Chapter 8.

The star necklace glittered under the small lights that dotted the ceiling of Tae Kyung’s room.

“You took good care of it,” he remarked, holding the chain up to eye level.  “Or is that because you didn’t even wear it?”

Mi Nyeo shifted her balance on her feet.  She was standing to one side of his desk, making sure to keep her hands clasped behind her back so that she didn’t break anything.

“It was too precious to wear,” she said.

Not wanting to sit down, Tae Kyung chose instead to hover over his office chair.  “Should I interpret that to mean that you were too uncomfortable to wear it, and now you’re too uncomfortable to keep it?”

Mi Nyeo tilted her head to one side in thought.  “Yes...It is too uncomfortable for me to wear...I think that it is meant for someone else.”

“And why would I want to give this to someone else when it was meant for you?”

“I have realised that it is too difficult for me to call you Oppa or Oppa-nim because you have always been my Hyung-nim.  I think I would really like to be your Dongsaeng, if you’ll let me.”

Tae Kyung frowned.  “What does this have to do with the necklace?  You can still keep it.”

“It will be our family heirloom.  One that you can give to someone important.”

“You’re important to me,” he said in a low voice.  “Tonight I went to worship a God I don’t even believe in when I could have been sitting in a comfortable warm studio playing music and making music history.”

“I hope that you will come to Christmas mass every year so that we can have a family tradition as well as a family heirloom.  Aren’t I a good dongsaeng?”

“I’ve heard that siblings are supposed to be irritating, so I guess you are doing a good job,” he relented.

“Does that mean that you accept me as family?”

“Very well.  You will be my family from now on.  You will love me as much as you love Mi Nam, if not more.  Your first duty as dongsaeng will be to go down and bring me back some cake.  We will eat it up here to celebrate the end of one relationship and the beginning of a new one.”

“You have been very understanding, but I can’t have cake alone with you.”

“Why?  Are you saying that good siblings don’t have cake with each other?”

“They do,” she agreed.  “It is Christmas, and we should be spending all of our time with loved ones, but there is someone I want to share cake with more.  I want to be wherever he is.”

“Ah.”  Tae Kyung finally sat down.  “So even though I am family, I take second place to him?”

Mi Nyeo was quiet for a while before she spoke.  “Will you come and have cake downstairs?” she asked.  “If he is there, then I can eat cake with you both.”

“What if he’s somewhere else?”

“Then I hope you will come down anyway.  As your sister, I am telling you that you have an extended family to eat cake with.  You will never be alone around them.”

“I don’t like being second.”

Mi Nyeo nodded.  “I know how you feel.”

Jeremy was sitting on the edge of his bed, still in his jeans and shirt that he’d worn to church, when he heard Mi Nyeo’s soft knock on his door.

With a blank look around his clean room, he got to his feet and let Mi Nyeo in.  He’d been waiting for her for what felt like ages, and though he didn’t want to hear what she had to say, he didn’t want to put it off either.  He had plans for some serious moping under the bed covers with cake and rum.

A smile appeared on her face when he let her in.  She stepped through the small gap and shifted up and down on the balls of her feet as he closed the door.  She looked nervous and excited.  Her cheeks were flushed with it.

“I wanted to bring you some cake,” she said.  She lifted her hands and presented him with several slices in a napkin.  “I wasn’t sure if you had already had some.”

“Ah.  Thanks.”  Jeremy took the food just for something to do.  He loosened a corner of one of the slices, but failed to lift it to his mouth.

“Why are you in here?” she asked.  “Why aren’t you downstairs with the others?”

He shuffled away from her and put the cake on a side table.  “Mi Nyeo, would it be okay if I had the room tonight?”

She looked puzzled.  “I don’t mind.  Are you feeling unwell?”

“Yes.  I think I’m unwell,” he said, avoiding her gaze.  “How is Tae Kyung?”

She closed the distance between them in seconds, and touched his forehead with her small hand.  “Hyung-nim is well.  He’s coming down to have some cake, I think, which is where I thought you were.  Jeremy, are you really unwell?  You have such a long face.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, removing her hand.  He tried to smile but failed.  “Just tell me that you’re happy.”

Mi Nyeo shook her head.  was set in a stubborn line.  “How can I be happy when you’re like this?  What’s wrong?  Tell me what has happened?  You always eat cake.”

“Just give me some time and I’ll be back to normal.  Just give me some time.”

Her eyes widened in fear.  She held one of his hands so that he couldn’t walk away from her.  Her grip was so tight that it hurt him.  He looked down at her miserable face, and relented.  There was no point in hiding anything from her if it just made her like this.

“I...”  He looked guilty.  “I heard Tae Kyung talking to you about a second chance.  You were so sad tonight when he didn’t come, and so glad when he did.  I’m not smart like my Hyungs, but I know enough to understand that things with you and Tae Kyung are all fixed.”

“Yes.  We are on our way to being fixed,” she said with a faint smile.

He blinked.  “Oh.”  He sank to his knees.  “Oh.”

“Jeremy!”  She tried to catch him by slipping her arms under his shoulders, but she was so small that she sank to the floor with him.  “Are you all right?  Should I get help?”

“No.  It’s okay Mi Nyeo,” he said, staring at his traitorous knees and wondering how to explain them away.  “S-so you and Tae Kyung are dating again?  So that’s just so...so...”  So terrible that lying under a moving bus sounds pretty good right about now.

She leaned back to search his face.  Her eyes seemed to dilate in ever-growing horror the longer he sat there.

“What?  Do I have something in my teeth?  Am I covered in cake?  Am I bleeding?” he asked, touching his face.  He wanted to scramble over to the bathroom to clean up, but he didn’t trust his knees at that moment.

To his surprise, her teacup eyes began to glitter.  Two fat tears rolled down her cheeks before she hugged him.

“Hyung-nim and I aren’t dating,” she said into his shoulder.

When he didn’t say anything, she said it to his face: “Hyung-nim and I aren’t dating again.  I think you’ve misunderstood.”

Jeremy felt confused.  “Oh.”

“I was worried about Hyung-nim because I thought he’d turn back into the old Hwang Tae Kyung-ssi.  He was so lonely when I first met him.  I didn’t want to see him turn into that again.  That was why I was sad when he didn’t come tonight, and happy when he did.  Hyung-nim and I have decided to be family to each other.  We don’t have much family, so it will be a good thing, and I think he wants to try it.”

Family?

More tears fell down her face.  “Jeremy.  Over the past year I have weighed my feelings carefully.  I didn’t kiss you thoughtlessly that night.  I kissed you because I know my feelings, and they are so...”  She gulped back more tears.  “So strong.  I know for sure that it is you I want to be with.  It is you I want to laugh with and cry with and worry about Hyung-nim and the others with.  I love you with all my heart.  So please stop crying.”

He blinked.  “I’m crying?”

Mi Nyeo wiped his cheeks with gentle of her thumbs, and showed him her hands before drying them on her oversized jumper and leggings.

“Ah.”  Jeremy wiped his face with his sleeve.  “S-sorry.  I wanted it to be okay.  After all, you were smiling again, but I thought I’d lost you.”

She sniffled, nodded and firmly kissed him on the mouth.  Her lips were damp from tears.

“Better?” she asked, pieces of his blonde hair behind his ears until he nodded.

He circled her small waist with his arms and held her tight against him so that she couldn’t budge an inch.

“Just let me keep you until my knees recover, and then I’ll go downstairs with you,” he said, her back.

Mi Nyeo rested her head on his shoulder.  After a long silence, she spoke up.  “Jeremy.  Would you be angry with me if I asked to stay with you in here tonight?”

His first answer came out in the form of an asthmatic-sounding wheeze.

Still in his arms, Mi Nyeo waited in silence.  In time he managed to utter a better answer to her: “You are trying to get me in trouble with Tae Kyung or Mi Nam, aren’t you?  You want me to get on their bad side.”

She hugged him tighter.  “I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t trust you to take care of me.  I just want to be with you like this.”

He turned his head to breathe her warmth in.  He badly wanted to be with her too.

“Did you bring enough cake for us to stay here all night?” he asked, looking over at her offering on the side table.

“I think so.  Did you get your appetite back?  That’s good.  Wait here.  I will go down and get more for you.”

She stood up and had taken her first steps away from him when he sprang on her, flinging his arms around her waist.

“Don’t go Mi Nyeo.”  He turned her around to look at him.  She blushed when he lifted his hands to cradle her cheeks.  “There is something that I need to do.  I’ve wanted to do it since I first met you.”

She waited in anticipation.

He leaned closer.  “You are so...”

“Mmm?”

“CUUUUUTE!”

Her eyes bulged as he pinched her cheeks hard.  Her jerked her face from side to side at will.

“Aya!  Jeremy that hurts!”

He let go of her face and chuckled.  “I’m sorry.  I couldn’t help it.  I’m just so touched that you wanted to get me cake.  No, stop!  Don’t tickle me.  That’s not fair.  Noooo!”

Jeremy wasn’t the type to remain sad if he had no reason to be, so it was no surprise to him that most of his heartache had healed up overnight.  He smiled before he even remembered what he was smiling about, and when he opened his eyes, the sight of Mi Nyeo in his bed had him more excited than he remembered being on his first rollercoaster ride.

He rolled onto his side so that he could take a closer look at her, taking care not to wake her up by moving his arm, which had gone numb from pillowing her head for most of the night.  She was leaning towards him with a mellow expression on her face.  Her body was curled up in a tiny ball, reminding him of a kitten.

For a while he watched the rise and fall of her chest as she slept, and then his attention went almost naturally to .  It was shaped like a carefully tied pink bow; smooth and perfect.  It twitched when she whispered soundless things in her dreams.  Her lips parted sometimes as if she wanted him to kiss her, which he did, very badly, to the point of need.

“If it was just a ‘good morning’ kiss,” he whispered to her closed eyes and her button nose.  “Would you mind if I gave you one without you knowing?  I really really need one right now.”

He touched her chin with his fingers and feathered her lips with his mouth, closing his eyes in pleasure.  Kissing her was so easy and so satisfying.  He didn’t stop until her body stirred just enough to alarm him, and he pulled back, half-hoping that she’d wake up so that he could kiss her properly.  Mi Nyeo rolled onto her back and then stilled.  Her jumper bunched up around her waist, exposing her hips.

He looked around for the covers to keep her warm, and saw that they’d kicked it on the floor sometime during the night.  He blamed it on the cake they’d eaten.  They’d been hyper until their sugar crash in the early hours of the morning.  He remembered falling asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

“No more cake,” she mumbled as if she’d read his mind.

The dimple in the corner of Jeremy’s mouth appeared.  He leaned closer to look at Mi Nyeo’s doll face.  “Mi Nyeo.  Are you awake?”

Her eyelashes fluttered.  “No cake.”

“It’s all right,” he whispered.  His lips curled into a lopsided smile.  “No one’s going to make you eat any more cake.”

She inhaled gallons of air in response.  She lifted her arms above her head, arched her back and stretched out from head to toe.  Her lashes lifted, and her brown eyes appeared.  She gazed at his arm supporting her head, his face, and broke into a smile that was so infectious that his cheeks hurt from mirroring it.

“Jeremy,” she said happily.

He leaned into her.  “Did you sleep well?”

With a blush, she leaned closer to him.  “No.  I was so happy all night that I didn’t want to close my eyes.  I feel like that time when we were dancing, and my heart was about to burst.  I don’t think it’s healthy to be this happy.”

“Then why don’t you go back to sleep?  I’ll go down and feed Jolie so that you can have some peace.”

Mi Nyeo shook her head, denying him permission.  She crossed the two inches between them and gave him a shy peck on the lips.  Jeremy’s eyebrows went up in surprise.

“Y-yah.  That was too fast.  D-do it again so that I know you mean it?”

She pecked him again, more boldly this time, and she chortled at the grin that dawned on his face.

“Jolie won’t mind if I lie in for a bit,” he reasoned, briskly pulling her against him so that he was touching every part of her.

“Jolie will understand.”  Mi Nyeo wrapped an arm around him and closed her eyes.