Present Day, 2015.

“Yah! Hurry up girls! The van is leaving!” Their mother Eunmi called to them from downstairs.

The two sisters met eyes, looking around their room one last time. It was empty, all their stuff gone, all of their toys, beds, everything. Picture frames and drawings that had covered their walls had been removed, leaving behind little to no trace that they were once there. The memories were there forever, but now they had to move on. Joomi brushed her hand against their wall again, where they measured their heights against each other.

“I hate this, unni. This is our home. We grew up here.” Joomi said to her older sister. In this house, they knew how to hide, they knew how to get away from it all. But in the new house, where would they go? They had no idea what kind of house it would, but their mother said it was bigger than this one. 

Her and her new husband, Jo Suk, were excited to move into the old house. They described it as a mansion on top of a hill overlooking all the other houses below it. It was one of the biggest houses in the area and it was rumored that the house had been in the family for as long as anyone could remember. The house was so grand it was as if they were the King and Queen of the neighborhood.

The only reason they were moving there was because their great-uncle passed away and their mother, Eunmi, inherited their house somehow. The house was always passed down through the male household that Eun Mi's late husband belonged too. Eun Mi had never met his great-uncle, but she had heard that he doted greatly on her late husband . And of course, why stay at a house, you have to pay for when you can live in a house that was given to you? That’s exactly why they were uprooting from their old house to the new mansion that Eunmi and Jo Suk wanted to rule the neighborhood in.

“I know, Joomi. But there’s nothing we can do about it.” Joori told her, “You know that. Besides, mom doesn’t even know what really goes on under her roof. You think she’d give up being ‘Queen of her Neighborhood’ for us?” Joori said, taking Joomi’s hand and leading her towards the front door. If they stayed any longer, Jo Suk would get impatient.

“This just .” Joomi muttered under her breath, Jo Suk and his son, Chan Suk, were smiling happily in the moving van, their excitement streaming out of their pores.

“I know.” Joori repeated again, that was all she could say. She knew that she hated Jo Suk, she hated Chan Suk, she hated how her mother overlooked everything about that stupid man because she was lonely. It had been years since their real father died and Eunmi couldn’t get over his death. She married the first man who gave her the time of day and now Joomi and her were the ones suffering.

They climbed into the van with their mother separating them from Chan Suk and sat in silence. Jo Suk drove away from the old house happily, and Joori and Joomi watched it longingly as the memories of their father and their childhood was disappearing before their eyes.

The van jerked over the uneven asphalt and it made the sisters feel sick to their stomach as Jo Suk didn’t even bother avoiding the potholes in the road. He hummed along to the music playing on the radio, ignoring the bouncing of all of their stuff in the back.

“So you’ll be attending the new high school.” Eunmi told them happily, “It’s a private school so they have school uniforms and you’ll look so good in them, I promise you’ll love them. They’re so cute!” She squealed just thinking of the uniform on her daughters. She had a secret love for school uniforms and she made sure that the school she chose for them had the cutest ones.

But Joori and Joomi were not looking forward to starting over at a new school, a private school no less. They were leaving behind all their friends at their old school, and they already had a hard enough time making friends with their inability to socialize due to curfew.

No one was going to like them, they knew it, and they would be in separate classes since Joori was one year older and Joomi wouldn’t be able to handle the classes by herself. She had a bad feeling about the school and she hadn’t ev