Hello there, before you begin and read this story, I would like to inform you that this is a raw material (Not proofread and I only continued writing the scenes from the bullet written ideas) so I apologize if there are blatant errors, but I assume you already know that because I am known for not editing my works, lol!

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In traditional Korean society, women's roles were confined to the home. From a young age, women were taught the virtues of subordination and endurance to prepare for their future roles as wife and mother. Women, in general, could not participate in society as men did, and their role was limited to household matters. The only career usually available to girls was to make a good marriage. Mothers kept a watchful eye on their daughters, and once a suitable young man had proposed, or arranged in marriage, had been accepted, and a formal engagement is announced, there was an end to the matter. It was considered disgraceful behavior to break off an engagement because you had changed your mind.

Until it changed in 1948, where women gained their legal rights to vote, drive, own and inherit properties and/or assets. For instance, Korean females have access to all medical and healthcare services. However, even if the world had changed, some people still practice the traditional way, hence, we call them the traditionalist. The problem is when someone grows in a household with this kind of mindset and adding intercultural marriages into the picture is a big problem, especially if you hope to wed someone from a country who have a historical feud with your own homeland.

Mrs. Yoo Nayeon, and Mrs. Hirai Mina, two upper-class women from South Korea and Japan, have known each other since they're teenagers. Now both widows, each with one daughter, they meet by chance in the Netherlands. Their daughters are out for the afternoon, while they are left to linger on the restaurant terrace, admiring the city goers below them. As the evening light descends, they recall the courtship days of their youth. But it can be unwise to look closely at the past.

- - -

From the table of which they had been lunching the ripe but well-cared-for middle aged women moved across the lofty terrace of the Dutch restaurant, and leaning on the parapet, looked at each other first, then down at the diverse city center filled with several distinct shopping areas and shopping streets, many of which have their own themes or specialties that filled by young shoppers. Nayeon and Mina had the same vague expression but benevolent approval.

As they lean over, they've heard Nayeon's daughter voice echoed up from below them, "Well, come along Tzuyu" they heard her say, "Let's leave the coffin-dodgers to their knitting!"

"Well, I mean figuratively..." rejoined Tzuyu, "We haven't left our poor parents much else to do..." their conversation engulfed as they rounded the corner of the street.

The two ladies looked at each other again, this time with a tinge of smiling embarrassment. Mina shook her head and colored slightly, "Nayeon!" she murmured, sending an unheard rebuke after the mocking voice of their own daughters. The other lady named Nayeon gave a good-humored laugh, "That's what our daughters think of us!?".

Mina replied with a deprecating gesture, "Not of us individually, we must remember that it is just the collective modern idea of mothers." Half guiltily she drew from her handsomely mounted black handbag a twist of dark green silk run through by two fine knitting needles, "one never knows" she murmured. Retirement has certainly given us a good deal of time to kill, and sometimes I get tired just by looking-- even at this!" her gesture was addressed to the stupendous scene at their feet. Nayeon laughed again, as they both stared at the view of the city, contemplating in silence, with a sort of diffused serenity which might be borrowed from the effulgence of the Dutch skies. The luncheon hour was long past, and the two had their end of the vast terrace to themselves. In the opposite street below them a few groups, detained with lingering look at the outspread city gathering guidebooks and tips from the locals.

"Well, I don't see why we shouldn't stay here," Nayeon said. Two derelict chairs stood near and Nayeon pushed them into the angle of the parapet and settled herself in one, her gaze linger ahead of them, "We still have the best view" she states.

"It always will be... to me," Mina assented with so-slight stress on the 'me' to Nayeon, though the taller had noticed it, wondered if it not merely accidental, like the random underlining of old-fashioned letter writers.

"Myoui Mina was always old-fashioned," she thought. "It's a similar view we both been familiar with for a good many years. When we first met, we are much younger than our girls our now. You remember?"

"Yes, I remember. You were nineteen and I was eighteen." Mina murmured, with the same undefinable stress. A waiter rounded the corner and out in the balcony, he was lingering and Nayeon felt bothered, "I'll cure him for wandering..." she mutters stretching a hand to her bag as discreetly opulent looking like Mina's. Gesturing to the waiter, she explained that she and her friend would like to stay for the rest of the afternoon to enjoy the view if that is fine and not disturb the service. The young blonde man bowed at her gratuity and assured them that they are most welcome or would be still more so if they would condescend to remain for dinner. "Weather reports we'll be having a full view of the moon tonight!" said the waiter.

A full moon night they would remember.

Nayeon's brow drew close together, as though reference about the moon is out of place and unwelcomed, she still smiled to the waiter as he disappeared inside. "Well, why not. We might do worse than roaming around with your knitting set and my lack of alcohol," Nayeon remarks, "Besides, we don't know what time our girls will be back!"

"I supposes so, I heard them talking about meeting with these young lads from Italy who's here for a vacation, must I say. I heard Chaeyoung mentioned about coming home after the moonlight," Nayeon groans as the other gave her a sympathetic smile.

"Moonlight- Do you suppose our girls are as sentimental as we are?" Nayeon questions.

"I've come into the conclusion of having the slightest idea if they are," answered Mina, "or perhaps we don't know much of each other" Nayeon studies Mina for a second and shrugs, "No... I perhaps we didn't".

Mina gave her a shy smile, "I'm sorry, I never should have supposed you were that sentimental, Nayeon".

"Nah, perhaps I wasn't" Nayeon's lid drew closer in retrospect. For a few minutes the two ladies who had been intimate since their younger years, reflected how they knew little about each other. Each one of course, had a label ready to attach to the other's name. Yoo Nayeon for instance, if she tells herself or someone who will ask her about Hirai Mina, that twenty-five years ago had been exquisitely lovely--- equally pretty as her daughter Tzuyu, though her daughter can pass as one of those skinny women that poses in the magazines with her height, beauty and charm, her friend Mina has that charm that is undeniably magnetic towards anyone she graces her presence with. Mina was and still a candid soul that steals someone's attention without even trying. Even her daughter Chaeyoung had to say that Mrs. Hirai had passed the new standard of the new millennia (whatever that means in her daughter's colorful dictionary) according to her... Mrs. Hirai has the edgy look, and Tzuyu doesn't resemble much of Mr. Hirai Momo, although her daughter says Tzuyu took more of Mina's personalities than her beauty and some traits she's familiar with that she'd rather kept to herself. It was funny where her daughter got it, with those two nullities as parents. Yes, Hirai Momo was- well, the duplicate of his wife Mina, museum specimens of "old Japan". Good-looking, irreproachable, reserved, and exemplary. Mrs. Yoo and Mrs. Hirai used to live opposite to each other back then, as well as figuratively for years. Back then, families frown at their neighbors who are not their kind, and by kind means people who were not from their own homeland, Mina's parents move to Korea due to her father's work, regardless of their countries feud, Nayeon and Mina became friends, whatever happens to the Myoui's household can be easily spotted opposite the street, hence making it more visible and prone to mockery from their traditional neighbors- the Im's. When Nayeon got engaged to the cunning young man named Yoo Jeongyeon, Mina's family went back to their country, lost contact for several years. When she came back years later, she is with a man named Hirai Momo as her husband and a child of her own which is half a year older than Chaeyoung, which she had assumed at that time the reason for Mina's sudden departure was she was married off to the brilliant man.

Their relationship as friends weren't as intimate as they started when they were teens, Mina was busy with her own child and so does she, while their husbands are always out doing a 'man's work'. Sure, they speak and had some playdates with their kids but not as often as they used to be when they were young that they always spend time together, regardless of their differences. A few years later and not many months apart, both ladies lost their husbands. There was an appropriate exchange of wreaths and condolences, and a brief intimacy in the half-shadow of their mourning, but they had to part as Nayeon had to move to the big city to build her own business, and Mina went back to her country, they had run ins a few times whenever Mina goes back to Korea, or Nayeon goes to her business travels, and after interval- now they had run across each other in the city of the Netherlands with their daughters, in the same hotel, and their daughters picked up things like the past years never really separated them.

The similarity of their lot again had drawn them together, lending each other jokes that if in the old days it is hard to "keep up" with their daughters, it was now, at times, a little dull not to. No doubt Nayeon had reflected, her business retirement more than poor than Mina's ever would. It was a big drop from being the wife of Yoo Jeongyeon to being his widow. She had always regarded herself (with a certain conjugal pride) that she is equal with her husband's social gifts, as contributing her full share to the making of exceptional couple they were but after his death was irremediable. As the wife of a famous lawyer with an international case on hand, everyday brought exciting and expected obligation: the impromptu entertaining of eminent colleagues from abroad, the hurried dashes on legal business to different parts of the world, where the entertainment was handsomely reciprocated in his wake. However, Nayeon thought being Yoo Jeongyeon's widow is the dullest moment of her life, living up to such a husband people refer her as "Yoo's wife" rather than referring to her as Yoo Nayeon or being credited as the person behind the success of the business she had built on her own, but people still acknowledge her as Jeongyeon's wife, generally the wives of celebrities are such a frumps.

Now, she had only her daughter Chaeyoung to live up to. There was nothing left but to mother her daughter; and dear Chaeyoung is such a sweet but wild child that needs excessive mothering. "With Tzuyu... I don't know if I should be quiet," Nayeon sometimes half-enviously reflected but Chaeyoung is a half a year younger than her brilliant friend. Sometimes she thought if it was a rare accident, an extremely beautiful girl who somehow made youth and prettiness as safe as their absence. It was perplexing-- but to Nayeon it's a little boring.

"What about my daughter, Nayeon?"

"I wished that Chaeyoung can be more of like her... fall in love with the right man, didn't need to be watch all the time, out-maneuvered, or rescued."

Mina was less articulate than Nayeon, and her metal portrait of her friend was slighter and with fainter touches. To her Nayeon is awfully brilliant, but not as brilliant as she thinks she is, though she might add a little something for the enlightenment of strangers, Nayeon was dashing-- much more of her daughter, pretty, of course, and clever in a way, but she ddidn't have her mother's-- well, 'vividness' which someone had called it. Mina take up this current word and cite them in quotation marks as unheard-of audacities. Sometimes Mina thought Nayeon is disappointed that her child is like that, and that Mina had a boring and sad--- sad life because Tzuyu is always in the right track, and yet Nay