Tayoung!” Lauren called to the girl who'd just gotten out of her pottery club as she ran down the street.

She jerked to a stop next to her, panting hard since she'd run all the way from the locker room with her heavy backpack once she saw the time.

“Late as usual,” Tayoung huffed slightly but Lauren could tell she was only feigning being irritated. Though for many others it was hard to read the girl's chic expressions.

Lauren popped her head up and smiled like a puppy—the smile that always got her appa away with things her Key umma didn't like. It worked on Tayoung too it seemed. She smiled and grabbed Lauren's sweater.

“Come on, let's go. Appa's dying to see you and won't stop texting me.” She showed Lauren her phone that had big letters in all caps over and over 'ARE YOU HERE YET?'

“Childish as ever,” Lauren chuckled.

“My appas never grow up really. It drives me insane sometimes.” She shook her head and put it away.

“I totally understand. You know how my umma and appa get. Sometimes I swear they're stuck as teenagers.”

“Just wait until the next potluck. Then all five of them will be together and the four of us will suffer.”

“It's not so bad. I always have a lot of laughs at our family potlucks.”

“Why are we called a family anyway? We're not even related,” Tayoung wondered.

“Family doesn't have to be blood. You can make your own with people you cherish and sometimes it's even closer than blood-relatives,” Lauren shrugged, speaking rather mature words.

Then her phone started ringing and she answered it as they kept walking. They'd walk to Tayoung's house since hers wasn't far from their school.

“Yo, whad up Kyung?” she said in a gangster way as was a private joke with her and Kyungsan.

“Nothing hommie L. Whad up wit you? Why you go and bounce on me like dat?” he replied in this hilarious deep mimicry of an African American rapper.

She laughed and went back to her normal voice and Korean as she replied, “I left to meet up with Tayoung. We’re going to go visit Mir and Joon.”

“Oh...” he seemed really disappointed and the way his pout translated through his voice alone was cute. “I wanted to get a burger with you.”

“Why are the both of you being so nice today? Tomorrow, I'll get a milkshake with Yoogeun and then Wednesday, I'll get a burger with you, okay? Or we could just all do it together tomorrow.”

“Yoogeun won't pay for two of us and I'm not paying for some stingy old scrooge who never treats his dongsaeng,” he grumbled.

“You guys pick on each other so much I doubt you're even friends sometimes,” she observed.

“No, that's just how boys are when they're friends,” he explained.

“Okay, whatever you say. It doesn't seem very healthy to me.”

“Hmm, maybe you're right...” he seemed to pause and be pondering something as for several seconds there was no sound from the other line.

“Well, I've got to go. We're almost there.”

“Okay, have fun! See you later!” he called brightly, snapping out of his weird funk finally she assumed.

She wasn't concerned though since he often did things like that. Kyungsan was sweet and intelligent but he was a bit of an oddball.

“See you!” She clicked the end touch screen button and pocketed her phone.

“Kyungsan?” Tayoung asked knowingly.

“Yup.”

“He calls you a lot...” she observed.

Lauren shrugged as she reached up to tighten her ponytail. “He likes to talk and we're best friends. I don’t find anything weird with that.”

“Well, I think that guys only call girls they're interested in that much....” she started slowly.

Lauren sighed and put her hands at her hips in another habit picked up from her umma. “Tayoung, we've been through this before. Neither Kyungsan nor Yoogeun like me. We're just friends. It would be weird...I think Kyungsan has something going on with one of the girls in his class too.”

“Really? Well, Yoogeun...”

“Yoogeun is weird. I don't think he likes girls.”

Tayoung sputtered in shock. “Wait...You think he's gay?”

“It's possible. Kyungsan hinted he was and he's always with his baseball buddies. I've never seen him talk about a girl or even take a second look. Isn't it kind of suspicious?”

“Lauren, I don't think that's likely...It could be just that he's liked one girl all this time and just hasn't said anything.”

“Hmm...Maybe.”

Lauren pursed her lips, thinking of who that could be. She never gave a second thought that it could be that way with her. They were close like family--she was sure he thought of her as more of an older sister. She was hooked on the idea of what kind of guy he might be attracted to now. Maybe Mason since they sat next to each other and joked around a lot. Mason was a model, very tall, very handsome, very traditionally Korean and very similar to Yoogeun.

“Hmm. They'd be kind of a cute couple...”

“Who?” Tayoung asked curiously. “You were talking to yourself again.”

“Oh, nobody,” she replied with a secretive smile.

They had come up on this yellow and white two-story house with a white fence around it. When they went through the gate, they were assaulted by three puppies of different sizes and colors all named after manga characters. They walked in through the wide, white front door that was unlocked and stepped into the hallway. They slipped off their shoes and went up the gray-carpeted steps to Tayoung's bedroom.

Tayoung's bedroom was small with a low, perfectly made single bed, a shelf full of hand-crafted pottery, a bookshelf full to the brim with well-cared for and loved books on art and philosophy, and a very soft, white rug that felt like sheep fur. They set their bags on her bed and were just about to sit on the floor when the door was flung open.

“Lauren~!” this small bear of a man with a full beard on his smiling baby face jumped in. He hugged her tight, squeezing the air from her chest.

“Hi, Uncle Mir. Nice to see you too.” She gave him a warm hug back.

“Tayoungie~!” he sang and reached for her.

She stopped him dead with a cold, blank look. He smiled softly and patted her head. She smiled a bit crookedly then with warmth, revealing that she actually had a good relationship with her adopted father than she usually suggested.

“Do you guys want something to eat or drink? Joon can make it since he just got back.”

“Beef!” both girls said eagerly.

Uncle Joon's beef was really great. That's all he liked to eat so he'd naturally gotten good at it over the years. Mir had some horror stories of when the famous actor couldn't cook though. Mir was a professional manga reader and animation voice actor and so there were manga books and movie and anime pariphernalie around the house plus a ton of pictures of Joon, his handsome, manly husband.

Lauren noticed this for some reason as they went down to say hello to him. The tall, black-haired man was starting the barbeque. The caramel-blonde Mir—built slightly tubby in a cute way where his husband was tall, lean and muscular—was pulling out plates of meat from the fridge. Lauren and Tayoung grabbed the plates from him and went outside.

“Hey girls, have a good day at school?” Joon asked friendly-like, looking up at them with a charming smile that pushed dimples into his chiseled, fox-like face.

“It was fine,” Tayoung answered coolly.

“It was great!” Lauren answered in a peppy way, flashing a bright smile.

“Same answer as always from our ice princess and bubblegum princess,” he joked as he took the plates from their hands.

After he set the meat on the edge of the barbeque and fed the fire, he gave Lauren a warm hug. He kept his arm over her shoulders and she felt really comfortable with it. Joon was like a friend now though she hadn’t used to like him too much because he was kind of noisy. Well, the both of them were noisy, annoying, hardly ever serious but also very funny and friendly. They were friends of her umma and appa way before they'd even met each other and she knew the pair had gotten together because of her umma's matchmaking.

“So, how are your troublemaker umma and appa, Lauren?” Joon asked, looking down at her from the side.

She grabbed a pair of tongs and helped him put the square pieces on the grill while Tayoung went to help Mir get vegetables and prepare rice.

“Well, appa is excited about starting a new album that he’s personally producing and umma has been kind of depressed and lonely lately but things are getting better.”

“Hmm...seems pretty normal. They go through slumps but you know they love each other like crazy, so don't worry about it. Tell your appa to take your umma on a vacation. Sometimes, he's a clueless pabo.”

“Yeah maybe you’re right. I think that would be good for both of them. You describe them pretty well: umma's a diva and appa's a pabo.”

“It's amazing how none of us have changed really through all these years.”

“You guys must have had a lot of fun when you were younger. I like hearing the stories.”

“Well, I'm sure you’ll hear lots more at the potluck, probably something that will embarrass your umma,” he chuckled.

“Hopefully we can get through the whole thing without him walking out. Appa had to sleep on the couch for a week after last time.”

“Gosh. I love those two, honestly, but I hope you have a better relationship. Any boys I need to beat up or interrogate yet?”

“No, as always,” she answered, echoing words said to him tens of times now.
 

“Good. If you don't date, then I don't have to worry about Tayoung yet.” He seemed relieved.

She smiled secretively, thinking that that wasn’t necessarily true—not as long as she could help it.

“Are you talking about my future marriage with Lauren?” Mir yelled from the open sliding-glass door.

Joon smiled at him from the window. Mir blushed, shooting a puppy smile back at him.

“Don't you know you're already stuck with me, chagi? I would think you'd have grown to love me by know,” he complained.

“I love you, yobeo~” Mir sang apologetically.

Joon chuckled with a small smile and let Lauren go. She stayed and helped him though as they chatted about his next movie. They ate diner together, laughing a lot at Mir and Joon's crazy antics, especially when they played the multiplication tables game and Lauren and Tayoung proved themselves to be smarter. They ended up not having to do any of the dishes. They went back to Tayoung's room and sat on her floor, pulling out a folding table to do work on. Lauren only had a sketchbook but Tayoung had books upon books of work on the table.

“So....I think I have a plan,” Lauren started with a mischievous smile.

“Oh, I thought you were here to work on homework.”

“We have more important things to do. Valentine’s Day is next Friday, after all.”

Tayoung blushed but seemed a bit interested. “Did you think of something?”

“Yeah....I thought of a few things after I talked to Yoogeun about Leo.”

“Uh, you asked him? What if he tells Leo something?” Tayoung exclaimed in distress, dropping her head on her arms wrapped around her knees, her books being ignored for the first time and probably weeping silently.

“I was totally inconspicuous. He doesn’t suspect a thing,” she reassured.

Lauren explained what she'd learned and Tayoung added her knowledge and they constructed confession plans. The scenarios were all drown out with cute, animated figures on a sketchbook and then they chose the one they thought could work best. Tayoung seemed confident and excited afterwords as they relaxed against the bed.

She was finally going to be able to say how she felt about Leo after all these years and there wa