Eunbi found herself in a desert watching her daughter, Wonyoung, play in the sandy terrain. She found it strange that they were in the middle of nowhere, the outline of the nearest village can be seen close to the horizon. Before she managed to take a step towards the village, Wonyoung called out to her.

 

“Yo mama!”

 

Eunbi turned around to see her daughter laughing her heart out while pointing at a poorly made sandcastle in front of her. The sandcastle looked hauntingly familiar; the hardened sand that made the pillars that were still fresh from her memory. What got her attention was the unmistakable crest at the top of the castle, something Wonyoung should not have known but is clearly imprinted in the older’s mind.

 

“Mama, look what you’ve done!”

 

She looked up to see her daughter’s laughing face slowly getting distorted as her facial features twisted around her nose, opening wider each second and eventually exploding as if it was an active nuclear head.

 

That was when Eunbi jolted awake.

 

The short-haired blonde found herself in the comfort of her own bed. She opened the curtains and was relieved to see the familiar gates and yards in her suburban neighborhood in the outskirts of Seoul. The clock showed that it was 6:56 AM, four minutes before her alarm was going to go off. She sighed as she forced herself to get up from bed to prepare for the day. As she was preparing her wardrobe for her work, she noticed the small box at the far corner of her closet. The box was nothing out of ordinary: it was made out of cardboard and it looked aged with its slightly deformed exterior. There was nothing on the outside that indicated what was inside it, but Eunbi didn’t need a label to know the contents of the said box. Indeed, things can never be forgotten.

 

Her little musing was cut short by a loud clanking metal sound coming from the streets. Eunbi looked outside to see a junkman desperately trying to disassemble a fridge left on the sidewalk by one of their neighbors.

 

CLANK.

 

CLANK.

 

CLANK.

 

She could see the images from her past flash through her eyes. The metal sound reminded her of the past she was trying to run away from. The artillery, the explosions, the wind, the cries of the wounded: everything just came rushing in.

 

“Calm down, Eunbi.” She said to herself as she tried to find her footing again. She could sense a massive headache coming if the sound did not stop. Fortunately, the junk man managed to disassemble the refrigerator after a few seconds. Eunbi lets out a deep breath and goes on to prepare breakfast.

 

“Today is not going to be a great day.”

 

---

 

She went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast for her and her daughter Wonyoung. She was cooking bacon and eggs when the sixteen-year-old came down from the stairs after preparing for school.

 

“Yo, mama!” The energetic girl shouted to greet her mom. Some people might think that the interaction is a little too informal for a mother-daughter relationship, but Eunbi always valued openness in their relationship. It all started when Wonyoung asked her what a MILF was.

 

“Mama, what’s a MILF?”

 

“Where did you hear that from?”

 

“My friends started calling you MILF a month ago, and when I asked, they told me calling someone a MILF is a sign of respect. So, when my math teacher helped me with my homework, I told her ‘Thanks for being a MILF, Ma’am.’. And that didn’t end well.” Wonyoung said with downcast eyes.

 

Eunbi tried to comfort her daughter by gently patting her back, “Why didn’t you ask me?”

 

“Because I was scared to talk to you about it.”

 

And that was how they agreed upon being informal with each other. Eunbi was relieved that they made the agreement on some days, but she was just not in the mood today.

 

“Wonyoung, eat up. How would you like your eggs this morning?” said Eunbi after setting up the table for their meal.

 

“That’s bold of you to ask, mama. At least take me to dinner first.”

 

“Shut up. Who told you about that?” Eunbi asked, recognizing the innuendo.

 

The little kid smirked as she replied, “Your mom.”

 

“Excuse me, but your grandma was NOT a ho. So eat up before I ban you from using the internet again,” Eunbi countered, letting her daughter remember how she got punished before for pushing Eunbi to the limit.

 

Wonyoung let out her distinct annoying laugh, which included a very charming eyesmile that only she can pull off.

 

“Okay mom,” said Wonyoung. “Oh, I’ll be sleeping at Yujin’s place tonight since there’s no school tomorrow. She said she bought a new fan so we’re going to just chill out in her room and watch Netflix.”

 

Eunbi raised her eyebrows, “Did Yujin just invite you to ‘Netflix and Chill’?”

 

The daughter immediately denied the accusation her mother was implicitly making, “No! God, no! We’re just friends. God, mama please! If anything, you should be the one looking for someone to Netflix and chill with,” Wonyoung was so animated in responding to her that she unknowingly was slamming her cutleries on the plate.

 

CLANK

 

CLANK

 

CLANK

 

 

Eunbi winced again to the clanking sound and the wave of memories that came earlier that day are resurfacing again. It did not help that her coffee maker was not finished making her coffee yet. Her head was starting to throb, her vision was starting to blur, and her hands were starting to shake. The tiled kitchen floor was transforming to the awfully familiar sandy ground that she once walked on years ago.

 

“I don’t want to have the birds and the bees talk this early Ma-- Mama, are you okay?”

 

Her daughter’s voice brought her back to reality, but only slightly. She could still feel her head throbbing and the headache was surely coming, but at least she was more aware of her surroundings. Wonyoung has dropped her fork and knife, effectively stopping the noise she was making. This respite was enough for Eunbi to manage to open her eyes again and stand upright.

 

“Do you need your usual vodka? It looks like something got to you mama.”

 

Eunbi fixed her clothes, trying to play off the breakdown she almost had, and turned to her daughter with a playful stern expression on her face. “Finish your breakfast before I take your blankets away again tonight.”

 

Wonyoung immediately went back to eating her breakfast, but not before reminding her mother, “Don’t forget to buy new shooters today. We only have one Absolut shooter left.”

 

Eunbi hoped that one was enough.

 

 

One was not enough.

 

It seemed that everybody in Seoul wanted the metalworks in their construction sites done today and that all of these construction sites were in Eunbi’s way to work. The subway, which Eunbi thought to be her sanctuary, was not as forgiving as it always was. She ended up in the same car as a hobo who thought he can play a makeshift triangle using a metal chopstick and an old grill grate to make people give him money for food. That and a middle schooler practicing their xylophone on their way to class (yes, the kid needed the practice) was enough to push Eunbi over the edge. She took out her last Absolut vodka shooter from her bag and downed it before anyone noticed.

 

Call her an alcoholic, but the alcohol helped a lot in calming her nerves. Being a steam engineer, she was constantly exposed to loud noises in site visits. She would take a swig of a shooter before going into the site to talk to the contractors. The contractors and the workers did not seem to notice and she made sure to keep her distance so they don’t smell her breath. That was also the reason why she did not drive to work even if she had a car, but she would not tell others that. She would always blame the Seoul traffic and praise the efficiency of the traffic system.

 

But today, the system. The now shooter-less Eunbi sighed as she entered their office hoping that it would be a quiet day today.

 

 

“CHAEWON! LOOK AT THIS!” An ash blonde office woman shouted from the opposite end of the office to call the attention of a short-haired girl seated in the desk beside Eunbi’s. Being the team leader, Eunbi had the power to fire the woman for being so noisy after the morning she just had but she hesitated because she did not want to deal with HR.

 

“Yena, pipe it down a little bit. It’s a Monday, for goodness’ sake,” Eunbi said in the calmest tone she can manage, “What is the commotion all about?”

 

The ash blonde woman named Yena turned to her and after realizing that her boss had arrived, she gave Eunbi a small bow and quietly replied, “It’s nothing important, Miss Eunbi. Please carry on.”

 

“Since you welcomed me with such a loud voice this early in the morning, it should have been important. So, tell me before I fire your .”

 

Yena fiddled with her phone, and after a few seconds of thought, she unlocked it and opened an app. She showed it to Eunbi and explained, “I tweeted something controversial about the building code of Seoul and I got ratio-ed by my haters who clearly don’t know anything about steam systems.”

 

Eunbi was annoyed but also intrigued about the chaos her underling had caused in the internet, “What was your tweet about?”

 

“I tweeted about how the steam energy sector should be privatized to facilitate prompt improvements in the industry before handing it out to the citizens. These dumdums want it to be public just because, and I quote, ‘Anybody can make steam.’”

 

“That’s stupid,” Eunbi could not help but chuckle.

 

“I wanted to show it to Chaewon to laugh about it, but she’s busy admiring her new chair,” Yena pointed to the short-haired girl who had been walking around what it seemed to be an ordinary gaming chair.

 

Chaewon seemed to hear that she was the subject of the conversation and shouted, “It’s an A+ chair. It’s the latest model of the S.I.M.P. series. It even comes with a massager and gaming tips! I gave an arm and a leg to buy this and it’s worth it.”

 

The two women listening exchanged glances at each other. They were clearly missing something here.

 

“How can you simp over a chair? It’s just a chair!” Yena shouted angrily.

 

“Excuse me, I love this chair. Leave me to simp to whomever or whatever. I don’t judge you when you simp for this girl with a good voice!”

 

“Hey, that girl with a GREAT voice is ethereal. Don’t you have Hitomi? What would she say if she discovers that she has taken second place in your life because of a chair?”

 

Chaewon winced at the mention of her girlfriend’s name and turned towards her boss, who was quietly enjoying the exchange. “You wouldn’t tell Hitomi, would you? She was so against buying this chair because it was too expensive—”

 

Eunbi interrupted the girl, “The chair or Hitomi?”

 

The girl took a step back to think about her answer, “Hmm. I can love the chair and Hitomi equally. They both make me feel comfortable, safe and---”

 

“You sit on them both,” Yena smirked after completing her colleague’s sentence, which led to the girl tossing an empty water bottle towards the direction of the blonde. Before the bottle reached Yena, Eunbi managed to catch the bottle in mid-air, shocking them both.

 

“Okay, back to work,” Eunbi went to Yena and lightly smacked the younger girl on the head, “If you make a comment like that about Hitomi again, I am going to ban you from talking.”

 

“But I wasn’t wrong, she made the same joke when we were drink---”

 

Yena’s explanation was cut short by the company phone ringing. Eunbi’s glare was enough to force the ash blonde to answer the phone call. After a few questions and nods in response, Yena hung up the phone and told them about the call.

 

“There is an emergency at Stone Music Entertainment building. Some American turned the heat at max temperature since he thought the setting was on degrees Fahrenheit,” Yena said with disgust. “They heard weird noises coming from the boiler room so they asked us to check it out.”

 

Eunbi let out a heavy sigh and said, “Can you and Chaewon handle this? I have a lot of things to do here still.” That was an excuse. It was a relatively light workday for Eunbi, but the thought of fixing noises in a steaming environment was appalling for her especially since she had already her consumed her last vodka shooter.

 

“But ma’am,” answered Chaewon, “you are the point person for the maintenance of that building. It would be helpful if you came with us.”

 

She was right, and Eunbi knew it. “Fine, let’s go. Get the car and I’ll meet you out front.” As soon as the two walked out of the office, Eunbi rushed to search her bag for a spare shooter that somehow got lost in the past and forgot about it. After minutes of searching, she gave up. She might have to go through this sober.

 

you too, life.

 

--

 

They arrived at the building after half an hour and it was apparent that the situation was serious. Once they stepped inside the building, they could feel that the building was starting to heat up. Recognizing that this can be a bigger deal than it already was, she turned to Yena and ordered, “Get our protective equipment and call the fire department. Chaewon, come with me to the boiler room.”

 

The path to the boiler room was hot, literally. The steam coming out of the room can be seen from the other end of the hallway where Eunbi was. As they moved closer to the source of the steam, the noises from the room became louder.

 

Thunk. Thunk. THUNK. THUNK.

 

The noise was starting to get to Eunbi, who was taking the lead with Chaewon behind her. She powered through the throbbing headache not wanting to disappoint her junior. It was their job, after all.

 

THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK.

 

She could feel that something was off with what she was hearing. She thought that it might be because of the trauma, but the sound seemed too real to be part of her episodes. She had only heard this type of sound once in the past and now that she thought more about it, this was utterly similar. The steam was steadily expanding inside a sealed room and it was only a matter of time when the door reaches its limit.

 

“Are you okay, ma’am?” She heard Chaewon ask, who approached her from the front. Eunbi recognized that the woman was between her and the room that was about to blow off. She heard the slight jimmying sound of the doorknob. With her quick reflexes, she pulled Chaewon to the space behind her and shouted, “The room is about to blow. Run!”

 

The younger woman was confused, but seeing the terror in her boss’s face, she followed the instruction and ran. Eunbi ran just behind Chaewon, her hand on the other’s back as if to push her away from danger. They barely made it out of the staircase when they heard a loud explosion coming from the boiler room.

 

The two women were panting trying to catch their breath when they saw Yena running towards them, the firemen were already running into the building just behind her.

 

Yena asked, “Are you okay?”

 

Chaewon only managed to nod since she still did not have enough air in her to say anything. Yena turned to where her boss was just to see that she had disappeared through a nearby alley. She was about to follow when she got a text from the said boss,

 

“I’m okay. I’m calling in for today. Handle the firemen for me.”

 

 

 

Eunbi managed to find herself in familiar territory once she turned the corner. She was greeted by a plain storage room door with a small green light at the top. She turned the knob and was surprised when the door swung open. She did not expect the establishment to be open this early in the day, not that she was complaining. She made her way through the dark staircase and into a big empty space of a nightclub. She expected the place to be completely empty but she saw a group of people moving around the place pushing around boxes and carts from one end to another. Her eyes wandered around to the most important place in the club and saw the familiar girl behind the bar, cleaning shot glasses.

 

“Sakura!” Eunbi shouted to get the bartender’s attention. The bartender looked up and answered with a small wave. Once Eunbi had reached the bar and gotten seated on one of the stools, the woman named Sakura asked, “What brings you here at nine in the morning?”

 

“Ran out of shooters.”

 

“Isn’t it too early?”

 

“You were open.”

 

“You know I only close the bar when I sleep.”

 

“And like I said, you were open. You’re always open.”

 

“Go to a ing convenience store then. I won’t have you mess up my accounting,” replied Sakura, motioning towards the liquor display behind her.

 

“I can’t. I need something stronger,” Eunbi paused, hoping for a reaction from the bartender, who had now moved on to drying cocktail glasses. “There was an explosion at work today.”

 

That managed to get Sakura’s attention. “Oh. Let me just finish drying these and I’ll get something from my private stash out back.” The silver-haired woman was a friend of Eunbi from the old days, and arguably it was some of their darkest days. Needless to say, Sakura was aware of Eunbi’s trauma problem. In fact, it was also the reason why she had opened a nightclub in the heart of Seoul, but that is another long story.

 

Eunbi hummed in approval and left the girl to work. She looked around what the fuss was about this early in the “Scary Akgae”, the name of Sakura’s club. It seemed like they were setting up a stage for a performance. The stage had a wide area that included a platform and a soundboard and there were a few men working on installing screens at the backdrop. Eunbi thought it might be for a DJ’s performance. She could ask Sakura later. She was about to turn back around to the bar when she spied from the corner of her eyes a woman holding a balloon above her head. The woman had a really beautiful face, to which Eunbi would concede that the woman might be more beautiful than her. She was wearing a purple blouse under a black blazer with a black pencil-type skirt to match. Based on her outfit, Eunbi thought that she definitely was not part of the sound team. Eunbi noticed the said woman’s expressionless face had turned into smug smirk as their eyes met.

 

, she noticed me.

 

She turned back around to see Sakura coming back from the back room, pushing a cart of exquisite alcohol bottles.

 

“What do you want, Eunbi? I got vodka, whiskey, rum…”

 

Eunbi looked over the tray and asked, “Is that Pendleton?” Sakura nodded.

 

“Make me an old-fashioned, Sakura. Just like the old days.” The bartender turned and prepared her drink. It has been a while since she had Sakura’s old-fashioned, the one drink that their whole squad used to consume to get nerves out of their systems before the day started. Before she could go down memory lane, she was surprised by a loud pop from behind her.

 

She looked and saw that the balloon that the pretty woman was holding was no more. The woman held up her thumb to signal her colleague at the other side of the club holding what seemed to be a sensor. Eunbi noticed the small smile on the woman’s lips when she got a new balloon and moved to a different part of the club farther away from Eunbi.

 

“They’ve been testing the acoustics of the place since 8 AM. I got scared of the balloons at first but I got used to it after a while,” said Sakura as she gave Eunbi her drink. The older girl accepted with a slight nod and took a little sip.

 

“She’s pretty, no?” Sakura suddenly asked, making Eunbi spit out her drink.

 

“What?”

 

“She’s pretty.”

 

“Well… yeah, I guess,” Eunbi hesitantly replied. She was about to take another sip when she heard a voice behind her.

 

“You guess? You must not know how to appreciate beauty, miss.” A tap on Eunbi’s shoulder made Eunbi turn around yet again to face the beautiful woman holding a balloon before. “If you don’t think I was pretty, what was the color of the balloon I was holding earlier?”

 

“What?” Eunbi was confused.

 

“What was the color of the balloon I was holding?” the woman repeated, staring her in the eyes .

 

“I know, it was—” Eunbi tried racking her brain but nothing. She knew she had trained for these situations before, but it was a long time ago. She was too distracted by the beautiful face to notice what the color of the damn balloon was. It did not help that the said beauty was staring at her eyes in that moment. She knew she had to guess to save her pride.

 

“Yellow.”

 

“Close. It was red.”

 

“Same thing,” Eunbi coolly replied. She went back to drinking her drink to avoid further humiliation when the woman added again.

 

“Oh. Old-fashioned. It suits you.”

 

Eunbi was shocked by the statement, “Excuse me, did you just call me old?”

 

The woman shrugged, “I can argue that it’s because the drink itself is simple yet classy and full of mystery. But if what you said was the case, wouldn’t it still be the truth?”

 

Eunbi was getting worked up by what the woman in front of her said especially when it was followed by a smug smirk, “I am not THAT old. If you were to order a drink right now, what would it be huh?”

 

The smug smirked still remained, much to Eunbi’s disappointment. She had expected to elicit a reaction from the woman, but she calmly answered, “Whiskey and coke.”

 

“That’s a grandma drink.”

 

“Never said I wasn’t old.”

 

“I’m not old.”

 

“Then will you go to the rave here with me later tonight?”

 

“Yeah sure! I—Wait.” Eunbi didn’t know that such a smug person could be smugger, but it happened.

 

“It’s a date. I’ll see you here at 10 PM. The name’s Hyewon. What’s yours?”

 

Eunbi was tongue-tied by Hyewon’s audacity, resulting in an awkward silence which was thankfully broken by Sakura.

 

“Her name’s Eunbi. She will see you later at 10 PM, Hyewon.”

 

As if she wanted Eunbi to malfunction even more, Hyewon gave her a wink before telling Sakura, “We’re done here. I’ve told the setup team where to put the speakers to get the best acoustic experience. I’ll be waiting for that whiskey and coke later, Sakura.” Sakura gave her a salute and the beautiful woman headed out of the club.

 

“Goddamn Eunbi, you just got yourself a date,” Sakura said as she wiped down the counter while Eunbi just stared into space.

 

What just happened?

 

 

After Wonyoung left for her sleepover at Yujin’s, Eunbi focused on her own outfit for tonight. She had been trying out different looks from her closet but nothing worked. Although she looked stunning in all of them, she couldn’t help but accept one thing: She looked like a mom. And that would prove Hyewon right. She continued to rummage through her closet, intentionally ignoring