-- Geum Min

Young Min glances up at me with a dazed look in his eyes. “She’s so… pabo… why…” he mutters under his breath.

I laugh and pat his shoulder to console him. Skye’s on the bed rolling with mirth – what she’s been doing for the five minutes since we received Yoona’s reply. Every time she calms down and looks back at my brother, his disheartened expression just sends her off again. Shaking my head, I grin at him and snatch the phone out of his hands to type a message back to her, but he lunges for it and takes it right back. His fingers move furiously over the keyboard, his brows furrowed in concentration as he writes a message to send. With a final confident smile, he lazily moves his finger over to the corner of the screen – obviously to hit “Send”. He proudly displays the message to us to see.

‘Yah, Pabo! I said I’m a singer, not a rapper!’

Tutting, I whack his shoulder. “You can’t send that to a girl – your noona! It’s so rude that she’s probably never going to speak to you again!”

Young Min at least has the decency to look sheepish as his twin bellows with laughter. Skye shakes her head at both of them. While we both give Young Min a crash course on treating girls nicely and Kwang Min tries to listen in, Young Min’s phone beeps again. Skye makes a dive for it, but Kwang Min beats her to it. He sticks his tongue out at her and she rolls her eyes as she settles down next to him to read the message over his shoulder.

I stroll over to the pair of them, who are both grinning like idiots. Skye slips the phone out of Kwang Min’s hands and hands it to me, her eyes alight with excitement. I swiftly read through Yoona’s short reply, her secret admirer right behind me.

‘>//< Mianhaeyo Oppa! Kekeke, please just tell me who you are!’

Skye bursts out laughing at something behind me, and I turn to find a love-struck expression on my brother’s face. It’s such a foreign look on him that I can’t help but join in with her. Kwang Min looks revolted. His elder twin, noticing that he is the subject of our attention, promptly turns red and casts his eyes down.

“Yah, shut up,” he says softly.

Kwang Min ignores him. “Wow, I’ve never seen anyone resemble a tomato so much. Let’s call you tomato head!”

“Better to be a tomato head than to be as old as you, right?” Young Min shoots back.

I drag Skye gently over to Yoo Min’s bed and we sit down to wait out their newest squabble.

“Old? I’m old?! You’re the older twin!”

Young Min huffs, “You’re so old you knew Burger King when he was just a prince!”

“Really? You’re so old that if I asked you to act your age, you’d die!”

Skye interrupts their fight with a bout of laughter. She’s so busy laughing that she even rolls off the bed, and falls with a hard thud, but still doesn’t stop. On the floor with her hair all over the place, she looks hilarious. The spectacle immediately causes the three of us to start laughing along. Kwang Min drops onto the floor too and waves his hands and legs around – much as he would if he were in the snow trying to make snow angels. Young Min stops laughing when he sees that.

“Yah, Kwang! You’ll make the floor dirty with all your germs if you do that! Get a mop and clean properly!”

Kwang Min pouts. “But Skye can do it!”

Young Min pins him with a glare. “Does she look like she’s trying to wipe her germs on the floor? And you have Jo Kwang Min-germs. Do you want to get Yoo Min and Geum Min sick because of your germs?”

“I don’t have germs.”

“Yes, you do. Now get off and get a mop.”

Skye looks stunned, and there are still tear tracks on her face from laughing too much. “Young Min, I never knew you were this much of an Eomma!”

The three of us stare at her, and I start to smile. Kwang Min’s mouth twitches too, but Young Min just stands there with his jaw nearly touching the ground. Actually, I think it’s a pretty fitting description of him. He’s always doing the housework for us – he’s a clean freak – and cooking too. There are times when he’ll even pester us just like he would if he were really our mother. Eomma often just leaves him in charge so that he can mother us around.

Once, in school, they made us sit together and watch this film about the dangers of boy-girl relationships at a young age, and how to “abstain”. They showed us this clip about a girl undergoing abortion, which was pretty gory and disgusting. I immediately covered my eyes, and Kwang Min made to cover my ears, but it was Young Min who stopped him and told him to let me watch the film in order to understand that I should never even try doing anything funny. But when it came to the next clip, watching the process of giving birth, Young Min immediately told Kwang Min to grab me while he took care of Yoo Min, because apparently they didn’t want to be blamed if we decided never to have children in the future because of it.

“Young Min Eomma!” Skye calls. “You should answer Yoona Noona!”

Kwang Min and I both laugh at that. Young Min turns red again but picks up his phone and does as she says.

‘Aniyo. You have to guess. ^^ Hwaiting!’

“Way to go, now you’re all mysterious,” I say.

Young Min looks confused. “Wasn’t that the point?”

“Neh, it was,” Skye answers. “That’s why we’re proud of you, Young Min Eomma!”

He scowls. “If you call me that one more time, I’m going to –”

“Young Min Eomma!” Skye and I shout simultaneously.

He can only sigh at us and shake his head.

I’m sitting in Youngkwang’s room when Skye walks in with two empty glasses in her hands – a confused-looking Young Min following her.

“Arasseo, I’m going to show you a magic trick,” she says, and motions for him to wait at the desk where his laptop is.

Kwang Min, who’s sitting on his own bed with music notes in hand, exchanges glances with his twin. Skye walks into the bathroom, and we hear the sound of running water. I lazily close my book and lean forward, curious to see what this magic trick is. She makes her way out with both cups filled to the brim with water, and she walks slowly to balance them and ensure that the water doesn’t spill out. Setting them carefully on the desk, she turns to Young Min and smiles.

“So, can you put your hands down on the table like this?” she demonstrates standing near the table and putting her hands – palms down – on the surface of the desk.

Young Min copies her, placing his hands neatly near his laptop. Raising an eyebrow, he waits for her to proceed.

She nods, satisfied. “Okay, that’s perfect. Now, just watch as I put these cups on,” she picks up the cups slowly, “And balance them on the backs of your hands. Don’t move.”

“Neh.”

He obeys and freezes in place as she makes sure that the cups are stable on his hands. When she’s satisfied, she stands back and admires the perfect poise of the cups on his hands. They’re not even shaking. Young Min keeps true to his word, staying perfectly still – he probably realizes that if the cups spill the water, his laptop will get wet.

Skye steps back and joins me by the bed, acting like nothing’s happened. Young Min turns around slowly, mindful not to topple the cups on his hands.

“Yah, where’s the magic?”

Grinning, she tells him, “Oh, that’s where you come in. I want to see whether you can get out of that by yourself.”

Kwang Min and I burst out at Young Min’s horrified expression. Skye smirks at him and shrugs, relaxing next to me.

“How am I going to do that?”

She sighs, “Young Min Eomma, that’s the magic!”

“Help!”

Neither Kwang Min nor I make a move to help him. His facial expression is just too priceless. Skye picks up my phone, and she starts fiddling with it. I let her, since I’m already used to her playing with my stuff. I do it to her all the time as well, anyway. We hear a “click” and I turn to find my playful friend with a huge smile on her face. She shows me the screen on the phone and I see Young Min with his terrified face staring, pleadingly, back at me. It’s so funny! Kwang Min comes over to see what the commotion is about, and he also finds it incredibly amusing.

Young Min glances at us. “Yah, what are you laughing at?”

We ignore him. He groans and tries to maneuver his hands – I can see that he’s trying since his arms keep moving. But he doesn’t succeed. He keeps going at that for a good few minutes. Then his phone beeps again. This is where he turns to us with a pleading puppy-dog look on his face.

Again, we just ignore him and look at the message as he continues to struggle with the cups. ‘Aww. At least give me a hint? ^^; Like which company you’re under?’

‘I-I-I-I-I… can’t tell you. ^^ There’s your hint.’ I send back.

He looks desperate now. “Please just get me out of here!” he directs at Kwang Min. “You’re my twin! You should be the one helping me at anything I need help with!”

Kwang Min looks away, looking nonchalant. I giggle at his expression. When Young Min continues to moan, Skye finally shakes her head and walks over to him, taking the cups off. He immediately jumps away from her. Then he changes his mind and moves closer, grabbing her hands and putting them on the table – just like she made him pose. She looks curious, and lets him do it. Me, I’m wondering if she’s really that clueless. I mean, is she really going to fall for the same trick?

Young Min puts the cups on her hands and balances them with ridiculous ease – she’s letting him do that. Kwang Min looks surprised too – is she really this crazy to get trapped in her own trick? An immensely satisfied Young Min steps away from the blank girl and runs to sit beside me on his own bed.

Just then, Skye’s lips twitch and she smirks, her blur expression vanishing. She sticks her tongue out at him and turns around to the cups. I can see her bend down and slurp the water at the surface. When the water level sinks until there’s no danger of spillage, she grasps the edge of the cup cleverly with her teeth and drags it off her hand. With her now-free left hand, she removes the cup from her right and walks back towards us to plop down next to Kwang Min.

Young Min’s annoyed expression makes the next picture in my phone’s camera roll.

But that expression soon vanishes as he hears his phone’s message tone again. He opens the message and pauses to update himself on the conversation, which we’d had when he’d been… preoccupied. Shooting me a glare, he looks back at his phone.

‘I-I-I-I-I? Is that the hint? *types into Google to search* Oppa imma find you!’

“Wow, she got that hint!” I stated, impressed.

Kwang Min looks skeptical. “Will she really find the reference to You & I if she tries online?”

I shrug. “Could be.”

Skye grins and tries to take the phone to read the message, but Young Min guards it fiercely, glaring daggers at her. She holds her hands up in surrender. Kwang Min looks mischievous all of a sudden, and he makes a grab at the phone. His twin, who doesn’t notice his intentions, continues typing away nonchalantly before Kwang Min snatches it from him.

“Thank you,” he says, ignoring the scorching gaze directed at him.

Skye laughs as he starts typing and presses send. When he hands the phone back to Young Min, I see what he’s written.

‘I am Pabo Jo Young Min, and I’m not your Oppa. I am your Dongsaeng, younger than you by 5 years, but still perfectly capable of being exactly like your Eomma. Yoona Noona, saranghaeyo!’

I nearly choke over my bubbling laughter. Young Min’s face is dark and I can nearly see the steam erupting out of his ears. Then I realize that Kwang Min hasn’t sent the message to Yoona, but to himself instead. But Young Min hasn’t noticed. The poor guy really is the victims of pranks today. I notice Skye and Kwang Min slapping palms and laughing.

That’s when Young Min launches himself at Kwang Min. He flattens the younger boy under him as he lounges on top of him. Skye stares with wide eyes at the scene, but Young Min starts poking her.

“Revenge, you pranksters!” he says, jabbing her in the side.

She jumps, alarmed, and moves away from him. At the same time, Kwang Min jerks and tries to pull himself out from under his twin. I decide to be an angel and rescue the pair of them.

“Young Min Eomma!” Oops, wrong choice of words, but at least his attention is on me! “Kwang sent it to himself, not to Yoona!” I insist, showing him the phone as proof.

“I… knew that,” he says, but he gets off poor Kwang Min and stops trying to reach Skye.

And his phone beeps, yet again. I read over his shoulder, ‘Dong Hyun Oppa? O.O’

Young Min bites his lip. I reach over and reply for him, ‘I’m not an Oppa. But you’re close! *claps*’

I hit send. Young Min looks apologetically at the other two on the bed. Skye is laughing but Kwang Min looks irritated. He obviously does not appreciate being sat on. But then, who would?

“I’m back!” a breathless voice announces from the door, just then.

I spin around and run towards my twin, jumping up and down with excitement. Skye reacts the exact same way, and we clasp hands and jump around Yoo Min, yelling with excitement.

“How was it? How did it go? Tell us!” we both chorus.

Youngkwang join us but they stay in the background looking intensely curious. Kwang Min looks skeptical and ready to fight, for some reason. Young Min notices and nudges him, but he ignores him and instead, bluntly asks Yoo Min a question.

“Did he do anything to you? If he did, I’m going to hunt him down and brutally murder him. You’re too young to be in a relationship like that. If he ever –”

Young Min clasps his hand firmly over Kwang Min’s mouth, effectively shutting him up. He nods at Yoo Min to start telling us her story.

She smiles widely. “Well, at first we were –”

The door opens and Eomma barges in. “Oh my dear little girl, what happened today?” she jumps around like me and Skye as well, looking more like a young girl our age rather than a middle-aged mother of seven.

“Actually, it was absolutely perfect. He was a gentleman all throughout the date! It was beautiful!” she spews out, her eyes glazing over.

Young Min relaxes his grip on Kwang Min – who doesn’t look too happy, but he doesn’t look too murderous either, which I hope is a good thing.

Eomma goes crazy then, throwing her arms around her daughter and squeezing the life out of her. Then there’s utter chaos as everyone flings their arms around her and congratulates her. I notice Kwang Min hesitate for a short while before joining in as well, putting on a smile on his face. I’m happy for my twin.

A few minutes after the chaos ended, and Eomma left, we are all set up in Youngkwang’s room to get to sleep. We have filled Yoo Min up on what had happened while she was gone, and she is thrilled that Skye is staying over. She keeps giggling when I relate how Young Min has been getting texts from Yoona (who hasn’t replied yet – Young Min is so disappointed), and she laughs out loud when I tell her of Kwang Min and Skye’s pranks (“Young Min Eomma is the perfect name!” she remarks).

Young Min is sleeping on his bed with Kwang Min, and the three of us girls are settled into the other huge bed – Kwang Min’s. It’s comfortable, and we’re just chatting as of now. Skye is telling us about her home, and how she loves the trees and the rain. When I inform her that Yoo Min and I both like the rain as well (the heavier the better) she goes crazy. We spend a good few minutes relating our different experiences in the rain. We talk until midnight, and a little after – Youngkwang participating as well with various random topics.

Then I get a crazy idea.

“Let’s go hang out at the playground!”

I’m wondering if I can actually use “blur” in the way that I do. I’m not even sure if it’s a proper English word, or if it’s just the slang I’m used to. O.O