something distinctive about leggings, something that made her feel excited.  She told herself that she was only in her thirties, she was not middle aged yet and, in fact, rather than the routine life she seemed to be leading these days, she began to feel increasingly that she should try to spice things up a little.  Robert was long gone and perhaps she needed to think about finding a man to be in her life.  She felt she stood no chance unless she looked sexier than she did at the moment.  By the time Rachel stepped down from the bus stop closest to her work she had forgotten about the Korean student, instead she was filled with a determination to change her life and get a bit of excitement, certainly a bit of sex, back into it.

Rachel stepped into her small house having bought a short pea coat, a pair of plain black leggings and shoe-boots.  They were comfortable and made her feel sexy when she tried them on, but she remained self conscious of wearing them outside the house, concerned the ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ tag would be applied to her.  In addition, they lacked the shine that she realised she was yearning for.  She felt rather foolish to wish she had the body profile to be able to carry off the current sleek fashions, but she could not deny that she felt qualms of jealousy when she saw women who could.  A little uneasily, she realised that she wished she could look a little more like the woman she had seen Kwan with.  That was silly, of course, but maybe she could grow her hair longer and have it coloured black.  There was something so intriguing about it stretching down that woman’s back, hanging free, rather than the short controlled styles Rachel had imposed on her almond shade hair, never going down to her shoulder, let alone beyond.

Rachel wondered why she was concerned about what women Kwan might be attracted to.  It was ridiculous to think he might find her appealing in that way, though she had to admit she saw enough women with ‘toy boys’.  They did, however, tend to be far wealthier than herself; rich enough not to give a damn about what people thought about how they dressed or behaved.  Rachel knew, though, that she could never consider moving into that kind of category unless she won the lottery and she rarely bought a ticket.  She guessed that however much Kwan had been grateful that she had not responded coldly to him, that she too had felt glad that he had talked to her without turning his nose up at her; simply dismissing her as some drab middle-aged woman.  She had heard Korean and Japanese men were old fashioned in their behaviour, which could mean they were sexist but also that they were often more likely to be more gentlemanly than the average British man of their age.  Rachel concluded that that was what had appealed to her about Kwan.  Was it surprising, really, that given she had been chatting with a man who seemed to mix Mr. Darcy with James Dean, she should not feel a bit of a crush for him and want to at least look a little like the kind of woman he was attracted to?

Rachel was a little self-conscious when she stepped down from the bus.  She was now dressed in her new coat, leggings and shoe-boots.  She was taking advantage of a day off; she got them mid-week once in a while to make up for working Saturdays.  Perhaps that the fact that she shopping mall she was heading to stood close to where she worked, where her colleagues would be working right now, added to that unease.  She realised she worried one of them would see her dressed this way and would make an embarrassing comment or be disapproving.  It was so different now to the night before, when, fired with confidence, she had signed up to an online dating service and had even emailed a few of the men she had seen featured that lived in her area.  She was quite proud at the steps she had taken, but her nerve kept wavering and so she had decided to step out in her new outfit to practice.  It would be no use turning up to a date and looking uncomfortable in what she wore.

Rachel was determined that her new relationship was going to be sexy and sophisticated and she felt that however uneasy she might feel now she needed to come across as that kind of woman.  She had felt a little daring when she had decided to raise the setting for her profile for seeking East Asian men.  However, she had realised that, perhaps, she had discovered something about herself in recent days.  It was only a start after all, there was a long way between even emailing a man and actually having a relationship with him, lots of opportunity to really test how she felt about particular types of men let alone particular individuals.  Perhaps by ignoring a certain type she had been denying herself access to a kind of man she actually would find nice or sexy or attractive; hopefully all three.

Rachel walked into the shopping mall, silently reasserting to herself that she was a sexy young woman out doing some browsing in clothes shops with some distant thought that if she was going to be dating again, let alone having a new sexual partner, she was going to need some decent lingerie.  She stopped by the rail on the upper level of the mall and looked down to the floors below her.  Something in the movement of a figure on the escalator caught her attention.  Rachel realised that it was the young Korean student, dressed once more in the leathers she had originally seen her in.  The trademark scarf was grey this time, matching the loose boyfriend cardigan that she wore beneath her jacket.  Keeping her eye on the woman, somehow concerned not to lose sight of her, Rachel found herself walking after her.  For some reason she realised she had come to see this woman as something like her genie, a youthful fairy godmother who was encouraging her to change her life.  Rachel knew that it was a ridiculous thought but had to confess that if she had not see this woman with Kwan she would not have embarked down the path she was now following.

Rachel walked down the escalator the young woman had taken, keen not to lose her among the shopping crowd.  She just caught sight of her as she turned into a large boutique and Rachel followed, curious as to what the woman would be looking at; what fashions would take her fancy.  Inside the shop Rachel worried that she had lost the woman who she had to admit, was pretty illusive.  Trying not to be obvious, Rachel walked through the different rails and into the various sections of the store.  For some reason she felt that if she saw the woman one more time she would have the courage she needed to carry on with these new approaches in her life that she had decided on.

Then Rachel caught sight of the woman coming towards her, down an aisle between rows of clothing.  She glanced away, not wanting to appear as if she was staring.  However, when she glanced back, the woman had stopped walking and was looking straight at her.  Rachel felt embarrassed and lowered her eyes, pretending to look at a display of coats.  Then she told herself that she had done nothing wrong and that if she was this uneasy about encountering a woman she had taken some remote interest in, how was she going to handle the kind of dates she was assuming she was going to be setting up in the weeks to come?  With determination, Rachel began to walk towards the woman thinking through some question she could ask to strike up a conversation.  However, all she could think about things related to Kwan and she felt that such questions might unnerve the young woman.

Rachel looked up a little more boldly, knowing that she had to say something or the moment would be passed.  The woman had stopped walking and looked back at her with an air of anticipation.  Then Rachel realised something was wrong.  At a distance she had not really noticed it.  Her confusion and worries had no doubt played a part too.  Now she realised that she, in fact, had not seen the woman, she had been looking into a full-length mirror fixed to one of the pillars.  Rachel looked around her and then quickly ran to the mirror, not believing this was true.  As she stood right by the mirror, gripping the frame as if to confirm it was a mirror and not something like a display screen, she saw the Korean woman reflected, not only that, but her stance, the movements she made, were Rachel’s.