*BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ*

A groggy face emerges from beneath navy blue sheets, covered by a mop of unkempt bedhead, disheveled and pointing toward every cardinal and ordinal direction. Whatever dream she was having is swiftly forgotten as the teenager directs her full attention toward shutting off the ringing from her phone. She hesitates for a single moment, contemplating whether she could get away with tapping 'snooze' on the screen, but decides against it.

Someone has to be the responsible one.

Taeyeon forces herself to leave the comfort of her bed, and even though springtime has arrived and the air in her room is perfectly to her liking, she fantasizes that she has set the alarm last night by mistake and that today is actually Saturday. Unfortunately, the date on her home screen taunts her, shoving the word "Thursday" into her face like it's a scoreboard. She won't get to keep her loose t-shirt and pajama pants on and go back to bed this time.

She grumbles at the injustice of the universe that she must go to school as she picks out some clothes at random from her dresser and drags her feet out of her room to wash up and make herself presentable to the public. As she walks down the hall and past walls plastered all over with pictures of the small resident family to the bathroom she shares with her twin sister, she pounds on said sister's door and screams, "Get up! Hurry up, or we're going to be late again! I know you haven't started getting ready yet; I can hear your total lack of movement, you lazy bum!" 

Taeyeon rolls her eyes when the person inside totally ignores her, even though she isn't surprised in the least. However, she isn't going to stick her neck out for her sluggish sibling- not when their next tardy lands them both in detention. "I will leave without you if you aren't ready by 7:45! I'm serious this time!" 

From behind the closed door, a squeaky voice emerges. "Ugh, that's not your car, ! It's both of ours, and mom told you we're supposed to share it. So don't even think about leaving me behind!" 

Content that her sister is at least going to get up and begin her ridiculously drawn-out morning ritual, Taeyeon enters the bathroom and locks the door behind her. Even though they used to often use the facilities simultaneously for efficiency purposes, with one washing herself while the other brushed her teeth, in recent years having both of them in there at the same time tended to just eat up more time than necessary as they bickered along each step.

After carefully picking out and putting back and picking out again her outfit for the day, Jessica walks past the dozens of framed portraits of their family herself. She can hear her sister's ridiculous rock music being blasted from inside the bathroom but not the sound of running water- it's her turn. 

Jessica knocks on the door to urge Taeyeon to finish up with the rest of whatever she needs to do already. "Come onnnnnn, hurry uuuuuuup. It's not my fault if we're late if you're going to hog the bathroom all morning!" She shivers in her loose nightgown, looking forward to the warmth of a hot shower.

"Well I'm not done yet, so too bad! You should've woken up earlier if you wanted to come in first- you should just do that anyway, since you take a million hours every ing day," comes the forceful reply.

Taeyeon doesn't realize how loudly she's raised her voice as she tried to be heard over the tenacious melodies of double guitars. Unfortunately, this just annoys her sister even more.

Jessica gasps in exasperation as she attempts to open the door without permission to expel the current occupant, or at least hop behind the shower curtain while Taeyeon draws her weird make-up or whatever. The doorknob doesn't budge however, no matter how hard she tries to twist it. Now deeply frustrated that her twin has metaphorically lugged her out of bed for apparently no reason but to mess with her, she is ready to unleash her anger in the form of strident high-pitched shrieks.

As though sensing the imminent tantrum, Taeyeon shouts beyond the locked door again. "Just go use mom's! She's definitely done with the master bath already, and that's way bigger anyway!" 

"Ahhhhh- No! You know how overbearing she gets if she happens to come in while you're using her bathroom. We'll still probably be late if it's one of her 'fussy' days- arrghh!" 

"Better get moving then-! I'm not joking, I will leave without you and you can have mom drive you to school if that happens." 

Stuck between the two possibilities, neither of which sounds even moderately appealing, Jessica chooses the lesser of two evils and trudges toward their mother's bathroom, which is connected to the master bedroom. She does kick at the door separating her from her strait-laced sister as a parting grievance, however. 

Having taken her sweet time getting dressed, applying some slightly-off-the-mainstream makeup, and tousling her hair with painstaking care to achieve that perfect mixture of messy and styled locks reminiscent of the lead guitarist of her favorite band, Taeyeon finally vacates the balmy room and steps out of the remnants of steam. As her skin adjusts to the comparatively cooler air of the rest of the house, she hears a grumbling in her belly that definitely needs to be taken care of before school. The teen grabs her backpack -carefully organized and arranged before retiring to bed last night- and heads downstairs, mouth watering as her nose picks up the scent of her mom's specialty pancakes from the kitchen.

The sight is a familiar one in the household- Tiffany juggles a half dozen pots and pans on the stovetop as she prepares the family's breakfast and lunch, which they each take with them to school or the office. In order to make sure her kids can get to school on time, she usually waits until after they are gone before she takes her own shower. Today is no exception, and Taeyeon sees her mom, still in her robes and slippers and hair curlers, expertly float between her trusty appliances, hard at work. 

The padded footfalls growing louder and louder alerts Tiffany that one of her daughters has managed to finish her morning routine with ample time remaining before they need to leave. It's no surprise to her that the twin who pops into the kitchen is Taeyeon, who is almost always earlier to rise and quicker to get going than her sister.

The single mom can't hold back a smile that extends all the way to her crescent eyes as she sets down a plate for her daughter at her preferred seat on the breakfast counter. "Oh, Tootsie-Bear, you're just in time for breakfast. My two babies have been in such a rush to leave for school lately, I've been so worried that I'm sending you both to school hungry." 

At the sight of the tall stack of blueberry pancakes that seem to be responding directly to her empty stomach's SOS signals, Taeyeon squashes an instinctive protest of her mother's usage of that embarrassing nickname. The mini-mountain of homemade ambrosia, fluffier than the fullest cumulus clouds have been lovingly shaped into musical notes, treble clefs, and, to her chagrin, teddy bears. "T-than--fff-- mhm- thanfths Mmm-mom," she manages to somehow verbalize in between drowning her plate with syrup and shoving huge bites of syrup-y pancakes into her face.

As Taeyeon inhales the contents of her plate, she never comes close to actually finishing the meal as Tiffany continues to pile biscuits, sausages, and eggs as quickly as the teenager can polish them off. "Mmm-- mmmommmm- t-thass mphhh 'nufff. 'Nufffff!" As a senior in high school, her appetite is often voracious, but she is also rapidly approaching adulthood as graduation draws near. Taeyeon really wishes her mom could just stop treating her like such a little kid- she's going to leave for college in a few months and there's no reason she still needs help cutting up her food.

"Oh, but Cubbie-Bear, we don't have so much time left together, you know," Tiffany entreats as she wraps her arms around the grouchy teen and tries to kiss her on the side of her head.

"Awh, moo-ooom, stop being so embarrassing! Nooo- you're screwing up my hair!" Taeyeon rolls her eyes like that's what they were made for. Her mom is so cringey and dramatic; they're going off to university from where they'll come home every break, not getting drafted into war where they may never come back. "Maybe you should check up on Jessica; I feel like she's even slower than usual today."

Tiffany can never get enough of displaying her affections for her children and showing them just how much she loves and adores them. Even so, it's true that her other daughter still hasn't made it downstairs, and her pancakes will be cold soon.

Jessica huffs as she digs around various shelves and cabinets; one of the disadvantages of being the one exiled to the master bath is not knowing where anything is. She doesn't have a moment to spare when her manages to unearth some liquid liner in her excavation of her mom's cosmetics and other supplies. She isn't even entirely dressed yet and her hair still needs to be dried and curled. And maybe braided.

Her hand falters and she almost end