To Cross Oceans For

“You take her,” Yebin says.

“Nah,” Junghyun frowns, “you take her. I’m not as interested in the movie. I’ll go another time. You are. You wanna watch it now. She wants to go to a movie. You should just take her.”

“B-But she’s never watched...”

Junghyun raises an eyebrow and even though she is several notable inches shorter than Yebin, the older girl sighs, “Fine.”

“I’ll come along,” Nayoung says, knows fully why Yebin is hesitant to go to the movies alone with Jieqiong.

Yebin loves teaching Jieqiong new words but Yebin is also the biggest Harry Potter fan that Nayoung has met in her entire life and she’s sure that watching the last of the Harry Potter movies while having to answer questions of “what’s going on” or explaining the entire series to someone who has no knowledge of the magical world is not Yebin’s idea of a good time.

She can probably get them into another movie that would be easier to explain. Like Transformers or something. Big robots fighting other big things. Pretty straightforward, right?

Yebin lights up, squeals, grabs onto Nayoung’s elbow, “Nayoung-unnie’s the best!”

Jieqiong smiles at her.

“Ok, see you after!” Yebin beams then bounces off in the direction of another hall.

Jieqiong her head to the side, “Where is she going?”

“Oh,” Nayoung says, “we’re going to watch another movie that’s not Harry Potter.”

Jieqiong frowns lightly.

Nayoung pats her on the shoulder, “It’s ok, I heard this one has a lot of action. It should be easier for you to understand.”

“Oh,” Jieqiong says.

Nayoung feels the slightest bit guilty but shoves it to the bottom of her heart and does not think about it.

The sofa sinks down next to Nayoung.

She nods at Jieqiong who proceeds to steal a corner of the blanket.

“What are you-” Takeshi Kaneshiro waves a feathered fan on the TV screen, “oh?”

Nayoung shrugs, “It’s a pretty good movie.”

Jieqiong sneaks a popcorn kernel out of Nayoung’s bowl, “Mmhm, but the subtitles aren’t great.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, like he didn’t say ‘let’s.’ He said, ‘after you’,” Jieqiong says as she grabs a handful of popcorn, “and I know that’s not really wrong, but it’s not the same.”

“Ah.”

The movie continues, now there’s something going on with ships and water and Nayoung sort of gets what is happening since there are subtitles but it doesn’t seem entirely right. Maybe she should have rented a DVD instead of downloading the movie off the internet and searched for subtitles from sketchy sites.

“Oh they totally didn’t say that,” Jieqiong mutters under her breath for the fifth time.

Nayoung reaches for the remote and turns the TV off.

“Eh?” Jieqiong’s eyes are wide and really close to her face. Nayoung leans back a little and Jieqiong scoots back at the realization.

Nayoung shrugs, “it was getting confusing.”

“The subtitles were bad,” Jieqiong says, “and they should feel bad. Where did you even get those subtitles from? Didn’t this show in theatres? It’s a pretty good movie.”

“You’ve watched it?”

“Only the highest budgeted Chinese film of its time with a crazy star-studded cast? No,” Jieqiong smirks, “there’s no way I watched it while I was at home. Impossible.”

Nayoung snorts, swats at her with a hand.

Jieqiong rolls her eyes, slides off the couch, “I’ll get you a better copy of the movie. Or a Chinese dictionary.”

She does both and Nayoung gets to watch things burn and go up in flames.

Nayoung dusts the Chinese dictionary off with