It begins with a popsicle stick and a brand new pair of shoes.

You’re eight years old and your parents are out buying groceries so your older brother is left to look after you. At thirteen years old he’d rather eat dirt than watch over his little sister, but because he’s getting paid to do it he doesn’t complain- not until you jump in front of the t.v. while he’s playing one of his video games, the one with the zombies in it.

“Haneul, move!” He says, clearly annoyed.

“Just let me have one turn,” You plead, waving one finger at him. He doesn’t move an inch, instead he just stares at the tiny digit on your hand like it was a foreign object.

“You don’t even like zombie games,” He pointed out.

It was true. The first time you saw him playing this game you ducked behind the couch because you were too scared of the mangled bodies running in the screen. For days, you had nightmares about being chased and eaten by them.

“But Donghyun!” You whine, causing him to cringe. “That was a month ago.”

Your brother looks up for a moment, seemingly contemplating on whether or not to give the controller to you. His arm twitches a little and it looks like he’s going to give in. But then he hears the ringing of the ice cream truck coming down the hill, and he smiles. “Here, I’ll give you  two dollars to buy ice cream  if you leave me alone.”

You stare at the bills in his hand, then at the remote, then back at the bills. “Okay,” You smile, showing off your gapped front teeth. Then as you rush to put your shoes on and exit through the door, Donghyun rolls his eyes and mutters something along the lines of, thank god.

When you step outside, you’re surprised by how smoldering hot it is. Good thing the ice cream man was here, you say to yourself as you skip to the corner of the street where the ice cream truck is parked. By the time you reached the vehicle, the long line of children and their parents had already dispersed. That was a good thing, considering that you weren’t one for waiting in long lines.

“One cherry popsicle,” You say, handing the money to the ice cream man.

“Here you go,” He says, opening the freezer and producing a cherry popsicle in his hand for you to take.

You smile and say thanks before stepping off to the side to let others pay for their ice cream. Unfortunately for you, the plastic wrapping around the frozen treat takes you forever to unwrap and the sun starts to work its magic on the frozen treat. By the time you finally take your cherry popsicle out of the plastic covering, you’re upset to find out that most of it has melted away.

While you’re too busy being upset over the loss of your cherry popsicle, the ice cream truck drives off. Realizing that there wasn’t anything else you could do about it you make a quick turn to go back to your house, however you don’t pay attention to where you’re going and end up bumping into someone’s shoulder. In the process, you loose your grip around the popsicle stick and the whole treat comes cascading down on a white and grey, rubber, surface.

“Hey!” You hear someone shout. The voice is high pitched, but it was too rough to be a girl’s. For a moment your eyes just stay focused on where your popsicle landed- on someone’s shoe.

Finally you manage to look up and you see a boy with dark shaggy hair, and big angry eyes. “S-sorry,” You say in a soft voice. The boy in front of you was rather intimidating and you just wanted the whole thing to be over with already.  

But of course, it doesn’t just end because you want it to. Rather than accepting the apology and moving on, the boy continues to stare at you with his angry looking eyes. You try to apologize again but he cuts you off by saying,  “Look what you did, you idiot,” He points to his cherry red stained shoes. “These were new.”

“Sorry,” You tell him again. You really did feel bad about dropping your popsicle on his shoe, especially since it made him angry and making people angry- with the exception of Donghyun- wasn’t something you particularly enjoyed. “I didn’t see you.”

This time he gives you a blank look. You can’t tell whether or not he’s angry or calm, it almost scares you. But then his lips start to curl upwards into a smile, his eyes twinkle, and suddenly he doesn’t look so scary anymore. “It’s alright,” He finally says, the roughness in his voice completely gone. “I feel bad. I bet you really wanted to eat your popsicle.”

The boy was right, you were devastated by the loss. You nod your head and tell him yes. He smiles and you can’t help but smile back. Then he says, “If that’s true, then it off my shoe.”

His statement had you surprised and you give him a wide eyed look. Didn’t he know how dirty that was? “But that’s...that’s disgusting!” You tell him, making a sour face to emphasize your distaste.

“I’m not asking you to, I’m telling you to,” The boy says. His eyes shifted back into the angry, fiery ones you met earlier on. “Besides, you said you wanted to eat your popsicle didn’t you?”

You shake your head at him. “I’m not going to it off. I’m not a dog!”

At your answer he begins to laugh. You don’t understand what’s so funny, so you just continue to frown at him. “Are you sure? Cause you look like one!” He says,  then he barking at you as if you were supposed to understand what he was saying.

Each time you try to say something to him, he interrupts with a woof or a bark. It got to a point where you couldn’t take it anymore and your cheeks turned a brilliant shade of red. He stops for a moment and looks at you with fear growing in his eyes. He was really going to get it from you. Or so he thought.

“I hate you!” You yell at him. Five seconds after you tell him that, tears start to pour down your face and before you know it you’re practically crying a river. At your tear stained cheeks, the boy tries to say something but you turn around and make a beeline to your house. Whatever he had to say, it probably wasn’t going to be nice.

When you get to your house, Donghyun is still playing the video game only this time he’s yelling at the zombies on the screen to die. He doesn’t notice you standing there at first, but then he takes a break from the game to take a sip. He catches a glimpse of you as he gulps down his coca cola. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
He asks you, and you can tell that he really does care even though he tries not to sound like he does.

You stand there not saying anything, just letting the tears drip down your face. Then you run over to him and hug his waist, which he stiffens from at first but then relaxes. “Some boy was being mean to me. H-He said that I looked like a-a dog!” You tell him in between sobs.

When it comes to comforting you, Donghyun doesn’t normally know what to say. But this time, he does. Sort of. “Is that a bad thing? Everyone likes dogs. All dogs are cute right?”

You wipe the tears from your eyes and sniffle a little. “Y-yeah,” you tell him. You release your hold on your brother and lean in the couch. Although it wasn’t what your mother would say if you told her this, what Donghyun said made you cheer up a little.

“So who’s this boy?” He asks after the tears stopped coming. “Where does he live?” He makes a fist with his right hand and pounds his left palm with it.

“I...I don’t know.” You realize that you have never seen this boy before in your life. You and Donghyun have lived here since you were two, so that had to mean that the boy you were talking about was a new comer.

Your brother shrugs and returns back to the game. “Okay, well tell me if you see him again.”

“Okay,” You say.

For the next hour you don’t say anything, you just watch your brother shoot at the zombies. Each time he gets one of them, you squeal excitedly and tell him to shoot more of them. You were beginning to understand why he liked this game so much.

“Damnit!” He says when the screen goes red and the words Game Over appear on the screen. He drops the controller on the couch and gets on his feet, stretches, then turns to you. “I’m gonna get another drink. Want one?”

He was basically breaking the rule for you, which was that you weren’t allowed to have a soda until you were Thirteen. You can’t remember why your parents made that rule, just that it was something about you still having too much energy to need more sugar.

“Yes,” You say to him, nodding your head vigorously to show that you were excited to break the rule. At nine years old, this was as “bad” as bad gets.

Donghyun has to go to the basement to get the soft drinks, so it takes him awhile to return with the beverages. While he’s gone, the door bell rings and normally he was supposed to answer it. But since he was downstairs you were just in the living room, you decide to answer it for him.

You open the door to find the boy from earlier standing nexto to someone who looks exactly like him. You blink at the two of them, unsure if what you're seeing is real. Then the realization hits you: twins.

"No!" You shout, causing the two of them to jump.

One of them, the one on the left, covers on his ears and grumbles for you to shut up. That one, you realize, must be the one you had the displeasure of meeting. The other twin elbows him and smiles at you with a sheepish expression on his face. "Sorry about that," He begins by saying. "Kwangmin, my brother, he can be mean sometimes but he's not all the time. He came here to apologize, but I came with him to make sure that he didn't run off before ringing the bell."

A faint blush appears on the boy's cheeks, the one called Kwangmin. "Sh-shut up!" He tells his brother. "It wasn't like I wanted to say sorry in the first place...." This earns him another elbow from his brother, who seems to be the more matured and controlled one of the two. Kwangmin sighs, then looks at me. The expression on his face is priceless; His lips are tight and his eyebrows are pulled together in concentration- as if he couldn't bare to say those words to me. "I'msorry!" He blurts out.

You your head to the side, "What?"

Again he starts to get angry and he stomps his foot on the ground. "I said I was sorry!"

His brother steps in, smiling apologetically at you. "He's just cranky because he hasn't eaten."

"Yah! That's not it, Youngmin. I just hate it when girls pretend to be death."

You blink once, then twice. "You mean deaf?" You struggle to contain your laughter, but you can't help yourself. How could he think that the word was death?

Kwangmin's face turned even more red"Yah!" He says, trying to shut you up. "Youngmin let's leave this hyena now." He turns and walks down the steps, waiting for his twin to follow him.

Youngmin looks at him then back at you, and then shrugs. "Even though my brother's a meanie, I hope we can still be friends," He says to you, then walks down the steps without hearing your answer.

This is the first time that you met the Jo twins and the first time that you feel the tiny organ in your chest beat rapidly. Back then, you had no idea what that beating meant, just that you liked the idea of being friends.

If only you knew....If only the you back then knew how painful it would be in the future to just be friends....
 

Authors Note: So what do you guys think about it so far? Is it any good or was it too boring? By the way, this chapter and the next few chapters will be in the past.