“After this day, my mother would escape to the same music room every lunchtime to listen to him play piano, violin, guitar or whatever other instrument he was playing on and composing for the day. At first he was rather nervous about the school’s Madonna who appeared effortlessly perfect being around him, a music nerd every day. Later it developed into annoyance that she was ‘interrupting’ his music time, which of course was a huge lie. He’s so caught up in his own little world. How is it even possible that he would notice her? But eventually he got used to it. He even taught her how to play the piano and a bit of musical theory, for the two things my mother was bad at were food and art. And he was great with both of those. In return for his music lessons, my mother would give him personal tutoring from her, to which she would always tell him to be grateful, for many people would have loved to have been tutored be her. And to that, my father would simply snort.” Haneul laughed at this.

“Eventually they’d become best friends, because my mother the popular and perfect girl at school, my father the looked down upon music nerd, of course they were both very easy to judge and misunderstand from first glance. Yet both of them saw each other for who they really were, and they were grateful towards each other for this. They eventually started hanging out after school, with my mother attempting to train his weak body and improve his immune system, and with my father attempting to improve her cooking skills. To which the latter was to no avail, much to both my parents’ dismay. My father would ‘walk my mother home’ and ‘protect her’, but they both knew that was silly, as my mother could defend herself better as a teenage girl than my father would be able to do so in a hundred years. But they both enjoyed the time around each other. And they knew the other did too.”

“So skip forward to when all my mother’s tutoring paid off and my father got moved up into the A class. Both of them were ecstatic, absolutely ecstatic. And then in their excitement my mother knocks off my father’s glasses and realises he’s… quite the looker.” Haneul chuckled, “In her opinion of course. It’s so funny though. Don’t you think it just reminds you of those stories with the gorgeous girl who hides how pretty she is through a pair of ugly glasses? Yeah, it was exactly like that except in reverse. My mother decided she’d restyle his hair and told him to wear glasses less often around her since he had the ’most beautiful eyes on earth’… Or so she said.” Haneul gagged at this.

“And then skip forward some more to one snowy Christmas eve under a Christmas tree near the Hangang when my father, with his glasses off and his restyled hair because he thinks it’ll help him that much more, confesses that he’s realised for a few months now that he truly loves my mother, to my mother with an expensive nice big gold heart locket he had saved up for her for several months. Of course, my mother was ecstatic as she said that she had fallen in love with him before she saw his good looking face or even knew he was this nice. That day when she watched him play the piano so beautifully and with that much passion, she had felt something stirring inside of her. It’s all very corny and goosebumpy.” Haneul said with a shiver and a laugh. “He then brought out a polaroid camera he had also been saving up for and asked someone to take a picture of the two of them. At the very last moment before the picture was taken, my father kissed my mother on the cheek and then later on they put that picture in the locket he gave her. Haneul seemed t think for a while, “To be honest, even though he’s given my mother this much heartbreak by leaving us, I think she still carries that locket around with her. She still loves him that much.” Haneul stared at the ground in stony silence and sadness for her mother.

“Continue the story?” Hwayoung urged Haneul. Haneul cleared awkwardly then continued.

“They went out for three years- from their last year of high school to their second year of university. Many people were against the idea of the two of them being together. My mother’s parents, my mother’s relatives, family friends, generally jut everyone on my mother’s side of the family. But they stuck through that and eventually got married anyway. My grandparents on my mother’s side were still so against this they didn’t even go to the wedding.” Haneul sighed at her grandparents’ stubbornness. “Eventually they gave their permission for him to be married to her, even though literally speaking they actually were already. But the one catch was that he’d have to give up music. They wanted their son-in-law to have a solid career path, not something filmsy and luck reliant like music. Both my parents didn’t like the sound of this, with my mother disagreeing because the reason she had fallen in love with him being his music. He was extremely reluctant, but in the end he did give it up for her, because at this point in time my mother was already pregnant with my older sister and he didn’t want anything to happen. I wonder what happened to his sense of responsibility from back then?” Haneul muttered angrily to the air.

“Anyway, eventually he became crankier and crankier without music as his mood reliever and being forced into becoming a chemist and my mother always travelling around due to her work as an agent for the MSS at the time. I remember the first time I had ever heard my parents argue seriously, as in really seriously, was when I was four at dinner one day. That day, I still remember clearly in my mind. My father broke 4 bowls, 3 mugs, 5 plates and 2 pairs of chopsticks. I didn’t even know that he could be so strong.” Haneul smiled weakly at the memory. “But I still didn’t understand well what exactly was happening that day, so I just let it go soon. Though I do remember the argument in here.” Haneul pointed at her head. “Loud and clear.”

“He’d asked my mother why he had given up music for a woman who was never at home all the time because of work. My mother shot back that at the time she told him he didn’t need her parents’ approval for her to continue loving him and that he shouldn’t give up music and that it was his choice. Then, he shot back that it was because he didn’t want anything bad to happen to my sister since my mother was pregnant 1 month with my sister at the time. My mother simply broke down into tears, something she rarely did, and he continued shooting his feelings he had hidden for years. He also told her to stop just working for the MSS when she grew up in Korea for a while and her husband was Korean. That was the reason she had actually changed from the MSS to the IAI. He was unhappy with the fact that she was only working for China and not Korea, but because my mother was unwilling to give up working for the country she had a cultural heritage and was born in, she decided to settle for the IAI would service just about the whole of Asia instead.”

Haneul then bit her lip as she said the next sentence. “Eventually, due to certain events happening, my father just completely lost it and left us.”

“What happened?” Hwayoung asked.

“That’s not something I’m sure I can say.” Haneul said in a strained voice, obviously about to break down at the memories of her sister’s death.

Hwayoung looked at Haneul quietly with dark eyes. She decided to just leave it. She could see Haneul about to mentally break already and she didn’t exactly want to pick up the mess. “So, what are we having for lunch?” Hwayoung said, as she mentally calculated the time. 11:35. “It’s 11:35 already.” She said, although she knew Haneul would already know.

“I know.” Haneul said, confirming exactly what Hwayoung had thought. “Let’s just go out to a café or something. I’m going to go organise for a chauffeur to come and take us to the dorms now.” Haneul said as she stood up and smooth down her shorts, avoiding Hwayoung’s eyes.

“Alright. Thanks.” Hwayoung replied and left the room to give Haneul space.

The moment Haneul heard the door click shut behind Hwayoung, she quickly went back into her walk in wardrobe and knelt down at the jewellery section. She carefully tugged at an empty hook, second from the right in the top row and a soft, barely audible click was heard. Haneul then grabbed the edge of the board that was holding all the hooks and tugged at it. A small compartment no bigger than Haneul’s palm was revealed and Haneul quickly took the item that was inside and gently but quickly placed it inside her inner pocket.

She then rushed out, or rather paced, because Jang Haneul never rushes, and pulled her suitcase along with her. She pulled her phone out of her pocket without breaking her stride and messaged a request to the IAI. She received confirmation that her request was being processed within 5 seconds and she quickly placed her phone back into her pocket and opened the door of her bedroom. She saw Hwayoung standing outside and smiled a brief smile at Haneul before rolling her suitcase over in front of the door and continued on without it towards the kitchen. Haneul took a quick drink of water before she headed back towards the door and left the apartment wordlessly with Hwayoung quick to follow.

It had been 10 minutes in the car and the driver had announced to Haneul that they would be arriving soon. She looked at the sunglassed driver and matched it against faces in her database (brain) and realised this particular driver had chauffeured her before. She gave him a quick smile, but felt a strange but familiar feeling, almost as if she had known it from years ago, building up in her stomach.

“Hwayoung…” Haneul muttered.

“Yes?” Hwayoung’s gaze didn’t leave the window.

“I feel strange.”

Hwayoung turned her flawless face over to Haneul and looked at her strangely. “How?”

“My stomach feels like there’s something strange inside.” Haneul frowned.

Hwayoung looked at Haneul and started laughing.

“What?” Haneul growled.

Hwayoung finally calmed down enough and tried to hold in her laughter and uttered a few words before laughing again. “You’re nervous, Haneul. Nervous.”

Haneul frowned at her. “Stop laughing! What do you mean I’m nervous?” She said and pouted a little bit.

“You’re nervous Haneul, as simple as that.”

Haneul frowned. Nervous. It wasn’t something she had felt in a long time. Was that what this familiar feeling was?

“Young misses, we’ve arrived.” Haneul heard as she felt the car slow down to a stand still. She looked outside the window of the side of the car she was on and saw they had arrived in front of a middle classed looking apartment complex. She swallowed a lump that had formed in and wondered to herself.

“Is this what I’m nervous about?”