Lee Sungyeol cursed under his breath as he accidentally hammered his finger instead of the nail, dropping the nail down so he could caress his finger — only for the hammer to drop on his big toe. “Yeow!” he screamed, clutching both his foot and finger in agony, bouncing around to keep balance. “Stupid, idiotic — ugh, forget it.”

“Are you okay, Sungyeol-sshi?” he heard a soft voice called from the other side of the fence.

He blinked and looked up to see his neighbor, Nam Hyunyoung, a girl with light brown hair and pretty features and was two years younger than him. She blinked, looking curiously at him over the fence. Well, only from her eyes upward could be seen.

“Um, yeah, I just accidentally injured myself,” he explained, holding out his forefinger out like it explained a lot. “Been trying to fix my fence but I am guessing the hammer doesn't like me that much.”

“Ah.” She nodded.

He smiled gently. Hyunyoung was his junior in school. They were neighbors but that was all their relationship was. He doesn’t talk to her and when he does, it was only small talks like the conversation they were having now. She was quiet and shy and always busied herself with the school editorial team while he was vice president of the school's drama club.

There was this silence between them that strangely did not feel awkward.

“Hyunyoung-ah,” they heard Hyunyoung’s mother calling to her. “It’s time to go. We have to get to the airport now.”

“Arraseo. Coming, eomma.”

“Are you going somewhere? Like on a vacation?” Sungyeol asked as the younger girl was about to go. There was only two days left of holiday before school reopens to start a new term. It didn’t really seem wise to just go on a sudden vacation.

“Anni. We’re picking my sister up.”

“You have a sister?” Sungyeol did not know this. In the five years Hyunyoung had lived next to him, he had only seen her around and had assumed that she was the only child. He hadn’t seen anyone else their age besides her.

She nodded. “Neh, she lived with my father before but has come to live with eomma and me,” she replied in that soft voice of hers.

That made sense. He knew that Mrs. Nam had been divorced for the same amount of years he had known Hyunyoung lived next to him. So while she lived with her mother, her sister must have been living with their dad. “Oh . . . that’s, um, cool . . .?”

Well, what do you say to someone whose parents were divorced?

“Hyunyoung!” Mrs. Nam called again, clicking her tongue whilst tapping her foot impatiently at the car. “We need to get there on time.”

“Coming, eomma!” Hyunyoung turned back to Sungyeol and took a polite 90 degrees bow. “I will see you again, Sungyeol-sshi.” With a slight wave, she turned and hurried her way back to the car.

Sungyeol watched as the car drove off to the distance until he could not see it anymore before shaking his head. “Sister, huh,” he murmured to himself. “I wonder what her sister will be like.”

Shrugging, he turned back to the fence and sighed, looking at his now swollen thumb.

On the ride to the airport, Park Sora took a quick glance over to her daughter from the passenger's seat. “The Lee's son is very handsome, isn’t he?”

Hyunyoung blinked and looked up from the book she was reading. “Huh?” She was absorbed into what she was reading that she hadn’t heard her mother. “Mianhae, eomma. Did you say something just now?”

Sora chuckled. “I said that Sungyeol is a handsome boy.”

“Is he? I don’t notice.”

“You should be more aware of things, my child, especially if you want to be a professional photographer one day. You need to open your eyes wide and to see what the things you need to capture in still pictures are.”

“That’s a subtle way of saying I need to capture a guy’s heart.”

“Actually, more like saying you should take notice of how boys look at you,” Sora retorted lightly. “Boys your age are starting to take notice of a fine beauty like yourself.”

Hyunyoung shrugged it off nonchalantly. “I don’t know, eomma. I thought you said that I’m still too young to have a boyfriend?”

“Just because you’re too young to have a boyfriend doesn’t mean boys won’t be looking at you. Of course, if there are boys who look at you —”

“Eomma.” Hyunyoung blushed, cutting her mother off. “There aren’t any guys, okay. I’ll let you know if there are.”

“Pfft, you’ll let your sister know first.”

“You do have the knack to make everything humiliating,” Hyunyoung muttered.

Sora lightly poked her daughter’s sides at a traffic light. “Hey, I do not humiliate the two of you all the time. Can I help it if I think my babies are adorable and want to show my friends how cute you are?”

“Eomma, that’s perfectly normal — but showing pictures of us while bathing . . .”

“Admit it, you kids are adorable.”

Hyunyoung only smiled before she went back to her reading. The car became silent again until they reached the airport. Sora found a place to park her car before the two of them went to the arrival section to wait for Hyunyoung’s sister to come.

Sora checked her watch impatiently. “Isn’t your sister’s flight supposed to have arrived by now?” she muttered under breath. She had not seen her daughter for many years and she was ecstatic to hear that Jihyun was to stay with them for her senior year.

“Eomma, she’ll be out soon.”

“No one’s coming out yet.” She gestured toward the door where it was still closed. “Her flight was supposed to have arrived twenty minutes ago.”

“She’s probably still getting her luggage,” Hyunyoung reasoned patiently. “After all, she’s coming to stay with us so she’ll have quite a bit of baggage with her.”

“Stop being so reasonable.”

“Eomma, are you actually pouting?”

“No.”

“Uh, huh.”

“The doors are opening!” Sora waved her hand in front of her daughter to shush her up.

Hyunyoung had to chuckle at her mother’s over-enthusiasm. One of the many reasons why she loved her mother was because her mother was cool, her mother was like her best friend, Sora was laidback, and at times kid-like, although stern with discipline as her motto, but she also knew how to have fun. To Hyunyoung, Sora was the coolest mom ever.

“I see her!!”

Hyu