“Ami, darling, where are you going?” Eunmi’s mother made her way into her bedroom, where she was seen fixing her pungent eyes to her reflection in the mirror.

“Mother!!! How many times have I told you to knock first?” She glared to the point where her mother was portrayed in the square, reflective surface, framed by carved wood.

“I’m sorry, dear, I ju-“

“Mother, I’ve been 15 already! I need some privacy!”

Turning her back to her mother, Eunmi continued brushing her hair in annoyance, which resulted the long, black, and shiny surface to scatter there and there. She cursed, more likely to shove her mother out of her room but the woman who was just the older version of Eunmi didn’t budge.

“Here, let me help you,” Eunmi’s mother take the comb from the floor where Eunmi had dropped it.

“Just leave me alone,” she moved her lips as little as possible.

“Is there something wrong with school? You know you can tell me everything,” being a loving mother as she was, Eunmi’s mother sat on the edge of her bed, staring deeply to her daughter’s eyes in the mirror. She was hurt but she knew better to keep it in her heart.

“Nothing,” muttered Eunmi. She picked her lip gloss and put it on her already blood-red lips.

With those lips, that heavy make-up, and the tight jeans Eunmi was wearing, the Japanese woman couldn’t help feeling worried. Her daughter had grown up, possibly to the wrong direction. “Don’t you think those jeans are too tight? You’ll hurt your belly...”

“Mother, please! This is how girls of my age dress! Geez, all I want is looking pretty,” Eunmi examined her look accurately before adding an insignificant touch of blush-on.

“You’re pretty, Ami-chan,” praised her mother.

Eunmi rolled her eyes. “You said that just because I’m your daughter. In fact, nobody takes me as interesting. Nobody, I tell you, appreciates a mediocre half-Japanese half-Korean which is unclear about where her loyalty lies! And don’t call me Ami anymore! My name is Shim Eunmi!!”

Eunmi shifted uncomfortably in her sleep. Her body rolled to the side, her face making an expression of agony. Fate stretch his head from the cardboard box he was in, but Eunmi didn’t make any other moves.

Eunmi’s mother dropped the curtain, covering a view of heavy rain and lightning outside their store. Her father was in a journey to find some more artifacts from the centuries behind. There were just two of them in their closed store, where Eunmi was sitting on a stool, her fingers fidgeting on her phone. She was typing an apology to her first date, who apparently had gone through rain and wind to finally wait her in a cafe they were supposed to meet.

“Darling, can’t you just postpone your plan? I’m sure your friends will understand,” she turned around to the sound of rapid-beeping keypad.

“It’s okay. I’ll take the car...”

A reply of her crush almost freaked her out, specifically when the message said the boy had been waiting for almost half an hour. She clearly didn’t want to disappoint him: after one whole term holding back her feelings, a chance to a date with the most prominent boy in school finally came. Telling him to wait some more time, she finally looked up to her mother’s disapproval.

“No. You’re not qualified. Besides, it’s too dangerous...”

“Oh, please, just a spatter. I’ll be fine,” she folded her arms on her chest.

“No,” even though she loved her daughter more than loving herself, Eunmi’s mother had decided it was the right time for assertiveness. She wouldn’t risk her daughter’s safety.

“Uurrrgghh,” groaned Eunmi. “Where is the key?”

Eunmi’s eyes moved to the hook by the door where her father usually hung the car key. It wasn’t there. “Mother, give me the key!”

“Eunmi, listen. Nobody’s going out in this kind of weather. Your friends must be staying at home, too.”

“No, they’ve been there waiting for almost an hour now! Give me the key!!”

Eunmi’s palm protruded into the air between them. Her glaring eyes was what terrified her mother the most. But in spite of giving the fifteen-year-old what she wanted, she closed her eyes for a moment and said, “No. I don’t want you to be in danger.”

“Fine!” Eunmi walked briskly to the door, opened it, and greeted the wet evening, where the mizzle came directly to her face, the sky a view of dark grey clouds, and the wind whistling violently. She tightened her jacket around her neck and attempting to run through the rain, but her mother was fast enough to grab her arm.

“Mother!!!” she turned around and grimaced.

“I’ll go with you!” she raised her voice to fight the bristly sound of the storm, but Eunmi took it wrong.

“DON’T YELL TO ME, JAPANESE!!”

It felt like the lighting had struck her directly on her heart. Her grip on her daughter’s arm loosened, and the younger quickly grabbed an umbrella from a spot inside the store, taking the advantage while her mother was stunned.

“No! Mother, I’m sorry…,” Eunmi’s mouth moved in her sleep, but no sound could be heard.

She was walking difficultly in that empty alley, fastening her hand around the handle of the umbrella. She was a whole wet mess; the umbrella had no contribution against the weather. Her hands were cold, so was her heart. Guilty inside, but she knew it was too late.

Her mother had never understood how hard it had been for her, a Japanese-born Korean girl with a Japanese mother. The tension between both countries had invaded even the school life of a teenager like her, where she had been spending almost all of it getting bullied by her friends for having a Japanese background. She was sick, sick and tired of all the nicknames she had earned from his classmates. Blood traitor, ugly Japanese… some more were too terrible to mention. She couldn’t stand to be an outsider. She was Korean.

A car decelerated before her eyes, her mother on the driver’s seat. She looked obviously hurt, but calm at the same time. Eunmi climbed up to the seat right beside her, feeling too angry to say anything. It was quiet except for the dampened sound of the rain and the car machine, the buzz from the air conditioner, and the squeaky sound of the wipers. They moved through the terrible weather in a slow pace, leaving the unusually empty Insa-dong.

It was like everything moved in a light-speed motion. Eunmi couldn’t recall what had happened. She did remember she had nagged, urging her mother to drive faster. And then a big, white truck appeared before their eyes, the brake was loud, creaky, and threatening, but it had been too late. The crash was inescapable, their car rolling round and round like a top, got hit several times by the other road users. She felt light-headed while it happened, like her body was levitated by an unknown force before she hit the pavement hardly. Her head was hurt, her back aching, and her neck could barely move. Her mother lied down not too far from her, the rain washing the blood off her face but the blood kept flowing.

With all she had left, Eunmi crawled to her mother’s side. People were vaguely seen in her point of view, their words almost inaudible. Her mother was awake, yet visibly damaged. She weakly held Eunmi’s hand, smile on her face, and she mumbled, “You’re safe.” Her last words, and the light left her eyes, like the soul left her body, and she stopped breathing. For real. Forever.

“Mother,” Eunmi whispered, shaking her mother’s body to no avail, tears streaming down her cheeks, mixing with the rain. “Mother, wake up… Mother…”

Where was her voice? Why she couldn’t hear her? Why there was no voice escaping her lips? Where was the loud sound she had used to yell to her mother a century before?

“Mother… Mother, forgive me… Mother, please come back…,” reality hit her as she buried her face on her mother’s dead torso.

“Mother…!!” Eunmi woke up to the wetness of the tears on her face. In a basket on the side of her bed, Fate stood up on four legs in anticipation, shaking his tail happily. “Fate...,” she whispered, and the dog walked to her obediently, nuzzling his nose on the softness of her barefeet. Feeling sorrowful, she didn’t bother to wipe the tears of her cheeks as she picked him up and put him on her lap, crying her heart’s content over the memories of her mother.

‘I’ve killed her, Fate,’ she thought as she hugged the puppy. ‘I’ve killed my mother.’

“Hi,” the very own Kim Junsu was there, stood in the hallway with his bright, childlike smile. Nothing of his appearance changed, including his hoarse voice, but still it amazed Eunmi. Suddenly, the room she was in looked a lot brighter. “How are you?”

“Junsu-ssi wants to meet you, Eunmi-ah,” said her father as she greeted Junsu with a mannerly bow. Eunmi’s cheeks flushed, her eyes couldn’t leave Junsu’s. She was almost unable to hear the rest of her father’s words, which informed he would leave them to talk.

“You play piano?” asked Junsu, holding his hand to the black instrument behind her. Eunmi touched to send her question to Junsu, which replied it with, “No, it’s gotten worse instead. I’ve just visited the doctor.”

When Junsu looked around more attentively, it was like a stockroom and a family area combined. Boxes of antique merchandise piled on one corner, a bookshelf on its side. In the middle of the room was a set of chairs and coffee table. The television was on a special built-in closet with numerous pictures in frames beside it. Eunmi gestured him to be seated then disappeared, coming back a few minutes later with a glass of water.

“So you like music?” asked Junsu again, playing with Fate as the dog came to him. Eunmi scanned the room to locate her white board. It was on one of the boxes. She wrote,

I love music

Surprisingly, Junsu took the board and wrote down what he wanted to say next. It was,

I’m sorry I have to write it down. My doctor suggested me to. Where did you learn to play piano so beautifully?

Eunmi took the board by surprise, smiling at what Junsu had written. Her hands were shaking when she wrote her own, fluttered at their close distance. The Kim Junsu, Xiah Junsu was sitting on her side, how could that even happen?

My mother taught me

Eunmi’s heart twitched at the sentence which Junsu was reading. Yes, her mother had taught her everything she could’ve asked for, only she was too headless and heartless to realize; piano skill, cooking skill, Japanese language and custom, patience, and many other uncountable things, unconditional love was on top of those. She felt more miserable while reading Junsu’s words.

I’m sorry. You must be missing her so much you played Stand by U

Junsu watched Eunmi as the girl cleaned the board to write her answer. Yes, Stand by U was a heartbreaking call, a yearning for someone who had gone to the place we couldn’t reach. To Eunmi, the someone was her mother. To Junsu, TVXQ. He got that. Having used to sing those song with his four members, he realized the pain was still there, hiding in a secret place he had never known exist, as much as he hadn’t known somewhere in his future he would meet someone with such a story, using a song he sang to recall the memories of her lost love.

Tohoshinki’s ballads are all beautiful. It’s an honor for me to cover them. Wanna hear another one?

Junsu wrote,

Let me guess... Asu wa Kuru Kara?

Eunmi’s smile widened at his answer. Actually she was thinking of Forever Love, but she thought Junsu might want to hear the one he had written. She prepared herself to take the first note of the song.

Just a few seconds later, Junsu couldn’t get himself back together. The piece Eunmi was playing was too beautiful Junsu couldn’t help but humming along the tune. That was it, he had found her. He knew for sure. Hesitating no more, he took Eunmi’s board to wrote down another sentence.

Eunmi-ssi, could I ask you a favor? Would you like to join the audition for my musical project?