`“Where’s Keo?” Iris politely asked Soonyoung, having just come out of the kitchen with Kris. Soonyoung quietly pointed towards the door with a hint of guilt on his face, even though he didn’t do anything wrong. "Why did she leave?"

                Soonyoung shrugged and looked down.

                Iris skipped out of the room, catching Keo as she huffed towards the elevators. “Keo, stay,” she called, pulling at her younger sister’s arm. Keo pushed her ear buds in and shrugged off her sister’s grip. She really was not up for an explanation as to why she received a boy for her birthday. “Keo, let Kris explain.”

                Keo shook her head continuing to walkaway.

                In any other situation, Iris would have let her leave on her own. Keo knew how to get home and she’d gone home after disagreeing with Kris or Iris in the past. But this situation was different. For once, Iris wanted Keo to listen to what Kris had to say rather than push him off for his weird spontaneous words or actions.

                Before Keo knew it, she was being dragged back into the apartment by her waist. She screamed at the top of her lungs, probably disturbing any neighbours that weren’t at work. Iris struggled to smile at her neighbours that did open their doors to see what the ruckus was about while hauling her sister back down the hall and through the door frame.

                “Sit,” she panted.

                Iris was standing firmly in front of the only reasonably exit.The other option was jumping out the window three stories high. And jumping out a window in the winter didn't seem like a good idea, although she did consider it. Keo crossed her arms, one hip cocked sassily. Did she really have to deal with this on her birthday?

                “Sit, Keo,” Iris demanded, pointing to the living room sofas.

                With a slight roll of the eyes, Keo sat, waiting for a moment to escape. Kris was already sitting on one of the couches around the small coffee table. Keo glared slightly at him ignoring the fact that Soonyoung had taken a seat beside her. Iris took a seat beside Kris folding her hands together in her lap.

                “Are you going to listen?” She asked starkly to the youngest.

                Keo thought for a moment before shaking her head and slipping out a “No.” She looked to Soonyoung stretching herself away. “Who exactly are you? What exactly are you?”

                Soonyoung’s ears turned red and he mumbled somethingthat Keo couldn’t hear.

                “Did Kris hire you? Is this some kind of joke? You know I’m a minor right? It’s illegal to e yourself to minors. It’s illegal to e anyways.”

                Iris reached over the table and smacked her sister over the head, “He’s not a e!” Keo rubbed her head, whipping her head towards her sister with a scowl that Iris immediately ignored. “Kris,” Iris whined pulling on his shirt, "you have to explain this one.”

                Keo folded her arms again looking at the couple. Kris moaned, looking down at the ground. “Soonyoung is from an institute. I-“

                “I told you he was a e!” Keo yelled at her sister pointing a finger in Soonyoung’s face, “You dirty-“

                “Keo!” Iris yelled back with a mature tone. Kris scuffed the back of his head with his hand.

                “I said institute, not e. There’s an institute in Korea – where I am from- that takes volunteered men above the age of eighteen (Korean time) and sells them internationally to woman who want to ’buy’ them. As husbands.”

                Keo took a couple seconds to take in the information. Kris waited for her to say something. They all did. Iris anxiously played with Kris' fingers as she stared at her sister. Keo's head tilted and she closed her eyes. She took a deep breath.

                “What do you mean where you are from?” There was a painful look on her face that Kris interpreted as some sort of sign to help her process the things she was hearing.

                Kris breathed deeply and looked at Iris. Hesitantly, she nodded. Only then did he start talking. “Your sister bought me just before Christmas, two years ago when she lived in Vancouver. She told me not to tell you, or anyone, that she bought me. We’ve been together since."

                Keo remembered that Christmas clearly.

                “Keo, this is Kris- the boyfriend I was telling you I had last time we skyped.”

                Keo examined the tall man closely. Thick blonde hair that fell just over his eyebrows, piercing brown eyes, slim face with a nicely cut jaw line. He was undoubtly good looking, but Keo wasn’t completely sold yet. She was used to the pretty looking type of guys her sister usually picked up at the bar. Those guys never really lasted for very long.

                Kris reached out one of his large hands to shake with Keo, but she quickly avoided the situation with a narrow of her eyes. She was fourteen at the time Kris had first ‘entered the family’. His physical expression was strong, strong enough to win over her parents, but Keo refused to approve until she got a good look at his personality.

                For the most part, Kris was quiet. He watched the family games from the sidelines, only jumping in when Iris pulled him up to participate.  Keo was taking mental notes on how he acted around the other people. “Comfortable, yet still on edge," she noted. “And follows Iris like a lost puppy. Huh.”

                It didn’t take long for Keo to realize Kris definitely wasn’t like the other egotistical guys her sister usually fell for after a night of drinking. He was polite, sincere if not a bit oblivious. His drawing when they played Draw It and his smile was blinding. But what Keo liked was how he looked at Iris with admiration, like she saved him from something.

                She thought that maybe this guy would work out unlike the others. Secretly, she hoped he would work out.

                After a long time of sitting alone, Kris was engaged by a curious Keo. “So, are you from Vancouver?” She asked suddenly, turning to full on face the young man.

                Kris shook his head, muffling the word Korea into his turtleneck.

                “Really?!” Keo asked with wide eyed full of wonder. Kris smiled at her excitement. “Can you tell me about it? What’s it like there?”

                Kris and Keo quickly became friends after that. Even if Keo refused to listen to Kris’ nonsense ideas and strange habits (that she figured he developed while living in Korea) she liked him. Shortly after Christmas, Iris announced that she and Kris were getting married.No one was surprised.

                Iris let out a small but audible sigh from beside him. She hoped she would never have to tell Keo about Kris' origins, but it was good that at least he was giving her the bare minimum in details.

                Keo opened and closed , trying to force words out, but there was no sound.

                Kris smiled awkwardly. “I got lucky being bought by your sister. Some people get bought by nasty people. I couldn’t help but want to save Soonyoung. We've been together for years. We're basically brothers. You can understand, right?”

                Keo nodded slowly. “Why did you give him to me though? Just adopt him.”

                "We were supposed to," Iris hissed under her breath, shooting him a dirty look.

                Kris disregarded his wife's comment. “Because I need your help. Soonyoung is a year older than you, whereas I am several years older than him. I can't help him much while I'm working. You did say at new years you wanted a new friend.”

                Keo gawked. “This isn’t exactly what I meant.”

                Kris laughed quietly to himself. “Can you please just accept him? Maybe come around after school and just be with him, while Iris and I have to work.”

                Keo wanted to groan out in frustration, but bit her lip instead. “Okay... But I’m not dating him. I'm not marrying him either. I have a boyfriend. Iris knows that.”

                Soonyoung looked up at Kris in confusion. He didn't understand. He was Keo's present. She was supposed to be his. They were going to get married. That's what he grew up believing; that the one who bought him would be his. That's what happened with Kris when Iris bought him. So why did Keo have a boyfriend?

                Kris nodded, ignoring Soonyoung's questioning gaze, and agreed to not force Keo into an unwanted relationship."Just keep an eye on him. Just keep him company and stuff. Maybe take him around the city."

                For the rest of the afternoon, Soonyoung watched Keo. For some reason, she fascinated him, like a rare animal. It was like he had never seen a girl before, or at least never been so close to one.

                At first, he would watch from a distance. Keo would get up and walk around the apartment in search for something and Soonyoung would copy her movements from a ten foot radius. She would grab a snack from the fridge and once she would leave, Soonyoung would grab the very same thing and trail after her elsewhere. But if Keo noticed his copy-cat behaviour, she didn't seem to mind.

                As the afternoon carried on, Soonyoung started to get bolder and started observing her from a closer range. It started when Keo was on the computer, set up in the corner outside of Iris’ room. She was doodling away on the internet, occasionally laughing and shaking her head. Soonyoung would peak his head around the corner of the wall separating them every five minutes to see if Keo was still there, until she finally got fed up and gestured for him to take a stool and join her.

                Soonyoung was now sitting beside Keo happily, even though the distance between the two was still quite large. He liked Keo, even though she didn't really talk to him. He found it cute how stubborn she could be, but how passive she was in the end of an argument. If you asked him, he would tell you that when he first met Keo, he was scared. He didn't know what to expect. And her excessive screaming did not help at all; Soonyoung could have a weak heart at times. But after six hours of being in the same general area as her, he found her soft and friendly. Like a marshmellow. He liked marshmellows.

                Keo was still feeling weird around Soonyoung. In all honestly, she was feeling weird about Kris now too. How could they come from an institute that sells men to lonely women around the world? Something there just wasn’t right. It sounded super illegal. The feeling had bugged her even while she tried to get close to Soonyoung, when she quietly told him about herself. She tried not to show her discomfort all that much so that she didn’t scare him away. She felt like he was like an animal that would run and hide if she did anything sudden.

Iris prepared dinner early while Soonyoung helped Kris set the table. When they all were seated at the table there was a sense of tension in the air. No one spoke, whereas the dinners Keo usually had with Iris and Kris were loud and fun. Soonyoung picked quietly at his food occasionally, stealing glances up at Keo while he thought she didn’t notice.

                The table was so quiet that Keo wanted to flip it over just to listen to all the dishes crash on the floor. She needed sound .She sat up against the back of her chair, building up the courage to say something.

“So where is Soonyoung going to live?” She asked, immediately shovelling food into after. Kris pointed down with his mouth full. “Here? How long has he been here?”

                Across the table Soonyoung sat pushing his hands in between his legs listening to the older people answer all his questions. “What do you mean since Christmas?! How did you hide him that long? I’ve been over all the time.”

                “You really are kind of clueless.” Iris joked pushing her empty plate to the middle of the table. Keo laughed at herself, she couldn’t really believe that her sister smuggled a teenage boy around her for a month.

                Keo then turned to Soonyoung and asked, “If you are from Korea, then why can you speak and understand English?”

Kris took his turn in answering, finishing the load of food on his plate. “At the institute, they teach foreign languages so that if you are bought by a foreigner, you can actually converse with them. They sell you off after you learn at least English.”

Keo nodded her head creating an ‘o’ with her lips. “Do you speak any other languages?”

                Soonyoung nodded, “Japanese” he whispered looking down into his lap. He could stand to look at Keo, just not as she looked at him.

                Keo turned to Kris, who answered,“Cantonese/Mandarin.” Keo marvelled at the many languages they could speak. She wished she had learned a second language herself. The mandatory basic French she learned in school was doing no justice for her.

                “What’s it like there?” Keo looked from Kris to Soonyoung. “At the institute. What’s it like?”

                Soonyoung’s expression dropped slightly and he looked to Kris for some relief.

                Kris sat back slightly, finding a comfortable position. He thought back to his times in Korea. “I grew up in the institute.”

                CEO of Happy Endings Institute, Kim Tarin, was a happy man. For four years after building and supporting Happy Endings and getting married, his wife was found to be having an affair with one of the trainees in his own institute. Enraged by the betrayal he filed for a divorce.

                Kim Boyoung, the CEO’s ex-wife had been pregnant at the time of the divorce and could not support her child after he had been born. For a year, she raised the baby on her own, only receiving the bare minimum amount of money from her ex-husband to raise the child he did not believe was his.

                After growing ill and having the inability to raise her child on the small pay checks Boyoung was receiving, she pleaded Mr. Kim to take in her baby and raise him properly. After another year of struggle, Tarin accepted the responsibility of having custody over the baby and immediately placed him in the institute where he would be taken care of.

                No one had known the name of the baby that lived in the institute after the CEO left him there to be cared for by the other trainees and staff, so they began calling him Kris. Kris grew well and fast, developing quicker than most children his age judging by the conditions he lived in.

                “Do you know what ever happened to your mom?” Keo asked quietly hoping she wasn’t touching on a sensitive topic. Kris shook his head. “I’m sorry,” She whispered under her breath.

                Kris smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not all that bothered. Its better here than there.”

                The table fell silent and Keo turned to Soonyoung. “What about you? Was it bad for you there?”

                “I don’t think we should talk about Soonyoung’s time there at the dinner table,” Kris said with a serious look on his face.

Keo took the hint that talking about Soonyoung’s institute life would upset him and put in her mind to ask him once she knew him better. Their table conversation took a long while to return to its normal setting, Keo gently took Soonyoung’s chin and turned him to face her. Soonyoung looked away from her eyes with his whole face going red.  “You know, I can’t help but feel like I’ve seen you somewhere.”

                Kris laughed, but it sounded forced and he changed the subject quickly.

                Following soon after dinner, Keo left to spend the rest of the night with her parents. She couldn’t help but feel somewhat bad for Soonyoung and Kris. Living in busy city Toronto, Canada seemed to look far better than living in some Institute in Korea.

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