The next morning, I caught my usual bus to the wealthier, ritzier side of town. I clutched the piece of scrap paper with Jonghyun’s address tightly in my hand when I got off at the correct stop, but I had no idea how to go about locating the Kims’ house.

In the end, after wandering around the unfamiliar neighborhood for a quarter of an hour, I stepped inside a cozy little corner market to ask for directions. The elderly woman behind the counter helpfully told me how to get to the appropriate street, but when I asked her which house belonged to the Kims, she only laughed and turned her back on me.

I discovered why as soon as I located the correct address. There was only one house on the entire street, if you could even call that monstrosity a house. It was more like a hotel or a palace, built in an Italian style – all colonnades and piazzas, domes and pilasters. It was spread across several acres of perfectly-tended land. The entire estate was surrounded by a state-of-the-art security fence, complete with security cameras placed at regular intervals.

I stood at the gate in awe for several minutes, gaping up at the house. I had never seen such a big building before; it was impossible for me to imagine someone actually living there. Finally I gave myself a shake to rid myself of such thoughts – I wasn’t typically an ogler – and I pressed the button on the call box.

The intercom beside the gate buzzed into life. “Can I help you?” a nasally, masculine voice asked. The person it belonged to didn’t sound at all happy to be speaking with me. Like boss, like employee, I guess.

“Um, I’m here to see Kim Jonghyun-ssi,” I muttered, holding down the talk button.

“This is a private residence,” the snooty voice replied without hesitation. “Please vacate the premises immediately before security is called.”

I glared at the box, affronted, and then pressed the call button again. “I’m here to see Kim Jonghyun-ssi,” I repeated, more firmly this time and with a hint of impatience. “He’s expecting me.”

“Allow me to verify,” the voice said, and he sounded even more annoyed. There was a very long pause, presumably while the man made sure Jonghyun was actually expecting a visitor, and then the intercom crackled into life again. “You’re late,” he said simply before the gate beeped and slowly swung open.

The house was situated nearly a mile back from the front gate, down a long drive of imported yellow gravel. Shouldering my school bag, I began the long trek towards the house.

There was a uniformed butler waiting at the front door for me, looking down his rather large nose. I’m pretty sure his suit cost more than my entire wardrobe, but I was too out of breath from practically sprinting up the drive to say anything. He took in my disheveled appearance with a look that spoke volumes, but thankfully he didn’t comment verbally.

“Follow me, please,” he said, and I was at least pleased to discover that this wasn’t the same person who had spoken to me so disrespectfully over the intercom. Just how many servants did it take to run a household this large?

I couldn’t help myself from looking around as I followed the butler into the entrance hall. I was both entranced and disgusted by the sinful decadence of the Kims’ house. The floors were imported marble, the walls white and warm and hung with expensively-framed paintings of boring subjects like bowls of fruit and flowers. Three sets of French doors, framed by heavy brocade curtains, led out onto a stone patio where a fountain bubbled merrily. The butler led me past these doors and up a curving grand staircase that led to the second floor.

I followed him down so many hallways and around so many corners that I wouldn’t have been able to find my way out even if I’d tried. So I simply kept my mouth shut and forced my feet onward, my sneakers sounding heavy against the polished wooden floor.

The butler finally stopped in front of a set of impressive oak doors, where an intercom had been cleverly hidden within the wood paneling of the wall. The butler held down the call button and said, “Young Master, your guest has arrived.” Though his emphasis on the word guest was slight, it was enough that I could tell just what he thought of me.

There was a long pause, so long that I was beginning to think the intercom wasn’t working – or that Jonghyun was simply ignoring us – but then one of the doors opened. My project partner stood there, leaning against the doorframe with one arm raised above his head, his eyes raking me up and down lazily with obvious distaste. I was probably the poorest, dirtiest thing to ever set foot in his mansion, after all.

He sighed and simply gestured for me to follow him through the doors. The butler bowed respectfully to Jonghyun and disappeared as I stepped across the threshold and the door shut with a frightening sort of finality.

I found myself in an ultra-modern sitting room of sorts, all chrome and glass and uncomfortable-looking furniture. One entire wall was nothing but floor-to-ceiling window, giving a spectacular view of the swimming pool and elegant pond behind the house. Another of the four walls was taken over by a giant television screen and extensive media system. The room made me feel like I was stepping into the future, and I didn’t particularly like the way my faded jeans with the holes ripped in both knees contrasted to the crisp modernity of the room.

“Sit down,” Jonghyun ordered carelessly, throwing himself nonchalantly into a square-shaped armchair, propping his bare feet up on the glass and chrome coffee table.

I shrugged out of my messenger bag and sank down cautiously on the sofa, which was also strangely square-shaped. I was used to furniture having soft edges, not sharp ones.

“I guess we should get started on the project,” I murmured when it became obvious that Jonghyun would be content to just sit there and glare at me all afternoon. I pulled out my notebook and a pen. I’d even scribbled down a list of basic questions to start off with, hoping that I could expound on the answers he gave me to flesh out my dossier. “Name?”

He snorted derisively at me. “Like you don’t already know it.”

“Humor me,” I replied sharply.

Jonghyun rolled his eyes but said, “Kim Jonghyun.”

I scribbled the name down on my blank notebook paper even though I did, obviously, know his name. Everyone knew his name. “Okay then, when is your birthday?”

“April 8^th,” he intoned flatly, chin resting in his open palm. I’d only asked him two questions so far and already he looked like he was going to die of boredom.

I went down my list of boring, stereotypical questions: what was his favorite color, his favorite subject in school, his pets, his best friends, his favorite movie, etc. When I had exhausted my list and he looked completely fed up with answering questions about himself, I decided to switch it up and tell him a few things about myself.

“Well, my full name is Song Narae,” I said, chewing on my pen top thoughtfully. “My birthday is March 3^rd. My favorite color is blue and I really enjoy English class at school…Shouldn’t you be writing down my answers?”

He shrugged indifferently; he didn’t even have a writing utensil with him.

“Whatever,” I grumbled. “It’s your grade on the line, not mine. I don’t care if you graduate or not.”

At that, Jonghyun finally seemed to rethink his decision to not take this seriously, so he grabbed a notepad and frantically scribbled down everything I had told him.

“Tell me about your family,” he ordered when he had finished writing, giving his hand a small shake to alleviate the cramps.

I grimaced. I wasn’t particularly fond of my biological family, and I was sure that someone like Kim Jonghyun couldn’t possibly understand my ed-up sort of family anyway. It was a subject I wanted to avoid, but, in an invasive project like this, I guess I had no choice but to talk about it. “Well, my dad works a lot so he’s not home often.” That seemed safe enough. “And my mother is…gone. I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”

“Gone where?” he asked, and for the first time I saw something akin to curiosity in his dark eyes.

“I’d rather not say,” I said stiffly. “What about your family?”

He leaned back in the square-shaped armchair, shrugging. “Surprisingly similar to yours, actually. My father is gone often on business, so I don’t see him much. He travels a lot. And my mother is gone as well, also no siblings.”

“Gone where?” I repeated his earlier question.

He smirked at me. “I’d rather not say.”

I couldn’t hold back a small chuckle at that. Trust Jonghyun to throw my own words back at me. Maybe he was a bit cleverer than I gave him credit for. I tapped my pen against my notebook thoughtfully. “Okay, when you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?”

He gave me a blank, rather confused look. “What do you mean, what did I want to be when I was a kid? I’m going to inherit my father’s company.” He said it like it was the most obvious thing to the world.

“I didn’t ask what you were going to be, but what you wanted to be,” I corrected him. “There’s a big difference.”

He furrowed his brow like my question legitimately confused him, like he couldn’t understand the distinction between the two. “I want to take over my father’s company,” he finally said.

I scoffed at him. “No little kid wants to be the CEO of a company,” I informed him. “They have wild, fantastical drams, like being an astronaut or an acrobat or maybe even president of the country.”

“What did you want to be when you were a kid?” he surprised me by asking, with the most genuine sincerity I had yet seen from him.

I was taken back by the openness with which he stared at me, so I answered honestly without thinking. “When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a ballerina and perform in front of millions of people.”

“And why didn’t you go after that dream?” He was leaning forward now, eyeing me with something that seemed strangely like real curiosity.

I shrugged, playing with my pen in embarrassment. “We couldn’t afford dance classes and I wasn’t really any good anyway. I’m not very graceful and I have no rhythm.”

“What do you want to be now?” he asked next. “You said that you wanted to be a ballerina when you were a kid, but what is your dream now?”

I pursed my lips thoughtfully. It was risky confiding my goals to him – for all I knew, he would go and blab to all the other popular kids at school and they would only have more fuel to tease me with – but in the end I gave in for the sake of the project. “Well, my dream now is to become a doctor. A thoracic surgeon, actually. I want to operate on people’s hearts.”

“Why aren’t you working towards that goal?” he pressed.

I arched my eyebrows at him. “I am. I’ve got a full scholarship to one of the most prestigious schools in the country. If I can graduate from Seol Chong with honors – which, considering that I’m already at the top of our class, doesn’t seem difficult – I don’t think I’ll have a problem getting a scholarship at a top university.”

He stayed silent for a moment, seemingly lost in his thoughts.

I was the one who ended up breaking it. “So what did you want to be?” I asked, my voice sounding loud as it echoed across the room. “I mean, other than the CEO of your father’s company.”

Jonghyun blushed, actually blushed, before he answered. “I guess I always sort of wanted to be a musician.”

“That’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” I told him. “There are a lot of people with that same goal. Do you play any instruments?”

He nodded. “I play the piano, guitar, and bass. I also sing.” He shrugged in response to my incredulous look. “I had private instructors growing up. My father wanted me to learn classical instruments and I wanted to learn the electric guitar, so we compromised and I learned everything.”

“That’s amazing!” I exclaimed, genuinely excited. “Playing an instrument is very difficult! It’s great that you know how to play so many!”

He gave me a strange look. “I guess so…”

“So do you sing well?” I prompted, cocking my head to the side and examining him. Perhaps because we were in his home and he was more comfortable or maybe because he was in casual clothes rather than his school uniform, but Jonghyun seemed different to me somehow. He was good-looking, I had to admit – if one liked the puppy-dinosaur look, that is.

He blushed again and fiddled with a leather bracelet snapped around his wrist. “I don’t know. I’ve never sung in front of anyone before.”

I was half a heartbeat away from asking him to sing for me, but then I realized who he was and who I was and why we were even there together in the first place. It would have been completely out of line to ask him, so I didn’t.

“Well,” I said instead, the tone of my voice changing automatically. I closed my notebook and slid it back into my school bag. “I guess that’s enough for today. When do you want to meet next?”

He switched back to -mode immediately. “I don’t care,” he muttered. “Next weekend is fine.”

I glanced at my planner, checking the dates. “Can we do it on Wednesday instead?” I asked. “I can just catch a ride with you from school.” I saw the panicked look on his face and realized that he would probably rather drop dead than be seen leaving school with me. It was probably social suicide. “Ah, I forgot, I need to pick up something up along the way. I’ll just catch the bus,” I said instead, and I could practically hear his sigh of relief.

“That’s fine,” he muttered, already ready to get rid of me. “Wednesday it is.”