“Seunggwan?”

There was a light tapping at Seunggwan's bedroom door, but no answer. On the other side, Jinki was trying her best to juggle a tray with one arm, while the other attempted to turn the bedroom doorknob. Once the door was open, she slowly peered her head in, only to see a heap of tousled chocolate brown hair peeking from underneath a navy blue blanket. The corners of tugged into a slight smile as she walked into the room, careful not to wake the slumbering boy. Nothing but the sound of humming came from the humidifier as she tiptoed quietly to his lamp table to set the tray of his medicine down.

Seunggwan stirred in his sleep, pulling the blanket away from his face, and squinting up at the second company in the room, “Mom?”

“No, it's me,” Jinki sat down at the edge of his bed, tucking her elbows into her sides, seeming afraid to touch anything, “Just Jinki,”

Jinki had run into Mrs. Bu on his fronts steps just as she was about to knock on the door. Judging by the light pink scrubs she was wearing, she was heading off to work for half a day, and was overjoyed when she saw the little girl waiting by the bottom step. It was then when Mrs. Bu had asked Jinki to stay and watch over Seunggwan for a little while until she got back home that evening; which Jinki had no choice to accept because she couldn't say no to that generous smile. So it was then that Jinki was entrusted with the keys to the house, and given a list of instructions to follow. And it just so happened that in about ten minutes, Jinki had to wake up the sleeping boy for his next dose of medicine.

“'Just Jinki'”, Seunggwan managed to chuckle through a cough, turning around so that he could get a better look at the young girl, “I'm sure you're more than 'Just Jinki' to Chan,”

Biting her bottom lip slightly, Jinki rolled her eyes at the sick boy and reached over to grab his bottle of medicine. When Seunggwan noticed what she was holding in her hands, he immediately covered his mouth with his arm, furiously shaking his head with every ounce of energy he could muster up. Jinki stifled back a giggle; she could totally understand why he refused to drink it. Just by the aroma alone, she could tell that it was one of those organic medicines that Dr. Montgomery, her private doctor, would prescribe to her whenever she was ill. The concoction smelled something of earthy herbs mixed in with a variety of strong berries for flavor. She poured the correct measurement into the little cup, and held it out to the grumpy faced Seunggwan.

“Come on, Seunggwan,” Jinki clicked her tongue, “If you don't drink this, you won't get better,”

But unlike with his mom, Seunggwan opened his mouth without any hesitation. Like before, he washed the foul taste away with a big gulp of water, and laid back against the headboard to look at Jinki. Her eyes were glued to the piece of paper his mom had given her, checking what she had to do next – his next dose was going to be in two hours. When she was done, she looked up at Seunggwan, and quickly looked away when she saw him staring at her. A light blush formed on her cheeks, but she ignored it and got up quickly, hands rubbing her sides, “Um, would you mind if I did my homework here or...?”

“You're so uptight, Jinki,” Seunggwan commented after he pointed out that it was only Friday, “Why don't you just relax? My mom asked you to keep me company, and I'll tell on you if you do your homework because that's not doing what she asked,”

“Alright, alright,” Jinki agreed, sitting back down on his bed. Seunggwan wondered why she wasn't afraid to sit near him considering that he was sick and contagious. Te look on his face must have given it away when she answered, “I don't get sick often, so don't worry,”

Clearing his throat, Seunggwan sunk down underneath his covers and propped his head up with pillows so he could still see Jinki even if he was lying down. He watched her observe his bedroom with curiosity in her eyes; she reminded him of his mom earlier that morning when Mrs. Bu was doing the same thing. Looking at Seunggwan, she wordlessly asked him permission to pick up one of the books that were sitting on his shelf. It was a tattered chocolate brown photo album with cracks running down the spine. She was almost afraid to hold it in her hands for fear of breaking it. The pages were slightly yellowed from age, and crisp from slight water damage. In the back of her mind, she wondered why someone like Seunggwan – a 21^st century teenage boy – collected albums. Usually it was considered a mom hobby, so it was weird for her.

“Wow, are these all pictures of you?” Jinki breathlessly asked, turning page after page, marveling at the pictures of a short, pudgy faced boy that looked barely anything like Seunggwan did now. From his bed, Seunggwan muttered a small, “Yep,”

One thing she realized that a majority of the pictures were taken outdoors, with fresh green grass evident in every single picture. It was a mystery to her as to what the clean open air was since as far as she could remember, she had always been reeled into the bustling world of industrialization. She then remembered that Seunggwan once mentioned to her that he was originally form Jeju, and only a few years ago did he actually move to Seoul. One picture that had caught her eye was one with a bright red jacket. No, it wasn't Seunggwan that was wearing it, but a girl that looked very similar to the one in the picture she saw downstairs.

Her hair was thin and pulled into two high pigtails, cheeks rosy from the chilly winter air. The ground was covered in snow that went about knee-deep for small children, and smack dab in the middle of the field was a snowman. Seunggwan and the girl both had their hands on the body as they packed more snow onto the body. Seeing how happy the two kids were, Jinki couldn't help but smile as well, placing the book back in it's original position. She made her way back to Seunggwan's bed, and noticed that his eyes were already half closed; the medicine must have been taking effect.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Seunggwan softly asked when he saw the way she was smiling, her dimples evident on both sides of her face.

Jinki shook her head as she giggled, “As nice as those pictures were, I didn't find any good ones to use as blackmail against you,”

Tsking, Seunggwan motioned for Jinki to come closer, and she did. As she leaned in, Seunggwan closed his eyes contently, looking as if his mind were in complete ease, “You know Jinki, you haven't changed one bit,”

Her eyebrows raised a the odd compliment, and she was considering asking what he meant by that, until he started lightly snoring. Jinki blinked her eyes confusedly and thought, “What does he mean by that?”

“Wait, so let me get this straight,” Daejae climbed up the high stool in the Jin kitchen with a chocolate fudgesicle in one hand, and a cherry one in the other, “Even with all this grand space, you're not going to use it to hold a Christmas party?”

Across the island, Jinki bit off the tip of her orange popsicle she was eating, and shook her head. Ever since she moved back to Korea from America, not once did her family ever hold a Christmas party. To be honest, she couldn't the last time the Jins even decorated from Christmas. The last Christmas the had actually spent together was last year when her parents came back to stay with her through her first year of high school. Of course, they only stayed for the first two months before they were gone again. Her parents, although they worked for Microsoft Korea, often spent their time in the American headquarters to get most of their work done.

“But imagine how cool your party would be!” Daejae alternated between the popsicles she was eating to get 'an amazing combination of flavors' as she liked to call it, “Everyone would be talking about it for like the next decade or so!”

“Admit it, Daejae. You only want me to hold a party here because it'll be an opportunity for you to see Mingming,” Jinki teased the younger girl, who was now on a rampage rant about how untrue that was.

With full of flavored ice, Daejae continued to talk with full, “And besides, even if it were the reason, then it's a good reason because there is a lack of Mingming in my life! He's not coming over as often anymore! It's been like...two, even three weeks since I last saw the guy!”

Which wasn't entirely true. Dongjin would often bring Mingming into the household (with Jinki's permission of course) so they could practice for lacrosse together. Mingming was the better player on the team, and if anything, Dongjin really needed the help. The most sports he'd ever done was handball in middle school – and even then he wasn't very good. Most of the time Jinki would only get to see Mingming when he was leaving because she often came home later due to school activities (or hanging out with Seunggwan, but she wasn't going to admit that to anyone any time soon). Daejae on the other hand, was usually napping on the couch whenever Mingming was over, and would only wake up late into the evening, only to find out that Mingming was gone and she still had piles of homework to do. So really, it was her own fault that she hadn't seen her crush in a long while.

“Jinki, Daejae? Are you here? I'm home!” The heard Dongjin's voice echo from the main entrance, “And Mingming's here with me so if y'all aren't decent, then...”

“Nah, we're good! We're in the kitchen if you need us,” Jinki yelled back before turning to Daejae and whispering, “Well isn't today your lucky day, Mingming's Number One Fan,”

The boys met up with them in the kitchen, and the first thing they eyed were the popsicles the two were eating. Ever since he moved in with Jinki, Dongjin hadn't seen any trace of junk food hidden in the cabinets let alone out in the open in the fridge. Jinki explained that she had asked Taehyun, a part time helper around the house, to buy them for her and with the spending money he was allotted, he had bought one of each kind, and one of each flavor. Dongjin immediately sprinted for the freezer and grabbed himself a firecracker, tossing one to Mingming as well. Jinki noticed that the boys were still in their lacrosse uniforms which gave her mixed feelings. For one, that means they didn't bother changing out of their sweaty clothes, and for two, Mingming looked really good in his. It was a simple navy blue uniform with a vector design, but on him, he looked great. Compared to Dongjin at least. Dongjin looked...well...Dongjin.

“Did you hear? Chan and Hansol's team lost last week,” Mingming pulled the wrapper off the sticky popsicle, and threw it in the trash can, “And get this, they lost to Hanyang Preparatory,”

Jinki almost choked on the water she was drinking at the mention of Hanyang Prep's name. Hanyang's gaming team was considered to be the worst in the division, and as far as she could remember, Kyung Rim had never lost a game to them in the past fifteen years. Also, why was she just hearing of this now? Why didn't Chan even mention it to her when she had asked about it in school? All he had said was, “It was good,” And now she's hearing from Mingming, the guy who was always one step behind everyone in terms of school news (no offense), what had happened. Dongjin was shaking his head disapprovingly; he too had his fair share of tournaments against Hanyang, and they were indeed the worst school in any activity.

“Do you happen to know what the score was?” Jinki said once she was out of her trance.

Mingming shook his head, “Nope, sorry. Junhui told me that everyone on the team was too embarrassed to even speak of it again. All he said that Chan was totally off his game that day. Apparently he made a lot of careless mistakes that only rookies would make,”

Jinki brought her eyes down to the marbletop and pursed her lips. She thought back to their 'date' and how disappointed he seemed when he had left to aid Hansol. Shaking it off, she didn't bother mentioning it to the others because she didn't want the situation to get any bigger. She might as well keep it between Chan and her, and ask him about it the next time she saw him at school. About half an hour later of conversing about school and whatnot, Jinki excused herself from the gathering and headed up to her room to start on homework. She had procrastinated a lot of her assignments already and she figured it was about time to start catching up if she wanted to stay alive in school.

Her homework playlist was about to replay for the second time that evening when she heard Daejae yelling for Jinki to come down and say 'goodbye' to Mingming. Pulling her earbuds out, she quickly closed her English workbook and ran downstairs, pulling Mingming into a big hug before saying goodbye. Dongjin and Daejae retreated not too long after that, leaving the two to themselves at the front door. Jinki closed the door behind her and stepped out onto the porch with Mingming. Around her, she could see the neighbors had already set up their lights and other Christmas themed standees. Mingming slid his hands into his pockets, and smiled at her “Your little cousin, Daejae...she's really sweet,”

“Well, she does like you a lot so,” Jinki reminded him, making the older one laugh, “Anyway, I'll tell her you said that. She'll totally freak,”

Mingming nodded, and waved goodbye, sticking his thumb over his shoulder to signal that he was going to go now. But it wasn't long before he turned back around, hand rubbing his neck shyly, “Ah Jinki, I almost forgot. Um, I know that it's still kind of far from now, but my extended family from China will be coming to visit me and we have this family gathering---”

“I get it,” Jinki cut him off, stopping him from stumbling over his words any more. He sounded completely unsure of how to put it, so she might as well put an end to his suffering, “You want to ask me to be your partner because of some grandmother reason, correct?”

He nodded. Opening the door behind her, Jinki returned the gesture and smiled, “Sure, I'll go with you. Only, you're going to have to warn me about the family things I'm going to be encountering otherwise I'll walk out of that gathering on you,”

“Those are pretty harsh conditions,” Mingming pouted, acting like he was hurt, which only amused her more, “But you've got yourself a deal,”

“Hey Jinki, can you help me with something?” Daejae barged into Jinki's room without any warning with her math workbook in hand.

Jinki jumped in her seat, dropping the pen she was using to hand-write her essay with. This was the third time that night that Daejae did that, and each time she had requested that Daejae would at least knock before she entered. Pulling her earbuds out, Jinki motioned for Daejae to come over and grabbed the math textbook from her hands, staring down at the problems that Daejae had circled. She rolled her eyes when she noticed that a majority of the pages had giant circles for sections of problems. See, Jinki didn't mind helping Daejae with her homework, but she hated it when she would explain the material once, and five minutes later, Daejae would come back with the same problem only on a different question. It seemed like what Daejae wanted were answers, not explanations.

While Jinki worked on the answers on a different sheet of paper, Daejae hopped onto Jinki's bed, and grabbed the older girl's phone. Lately, Daejae had been obsessed with this new Android game/puzzle, 2048, that Jinki had managed to beat on her first try (and the next ten times after). After entering Jinki's password, the message box popped up on the screen. If Daejae hadn't read the contact name, she would have just exited from the box – except the contact was much more interesting than some game. It was Seunggwan.

Waving Jinki's phone in the air with the message open, Daejae sang in the most obnoxious sing-song voice she could make, “Seunggwan wants to know if you want to hang out this Saturday!”

Jinki's writing immediately stopped, and in a heartbeat she grabbed at the phone, “Daejae, give that to me!”

“I'm going to say 'yes',” Daejae continued to annoy her, now jumping on the bed to make Jinki's life harder, “And them I'm going to send it to him!”

“Give it!”

“What if I text him, 'Seunggwan, I know this might seem sudden but I really like you,'?”

“Daejae, don't you dare!”

“You didn't deny it!”

“I--- just give it to me!”