“You’re finally home!” Haneul heard the worried voice of Hye Su say in a motherly tone, “Do you know how worried we were about you? You weren’t picking up our calls!”

“That’s because I was talking to people and it would’ve been rude to just randomly start talking on a phone halfway through the conversation. The conversation was very serious, you see.” Haneul said in a sharp voice.

“Alright, alright. I’m sorry. Did you get your pocket watch back then?” Hye Su asked.

Haneul only nodded as she kicked off her shoes and headed to her room and shut the door softly behind her. Hye Su sighed at this turn of events. She knew that Haneul was probably pissed as hell at Dongho for throwing away her pocket watch which was obviously very precious to her, precious enough for the usually reserved Haneul to start crying over it. Hye Su knocked on the door that separated the U-Kiss dorm and theirs. Soohyun opened the door to see Hye Su there.

“Ah, Hye Su! What’s wrong?” Soohyun asked brightly.

“Haneul’s back now, so go and tell Kevin, Jaeseop and Dongho to stop worrying.” Hye Su smiled gently at Soohyun.

“Is Haneul back yet?” Kevin suddenly burst in behind Soohyun with a worry stricken look on his face, “It’s not safe for a young girl to be out alone at this hour, you know!”

“Yes, I do know.” Hye Su softly replied to Kevin in her usual soothing motherly tone, “And worry not. She’s back already.”

“Really?” Kevin said and then sighed a breath of relief. “Good. I thought she was kidnapped or something.”

“I think Haneul’s a bit too strong of a girl to let someone kidnap her and then ransom or her, you know.” Hye Su said and chuckled softly.

“Well, you never know what could happen. The streets just aren’t safe for a lone girl to be wandering around. Did she find what she was looking for by the way?” Kevin asked.

Hye Su nodded.

“So where is she now?”

“She’s in her room. I think she wants some alone time.” Hye Su said and sighed.

Kevin decided to ignore the second half of the sentence and walked right past Hye Su towards Haneul’s room. “Yah… Kevin-ah! I just told you I think she wants some alone time!”

“Well she’s not going to get that alone time.” Kevin said in a slightly annoyed voice as he threw open the door to her room. He looked to see a scene with Haneul sitting on her bed alone in the darkness with only a sliver of moonlight filtering in through her room dangling her pocket watch in front of her face. She looked up and opened her eyes in surprise.

“Sunghyun-sshi…” Haneul softly said.

“Not sshi!” Kevin said annoyed, “We were doing well before. How come you suddenly went back to speaking so formally?”

“Ah… Sunghyun… What’s wrong now?” Haneul said as she softly placed her pocket watch onto her bed and stood up and walked over to him with soft steps. “Did you need something?”

“Yes. I just needed to make sure you were okay.” He said and pat her head and then frowned. “Why is your hair wet?”

“I took a shower at my cousin’s place.” Haneul stated matter-of-factly.

“Which cousin. Your rich one or Hyunseung?”

“Hyunseung.”

“So you’re telling me that you just waltzed into an apartment that six males are sharing and just went and took a shower?”

“Yes. Why not?” Haneul asked, as if it were normal for a girl to waltz into an apartment that six males are sharing and just take a shower.

“Because that’s indecent.” Kevin replied exasperatedly.

“Who are you to say it’s indecent for me to walk into my cousin’s place and take a shower?” Haneul started to have an annoyed edge to her voice.

“Because there are six males sharing that apartment and you just go in and take a shower! Tell me which part of that is not indecent!” Kevin’s voice began to rise slightly.

“One of those males is my cousin and two have girlfriends!”

“What do you mean two have girlfriends? Only one does!”

“No, two of them do! And how would you know whether or not there are more. Are you close with them?”

Kevin paused and bit his lip as he realised that she won that one. “But what about the other three?”

“I’ve got an overprotective cousin with me so why should I fear?” Haneul snorted and challenged him to say more.

“Alright, alright.” He threw his arms up in bitter defeat and glared at Haneul, “But please don’t come home next time telling me you went to some other male friend’s house to take a shower and he shares the place with some other guys.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I will.” Haneul sneered at him, “And it’s my pleasure to do whatever I wish, not yours.”

“I’m just worried!” Kevin sighed.

“I don’t need your worry.” Haneul sniffed in an annoyed manner, “I can take care of myself just fine, thanks. I’m a big girl.”

“There’s no doubt in my mind you’re a big girl, but there’s nothing wrong with worrying, is there?” Kevin replied defensively, “I’m just being the good guy here being worried for you!”

“Well that worry is misplaced, do you hear me?” Haneul snorted and tried to walk past Kevin and end the conversation there.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Kevin asked as he grabbed Haneul’s right arm with his left hand.

“To eat.” Haneul replied and rolled her eyes as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “What else?”

“Didn’t you eat at Beast’s dorm?”

“No.” Haneul curtly replied and shook her head lightly while pursed her lips and pushed Kevin’s hand off her arm, “Now if you’ll excuse me.”

Kevin simply watched Haneul make her way into the kitchen and shut the door softly behind her. He sighed.

“Why are the two of you having fights like that already?” Kevin turned around to see Soo Jin leaning against her door frame with one eyebrow raised, “I thought you didn’t like her?”

“I don’t.” Kevin confirmed for Soo Jin, “I really don’t like how disrespectful and rude she is sometimes. And look at her! I was just worried for her yet she got so annoyed at me. I’ve been trying to get closer to her and it seems that she wants to get closer to me as well, but things just aren’t working out. And why she was shrieking over a small matter of a pocket watch is just absolutely beyond me.”

“Because her sister gave her that pocket watch.” The two of them heard a quiet voice say from down the hallway. Both of them turned to see Hwayoung come up the hallway with her hands in her jeans pockets.

“So?” Soo Jin asked with an annoyed expression on her face.

“I don’t know either.” Hwayoung admitted.

Soo Jin threw up her hands in sarcastic wonder. “You don’t know? Then why act like you do?”

“Because what I do know is that there’s a lot more to her and her sister’s relation than meets the eye. I’ve known who she and her mother are for a few years, but I only recently found out she had a sister and a father. Well, I suppose I had always known she had a father, but it just wasn’t a fact that was conscious to me who... Well that’s complicated and I don’t have time to explain.” Hwayoung paused to bite her lip sadly, “But her sister’s a complete mystery. She’s explained her father’s situation to me before, but not her sister. So I wish for the two of you not to judge her so quickly like that. She may seem rude and disrespectful, but trust me when I say this,that she’s actually one of the most respectful people you’ll ever meet. She just doesn’t seem to show it much, but I can tell it’s deeply rooted in her somewhere.”

“Yeah. Somewhere.” Soo Jin snorted, “Somewhere, somewhere, somewhere. Just, we don’t know where it is, do we?” Hwayoung sighed at Soo Jin’s inability to understand Haneul’s situation.

“Look, it’s alright if you don’t understand, just don’t push Haneul and give her a hard time, okay? She wasn’t exactly raised like a normal child. She was raised in a very controlled environment so she doesn’t understand a lot of things normal people would. Anyway, I think because of how loud the two of you were Haneul probably heard everything, didn’t you Haneul?” Hwayoung called the last part a little louder.

“Yeah.” Haneul emerged from behind the kitchen door softly and gazed at Kevin and Soo Jin softly, not exactly blaming them for disliking her. “It’s okay though. I don’t blame you guys. I wouldn’t like me either.” She bit her lip bitterly and suppressed a sigh and the urge to say the words “Not even my father does.”

“Anyway,” She shook the thoughts out of her head, “I’m afraid I can’t tell any of you about my sister… Just yet.” Haneul said the last two words which brought shock to herself. She wasn’t sure what she was insinuating by ‘just yet’. Was she perhaps thinking that one day she’d be close enough to them to tell them about her most sensitive matter? “Or not.” Haneul muttered to herself afterwards, which unfortunately due to the silence of the place was picked up by everyone’s ears anyways.

Soo Jin only frowned and walked back into her own room. Kevin sighed and made his way towards the door to U-Kiss’s dorm and opened the door and walked through. Haneul’s gaze made its way to Hwayoung she bit her lip and softly shook it. Haneul understood the message straight away. Just don’t worry about them.

Haneul walked back into her room and plopped herself back onto her bed. She lifted up her pocket watch again and the moonlight caught it at a strange angle. Haneul noticed the smallest bump that no matter how many countless and endless time she had touched the pocket watch before, she had somehow managed to miss. Haneul sat up and stared at the bump a little closer. She brushed her index finger over it and noted that she couldn’t even feel it when she had touched it previous. “Is it damage from being thrown into the hard rubbish?” Haneul softly murmured to herself. Haneul thought about the possibility and realised it was very high, but she just had a weird feeling it wasn’t.

Haneul gently used her nail to scrape at it and winced at the sound of the rust scraping on her nails. She paused to take a better look at it. The paint had started to scrape off a little and showed the faintest line visible to the human eye. Haneul followed along the line’s axis and scraped on the paint and found that the line actually formed a very thin crack along the side of the pocket watch. Haneul stared at the pocket watch for a bit more before she slowly, slowly pulled at the crack to revel what was inside of the pocket watch.

Haneul stared at the item inside, then as what it was sank in, Haneul gasped.