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Pinnacle of Youth

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“Grandma?” Sae Jin asked, pressing her ear tighter to the phone to hear the frail older woman’s voice. She could barely hear over the phone since her grandmother always spoke so quietly. Dae Hyun sighed and looked away, wanting to leave the room, but was intrigued when Sae Jin began speaking a language he no longer understood.

He had never known she was bilingual, in fact, he didn’t know much about her past at all other than the death of her mother. “No, dad’s not here this weekend, he’s out in Jeju, should I have him give you a call?” Sae Jin spoke in fluent German to her grandmother who continued to reside in Germany. Her mother and her parents had moved there a while back, before Sae Jin was even thought about, when her dad first married her mom. But the lady she was talking to wasn’t her blood grandmother, just an old woman who had befriended Sae Jin’s mother’s parents long ago.

“Hmm, yes, I’ll let him know you called! Bye grandma, I love you!” The phone call ended almost as quickly as it began, or so it seemed to Dae Hyun. It was hard to call it a long conversation when he couldn’t keep up with it, having literally no vocabulary or experience what so ever with the German language.

“Who was that?” Dae Hyun asked, the frustration in his voice having subsided as he spoke calmly to her.

“Just my grandma, we haven’t talked in a while and she was calling to check up on me and my dad, that’s all,” Sae Jin replied, avoiding eye contact with Dae Hyun at all costs. God only knew what would happen if she had looked up at him, so when she hung up the phone on the receiver, she pushed passed Dae Hyun and headed over to the couch where she continued the book she was reading earlier.

Dae Hyun, on the other hand, dressed to go to practice, plopped down on the floor in front of her to play some Xbox. In a comfy tee and sweats, he could have sat there for hours and played, but he could hardly say his mind could concentrate on the game at all. All thoughts of previous events had no intention of getting out any time soon.

But the one thing Dae Hyun regretted the most was letting Sae Jin answer the phone. Who knows when they’d get another opportunity like that again? Sure, he could just kiss her, but it wasn’t as intimate or as somewhat romantic as that moment they just had was.

Despite the fact that Dae Hyun was, indeed, a big devil, he had a side to him that was a er for romance, a side to him that always put the girl before him. He didn’t really want to kiss Sae Jin just for his desires alone; he wanted to make her feel comfortable enough to kiss him.  

“Hi daddy,” Sae Jin said. Her voice brought Dae Hyun out of his reverie, and now his ears seemed to be not focused on the people over Live, but on her conversation with her father. To be honest, he didn’t even care what she was saying, the sound of her voice was enough to either lull him to sleep, or make him forget everything that was on his mind. 

“Grandma called. She just was asking how we were doing so I told her I’d let you know she called and have you call her back to your convenience,” Sae Jin added, twisting her finger around her own hair. “I know you don’t speak German, daddy. She speaks Korean, you know. I know she’s not my blood grandmother, but it’s not like she can’t communicate with you.” Sae Jin laughed, causing Dae Hyun to lay his head back, resting it on her legs.

She covered the receiver of the phone. “Not now, please? When I get off the phone,” she said, “No, not you, daddy; Dae Hyun was just asking me to play Xbox with him. Yes. Yes everything’s fine. I miss you too.  Just call her, dad; she wants to talk to you.  Please, do it for me?” Sae Jin sighed, growing impatient with her father. “Daddy, please? I’ll make your favorite cupcakes when you come back,” she bribed, finally getting her father to give in with a chuckle.

“Alright, I’ll see you soon. Love you too. Yes. Bye.”

Sae Jin set her cell phone down on the couch next to her before taking Dae Hyun’s luscious locks in her hands, running her fingers through it, scraping his scalp with her nails just the way he it. He unconsciously his lips and tilted his head back, the feel of her fingers through his hair one of his most favorite feelings.

“Do you think there’s a possibility we could go out for dinner tonight? Just you and me,” Dae Hyun asked. He wanted to set the mood, hopefully to land a kiss this evening since he had been denied earlier today.

“How late do you think we’ll be out? I have to babysit early in the morning,” she replied, her hands pulling out of his hair to look down at him, waiting for him to open his eyes but they never opened as he thought.

“I don’t know, not very late I guess,” he retorted; Dae Hyun was going to do anything in his power to convince her to go on this little date with him. After being ed by the phone, he figured any chance would be a good chance, although right now he could tell just how badly the mood was killed. They both acted like it never even happened, like Dae Hyun wasn’t just pinning her up to the wall in the most fashion without the means of ing against the wall.

They both acted like that whole confession didn’t even take place. But Dae Hyun was vengeful, and he would get that kiss sooner or later, he could feel it.

“This is all just a rouse to get another intimate moment out of me, isn’t it,” she stated, easily catching onto his game, causing Dae Hyun to blush and pull his head up from her lap so she wouldn’t see it.

“I merely think that I deserve another chance after being screwed over by the phone,” he replied quietly, hoping that she wouldn’t hear it, and much to his luck, she didn’t, giving him enough time to think up an answer more suited to her liking. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Is it so wrong for me to want to go out to dinner with my future sister?”

Damn, if the phone didn’t kill the mood that certainly did. She sighed, feeling like there was a miscommunication in Dae Hyun’s words, but how could that possibly have been taken the wrong way? She stood from the couch and left upstairs, shutting herself in her studio room, the room he was never allowed to go into again. Dae Hyun knew by the sound of the doors, the way it echoed off the walls and the way it creaked unlike the door to her room. The door was a little too big for the frame, so it had to be pushed a little harder, making a scraping noise while it did so.

So this is what she did when she was frustrated, she’d go in there and paint to let her feelings out, the express herself across a broad variety of sized canvases with a multitude of colors painted into brilliant masterpieces. Thankfully he didn’t have to go in there again to understand the inner workings of that room and the significance it had to her, though he knew he didn’t have it entirely figured out.

Dae Hyun sighed and ran a hand through his hair, “Way to go, that was definitely the wrong thing to say,” he told himself, scolding himself for his words, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He got rejected for dinner and now sat downstairs alone without her comforting presence. The only thing he could do now was sleep. Oh wait, he couldn’t even do that, because Sae Jin was obviously too much of an infatuation with him for him to even think clearly for more than ten seconds at a time.

With her infesting his mind like termites, there was no way he’d even get a minute of good shut-eye. Going to sleep was out of the option. His ability to concentrated was cut in half, if not more, so playing any kind of coordination game was out of the question.

What the hell else was he supposed to do? The only thing he body really permitted him to do was be around her and soak up her presence and act like a normal human being, or sit around and do nothing like a vegetable and imagine being around her to soak up her presence and act like a human being.

As much as Dae Hyun didn’t want to admit it, he was whipped over a girl who didn’t even really acknowledge the fact that she wanted him. A girl who wouldn’t possibly date him ever given the situation at hand; a girl who was much too good for him, but at the same time, exactly right for him; a girl, Jeom Sae Jin, who could one moment allow Dae Hyun to press her up against the wall, against his body, and let his lips feather over hers, and the other reject his offer for dinner. Reject the offer for another chance at romance.

Sae Jin was so confusing; Dae Hyun almost didn’t even want to deal with it. But the more he was around her, the more he started to genuinely like her, and the more of stuck around for it, the more he realized that this was actually going on right before his eyes.

It scared him and excited him at the same time. The danger of attempting to date a future sibling had an edge itself, but the fact that they were so blatantly open about it just a few moments ago sharpened the edge all together. He was afraid of the consequences of getting caught, but at the same time, he couldn’t help but want her. Want her in a way only the Devil could, but also want her in a way that only a lover could.

But that idea just scared him even more. Jung Dae Hyun, a nineteen year old rookie idol was falling in love with his mother’s love interest’s daughter—his soon to be sister. How could he not? Other than the idea of their parents dating, there was really no restriction to their relationship.

Screw it, what would be the consequences if he went upstairs right now and planted one y kiss on those delicious looking lips of hers? All he knew was that he’d no doubt enjoy it, but he tried to shake those unclean thoughts from his mind as he now sat on the couch before falling over, laying his head on the pillow that resided there.

Maybe the longer he lay there, the more likely he was to eventually fall asleep and rid himself of all this stress. Then again, maybe he could just ask Sae Jin for a nice deep tissue massage. That sounded like a much better plan to him.