"Mom, I don't want to go to this school! Its full of stuck up kids with rich daddies and mommies. They're all nothing but fakes." Kim EunHee says to her mother who was looking at a brochure for the academy. Her mom whipped her head and glared at EunHee.

"EunHee, don't you understand what a great opportunity this is for you. For you to live such a great life, to live a life with no problems. If you go to this school and graduate from here you will live a way that others wished they could.

“But others would know that I didn’t get there because my family could afford it, or because I’m the next heir to a huge corporation. No I got here because I won a raffle, that my mother secretly entered me in without my consent! People will look at us for that mom. Not because I am something important that I worked hard for!” EunHee explained pacing around the living room

Her mother sighed and put the brochure down onto the coffee table in front of her. “Will you stop pacing? You know how that makes me nervous. Come and sit here.” She pats to the empty cushion next to her. EunHee sighed and started to walk to her mom; she sat next to her and looked at her mother straight into her dark brown eyes. Her mother cupped her face gently and smiled, “EunHee-ah, I want the best for you. I don’t want you to live the way you do now, in a place like this.” She stops and looks around the room they were sitting in.

EunHee and her family lived in a two bedroom apartment in Hongdae. EunHee and her little sister shared a room while her parents took the other. The living room where they were currently were sitting at was small, enough to fit a couch, coffee table, and a flat screen TV. She thought she was living fine. Her father has a good job as professor at a university, and her mother owned her own restaurant. EunHee herself had two part-time jobs. One with newspaper delivery, and the other working in her mother’s restaurant. It’s enough she thought.

                   “You and your sister deserve so much more, a life full of riches, and happiness. Look at you; you’re beautiful enough to get you anything you want. But what do you do? You work two part-time jobs. Why?”

                  “So I can help you and dad.”

                  “Exactly, you never see any of your friends, because you’re working all the time. You’re only 18, you need to go out and have fun, but no, you’re always saying ‘sorry I have to work or I have to study’ EunHee, if you go to this school, you won’t have to work another day of your life.”

EunHee moved her mother’s hand off of her face and stood up. “But I like doing all that stuff. I love the life I’m living right now, there’s nothing wrong in my life.”

Her mother sighed with irritation and stood up as well, “Look Kim EunHee, you are going to this school whether you want to or not. You are quitting your job at the newspaper; I’m firing you from your job at my restaurant. Tomorrow morning someone is coming from the school to give you a tour, a fitting for your new uniform, your class schedule, and everything else you need. It’s all been paid for by the school. So enough of that, and enough of this conversation. You’re going. That’s final.” She walked off into the kitchen but before she entered she turned around and looked at EunHee, “And besides. Since when did you care about what people thought of you?” She turned and walked off.

EunHee rolled her eyes, and let herself fall onto the couch.