June 25th, 2014

Christmas break.

Finally.

The girls had a week off and they were planning of celebrating together early before each going home to their respective families.

The entire ‘who is Tiffany going to spend Christmas with’–fiasco was somewhat over and the girls learned to accept the fact that Tiffany really just wanted to be alone for the holidays.

It was a somewhat depressing thought.

Their sister, spending this wonderful holiday season where everything would just smack of family love and homely warmth…alone.

But they had no other choice and decided to just make Tiffany enjoy their time together as best they could so that she at least had a little bit to be happy about when she looked back.

The girls were using the cheap, fake plastic Christmas tree their Suju oppas had given to them to put up in their living room. Korea was not known for celebrating Christmas the more traditional North American way, but Tiffany had rather set ideas about how Christmas should be done. This was the first real Christmas she would be spending with the girls as SNSD and she wanted it to be special. Even though it hurt quite a bit to do things exactly as she would have done if her family were still here with her, Tiffany still wanted to ‘do Christmas right’.

So she came home with a surprise.

…

…

…

It was right after their schedule of the day. From this point on, their one-week break began. The girls rushed home in excitement, planning to start the festivities right when they got home. Sooyoung and Yoona immediately occupied their computers, planning on ordering all sorts of food to be delivered to their dorm. Taeyeon, Sunny, Hyoyeon were taking out a huge box of Christmas decorations they had been buying over the last few weeks. In the end, seeing the three girls jumping up and down pathetically like the Nerdlucks before they stole NBA-class talents, Seohyun took pity on her poor danshin unnies and decided to join the decoration team as well. Yuri and Jessica were in the kitchen, trying to bake a cake and some cookies. Whose idea it was to throw the most culinarily-incompetent girl into the kitchen, no one ever knew. But it was considered their own version of the ‘Christmas Miracle’ that the dorm was not burned to ashes that night.

There is something to be thankful for every season.

Tiffany didn’t come home with the girls.

But in all the commotion and the making merry, no one noticed until Jessica burnt her finger while taking out a tray of fresh chocolate chip cookies and was looking for Tiffany to kiss it better.

Having searched the whole house three times and coming to the conclusion that Tiffany was really not home, Jessica stomped around the apartment like a baby T-Rex denied its daily servings of fresh bloody carcass.

Her finger really hurt and she wanted to be babied.

She knew it was stupid and rather childish, but promotions had been hard and tiring and she and Tiffany didn’t often get much quality time together. Jessica really wanted to make the most of this week, and Tiffany missing the first few hours of their freedom was definitely not a good start.

Jessica sat on the couch and sulked to herself.

The other girls took one look at their ice princess and knew to stay well away. This was not their territory. It was best left for Tiffany to deal with.

“She better not be having a Christmas get-together with those bozos at the fight rings or I’m going to kill her,” Jessica muttered irately under her breath.

It was at this moment that there came a resounding ‘BAM!’ at the door. There was some muffled refined forms of cursing from behind the wooden panel and the girls knew immediately that their personal ‘Sica-bomb’ defusing expert was just a few meters away.

“Fudgin’ sufferin’ succotash!”

Yep.

Definitely Tiffany.

Only Tiffany would substitute an old ‘Looney Tunes’ catchphrase or other such oldie cartoons for curse words in a bid to avoid swearing like Nayeong so hated.

Tiffany had explained that she watched the oldie cartoons a lot growing up with her brothers, and recently, she’s found she has descended back into the habit of bursting into swearwords, or ‘foulies’, as she calls them, more often than before. So in an effort to stop swearing entirely, Tiffany chose to go back to some of her fondest memories growing up as a child and associating that with swearwords to turn herself off from the desire to even wanting to use swear words in the first place.

So far?

It’s not working so well.

But Jessica and Taeyeon were glad to see that Tiffany was no longer completely avoiding thinking about her family. By running away and just shutting off that part of her memory to avoid the inevitable pain, Tiffany never gave herself a chance to heal. But now, it seems she was taking a few steps in the right direction. In unconventional ways no doubt, but it was still a good promising start.

Seohyun quickly ran to open the door before her Jessica unnie could erupt and spew shards of ice over everyone, effectively ruining the previously warm festive mood by turning it into the frigid icy fortress of the Queen of Narnia.

The moment the door opened, Seohyun was almost whacked in the side of the head with a huge tree trunk. Luckily, the young girl ducked just in time.

“Holy crap on a broccoli! I’m so sorry Seohyunnie! Are you alright?!”

“Yeaaa…I’m fine unnie…”

“Quick-quick move in, I need to get this inside.”

The girls watched in amazement as Tiffany hauled a tree into their apartment.

Like a real tree.

Just like how Pinocchio became a real boy.

The thug carried the six-foot-and-a-half evergreen into the living room before laying it down on the ground.

Everyone stared.

“This! This is how you ‘do Christmas’ my Korean-i-fied friends.”

“Whu…whu…what is that?” Taeyeon inquired, her eyes wide. She had never seen someone haul in such a huge live tree into their house. It seemed…well weird…

“A grand fir. Smells wonderful and the branches are strong enough to hang ornaments. Trust me. This is much better than the small plastic one you guys wanna put up,” Tiffany said as she procured an X-Acto knife from her from somewhere along her belt and started to cut the yellow nylon strings binding the branches to the trunk. Then she swiftly nicked off a small cutting off the tree and threw it to Taeyeon.

“Crush the needles in between your fingers and take a sniff,” the girl encouraged while she continued to busy herself with setting up the tree.

The girls passed around the small cutting, rubbing the needles in between their fingertips and smelling it.

They were immediately struck with the fresh citrus aroma wafting off the crushed needles. Apart from Jessica Tiffany and Sunny, all the other girls were born and raised in Korea. Even then Sunny’s family left America soon after she was born and she was never steeped with much if any North American cultural practices. And apart from Taeyeon, all the girls were raised in cities and had limited access to nature. They had not known a tree could smell so wonderful.

The girls had not been living under a rock. They were aware of the stereotypical North American picture with a small family nestled in their cozy living room with the fireplace blazing and a tall, real tree in the corner, presents laying underneath, decorated with flowing ribbons, baubles, candy canes and topped with an angel. They just never expected that to be the reality in their own living room, thousands of miles away and separated by an immense oceanic expanse from North America.

Jessica was smiling brightly from ear to ear.

She had always wanted a real tree growing up as a little girl in San Francisco. But her parents always found it too much of a hassle and opted to settle for the plastic ones instead. This was like a childhood dream come true of sorts.

And Tiffany was the one to make it real.

The girls watched awestruck as Tiffany deftly pruned away the lower branches and cut off any ragged and protruding twigs and branch tips with her sharp X-Acto knife. Then she made her way back towards the door where there was a fair sized square box that the girls never noticed in their surprise at seeing a real live tree in their house. Tiffany opened the box and took out a tree stand. She moved to the kitchen and scrubbed the stand clean with a water-diluted bleach solution. Then she disappeared for a few minutes into her room. They could hear sounds of rummaging about, metal clanging on metal, and some mumbling from the girl before she reemerged with…a saw.

They blanched.

“Unnie! Why do you have a saw in our room?!” Seohyun squeaked, completely horrified at the thought of such a weapon nestled somewhere in her bedroom. Suddenly, all those cheap horror slasher films that Tiffany sometimes made them watch when it was her turn to choose a movie for movie night came rushing back like a badly timed montage. Seohyun stared at Tiffany like she was ‘Leatherface’ out to get her and saw her brutally to pieces.

Tiffany must have realized Seohyun’s train of thought and immediately lowered her saw to her side.

“Relax Seohyunnie…I just need to cut the end off the tree to get rid of the sap seal. There will be no slasher film re-enactments…tonight,” Tiffany said in a slightly evil looking smirk flashed Seohyun’s way before she moved back towards the tree. Seohyun knew her unnie was teasing her and shrugged off her ridiculous imaginations.

Tiffany began to saw off the end of the tree trunk in a slightly diagonal plane with deep even , trying to maximize the surface area of the cut so the tree could absorb more water.

Jessica approached Tiffany and crouched next to her, placing a hand on Tiffany’s arm.

“Can I try?” the brunette asked with eyes gleaming like a child with a new toy.

Tiffany moved aside and let Jessica move in front of her. She wrapped her arms around the slender girl and guided her hand to the saw. Then Tiffany taught Jessica how to saw in even to prevent a jagged cut. When the end finally fell off, Tiffany craned her neck forwards and placed a proud kiss on Jessica’s temple.

“Perfect…” she whispered into Jessica’s red blushing ears.

“Ahem! We’re still here you know!” Hyoyeon interrupted, her hands in the air, fingers spread apart, deep royal red and polished silver colored baubles dangling from each finger, a huge Cheshire cat grin on her face.

“Yea! When can we decorate the thing?! When-when-WHEN?!?!?” Sooyoung shrieked at pterodactyl-pitch, jumping up and down excitedly with her hands strapped to her sides, her legs bound tight, and her head wriggling about madly in the air like a worm poking its head out from the muddy depths of the soil. Somehow…the girls had managed to wrap Sooyoung in a swathe of maroon ribbons while Tiffany and Jessica were in their own little world of romantic tree sawing. But it seemed the giant didn’t seem to care much as she was now bounding towards them excitedly. Too bad her feet seemed to have a life of their own and moved faster than her body could possibly catch up to, resulting in…a ‘Sooyoung-tree’ falling down amidst a wail of screeches and mad cackles right in their own living room.

Tiffany quickly filled the tree stand with warm water and stood the tree up in the stand before the girls could tear their apartment apart in their excitement to decorate the tree. When she was finally done, she took one step back and…with one dramatic flourishing sweep of her arm, said:

“Have at it!”

There was a mad rush and a lot of hair pulling and limb yanking and even some biting as the girls surged forwards to be the first one to hang something on their Christmas tree.

A real Christmas tree!!!!!!!!!

Jessica just took a step back and settled next to Tiffany, watching the other girls go mad with excitement. The brunette laid her head on Tiffany’s shoulder.

“Where did you even manage to get a tree in the middle of Seoul baby?”

“I felt I needed a little bit of home this Christmas…so I’ve actually been keeping my eye out for places that sell real coniferous trees. Sp