When I had gotten off the plane at the beginning of the last two weeks of December, I’d thought I was in for a nice vacation with family, and Jongin. And for the most part, it was. 

I got to see the cousins I missed dearly, and visited my paternal grandparents’ graves. My maternal grandmother was ecstatic to see me, and was completely hospitable. While my family stayed with her, she wouldn’t let me touch a single dish or pick up a single broom. She kept assuming I was always fatigued because I’d been struck by lightning, no matter how many times I told her I was fine. 

I also made the most of my time with Jongin, physically together rather than mentally. It was almost an unspoken pact: when we were together, face-to-face, we did not think to each other. 

“Words,” he told me one night, lying on the ground, staring at the stars while I sat on the tree swing right beside him, “come out so differently when you say them out loud. No one knows what you mean exactly.” 

When he thinks a sentence, he envisions it, and I can see it. When he says one out loud, they are just words; all of them have different meanings, like puzzle pieces from different boxes. It shouldn’t be this different. 

“No one but me,” I said with a smirk. 

“You get me.” 

God, we sound like we were ripped out of a bad YA novel.

Jongin and Jaeson got closer than ever. Partly because Jongin already thought of him as a brother, because I already thought of him as a brother. On days my cousins and I would hang out together, the boys would go do their own thing. I didn’t pry too much, but sometimes I checked in. 

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He couldn’t hear anything. He used to be able to make out voices. Now he was isolated.

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Everything around her was dark. Still, shadows lurked, as if the surrounding was too familiar to stay hidden.

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My family found the fact that I was dating more shocking than who I was dating. 

It all happened when Jongin called me. On my cellphone. Like the idiot he is, he called my cellphone and my youngest cousin saw his name and contact photo, which was a couple photo. She shrieked. “That’s EXO’s Kai!” She shrieked right in my ear and I swear I went deaf for a bit. 

And, of course, everyone else in our family tree found out soon after. Very soon after. 

Suddenly all of my aunts and uncles were wondering how I met an EXO member, let alone seduced him. They asked my parents how they could allow such a relationship, whatever that means. Of course, my parents were dumbfounded. “Jinhee doesn’t have a boyfriend,” they said. “Jinhee hates EXO.” 

It was just a really awkward situation in which I had to confess to my parents that, yes, I am dating an EXO member, and no, I don’t hate EXO anymore. They found them both equally hard to believe.

But it only got worse from there. They wanted to meet him. They wanted to know his intentions, and test his love. 

They bought the story that he had found me by searching for other people struck by lightning and we had been struck at the same time. They especially bought that I rejected him multiple times on the basis of ship in EXO. They bought that this was all happening onlin