Wednesday, November 2nd 2022

The next morning, Jessica’s parents had assented to letting their daughter spend the entire day with Tiffany, as long as they came home before midnight.

So all bundled up, the two girls walked out serenely into the snow-chaste world, with Jessica having no idea as to what Tiffany had in store for her.

Tiffany had borrowed Mr. Jung’s SUV, promising to drive safely and to take care of his little darling princess. Truth be told, Mr. Jung actually trusted Tiffany with his car more than he trusted his own daughter. His eldest daughter had never been good with anything mechanical.

He remembered how little Jessica had crashed her tricycle into a ditch and scared him witless. He had hauled up his then five-year-old crying princess who wailed and blamed her accident on the fact that her ‘try-kee’ only had three wheels and that she wouldn’t have lost control if it had four. Mr. Jung had wanted to laugh at his daughter’s logic but her scraped knees had taken precedent and he had rushed her back into the house to care for her ‘boo-boos’.

Then a six-year-old Jessica.

The girl had come crying to him one day with such heartbreaking sobs that he had thought her to be severely hurt somewhere. He had picked her up and checked her all over for cuts and scrapes. When he came up empty, he put her on his knee and managed to finally calm her down enough to get her to tell him what on earth the matter was.

Turns out…

…she had mowed her new remote-controlled racecar she had gotten for her birthday into the road where it got crushed by a passing car.

Mr. Jung was more concerned with the fact that his little girl had gotten so close to the road where it was dangerous for a child. So he had made her promise never to play in the front yard again, to which his princess tearfully agreed as she ‘didn’t want no more stupid cars crushing her toys’.

This time his princess had blamed the accident on the fact that the car ‘wasn’t listening to what she was thinking’. He had tried patiently to explain to her that the little car couldn’t know what she was thinking. She had to ‘tell it what she wanted through the remote control’. But Jessica had insisted that the remote control did not listen to her fast enough and that it was ‘all the remote control’s fault!’ She had been near to throwing a tantrum, so he soothed her by taking her out for a little walk in the park to watch people flying kites.

Little Jessica was so mesmerized by the flying contraptions that she had begged her daddy to buy one and fly it with her. He had done so and they had indeed spent a glorious afternoon flying their little turtle shaped kite.

Come to think of it…it hadn’t ended well for the kite either. Jessica had either flown it into the trees or gotten it ripped to shreds as she ran away from the neighbors dog, a small but aptly named terrier called ‘Kaiser Coco’. Needless to say, his eldest princess was not good at anything even slightly mechanical whatsoever.

Mr. Jung watched Tiffany lean over and place a chaste kiss on his little princess’s cheek before pulling carefully out of the driveway.

He was sure he had left his Sooyeonnie in safe hands.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jessica sat in the car, curious as to where Tiffany was bringing her.

“Open the glove compartment Jess,” Tiffany told her.

Jessica did so and found a small present wrapped up in pastel blue and pink Winnie-the-Pooh themed wrapping paper.

“For me?” the brunette asked.
 

Tiffany nodded but kept her eyes strictly on the road.

Jessica carefully opened the wrapping and found…

…a sterling-silver-framed picture…

…with a little girl smiling out at her in a toothy grin.

Jessica wanted to ask as to what this was about but she knew better than to talk to Tiffany when she was driving.

So she studied the picture in front of her and hummed a Christmassy tune as Tiffany drove on.

Half an hour later, she found them pulling into the empty parking lot of a small orphanage. She tilted her head a little, bewildered at this turn of events.

Surely Tiffany hadn’t…

But before she could think any more, Tiffany had open her side of the door and ushered her out into the snowy world with an arm pressed to her back. They bustled inside and Tiffany comfortably moved towards two large red doors like she had been here before. The younger girl pushed open the door and ushered her in.

Inside, they found a middle-aged woman reading a picture storybook out loud to a room full of about twenty something children, most of them under age five from what Jessica could see.

The brunette looked around and immediately found a familiar face.

The little girl in the picture…

“I’ve been sponsoring her for a while now,” Tiffany whispered, not wanting to interrupt ‘story-time’.

Jessica looked on, watching the little girl’s face enraptured by the story.

“What’s her name?” the brunette asked, her eyes trained on the lively little girl who was even now giving her absolute undivided attention to some tale of Rudolph saving Christmas. Jessica smiled to see the l