CHAPTER SEVEN:

“Okay, so here’s the plan.” Yesung reiterated for the 27^th time. Except this time we were standing outside the doors of LaGuardia, a French cuisine restaurant located in downtown Seoul for the elite. So, how did we know to come here? You shouldn’t have asked actually. We called every restaurant we could think of and asked if there were any reservations under our parents’ name. Of course most restaurants could not disclose that information, because it was “infringing on their customers rights and privacy.” Whatever. Anyways, that proved to be a dilemma, until the smartass that I am, I rechecked the calendar and another calendar I found in the kitchen area and realized that the restaurant’s name was written on there. I mean how could we miss that? It clearly said “Reservation with Mom and Dad at LaGuardia. 6 sharp.” So, by now you’ve probably realized that with the getting ready for the dinner date and finding what restaurant the reservations were at, we were running late. Thankfully, by not that much. Of course, when Yesung found out that I missed seeing the restaurant name, he whacked me on the back of the head. Seriously, I should report him for abuse one of these days. Except that I abuse him a lot more and harder too. So, probably not a good idea.

“Okay, we’re only a little late.” Yesung fidgeted with his necktie.

I looked at my watch. “Yesung, its 6:35. I don’t think they’ll be too happy.” If it was one thing I knew that both our parents hated, it was being late instead of on time.

“We’ll make something up.” Yesung said nervously. I think he was trying to convince himself more so than me.

“Yeah, like what?” I asked him skeptically.

“Like the fact we’re getting even more later than we should be.” He stated as he was about to walk inside the restaurant.

“Aren’t you gonna go over the plan again?” I asked him, not to hear it for the 28^th time, but rather to enjoy watching him fidget. He sighed before turning back to me, “I thought you didn’t want me to repeat it again for the 100^th millionth time.”

“If you had repeated it that many times, believe me, I would have been dead on the floor a long time ago. Then, you would have to clean up my icky gooiness body off the floor, and believe me when I say that…”

“Okay, okay.” Yesung rubbed his forehead with his thumb and index finger. “I get it. I don’t even know why I bother, honestly.”

Satisfied, I reached for the door handle. But, before I could do so, I was stopped by Yesung.

“Not so fast, young lady.” He said with his hand on my wrist. I looked at his hand invading my privacy before looking back up at him. He got the point and removed his hand.

“What?” I bluntly asked.

“Don’t forget. We act like a couple and that we know why we’re there and what’s going on. Also, there is nothing wrong. At least not anything unusual that we might have noticed. And last but not least, we have to try to extract as much information as we can. Got it?”

I rolled my eyes. “I thought you were not gonna repeat yourself?” I asked. He just glared at me, to which I ignored and walked inside the restaurant.

“Reservations?” The man at the stand asked me.

“Yeah, they should be under this name,” I said as I passed him my parent’s business card.

“Alright. Ah! You must be the Kims. Right this way. Table # c-92.” He said and crossed something off his papers. Probably our names. We were led to our table by an .

“Remember,” Yesung whispered on our way there. Oh, my gosh! If he was gonna repeat it one more time, I swear to God, I’m going to bash his head in. And in front of all these people too. “Couple. Act…”

“Got it.” I rudely interrupted.

“Good. Now remember, our parents could be the culprits behind this whole fiasco.”

“What?” I whipped my head towards him. What did he mean our parents? Oh, that was so like them. I realized Yesung was facing forward with a genuine smile on his face, and that’s when I noticed he was looking at our parents, who with comic identical looks on their faces, they were not happy. Displeased was the correct term. I looked at my mom who was frowning, while the ahjusshi next to her—who was also frowning—said something, but I ignored him and sat down. Yesung, on the other hand—that bratty, good-for-nothing, goody-two-shoes -up—decided to answer the ahjusshi, who apparently had asked a question. The question: Why the hell are you two late, and making the rest of us wait on you? Except, of course, in much politer terms. And in even more politer terms, Yesung answered, “Sorry, we got a little distracted.” Upon, at which point he turned to me and winked. My jaw dropped open and I’m pretty sure it looked something like this:

Nope. Too ridiculous to even mention it. I stared blankly at him, unable to comprehend anything. Was that a ual innuendo that he threw at me? I didn’t even think he was capable of such a thing. It better not have been, because he was so going to sleep on the couch. Not, that I would have given him a choice, but a girl’s got to take her stand. I looked when I heard the others at the table chuckling.

“My daughter keeping you busy, eh?” The ahjusshi at the table asked, with a soft rumble to his voice. I could tell he was cackling inside, so I just gave him a glare. Not that he noticed, anyway.

“I guess that means, we should be expecting something soon. Don’t make us wait too long, okay?” Yesung father looked at us with a soft smile. I shyly smiled back at him. I’ve always liked Yesung’s father. In fact, when I was little I would always look up to the old man and wanted to marry someone just like him. He was always my ideal type. When my father ran away, I secretly wished upon a star every night that Yesung’s dad would marry my mom. But there were several obstacles to that. One being Yesung’s mom; two being that Mr. Ahjusshi came and swung my mom off her feet and to the altar, forever destroying my dream. And, of course how could I forget, the biggest reason why my wish would never work out was because of Yesung. I hated him back then (and now), and would never in a million years want to be his sibling. So from then on, I always admired Yesung’s dad from afar. Unfortunately—I glared at Yesung with a frown on my face—his son was nothing like that. And I got stuck with him. I sighed. Why do I always get the short end of the stick?

“I see you two are getting along well.” Yesung’s mom spoke up this time.

“Yes, we want to be grandparents now. Hurry along.” Mr. Ahjusshi spoke again, grinning at me. I just glared at him again. The ert, always asking about kids, and what not.

“I hate kids.” I said outright with a creepy smile on my face.

“Ha. Ha.” Yesung fake laughed and put an arm around my shoulders, squeezing it a bit too hard. “What she means is that she is afraid that if we do have kids, we won’t have enough time for ‘us’.”

“Well, you never know,” Mr. Ahjusshi smiled at me. “I believe that it is always a joy to have young ones—”

“Yah, Mr. Ahjusshi. Can you not, especially at the dinner table.” I told him.

“M-Mr. A-ah-ahjusshi?” The old man’s smile wavered a bit. “I’m sorry, what?” My mom gave me a sharp glance, with a look that was too lethal for words. Yesung looked at me and frowned, then went back to look at the menu. So much for backup.

“I mean we’re about to eat and I don’t like this subject. At all.” I said a little firm.

“Y-yes, I understand.” He said solemnly and exchanged a worried glance with my mother, before looking back at me. “It’s just that you haven’t called me that for a while, you usually just call me ‘aboenim’, or ‘sajangnim’.” 

I looked at him confused. I’d never called my step dad anything but ahjusshi. “How long have I called you that?” I asked him.

“3 months, 2 weeks, 1 day, 12 hours.” He said looking a little sad. I gave him a weird look. So did Yesung. I mean who remembers the exact time.

“Right,” I coughed at the same time Yesung nudged me. “Sajangnim!” I exclaimed a little too excitedly. “So….”

Thank god that the waiter had come at that time to take our orders. Apparently, this was his fifth time asking our parents, since Yesung and I had come so late. This time our parents put in their orders, as did Yesung and I. I was really thankful for the waiter’s distraction because it eased up the awkward tension that was building at our table. When the waiter left, we began to talk about lighter topics, like the weather and sports. Yesung and Mr. Ahjusshi both loved basketball, so they discussed that. While Yesung’s mom and dad teased me about some stupid things I did when I was younger. My mom would always pitch in here and there, giving her input. When the food finally arrived, I was more than thankful, because I was so hungry. I saw Yesung also digging in, and could tell he felt the same.

“’Whoa, slow down. You don’t want to get indigestion.” Yesung’s father chuckled.

“It’s okay, honey.” Yesung’s mother, Mrs. Kim, smiled at me. “Eunmin might be eating for two here. We don’t know.” I choked on my food. Without looking up from his plate, Yesung patted my back with his left hand. Except he patted too hard. I wasn’t even sure he was trying to even save me. I nudged his hand away, and just gulped down my drink, which was a fusion of wine and some fruit.

“Careful honey,” my mom frowned at me, “You don’t want to get drunk. These drinks have alcohol in it.” She then began to demonstrate by drinking her red wine. I frowned at her. Parents. They just never understand, nor do they make sense.

“So, you must all be wondering why we are all gathered here.” Mr. Ahjusshi spoke. “Actually, I have a reason for gathering you ‘youngers’ here today.” He continued. I cringed at his usage of words.

Yesung’s dad, Mr. Kim, nodded. “Yes, we have some business to discuss.” At his tone, we looked up. He had caught Yesung and my attention. We were both curious to see why exactly he had called us out for dinner. Maybe it would answer some of our questions.

“What do you mean?” I asked cautiously.

“Well,” Yesung’s father smiled, “You both know what is entailed when you two got married.”

“We do?” This time Yesung asked cautiously. Confusion swirled in his eyes, and I’m pretty sure in mine as well, because boy was I confused.

Mr. Ahjusshi chuckled. “Yes. You got the house as your wedding present. Which I suppose wasn’t a bad thing considering how quick you guys tied the knot.” He chuckled some more.

Mrs. Kim smiled at us as well, before reaching out to touch Yesung’s hand lightly. “Your grandmother would have been so proud of you, Yesung ah.”

“House?” Yesung croaked, or at least it sounded like it. In fact, I’m pretty sure he did.

“Yes. It was always yours. A part of your inheritance from your grandmother. Of course, the only condition was that you had to marry.” Mrs. Kim continued.

“Marry…?” I said slowly, but more of as a question.

“And marry he did.” She beamed at me. I could tell she was genuinely happy for us. It almost made me guilty for wishing her husband to be married to my mom. Almost.

“Yes.” Mr. Kim nodded. “You kids have always that house. You even named it ‘Summer Vine’ Estate.”

Yes, well now these kids were very confused as to where this conversation was headed. Although some things were starting to slowly make sense. The house, for one thing. It made sense now why it was so familiar. I turned to look at Yesung as he did the same. Realization slowly dawned on us. We had spent a few summers, his and my family, in that house. Because there were grape vines around it, we decided to call it Summer Vine, after much deliberation—actually more like after much arguing. Nevertheless, it was a beautiful house filled with lots of art, beauty, and mystery. It was located just right outside the city, to provide privacy and peace. And now that house was apparently in our names. Simple because we unknowingly got married to each other.

Yesung cleared his throat. “You called us here to talk about the house?”

“Ha ha, of course not.” Mr. Ahjusshi said. “Actually, we asked you out for dinner to talk about business.”

“Yes, we have both signed a deal with Standard Motors and Engineering. They are located in Sweden but also have offshore business here in South Korea. As of right now, we both have 20% of shares within the company, with dividend earnings based upon each fiscal year.” Yesung’s father further explained.

“But what does that have to do with us?” Yesung asked.

“Son, now that you have started a family and we have seen you become more responsible these past few months, we have decided to hand over the reins of our company to you, for you to lead. Naturally, since you are my only son, you will be my inheritor. You will also have shares within Mr. Lee’s company.” Mr. Kim nodded toward Mr. Ahjusshi, “He has kindly offered you a directorial position. Since we have a joint venture, it seemed for the best. Eunmin can be a financial consultant. Since she has no interest in this field, she only has to do a few hours of work a week. It’s not bad really.” He smiled gently towards me. Le sigh. The smile that could melt hearts, yet failed to seduce my mother. He continued on, “It has to do with money. And I know you’re very good with finances and calculation. It may help you in your tenure.”

“Yeah,” I said dreamily. He would have made a good father. Too bad my wish got messed up and he ended up as father-in-law. Seriously. They always say ‘be careful what you wish for’.

“Well think about it honey,” My mom, the quiet one, finally spoke. “It may open up a lot of opportunity for you.”

“Yes, let us know if you do decide. However, today we are here to come up with a contract.” Mr. Ahjusshi said.

“A contract?” I asked.

“Yes, your 100^th day celebration was a week ago. And since you two have kept your promise as blissful newlyweds, it’s time we talked about our deal.” He answered.

“Deal?” Yesung and I asked at the same time.

Mrs. Kim and my mom both chuckled. “Don’t tell me you’ve both forgotten?” Mrs. Kim asked with a twinkle in her eye.

“Yes, the deal about the inheritance.”

“Inheritance?” We asked at the same time, once again confused.

Mr. Kim noticed the confusion. “The deal we made that the two of you would receive 3 billion won or approximately $2.5 million dollars in assets, shares, and other financial gains if the two of you got married.”

“Including the land.” Mr. Ahjusshi said.

Yesung and I looked at each other, both of us thinking the same thing, as another clue to the ever growing puzzle fit in.