Her arms loaded down with groceries, Seolhyun hurried over to the elevator. “Youkyung, hold that door for me!” she cried frantically, trying not to drop the quart of milk dangling from her index finger. Youkyung pretended not to hear, and the doors glided shut in her face.

Seolhyun ground her teeth in frustration. This wasn’t the first time Youkyung had purposely let the elevator close as she ran toward it. She’d watched her do the same thing with other residents. Obviously it gave her some kind of thrill. She might have imagined it, but Seolhyun swore she saw a glimmer of sadistic humor in his eyes as the doors slid closed. She lowered one bag to the floor and pushed the call button.

While she waited, she went to collect her newspaper, only to discover the slot was empty—and it wasn’t even Tuesday. Apparently Chanmi was now taking comics from the Sunday edition, as well. Perhaps it was time to confront the younger girl. Seolhyun took the elevator up to the fifth floor, brought her groceries to the kitchen, and walked down the hallway to Chanmi's unit.

Outside her neighbor’s door, she rang the bell until she heard footsteps on the other side. “I'm coming, I'm coming!” Chanmi called out. She answered the door, wearing a jersey and sneakers. Her head was covered with a helmet and black lines streaked across her face. It wasn’t a look Seolhyun saw very often ever.

“Hey Seolhyun, what's up?" she said excitedly. “Do you want to see my cat?”

“Oh, no, thank you.” Seolhyun made an attempt to be neighborly or at least polite. “Uh, I believe you have my newspaper.”

 Her neighbor seemed startled, as if the suggestion that she might have taken something not hers was a devastating insult. Chanmi raised one hand to in innocence. “Oh shoot, was that your paper?” Seolhyun held out her hand.

The younger girl quickly retrieved the newspaper and placed it in Seolhyun’s outstretched hand. “I was wondering if you could give me the newspaper with the comics.” Seolhyun clutched the paper to her chest. “Only when you’re finished with it, of course.”

“I like reading the comics, Chanmi.”

“Oh ok, maybe next time!”

Wondering if she’d been a little too inflexible, Seolhyun returned to her own apartment, put away her groceries and made a cup of coffee. She sat down with the paper, prepared to relax. She’d just turned to the middle section, started reading the comics—when the rap music started next door. The whole room seemed to vibrate.

Seolhyun groaned. There was no question: the fates were conspiring against her. Getting up from her chair, Seolhyun pounded her fist against the kitchen wall hard enough to rattle her dishes. She had to repeat the pounding twice before the music was lowered to a tolerable level. Settled once more, she rested her feet on the ottoman, crossed her ankles and savored the first sip of coffee when her doorbell rang.

“Oh my god,” she muttered, throwing down the newspaper. If it turned out to be one of her annoying neighbors—whom she’d be having dinner with all too soon, according to Hyejeong—she didn’t know what she’d say.

To her astonishment, it was her sister, carrying a five-foot Christmas tree. “Yuna, what are you doing here?” Normally she’d be fortunate to see her twice in four months, and this was her second visit to Seoul in as many weeks.

“Are you complaining?”

“Of course not!”

“I brought gifts for you!” Yuna gently put down the Christmas tree into the room.

“So I noticed.”

Yuna smiled. “I thought you could use a bit of Christmas cheer. This also seemed like a good excuse to stop by so you could tell me how everything went yesterday.”

Had it only been the day before that she’d stood in the cold, soliciting donations? That didn’t seem possible, and yet Seolhyun hadn’t stopped thinking about the experience.

What remained uppermost in her mind was the time she’d spent with Hyejeong at the coffee shop. Hyejeong had been frank, unemotional, honest. Make that brutally honest. When she’d met Hyejeong, she’d considered the matchmaker rude and arrogant, but since then she’d had a change of heart.

Hyejeong, she decided, was simply…direct. She said what she felt and didn’t moderate her opinions in deference to other people’s flimsy egos. Seolhyun had never met anyone quite like her.

“Well?” Yun