We were standing in front of the huge mansion of Jung JinSol and her mother. Choerry could hardly breathe with nervousness, stagnating with the beauty and magnitude of the place. In fact, every bit of the place looked like it came out of a fairytale movie with double the luxury, impeccable architecture, the care for preserving it clear to any eye. It was really beautiful.

"Very well," Choerry took a deep breath. "This is the day our exile of social anonymity comes to an end, officially," I massaged my own temples when I heard her words. Yerim had really taken it seriously. "Jungeun, ring the bell," she said, looking nervous.

"Yerim, it's literally by your side. You do it!"

"Jungeun, please!" I rolled my eyes, accepting my situation and checking the Hello Kitty wristwatch that Yeojin had put on my wrist earlier so I wouldn't miss the time — it was exactly 5:20 pm — before pushing my partner to the side to press the damn button bell. The high-pitched voice approached the door and it was opened quickly, giving us the vision of a JinSoul quite different from the one I was used to.

Before I knew it, the panic in me was released and many parts of my body, the parts that shouldn't, suffered a high temperature increase.

The city princess wore a naval lace lingerie dress — so tight on her curvaceous body that the details usually hidden, such as the mark of her under the garment or the tips of her s, since she was without a bra, appeared — blue heels and black lace garter on both legs.

"I think my uality has just been questioned," Choerry commented and I cleared my throat loudly, trying to keep my thoughts away. In response, JinSoul smiled and pulled us inside. I saw one of the maids close the door when I looked back, very much wanting to escape that damn punishment that was irrevocably being attracted to Jung JinSol.

In that moment, I hated her more than ever.

"Sorry about that, girls, we're playing a game. It will be fun!" Guaranteed the blonde.

The large living room, with the giant plasma television, the sofa lined with velvet and the chandelier, I imagined, with crystals, was in a declared war zone. Lots of clothes were on the floor, on the stairs and even at the kitchen door, where I spent most of my time at JinSoul's party last year. Pieces of a set of a professional makeup equipment were scattered between the dressers and the table.

I found Olivia standing in front of the television, taking some makeup from a girl with big cheeks that I had never seen in my life. Hyejoo was wearing baby pink pajamas with exaggerated ruffles in both pieces.

"Today is the contrary day, so we have to dress completely the opposite of what we usually use," JinSoul explained. "We're changing our pajamas. I'm with Soojin's, Hyejoo's cousin's girlfriend. She's the one on the chair, Olie is taking off her makeup. It's very y, as you can see," her cheeks soon took on the familiar reddish tinge and I wanted to laugh at the way I always ended up screwed, one way or the other; imprisoned for almost two days with high school patricians and their exuberant bodies covered in tiny, thin pieces of clothing. Just great.

"Whose outfit is Olivia wearing?" Choerry asked and I wondered about her ability to notice anything other than Jung JinSol's marked silhouette facing us well.

"It's Chaewon's. We agreed that they were the opposite of each other, but Hyejoo's outfit is with Soojin, since she hates superheroes and this is my friend's current obsession. Choerry, you can wear Soyeon's clothes and Soyeon can wear yours. It's all matching!" She celebrated as if she had said the most sensible thing in the world. "Kimberly, can you please, please, please, please, lend Chae your pajamas?" Her eyes opened more than necessary in my direction, bright and big. It hurt not to be able to divert mine to more interesting parts of her body.

"I think so," I said, but I hardly paid any attention to the conversation.

"Yay! This is great because we all agree that you should use mine."

And my mind stopped when I realized that life was a real motherer with me for making me wear the shirt and shorts set of JinSoul's pajamas, which smelled just like the girl — Chanel nº5 mixed with her natural citrus scent — impregnated in every tiny line for an entire night.

I sighed loudly, frustrated with my reality more than ever, and pulled on my most hidden strength to turn off the light and step away from the mirror next to the unnecessarily wide shower that ran from ceiling to floor. Yerim was waiting for me against the wall of the corridor, in front of the door through which I left. She was already wearing Soyeon's clothes; black sweatpants and a cropped with long sleeves of the same fabric, but silver.

"Choerry," I muttered under my breath. She understood how much I was hating that night.

"Don't even start it, Jungeun, you promised you would try!" She was referring to the previous night when I, tired of hearing her cry, desperately wanting to sleep and bothered by the slight feeling of guilt she had put on me, said I would try to bond. But the word promise was never mentioned.

I tried to ignore her speech and go on with my stubbornness, but the damn feeling throbbed again, like the thinnest of needles pricking my skin, and I uncrossed my arms, meant to keep my word.

"This will not be repeated, you understand?" My eyebrows went up and I frowned when she smiled and put an arm around my shoulders.

"I don't think I've ever worn anything as stylish and expensive as this outfit, it is wonderful," she commented. I stopped to analyze my own clothes, how comfortable they felt against my skin, unlike anything I had inside the closet I shared with my roommates. In fact, our pajamas were beautiful, except that they weren't ours.

"Look, Yerim, try not to get attached to anything here, okay?" I called out her attention, stopping in the room a few meters away from the heap that the girls had made, taking care to keep the tone of my voice low. "We don't know the development of this story and we must not forget that this is not our common, we are very far from all this."

Choerry didn't seem to take my speech in a good way and her features became irritated.

"That's exactly what I want to forget, Jungeun," her words were cold. "Even though I don't know how long I'll have access to all of this, we deserve that kind of thing. Nice clothes, tasty cardboard food. Friends," she sighed and I realized that someone was approaching us. Choerry lowered her tone. "Then try to help me make it last as long as possible."

"You're Kimberly, right?" The girl in question had long, straight black hair, just like her cousin, but her eyes, dark as night, differentiated them more than her gummy smile. She was wearing Choerry's purple blouse and yellow shorts with SpongeBob print. "I'm Soyeon, I'm Hye's cousin."

"Nobody calls me Kimberly except JinSoul, you can call me Jungeun," it was no surprise that I hated my birth name.

"Jungeun? It's a nice name," she smiled. "Nice to meet you, Jungeun. It's good not to be the only one disinterested in the girls' 'super exciting' night here," her mockery made me like her already. "I have better views on a super exciting night, if you know what I mean. And, oh! Choerry, Chaewon was looking for-" Before she could finish the sentence, Yerim was gone just for the hope that someone was looking for her. "She's really enjoying it, isn't she?" Soyeon laughed at my companion's rush. I accompanied her.

"Absolutely," we sat on the sofa, both with our feet under our legs. We had things in common, it was obvious, and I was more comfortable having her there. "So, what antics are we going to have to endure today?"

"Our schedule is better than it once was, believe me. Only God knows what I've been put through with these four. We have the entire Twilight saga on DVD, then a round of pizza and sweets and I think they’re planning to talk about something that makes them sensitive and a Truth or Dare before we go to sleep," I wasn’t surprised to see her do the same expression of disgust that I did just for the quote of our itinerary. I wondered, once again, what the hell I was doing there.

I wish Soyeon was wrong, but there wasn't a single person more certain than she. Hyejoo and Chaewon set up the largest of the beds on the floor between the television and a couch with an absurd amount of comforters, and I followed them when they lay down facing the screen. Unluckily for me, Soyeon had abandoned me to lie next to her girlfriend at the right side, while I was at the far left. Choerry was between Soojin and Chaewon, who was talking to my mate while Olivia hugged her waist. Clearly, some larger figure had been planning my wretch more and more vigorously.

"Kimberly?" Called JinSoul, shortly after Eclipse, the third film of the saga, start. I mumbled an answer without even looking at her, keeping my eyes fixed on Bella Swan. "I'm cold, can you hug me?"

Her request made me uncomfortable and it took me some time to return her gaze. As usual, I felt very hot, so I hated being held without the strictest need, especially after having spent an entire night with Yerim crushing me in my tiny bed. Not to mention the fact that Jung JinSol, being an almost that, had no morals to ask for more contact than a handshake, something she had been ignoring with her kisses without warning on my cheek and the times she grabbed my arm to move around in the aquarium.

However, to her satisfaction, my core seemed interested enough to have her body covered with pure lace glued to mine to give her a positive, albeit reluctant, response.

JinSoul clung to me as if she were fraternizing with one of those panda bears drawn on the stickers she insisted on sticking on her school's card. Her skin was truly cold and caused me to collapse a little by coming in contact with my natural high temperature. Her arm went around my waist and her legs grabbed one of mine.

But what the had I done?

"You are so warm," she said. Without an answer, she looked back at me. "Are you really enjoying the movie?"

"I hate the Twilight movies."

"Why?" Her eyebrows arched.

"Because I read the books."

The great truth that Stephenie Meyer's fans didn't want to admit was the one that I liked to rub in the face of everyone who approached the subject near m: her book films ruined her works because they were so awful and badly done. While her writing was sensitive, powerful and delivered fiery messages, the live action was poor, boring and overrated. Not only of the Twilight saga, but also of The Hostess as well, one of my favorite books. I almost cried when I watched it during a Computer class when I saw the disaster they had done with one of the most spectacularly constructed works in history.

Besides the obvious: Kristen Stewart, although being extremely attractive, made Isabella Swan look weak and uninteresting at the time Robert Pattinson disgusted me like Edward Cullen and Taylor Lautner didn't even seem to have bothered to read the books before playing the sixteen-year-old Jacob Black.

Her brushed my thigh and I, in a wave of loss of control, pressed her so hard that the blonde let out a low moan. Which I tried to ignore.

"I also prefer books," but why the hell did this girl keep talking? "I think it gives us the freedom we need to create our own little world, a world we can visit while fully conscious and rest without the weight of reality retaliating. I like to think that this is where the pain can't reach me and I can feel good."

Her speech attracted me and I slowly digested it.

"Your thinking is not hypocritical, which is new," I began. "But since when did you know what pain is, Jung JinSol?"

My question made her escape my gaze and lower her head. When the next scene came on the screen, JinSoul moved away from me and I was able to look at just her back heavily protected by two layers of blankets, but her fragrant hair did not leave me given to its length.

When Breaking Dawn Part 2 finally came to an end and we were able to turn on the lights, Olivia guided us straight to the kitchen. My belly rumbled when I saw the most diverse flavors of pizza and I lost control, ending up eating more than eight slices, in addition to the piece of walnut and chocolate cake with hazelnut that they offered me as dessert. The maids said goodbye to us after eating and left the residence. However, the housekeeper, Miss La Vour, an old little lady with gray hair, retired to her room with the warning that she was going to sleep, but that we had a duty to let her know if we needed anything.

The way JinSoul treated her house staff, from the women who ate with us in the pantry to the security team she gave hot chocolate to in the back of the house, made me feel very comfortable. I liked it. One of them, with spiky hair and thick lips, told her that her mother, the mayor, would sleep at Kim Jiwoo's house, the principal of my school, so that she could have a more pleasant night with her friends.

That, yes, was good news, and it reminded me of my task, since I had allowed myself to forget my responsibility that night to to honor the 'I will try it' oath that Yerim demanded with her harsh looks.

"I think it's game time," Chaewon sang after a brief conversation in signs with her girlfriend.

With stomachs full of food, we sat on a small wheel on the floor and Soyeon did a favor to turn on the heater. The formation was very similar to the previous one on the comfortable bed of comforters, except that Choerry lay on my left and JinSoul on my right. I still enjoyed my second mug of hot chocolate.

Soojin took the metal water bottle from her backpack and put it in the center of the circle.

"Who's going to start?" She asked, holding her wavy hair in a high bun on her head.

"I'll do it," Olivia's voice was so low and deliciously hoarse that I could barely hear it, but it made me look at her curiously. "I can speak, Jungeun, I just prefer to communicate in my first language."

I had read about the difficulty of deaf people to speak, especially among deaf people like Hyejoo, who had never heard the sound of vowels. From her soft accent, I imagined that she had been attending a speech therapist for a long time.

Olivia turned the object around and it was decided that the part with the lid would indicate who would have to answer and the bottom who would ask.

"Chaewon asks Choerry," Soojin verbalized it.

"What do you choose, Choerry?" Asked the gilt.

"Truth!"

"What was the most embarrassing situation you've ever been in?"

"Well," Yerim blushed hard. "There was a time in the kindergarten where I was with Jungeun in the school park and we were racing and Jungeun was letting me win, but then I tripped and rolled off the slope to the dog track. I stopped right on top of a lot of poop, it was awful. Jungeun was worried and started to shout 'Cherry! Cherry!', event though I've always hated cherries, and our whole class listened to her shouting and went to check what had happened. They all saw me in that shameful situation."

"Wow! It is not disappointing at all, Choerry,” Chaewon commented through laughter. Soyeon laughed spitefully.

"Cherry?" The brunette mocked.

"We were a pair of spies, you know, we had job names!" She defended herself. "I was Cherry and she was Kim Lip."

"Kim Lip? Where did that come from?"

"Nowhere, JinSoul. Yerim just with nicknames."

"Hey-"

"Soyeon for Kim Lip," I glared at Hyejoo, even though I was grateful that she stopped Yerim's drama. "I'm sorry, Lip, but it suits you."

I rolled my eyes and chose truth.

"What's the biggest secret you've ever kept from anyone? And it's not worth lying," Soyeon was blunt. "Choerry, tell us if she's lying."

The obedient gesture my roomate did to the eldest made me want to kill her. I had no ide of how to answer that question in determined terms without ending up in prison, and Yerim knew it well enough, so much that she kept avoiding my gaze. Coward.

"Can I switch to challenge?"

"Please!" The damn gummy smile girl smirked and looked at JinSoul. "I dare you to kiss her. And it has to be for five whole seconds!"

I smiled, too smart to fall for her tricks, and kissed Jung JinSol's cold cheek for five seconds.

"You didn't make your terms explicit."

'Touché."

The game ontinued until Chaewon started to nestle between Hyejoo's legs and fell asleep — they were the first to go to the duvet bed. So we started talking about our personal tastes and Yerim was able to show how sociable she could be if she were given the chance to. She was so happy because, after all, being accepted had been her dream for some time now.

"She looks happy," JinSoul blurted out. She was the only person who made comments as random as those, but equally consistent with our present reality.

"Yes, she does," I looked at the braid she was making with a thick lock of her long platinum hair. "You've been quiet since the movies."

Not that I care, I meant to say. But since Yerim had put the 'try!' bull in my head, maybe I cared the least to be considered human. Nothing more.

"Today is the last day of autumn, you know?" She mumbled again. "It's been just over three months since we are almost that," I laughed at her words, seeing how serious she had taken it.

"No, JinSou. I've been considering you almost that for almost a week, I've named you almost that two days ago and it's been over three months since I was forced to socialize with you," I corrected her and for some reason, she found reasons to bow her head and laugh happily.

"When will I be your friend, Kimberly?"

"I have no friends, JinSoul."

She, to my surprise, rolled her eyes and stood up, attracting the other girls.

"It's almost three in the morning, guys. I think it's smart to go to sleep."

Silently, I thanked JinSoul for making my life easier and forcing everyone to lie down and sleep. I waited half an hour just to be sure, to check on them and all I could see with the faint moonlight coming in through the closed window were closed eyes and lazy breaths.

Careful not to wake the blonde next to me, I got up and grabbed my backpack, leaving the room and going up the stairs. This was, apparently, the bad part of having a house that was too big: the difficulty between finding and moving between rooms. I carefully opened all the doors I saw in front of me and ended up finding a luxurious guest room, a non-compact bathroom and a music room, with a piano, guitars and violins hanging on the wall and a lot of instruments that I had no idea how to play, or how they called. One of the bedrooms, however, had left me curious about one detail. It was JinSoul's.

Jung JinSol's room was not as big as I had imagined, nor stunning or shiny. It was actually quite simple. It was obvious that all the pieces there were more expensive than everything that had ever belonged to me in my life, but there was nothing to show off. A dark piano leaned against the wall, next to the window, and the second door gave me access to the bathroom and closet. There were no rugs, a sign that she was allergic, and no dresses, which made me presume her claustrophobia, but there was a white bookshelf stretched on the lilac wall in front of the bed, loaded with books that, I figured, had a pattern.

It wasn't exactly that what had attracted me, though. On the next shelf, next to a bunch of trophies, were medals and tickets in small pieces of cardboard stuck to the wall. Phrases like 'Try to eat, JinSoul, you can do it!', 'Hold the food, JinSoul' and 'You are not ungrateful for not being able to feel good' filled the papers. The trophies were repeated with the first position, but the sports varied. Swimming, synchronized swimming, jazz, jiu-jitsu, running. I had read enough biography books to interpret that wall correctly.

Jung JinSol was depressed, bulimic and anorexic. Or something close to it.

Something inside me broke with the realization and I knew it was the perfect princess image that I had created of her. I had never seriously thought about any of this because it was not my reality. Everyone I knew struggled to be able to eat, not the other way around. Everyone I knew had reasons to be unhappy, but, seeing it all, I believed for the first time that there was no need to have such thing as depression. It was a disease and could happen to anyone, even Jung JinSol.

For the first time, with the remnant of humanity that there was in me, I felt bad for her.

Too many first times for one day.

"What do you have to steal this time?" I was startled by her voice and jumped towards her.

"Choi Yerim!" I shouted in a whisper. "What the , dude! You don't know how to be normal, do you?"

"Answer me, Jungeun," she insisted, but I remained silent, waiting for her to give up on pissing me off. It did not happened. "Look here, you masochistic idiot, whether you like it or not, I'm with you and I will not let you do this alone when I can help."

"Go back to sleep, Yerim," I said, rolling my eyes and pushing her through, continuing my search. I heard Choerry close the door to JinSoul's room and follow me. Jesus ing Christ.

"You won't get rid of me so you better tell me for once."

Seeming to answer my prayers — whoever it was —, I found the first door locked. Only JinSoul and Sooyoung lived here, in addition to the employees, all too busy and loyal to disobey, so why lock up a room? I smiled victoriously, having no trouble cheating on the lock with a hair clip that I had taken from Yerim's messy hairstyle and running into Mayor Ha Sooyoung's office.

"Oh, no," my roommate murmured while following me cautiously into the room after closing the door behind her, understanding what my actions meant. "Let's be quick, okay? I don't want us to get into trouble. I mean, more trouble."

"It would help if you shut up and went back to sleep."

"It would help if you tell me what we are looking for!"

I started rummaging through the many dressers, opening the drawers in search of any sign of the damn fish, and Yerim, more fearful than anything, was calculating her movements when she searched the mayor's closet.

"Fish, Yerim, anything that reminds you of fish."

"Jungeun, I think I screw up a bit."

Rolling my eyes, I turned around and was ready for something broken, something werid, but a hidden passage behind the automatic door better known as Sooyoung's drink cabinet was more than my mind could ever imagine.

"Yerim, what the hell?!"

"I didn't do anything, I swear! I didn't drop anything, I didn't pull anything, it just opened!" She defended herself and I was motivated not to trust her if the noisy steps were not coming from the hole in the wall. I opened my eyes wide, understanding what that meant and grabbed Choerry's arm to pull her under the wooden table. Seconds later, the heels were too close and the muffled drag from the closet was enough for us to understand.

"Jiwoo, don't worry, I'm coming, baby," Ha Sooyoung's voice sounded, more alive than ever, and Yerim would scream in panic if I hadn't shut her up with my hand. The fear in her eyes was clear. "No, my love, work has delayed more than Iitshould have, I've already explained it," she continued. "JinSoul asked me to come here, she had another anxiety attack."

Yerim bit my hand and I almost hit her. Liar, she simulated with her lips. It took me three seconds to understand that she was referring to JinSoul's mother.

“Okay, I'm coming back. Leaving right now. Love you."

I stuck my head out a little after we heard the door lock again and pulled us out of the cubicle to find that we were alone again.

"What the hell was that? Mrs. Ha must be crazy! JinSoul didn't leave our sight all night! And Olivia had even told me that she was a little upset because she hadn't seen her mother since yesterday afternoon," she started, but I was busy gathering information and trying to believe in what I just heard." It seems that it's not just girls from the periphery who hide illegal secrets."

"This is something to worry about later, Yerim. In fact, you don't have any secrets and you won't start to have them."

"I'm already involved in this, Jungeun," she insisted. "I appreciate everything you've been doing to keep Yeojin and I out of it, but I know what I'm getting into and I won't let you continue alone on this one. Whatever you're going to do, I'll stay by your side."

Accepting that her stubbornness was greater than my patience, I took a deep breath while trying to accept that my protective instinct for Yerim would no longer prevent her from getting into trouble and, before I knew it, she was gone from my vision. I had been paralyzed for too long.

"Jungeun, is that this?" I went to her. Choerry had opened a drawer that was supposed to be closed due to its lock, but her hair was completely loose and it gave me an idea of how that happened. The false bottom was on top of the marble and all I saw at the end of the void was beta plaster fish. "Isn't this the soluble material that the teacher made you study for the last work of last year?"

"You are a genius, Choi Yerim," my eyes shone with satisfaction staring at the objects.

"Cherry and Kim Lip?"

I looked into her eyes and smiled. "Cherry and Kim Lip."

After putting the five plaster fish in my backpack, we unlocked the door to get out of there and headed to the stairs, but when we were right in the middle of it, we heard the familiar friction noise between the floor and the absurdly high heels.

"Damn it," Yerim whispered.

"She's coming here, we won't be able to get down without her seeing us."

"I think I got an idea. Stay down until she moves."

"What? No! Yerim, you can't-"

"Just trust me, damn it!"

Seeing her thirsty for her wishes and knowing that I was about to deeply regret it, I obeyed her and crouched down. It was too dark for Sooyoung to be able to focus on more than just one thing, so I understood my roommate's logic quickly enough. Yerim sat on a step and began to sob. The noise of the heels jumped closer until Ha Sooyoung was meters away from us.

The woman crouched down to Yerim and touched her head, pulling he off the wall. I saw my chance and left as quietly as I could, putting my backpack under Soyeon's, as it was before, and my body next to Jung JinSol, but I ended up not being so delicate in my last task and her sleepy eyes soon shone at me. Automatically but not wanting to, I remembered what I had seen in her room.

"Lippie," I wrinkled my nose in strangeness to the new nickname. JinSoul was so cliché it made me want to pretend to faint. But she smiled with her face crumpled by the pillow. "Choi Yerim is your friend, isn't she? Why can't I be too?"

A shadow came into view and I recognized it as Choerry by her body shape. She noticed that I was looking at her and smiled big, satisfied, raising her thumbs up and lying down again between the sleeping Soojin and Chaewon.

I didn't have to think to answer.

"You're wrong, Jung JinSol. Choi Yerim is my family."