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Author’s Note: Original Characters (readers of this saga) are going to be introduced in the story. The character list is as follow:

Character name (Reader name) – Character description.

Lee Eunha (DOnewyah) – 36 years old. Lee Jinki’s personal assistant in the hagwon business since 2016. Was PA to both Heechul and Jinki till 2022. Single because she cannot find a man who measures up to her bosses and their husbands.

Lee Suzy (YaleON) – 35 years old. Kim Heechul’s personal assistant in the hagwon business since 2022. Single because she is a workaholic.

Hong Jeysee (Jhengchie) – 29 years old. Yesung’s wife.

Chu Ashe (ashechuw) and Chu Carmen (Carm90) – 25 years old. Both are twin cousins of Amber from China. They came to work in Daegu in 2025. Live with DongHae and Hyukjae.

Ahn Jae-Mizui (Jrockow93) – 23 years old. School friend of Duckie. Finishing her Business Administration studies in USA.

~~~~~

65. PREPARATIONS (BYONG’S WEDDING - 2)

“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get a long leave immediately after the Seollal holidays?” Beagle complained as he lined up his family’s luggage alongside ours in the living room.

Lee Eunha, my personal assistant for the past 10 years, checked the digital pad that appeared to be glued to her hands since we began planning for the wedding in January and grinned, “Last time I spoke with the Commissioner General, he was happy to grant you the leave so ‘he can enjoy some peace at work without listening to your constant yapping’ in his own words.”

“We need to get you married quickly,” Beagle pretended to be shocked at her statement, making Eunha hide her laughter behind her digi-pad.

“Oh no, you can’t do that Beagle. I love to watch her make lovesick faces at my Tokki, every time I visit the hagwon,” Puppy winked at Eunha and made her squawk in protest. “Stop that noise Eunha. You know I speak the truth.”

Eunha’s face became pink but she didn’t hide away, “Since you see me every day, you should know that I make the same face at Heechul-ssi, you and Siwon-ssi also. I am resigned to my single status for life. I think god broke the mould after creating you all.”

“Don’t worry Eunha, we will find a good husband for you during this wedding,” imo absent-mindedly patted Eunha’s back as she hugged Baekhyun who had jumped into her arms.

“I think all of Korea’s eligible bachelors have been invited, by the look of the long guest list,” Ji winked at the poor woman, making her blush again.

“If we don’t find anyone else, there is always Minho Uncle,” Sehun loudly said to enable his voice to reach Minho who was preparing coffee in the kitchen.

“What did I do now? I am in my corner of the kitchen, not even talking to your wife who refuses to give me anything to eat,” Minho’s voice carried his exasperation for all to hear.

“Leave the poor woman alone. We don’t want her resigning right now. I need her at least till after the wedding is over and all the guests have departed,” I tried to extricate her from my family. “Eunha, have you confirmed which of the hagwon staff is coming to Jeju with us?”

“Suzy is looking after the hagwon guest list. Please try to remember that I am only your PA, therefore, I look after only the wardrobes and luggage. Guest lists and Heechul-ssi are Suzy’s responsibility,” Eunha poked her pen in my shoulder.

“You make Cinderella sound like an old maid,” My eyes crinkled as I happily imagined Heechul all wrinkled and grey-haired, wearing an elaborate ball gown.

“Yah, stop smiling at your stupid thoughts. What kind of a friend are you?” Heechul punched my arm as he began fiddling with his luggage again. He yelled at Siwon, “Simba, tell my stupid friend that I am not old.”

“Jinki, why do you insist on making my life difficult?” Siwon sighed as he sat down on the floor and began putting back everything that Heechul took out from his travel bag.

“I don’t think I should wear this color, it makes me look sallow,” Heechul looked critically at one of his dress shirts. “Why did I let Carmen convince me that it suits me?”

“Heechul-ssi, I need your help. Prime Minister’s office called to know the security details once more,” Lee Suzy’s words distracted Heechul and he left his bags alone to confer with Suzy and DongHae.

Suzy had joined our hagwon head office four years ago as Heechul’s personal assistant, freeing up Eunha to assist only me, and Kibum when required. Suzy and Eunha, nearly the same age at 35 and 36 respectively, had become good friends and worked together seamlessly. Suzy was a workaholic and their single status made them get along even better.

Eunha pushed aside Siwon and quickly re-packed their bag on her own. Hyukkie entered our living room which for the past few days resembled the lost and found section of an airport. Eunha handed him another digi-pad she had with her and, along with Sehun and Beagle, they began pasting labels on the bags and marking them with family names and room numbers. Carmen and Ashe wanted to help them but were told to go back upstairs and keep all the children out of the living room.

It was 20^th February and we were leaving for Jeju the next day. The emotional storm of the day before had blown over and there were no more whispers of cancelling the wedding. Siwon still had not made up his mind whether to be upset with Heechul for making their little princess cry or to be upset with me and Puppy for comforting Duckie and stop her from cancelling the wedding.

Leeteuk and Soo arrived with their two teenage devils and three neighborhood teenagers to pile up their luggage for tagging. Yoochun had one travel bag as did the Jung brothers Yunho and Changmin. Jaejoong sent all the other four boys upstairs and stayed back himself to get the bags tagged with the desired room numbers. He had insisted earlier that Junsu share one room with Yoochun, separating him from Yunho. Leeteuk had given up arguing with Joongie and allowed the change. Joongie was rooming with the Jung brothers.

We weren’t sure if it was wise to let a nearly 16 years old Junsu to share a room with the same age Yoochun, keeping in mind how deeply Junsu was in love with the other boy. What made us agree was the threat from Joongie that he would get Yoochun and Junsu drunk every night and lock them together in a room, irrespective of lack of permission from his parents. More effective than the threat was the fact that both Yoochun and Junsu were like lambs, even after four years of dating Yunho and Yoochun still had to move beyond kissing on the cheeks.

The luggage at my parents’, Oh’s and Kims’ houses had been tagged earlier in the day. Eunha and Sehun had gone to the homes of Kibum’s family and Puppy’s family to tag their pieces. The bags belonging to Puppy’s relatives, and our other guests traveling with us would be tagged at the airport only. Hyukkie, Beagle, Sehun and Eunha had gotten special permission to see our luggage through various checkpoints at the airport and get it safe and sound into the aircraft. At Jeju they were to oversee its transportation off the aircraft and into each room. I sighed deeply at the complex transportation plans.

Eunha and Suzy’s digi-pads were synced together with ours to help them in their tasks. I was pretty sure that both women even slept with one eye on their devices to be updated on any changes. We had two dozen digi-pads synced together so the planners and their helpers could communicate with each other effortlessly at any time.

Ashe and Carmen had left the kids in charge of Junsu and were huddled together at one end of the dining table with the women, refusing all last minute changes in any dresses. They had one bag filled with all sorts of fabric and sewing stuff for any emergency. The Chu twins were daughters of Amber’s aunt in China and had come to Daegu a year ago to join a fashion house in Daegu as couture designers. DongHae had insisted the 25-year-old twins stay with him and Hyukkie. Urged on by imo and hagwon staff, the Chu sisters had opened their own boutique store six months ago and were doing brisk business. As a token of gratitude, the sisters had designed and coordinated our large family’s wardrobe for the wedding celebrations, including the wedding attire for the bride and groom.

Byong and Duckie were busy trying to coax out the nature of Hahm gifts from the Hahm bearers – Sehun, Kai, Junsu, Joongie and Byong’s friends. We knew that the two older couples had pooled in together to gift the newlyweds a late, but two-week long, honeymoon in Japan during Duckie’s college holidays in July. Immediately after the wedding, the new couple would return to Daegu with us and we had booked a honeymoon suite for two days in the same hotel where Minx and Sehun had spent their honeymoon week.

Junsu and Jaejoong had prepared a special digital photo album to take the newlyweds down the memory lane of their life together from the moment they had met after Duckie’s birth till they took their wedding photos. They had a custom-made silver frame to showcase the digital images. Byong’s friends had contributed the nuggets of mischief by adding toys in the Hahm box which they had shielded from the teenagers’ eyes by gift wrapping them beforehand. We had the information as the Hahm box had been handed over to Beagle for safe passage to the island.

Heechul’s father and my father had added a few older ministers and ex-ministers to the list of people who would share our chartered plane. Thankfully, after arranging the family holidays for nearly twenty years, Puppy and Siwon knew that they must always prepare for last minute additions. That is why they had booked not only the entire resort, but also a 125-seater plane to ferry the week-long revelers. The guests, who would arrive later to the resort during the week, from other cities and countries, had been sent their air tickets.

“Jae-Mizui, do you really have to carry six large bags for just one week?” Hyukkie yelled out to Duckie’s friend who was also her maid of honor.

“How can you expect me to look good without enough clothes? I need one bag just for my footwear,” Jae-Mizui looked aghast at the thought of leaving behind any part of her luggage. “What difference will my bags make to the mountain already piled up?” Jae-Mizui had come from USA, where she was in the final semester of her business administration studies. She was a few years older than Duckie and we wondered how the two had ended up as good friends. Maybe it was their love for maths or it could be their desire to be different. In the week we had known Jae-Mizui, she had changed her eye color from deep blue to silver and shades in between.

“Jinri, I still can’t believe you are marrying your childhood friend. Who in today’s time is crazy enough to marry at 20?” Jae-Mizui began her litany again as she pulled Duckie’s hair. “Come to NY with me and we’ll have fun. Why do you want to tie yourself down with marriage at your age Jinri?”

“Because she loves me,” Byong answered for Duckie. “Stop trying to provoke my bride-to-be to run away with you. If you like girls, find your own. Don’t poach on mine.” He turned Jae-Mizui to face the Chu twins.

“Oh no, leave us out of it. We like men. Tall, successful ones to be precise,” Ashe protested with a serious face.

“Jinri are you really sure you want to marry this dirty-minded guy?” Jae-Mizui used every opportunity to question Duckie’s decision.

Duckie smiled at her friend and winked at Byong as she defended her choice, “Do you know any other guy who will put up with my physical abuse and still love me? On top of it, have a wonderful family? I feel I am just moving my stuff from one home to another. In fact, a lot of my stuff was already here and the rest fit in just two bags. I have already arranged my clothes and other stuff in our room in the afternoon.” Byong wrapped his arm around her and kissed her cheek. She was tall enough to be just a couple of inches shorter than his six feet.

“Eunha, who do these orange bags belong to? I see five of them here and the name reads KJW,” Hyukkie separated some bags from the rest and paused in his tagging.

“You will find them under Kim Jong Woon. His wife insisted on dropping them off here because Yesung-ssi threatened to leave behind a few tomorrow,” Minx answered for Eunha as she came out of the kitchen with snacks for the kids. She reminded Heechul, “Hee umma, make sure you put Jeysee unnie next to me on the plane. She does not want Yesung oppa to harass her about her luggage.”

“Why must women carry so much stuff wherever they go?” Hyukkie grumbled as he began tagging the orange bags.

“How many bags do you have Hyukjae-ssi?” Eunha asked with mischief in her eyes. Sehun and Beagle grinned at her, knowing the answer in advance.

Hyukkie looked sheepish because the number was there for all with the digi-pads to read. Between them, DongHae and Hyukkie had seven bags because Hyukkie insisted on carrying enough clothes to change three times a day and have matching shoes to wear.

“Which room number are you tagging the bags of Minho-ssi? My list says he is rooming Yixing, but it is also crossed off?” Suzy asked from the dining room which was also serving as our living room. She was puzzled at the last minute change in rooms.

“Yixing insists on sharing his room with Kris’s and Luhan’s grandsons,” Siwon clarified about the change where his father-in-law and Minho would be roommates. “You will find Minho’s name next to Abeoji’s and Yixing’s with Yibo and Wenhan.”

Puppy, Siwon, DongHae, Heechul, Kibum and Suzy were busy assigning seats to everyone for the plane rides to Jeju and back. They occupied the other end of the dining table. Puppy insisted on seating his parents’ relatives as far away as possible from our political guests. When Kibum placed them near center of the plane, Puppy wanted to move our seats away from them, “Key hyung, move us away from their seats. I cannot stand to hear them utter another debasing remark about our family’s preference for same-gender marriages.”

“Where do I seat them then? On the roof of the plane?” Kibum looked at the plane’s seating on his digi-pad and wondered in annoyance. “Stop messing with the arrangements and bear with them for an hour.”

“It’s not the question of an hour. I can’t stand anyone putting down my Tokki for even a second. Even my mother has come to appreciate Tokki. Why did she have to insist on inviting these social dinosaurs?” Puppy looked unhappily at the screen in his hand.

“You can’t move them to the back of the plane Jjong. You will upset them and then your mother will not stop complaining for the entire week,” Siwon reworked Pupp’s uncles and aunts to sit near the kids, Minho and Uncle.

“Keep them away from the teenagers, we don’t want Joongie to insult any one of them,” Heechul looked at all the seats near the teens.

“Suzy don’t group any of us together. We need to be spread across the plane,” DongHae had his own ideas.

“Let’s place the teens near the back. The kids in the middle with Uncle and Minho,” Heechul suggested.

“Yes and Abeoji’s guests in the front with Super and Boss,” Puppy marked the seats for Siwon and DongHae near the front.

“Behind them let’s place our immediate family starting with the older Lees, Parks, Ohs and Kims – both Kibum’s family and Jjong’s parents,” DongHae roughly divided the plane into groups.

“Behind them place our agency colleagues with Jjong and Jinki,” Siwon marked another set of seats.

“Put the younger kids behind them with Minho and Uncle. Then Kibum and I will sit with the hagwon guests,” Heechul marked the next few rows.

“Let’s put the freeloaders immediately behind them,” Puppy marked three rows for his side of family.

“Puppy, don’t call them that in front of our guests. We don’t want to embarrass anyone,” imo hushed up Puppy who made a face. He really did not want most of his family to attend the wedding.

“Key, do you want to sit with your family or are you comfortable looking after the hagwon guests with me?” Heechul confirmed.

“They get along well with all in our family. They’ll be just fine,” Kibum waved his hand in the air asking the group to move on.

“Put the Bride and the groom with their friends after Puppy’s relatives along with the teens. Junsu and Joongie will hate to be separated from Byong and Duckie.” DongHae allotted the seats for the final group and rubbed his eyes tiredly. “I am getting too old to do this. I am really looking forward to retirement.”

“You cannot retire till you make us sit with the group at the back. We refuse to sit anywhere else,” the Chu sisters made their preference known from the other end of the table.

“Oh, and don’t forget to place Chen and Ren next to me,” Kibum vacated two seats next to him in the plane.

“Absolutely not, all the kids are staying put with Minho and Uncle. That’s it. You can survive a few hours without them Key,” Heechul filled up the vacant seats again with their original occupants.

I moved from room to room observing each group diligently working at their assigned tasks. After checking on the older kids playing games and hogging on snacks at the same time, and younger ones eating and listening to Minho tell a story, I landed in Byong’s room.

It was now Byong and Duckie’s room. My soon-to-be daughter-in-law had already set it up according to their combined tastes. The feminine touches to the room were immediately visible. I smiled as I saw the big frame that they’d displayed on one wall of their room. It held couple photographs of most of our family taken at different times of their lives. Another frame held the photographs of my parents, Heechul’s father and Puppy’s parents.

It was the same room that Heechul and Siwon had lived in before and after Duckie’s birth. Somehow it was fitting that she moved into it permanently.

My Duckie was finally returning home.