My name is Jang Eun Hye and I am 10 years old. Dong Bang Shin Ki is my favorite boyband ever. Especially Shim Changmin. He’s my favorite. When I grow up, I want to marry him. . .

Eun Hye regarded the colorful letters on the page, her tongue poking out a little as she re-read the lines. She let out a hot puff of air through the gap where her big girl teeth were going grow in, displacing the scruffy fringe of her black hair. Her letter was missing something. She placed another Pucca sticker on the margins of the already decorative page but still, it seemed to lack something.

Suddenly, an idea popped into her head. She set down her sticker sheets on the rug that she had been laying on and padded over to the door to her room, letter in hand. Peeking her head out, she checked to make sure the coast was clear. She could hear her umma in the kitchen cooking dinner and her appa wasn’t home from work yet. Perfect.

Quickly, she scrambled across the hall to her parents’ bedroom, where the door was opened the smallest crack. She almost pushed open the door before she caught her mistake. The hinges on the door squeaked really loudly unless she pushed it a certain way. Remembering herself, she gripped the letter under her chin and grabbed the doorknob tightly, and pushed up on it hard. She managed to get the door opened just big enough for her to slip inside. She didn’t want to chance it even more and have her umma come to check on it.

Once inside, she tiptoed across the room, trying to make the least amount of noise. She knew her umma kept the makeup in the medicine cabinet and she headed straight for the bathroom that adjoined to the bedroom. Setting the letter carefully on the edge of the sink, she slowly pulled back the mirror that exposed the medicine cabinet. It took all of her standing on her tip toes to reach the middle shelf of the cabinet, wrapping her fingers around the small silvery tube.

“Almost. . .got it!”

As quickly and as quietly as she could, she uncapped the tube of bright red lipstick. She wasn’t tall enough to fully see her face in the mirror so climbed on the bowl of the sink and stuck her face near it. She had seen her umma do it enough times when she got ready to go out so Eun Hye just copied from her memory, smearing the waxy substance all over her lips. When she was sure her lips were adequately covered, she recapped the lipstick and set it back in cabinet.

The letter managed to stay undisturbed on the edge and she picked it up, careful not to wrinkle it. On the empty space next to her signature, she set a single red kiss mark, filled with all her unspoken wished and dreams. When she was done admiring her work, she grabbed a handful of tissues from the box the back of the toilet and made sure to leave the bathroom as she found it.

She ran to the relative safety of the hall bathroom to clean up, cleaning off and flushing the evidence down the toilet.  She had just turned the light off in the bathroom when she heard the front door open. Her appa was home. Quickly, she folded up her letter and rushed into the livingroom where he was putting down his work things.

"Appa! I wrote a letter to Changmin!" she cried, running over to him and he picked her up, a knowing smile on his face.

"Another one? Why, he must be swimming in all your letters," he teased to which the young girl pouted. She hadn't written that many...had she? She thought about what he said as he walked them to the kitchen, pausing to give her umma kiss.

"I need you to mail this one for me, please." Eun Hye waved the letter in the air and beamed her brightest smile, the gap in on display. Her appa only laughed, his eyes crinkling in the corner. 

"Alright, alright. Go put it in an envelope and I'll mail it on the way to work." With a kiss on the forehead, he let the excited girl down and she ran giggling with glee as she searched for an envelope. When she found one, she ran back to him with a large smile on her face, albeit a tad breathless. Her appa made a large show of sliding the letter into the envelope. 

"I wanna it! Please~" she whined and her father conceded, handing it to her. She proudly sealed the  envelope and hugged it once before giving it back.

"Go wash up for dinner now," he said and she nodded, turning and hurrying down the hall to the bathroom. His wife flashed him a knowing look from the sink. 

"How long are you going to keep doing this?" she asked in a low voice. He only shrugged.

"We can let her dream," he replied, walking over to the junk drawer and taking out a small bundle of envelopes almost identical to the one in his hand. All made out to the same address. He wrapped the rubber band that held them together around the new addition and wedged the bundle behind the ratty oven mitts and old film canisters.