It appears you never seem to catch the right moment, when you desperately want to talk to someone alone.

When I came home my mum and Young Hwan were in the kitchen making dinner together and listening to the radio, so I decided to bide my time and instead do some research with the bits of information I had.

I was quite surprised to discover that Sun Wu Kong wasn't a person's name at all, but the name of an ancient mystical Chinese god - also known as 'The Monkey' and infamous for his mischief and tendency for causing mayhem. This further supported my theory that my twin might in fact have been raised in some sort of cult. Also hadn't she spoken of demons?

I started to hunt down online information on cults and sects operating in South Korea, but couldn't find a single one that seemed to involve ancient Chinese paganism. My research was soon interrupted by my mum calling me to dinner.

My mum and Young Hwan were still listening to a report on the radio, so there was little conversation during the meal. Chanyeol wasn't even at the table - after having returned his precious umbrella to it's rightful home - he had retired to his room with a bag of chips and a pack of soft-drinks.

When the report finally ended Young Hwan gave us a small speech about how glad he was to have us living with him and how we would surely soon feel like family. I was only half-listening, but made sure to make eye-contact, to smile and to raise my glass at the end of the speech.

A part of me was feeling terribly tired, because of the emotionally draining day I had had, but the other part was forcing my body to stay awake and was hungry for answers. After Young Hwan had finished his speech, he and my mum wanted to talk a bit about the division of housework duties, but I - who was tired of waiting - politely interrupted and told them I would prefer to talk tomorrow instead and go to sleep now.

My plan was to retire to my room quickly and then call for my mum to have a one-on-one conversation. But when I started climbing back down the stairs to the living room I caught sight of my mother and Young Hwan making out on the sofa and I hurriedly returned to my room. Answers would apparently have to wait until tomorrow, I thought disappointed.

I didn't sleep well in the least. My dreams were filled with laughing monkeys, my doppelgänger in her pink coat and Oh Sehun, who kept asking me for numbers that kept slipping from my mind.

"What's the secret code to her heart?" he kept asking me, but I - although I wanted to give him the number - found my lips glued together and was entirely unable to speak.

I awoke to Yoon Mi Rae's "Baby Bye Bye" that I had set as alarm clock song on my cellphone. As usual I let the song play until the very end while simply staring at my room's ceiling, before I got up.

I liked to be the first one to wake up around the house - which worked most of the time, because my mum was a late riser - but in the Park residence I soon stumbled upon Chanyeol, who was already up and awake and making himself breakfast in the kitchen.

"Cute pajamas," he commented on my choice of nightgown and embarrassed I crossed my arms over the teddy bear face on my pajama top.

"My grandma made this for me!" I defended myself, although it was a lie.

"Huh," said Chanyeol whose attention had returned to whatever he was cooking on the stove, "Guess it's not nice when people are careless with things that someone important made for you."

I remained standing in the door, unsure whether I was welcome to enter the kitchen or not. Chanyeol continued to talk with his back turned to me:

"You see, the umbrella that you almost lost yesterday... the engraving. It was made by my mum. She was a goldsmith and an artist."

His voice had sounded steady and his tone matter-of-factly, but nevertheless his words hit me like daggers. I suddenly felt a strong guilt churning in my stomach.

"I'm extremely sorry," I said, knowing that no words really fit the situation. "I didn't know."

Chanyeol turned his head to me, but he looked sad rather than angry.

"It's okay. How could you have known? You probably thought I was some narcissistic fat cat boy, who gets his name engraved into his belongings. And also my mum died when I was 4, so it's been quite a while since then. Don't beat yourself up over it."

He actually gave me a genuine smile and I shyly returned it. Then some of my guilt got swept away by something else that I noticed.

"Your nose... there's no bruise!"

Chanyeol squinted at his own nose, as though to confirm for himself what I had just said, then he looked at me and laughed.

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that little stunt! I just really didn't want to move into that broom-cupboard upstairs! But don't worry too much, I intend to move out within the next couple of months anyway. I've already gotten the invite to an interview at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. I only gotta get them to like me, then I'll be out of your hair!"

I wanted to be angry for a bit longer, but couldn't. My stepbrother was planning on studying at my dream university! There was a chance that we had more in common than I had originally thought.

I couldn't help it - I was so excited, I momentarily forgot all about my doppelgänger.

"So what are you going to do? What's your field? Music? Acting? Design?" I asked.

"If I could, I'd do all of them!" Chanyeol replied in a cheery tone, "But I think I want to start out with Visual Arts and then see if the field suits me. I'd like to do Music on the side."

I gleamed back at him. Those were the exact majors that I had always wanted to choose for myself. My free time I mainly spent drawing, painting and doing some layman composing on my mum's guitar.

"This is gonna sound like I'm kidding, but those are legitimately exactly the things I want to study! Only I gotta prepare a folder first with which to apply," I told him, while taking a few steps into the kitchen.

"Cool!" Chanyeol said, "If you want I can show you what I did for my folder to get asked to an interview at SIA. Also do you want any of the stew? I think I made more than enough for two people."

"Sure!"

I had a suprisingly nice breakfast together with my step-brother during which we talked a lot and promised to show each other our layman artworks and work together to get into SIA. I would have been in impressively high spirits, if not for the doppelgänger problem that kept nagging at my thoughts and reminding me that I had a difficult conversation with my mum coming up.

After we had both finished eating, Chanyeol excused himself to go outside for a smoke and I volunteered to clear the table - partially in the hope to have my mum come into the kitchen.

To my misfortune it was Young Hwan who came into the kitchen first and who his heels when he spotted me still in pajamas.

Awkwardly standing somewhere out of view outside the kitchen he politely asked me to get dressed, as though I had just been standing around in my underwear and not my pajamas which covered me perfectly well. Not wanting things to get any weirder I quickly left the kitchen and went back into my room.

I got dressed and then sat on my bed feeling torn in half. On the one hand I wanted to pursue my doppelgänger and find out who she was. On the other I could of course... ignore her existence and start to really lead my own life by throwing myself into my application for art school for which I had found a surprising ally.

I wanted someone to talk to - someone other than my mum, because once I brought up my possible twin to her, there could be no return from allowing my doppelgänger's existence into my life.

Once again life made the choice for me, before I had made up my mind: My phone beeped to give notice that someone had send me a message. I thought it would be one of my few semi-friends from high school, but it was Oh Sehun.

"I didn't even have to put up any wanted posters!! She came back this morning! Thank you <3"

I didn't even have to think, I pocketed my cellphone in light-speed, exited my room, sprinted down the stairs and was out of the house as soon as I had my boots and jacket on.

I ran almost the entire way to the shopping mall. When I reached the large street that I had to cross to get to the shopping complex, I stopped because the traffic light showed red, but as soon as it switched back to green I was running as though my life depended on it and despite the stabbing pain in my sides.

Luckily there weren't a lot of people in the mall yet, so when I reached the coffee shop it was almost entirely empty. While opening the glass door I was already trying to spot the pink coat, but couldn't find it anywhere. Once inside it took a few moments of me dumbly spinning around until my eyes found Sehun's dyed blond head of hair at a table in the pack of the coffee shop, sitting with a black haired girl in a dark-green jacket that had almost the same color as mine.

"Today you two really do look like twins," Sehun said, when I had stopped next to his and the girl's table, but I had no eyes for him.

Instead I stared at the young woman in the dark-green jacket, who to both my relief and shock was indeed my doppelgänger. Today she looked so much like me, that she might have well been my reflection in a mirror: Her face was make-up less, her fashion plain like mine and she looked like she had slept just as badly as I had. She looked at me with a sad and lost expression that was the exact opposite of the angry fiery look she had given me yesterday. She looked like she wanted to talk.

"Do you mind leaving us alone for a bit?" I asked Sehun, while still holding my doppelgänger's gaze. I felt like if I went away now - or even looked away - she would disappear again.

"Do you mind leaving us alone?" asked Sehun, evidently angered by my intrusion into what he had possibly imagined to be a first date.

I and my doppelgänger both turned our head simultaneously to glare at Sehun, who looked a little intimidated, but wouldn't give up so easily.

"Is that what you want, Chu Hua?" he asked my doppelgänger.

Chu Hua. I wondered whether that was her real name or whether she had just given that name to Sehun to put him off. It didn't sound Korean. It sounded foreign, but I couldn't pinpoint the origin.

Chu Hua didn't say anything but she nodded. I noticed she was biting her lip - something my mum had been telling me to quit for ages.

Sehun reluctantly left his chair to go and sit somewhere else. I took his place feeling a rush of relief, that my doppelgänger was right here in front of me and wanted to talk to me, too.

"Your name is Chu Hua?" I asked, feeling a weird sense of power - she was the one who was shy and scared right now and I was the one asking questions.

"Yes. Rong Chu Hua. That is my name," she said, her large brown eyes, that looked just like mine, searching my face.

"Did... did you come back for me?" I said.

She nodded again.

"Do you also want to find out what's going on?"

This time she didn't nod, but instead sighed deeply.

"I don't think, we'll ever know," she said, "Just like I don't know why I came to this place and how."

I was perplexed. I hadn't expected the other me to have all the answers, but it would have help if she was a little less cryptic.

"You no longer think I'm a demon?" I asked, hoping to understand more of the contents of my doppelgängers twisted mind.

Chu Hua shook her head.

"I thought for some time that you might be a god or goddess, but if that were the case you would have found me anywhere and anytime, right? You wouldn't have to have come running here."

I was by now postively gaping. She couldn't be serious, could she?

"Why don't you tell me where you're from," I continued the conversation, "Where were you born and where do you live now? For your information - I'm a normal human, just like you... or Oh Sehun over there. Not a spirit or deity or anything like that and I'm just as shocked as you to be... talking to myself."

Chu Hua straightened up in her chair and threw her long hair over her shoulder.

"Well, the problem is that any of the places I could name now... they don't exist... here," she started to explain.

"What do you mean?"

I was by now very sure of my cult theory: Wasn't it possible that Chu Hua had been raised in some secluded sect, some place abroad?

"I mean that they don't exist... in this world," she said, as though that was a perfectly normal thing to say.

I was starting to get a little annoyed.

"Okay," I said, "Let's be fair and I'll give you a little information about me: I was born in Busan to my mother Kim Gayun and my father Kim Tae Woong. They seperated when I was 4 and me and my mum went to live in a small village near Ulsan. I moved here only yesterday. So, who raised you? Who are your parents?"

Chu Hua looked like I had given her too much information to handle already. Or had she not understood what I had said?

"I'm sorry," she said, "I'm not familiar with the geography of this country. Forgive my lack of knowledge, it's regretful how little I know about this world."

She was growing more mysterious and strange by the minute and I didn't like it. Why couldn't this be easier? Why did my possible twin sister have to be a nut job? And if she was one, why was she running around by herself?

Chu Hua was looking at me rather apologetically. She looked almost sad. We both stared at one another silently for a few seconds, then she said:

"You won't believe me, unless I show you."

"Show me what?"

Chu Hua was squirming in her seat now and fear had returned to her features. She did her best to calm herself and then gave me an intense look:

"I can tell you everything now, but whatever I say you won't believe me. I think the gods are playing a trick on both of us and only together can we regain their favor. If you'll let me I will show you where I came from. Because if I tell you beforehand, you'll think I'm mad."

She was saying it with such apparent sincerity, that I really wanted to believe her. But all the talking of gods and demonds had made me too suspicious. I decided to try and test her:

"So if I go with you to... where you're from, there won't be a bunch of clan or cult people jumping out of the bushes and kidnapping me, will there?"

Chu Hua looked at me with a bewildered expression.

"Why, of course not!" she said, "No one knows I'm here. They all think I'm in the Temple fasting and praying in solitary."

That confirmed it for me - Chu Hua had been kidnapped as a baby, raised by and now escaped from a cult. I wondered whether I should offer her my help.

"Are you happy... at the place that you're from?" I asked.

Chu Hua laughed her strange, yet beautiful laugh and some color returned to her cheeks.

"Sometimes," she said, "There are certain advantages to being me in my world. And there are disadvantages. To tell the truth I prefer it here. No one telling me what to do - ever. It's quite nice. But I can never stay long, you see."

She gave me a sad smile and still a little confused I smiled back.

"It will all make more sense, if you let me show you," Chu Hua repeated, this time with the demanding self-assurance I had seen her ooze yesterday.

She made it sound like an open offer, but really it wasn't. I had to let her show me. I was getting a sense of danger from everything, but the danger... felt oddly exciting. I had been leading a safe quiet little life for as long as I could remember - it was time to spice things up. I pushed my sense of danger and common sense out of my conscious and simply agreed:

"When can we go?"