"Noona," he yelled across the street and she tried to ignore him. His school uniform was wrinkled again, the shirt's colour was closer to yellow than to white and the bandage across his nose made him look like a criminal. Her brother could look nice if he wanted to, but he rarely did. "Chanok-noona!"
She stopped. There was no choice.

"Stop calling me that," she hissed as he caught up to her, and he dared to laugh.
"Why?" he asked cheerfully. "It's your name." At least he was by himself and not in the company of his dubious high school friends. Chanyeol had turned into a delinquent at a school for no-goods and was drifting further and further from the image of the perfect little brother she used to have.  As a child he was adorable, by now he just constantly  embarrassed her.

"Why?" she scoffed. "Why, you ask? Because we're in public, and I don't want you to call me by a name that makes me sound like a 90-year-old lady."

He frowned at her and looked around. "This is our neighbourhood though. I'm pretty sure most people here know your name, noona," he said with an amused expression. "Honestly, I don't get you sometimes." He walked on and didn't even turn around, as if he expected her to come after him. If there had been any different road, she would have taken it. She even considered to go somewhere else entirely, but she needed to get into her room to change, so she sighed and followed him, always a few steps behind, in case someone watched them.

'Park Chanok' was her birth name. It was written in every single official document and all her family members used it.
'Park Chanok' was the name she hated the most in the world, and it had nothing to do with vanity.

As Park Yura she currently tried to become successful as a fashion model. About a year ago, when she still was in high school, she was scouted and her agent, too, had told her that her real name was much too old-fashioned. No one younger than fifty had a name like 'Chanok', so she had appeared as 'Yura' in a couple of magazines and in small fashion shows.
But the name change had nothing to do with that. For years now she had told everyone to call her 'Yura', because she was sick of 'Park Chanok'. She was sick of being treated as the cheap substitute for someone else.

Before she turned ten she never really understood her grandfather. She thought he was funny, and when he called her 'noona' or kept buying her dried persimmons, no matter how often she told him that she didn't like sweet things, she just assumed that he had lost his mind because he was old. She even liked her name, although her classmates made fun of her, simply because it was a name her grandfather had chosen for her.
She couldn't possibly have known that it was never about her.

Park Chanok was her grandfather's older sister. She loved persimmons and sweetened rice. She died in war.
Everyone knew that her grandfather began to confuse his sister and his granddaughter at some point, but no one ever bothered to do anything about it.
"Just leave him be, Chanok," her mother would say. "It's hard enough for him."
No one cared what it was like for her, at least not in her own family.

'Yura' was the invention of little Minseok, although everyone but her seemed to have forgotten about it. He came up with it when his mother was on a trip with her friends and when the two younger Kim siblings had spent the weekend with Chanok, Chanyeol and their grandparents. Chanok was eleven then, Minseok ten and Chanyeol and Minkyung eight. Where Minkyoo was she couldn't really remember, but at that point he had already acted too high and mighty for her liking, so she was happy whenever he wasn't around.

"Chanok-noona, do you want sweetened rice?" her grandfather had asked, and Chanyeol, insensible as he was, had laughed. Minseok and Minkyung had looked at her curiously, and she had hurriedly explained the story of the original Park Chanok, mainly to make sure that Minkyung, who apparently carried her heart on her sleeve, wouldn't  try to enlighten her grandfather.
Minkyung had immediately pitied the nice old man with the dead sister and had been particulary nice to him afterwards, Minseok had just looked impassive and Chanok hadn't thought that he cared. It had always been hard to tell what might have gone through his head.

But then, when they played another game of pretend, he had suddenly decided to rename them all.
"Noona, you're Queen Yura now," he had said matter-of-factly. Minseok's instruction always had to be obeyed, because he was the one with the best ideas. Even his stubborn brother had admitted that before.

Yura had always loved his stories and she liked the new name, but she had still frowned. "Why can't I keep my name?" she had asked and he had shrugged.
"You're the queen and Yura sounds better for a queen."

She didn't know if he did it on purpose, or whether he really grasped how much a new identity meant to her. She couldn't even tell whether he even remembered that he was the one who gave her the name, but it was a fact that he was the first among the Kim siblings who called her 'Yura' even outside their roleplays, and in the end it was him who understood her better than anyone in her real family.

To her Minseok always was the one she felt closest to among them all, her own family included, maybe because they were only a year apart. Minkyoo was arrogant and treated her like she was below him, Chanyeol constantly grew brattier and Minkyung was adorable, but childish. If she could have chosen anyone as her sibling, she would have taken Minseok, and even when they all slowly grew apart and when she was eventually stuck with Chanyeol, she never stopped wondering what it would have been liked, had they been exchanged. It had maybe changed her whole idea of what family life meant. Maybe she wouldn't be so desperate to stand on her own two feet, just so that she could get away from those people who didn't allow her to be herself.

But Minseok wasn't her brother, he was just a stranger and a no-good like Chanyeol. He, too, would have dragged her down eventually with his complete lack of ambition.

When Chanyeol suddenly walked faster as he got closer to their house, Yura thought that he just wanted to shake her off. When he then walked past the house, and rang at the Kims' door, she frowned. It had been years now since they all stopped being close. Minkyung attended a different high school and was in a higher grade, and although Chanyeol and Minseok apparently went to the same school for hopeless cases, did they not really have much reason to hang out. An of two years did make a difference for students after all.

"Okay, hyung, listen, I went to this place for traditional medicine today," Chanyeol immediately said when Minseok opened the door, and shoved a small container at him he pulled out of his backpack. "And the woman there told me that this helps with swellings. I have no idea what's in it, but - you don't have any allergies, do you? - I'm sure it helps. Is your leg okay by the way? She says she needs to have a look at it before she can prescribe something."

Minseok looked incredibly confused and just blinked. "My leg is fine," he said and looked at the thing in his hands.

"I saw you limping though," Chanyeol said doubtfully, and frowned at Minseok's awkward one-legged standing position.

"It hurts a little when I put my weight on it," Minseok said after a pause, and when Chanyeol's face changed into an apologetic expression, he hurriedly added, "But not much, don't worry. It's fine."

Chanyeol still didn't look too convinced, and Minseok seemed a little helpless, when he noticed Yura staring at them.
"Yura-noona," he said, and gave her a small bow.

"Hi," she said with a small wave of her hand. "Long time no see. How is Minkyung?"

"Fine, I guess," he shrugged.

"I see. Have you eaten?"

"I'm about to."

"I see."

It was sad how their conversations had been reduced to small talk like that, and for a second she felt almost jealous of Chanyeol, who looked as if he was about to invite himself to eat Minseok's mother's home-made cooking. It was as if there was a wall between them. She was the outsider, Chanyeol stood on the other side.
She was closer in age to Minseok than he was, but she was that old noona now who had to enter her own house, while her younger brother talked with an old childhood friend.
She didn't know why Minseok would be hurt, and for a second it made her feel sad. He had given her a new name, but life had changed so much since then that only the name remained, not its origin.
There was no Queen Yura, just Park Yura, the newcomer model who needed an alias because her real name was too old-fashioned. She was in no position to choose her sibling, because all the candidates had run off and spent time together instead.

But Park Yura didn't need any family. Park Yura would follow her own path.