“The world’s smaller than you realise, huh? I would never have guessed Krystal would be your sister.”

So Tiffany calls her Krystal. So maybe it should be Krystal then. 

Tiffany has solved that conundrum for her. Tiffany explains, thankful, that the English name was easier to remember, even if Jung Soojung only had two different syllables to commit to memory, because, gosh, there were a lot of Seoyoungs and Seojung and Sohyuns and Soohyuns and it kind of just blurred together after a single point, and so many mixers, and they made you get kind of tipsy at those anyways it was pretty lucky that she never did anything super embarrassing.

(It still would have been useful if Tiffany had just mentioned in a video chat, once,  my girlfriend Krystal.) 

Krystal. Krystal then. Okay, she can do this. Krystal.

Wait a minute—

“What was with that emphasis, huh?” Jessica barks. “My sister? You’d have never guessed that?”

Tiffany shrugs overly casual, taunting. She grins and teases, “She’s just so much prettier.”

Jessica sticks her tongue out. She can’t protest to that while Krystal is here and present. If they had grown up together, maybe they could play fight and mock each other the way Tiffany does to her siblings, but this is too awkward. Tiffany needs to think more before she says things like that. Someone might misunderstand.

Over Tiffany’s raucous laughter, Krystal mumbles, “S’not true. She’s really pretty too.” And then she looks out the window.

Jessica wonders if Tiffany heard that.

Instead, Tiffany claps her hands together. She looks more closely at the sign. She squints, then snaps her fingers in a eureka moment.

“Oh!” Tiffany exclaims. “I finally get it. Krystal. Soojung. Soojung is crystal. I know that much. I studied the vocab! I did not fail that last test at language school, that’s for sure.”

Krystal wrinkles her nose.

“What was that?”

“Would you appreciate being named the same thing twice? It just seems like a waste of an opportunity.”

Jessica resists the temptation to shift uncomfortably and so her motions are limited to folding and unfolding her arms, crossed over her chest. Her mother chose Krystal’s names, both of them after her father set the guidelines. She had told her as much. 

“I think it’s cute,” Tiffany says.

Krystal takes that as a conclusive concluding statement and doesn’t say any more on the matter. 

“So,” Jessica says in a desperate attempt to change the mood, the subject, the everything. Tiffany’s presence here is supposed to be helping. She’d hate to imagine what the situation would be like if she weren’t around to run interference. “Let’s get your luggage into the car, huh?” 

“Seriously, Jess. You never even mentioned a sister to me before. I don't think so, anyway. I could have sworn you were an only child.”

Krystal might have flinched just now, but she hid it too well for Jessica to really tell after the fact. She can’t keep taking glances at her rear view mirror. That goes past being a safety precaution and just starts to be careless driving. And she has important people in the car she needs to be looking after.

Jessica gives a nervous laugh. She keeps her eyes on the road and does’t wonder what her sister’s reaction might be like. “Yeah. Funny. I guess it just never came up.”

“I should have asked the right questions, then! I feel like a seriously best friend now.”

Jessica feels like on several serious levels right now. She doesn’t dare glance at Krystal’s expression, whatever it may me but she fails because she has to look in the rear view mirror to check the distance of this stupid powder blue (what kind of color is that?) Ford that is incapable of properly switching lanes to overtake her, so she ends up seeing Krystal, head in hand propped up by elbow on arm rest, staring out the window, absent if a little cold. She used to do that, she thinks. Tiffany has enough photos of her on school buses and road trips to be photographic evidence if her memory wasn’t testament enough.

She looks forward again and gulps down the lump she didn’t realise was gathering in , up from her chest.

She drives.

At least Tiffany’s anecdotes about Korea can break through the silence. If she can prompt any out of her. Shouldn’t be too hard.

“So, uh,” Jessica says. “How did you two meet?”

She wonders if she’ll regret asking the question but another part of her also morbidly wants to know.

“That’s right!” Tiffany claps her hands together. “I just told you after we made official and you said you didn’t want TMI. Bet you want all the juicy gossip now that you know just who the lucky girl is, right?”

“You?” Krystal suggests, wryly, as she continues to sulk out the window.

“Huh?”

“She’s saying you’re the lucky girl, Tiffany,” Jessica explains. Is she being presumptuous. “Because you get to date her is my guess.”

Tiffany reaches over and pinches Krystal on the cheek. Krystal just sits there and makes a wincing face without batting any hand away. “I guess I am veeery luck then, huh?” When Tiffany draws out the vowels, she also wiggles around Krystal’s cheek.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Krystal mutters and she finally shakes her face free.

“Hmm, but on second thought, maybe it’s better I didn’t spill all the details to you, Jess. You might get traumatised if you have to learn that kind of stuff about a sibling. I know I would.”

“Don’t say weird things,” Krystal warns, frowning. Her voice sounds a little like a whine.

“It’s okay, Krys! Jess knows I’m just teasing.”

“You should just tell her how we met.”

Jessica hasn’t heard this many words out of her sister in, well, ever. Of course, the benchmark there is pretty low to begin with, but it take a bit to register. (And, of course, all the words are directed to Tiffany and not her but, well, she has to notice what she can.)

“Right, so it was basically, like, right after I landed.”

“That’s excessive.”

“The day I landed,” Tiffany amends without missing a beat. “I was trying to find my way to the dorm for the home stay but my phone just could not get a signal because it turns out my roaming wasn’t, well, totally 100% because I hadn’t planned properly and I was totally jet lagged so I forgot to buy a SIM card when I got out from the airport and had no idea where I was or where to get new one and, besides, my phone battery was 100% dead too.”

“Right,” Jessica says, trying to pare that speech down to just the relevant information.

“And then Krystal just come in out of the blue and saves me! My navigation hero!”

In the back seat, Krystal just sighs. Maybe she’s embarrassed. She’s hiding her face behind her hands too much for Jessica to really tell and she needs to focus on the driving now anyway.

“So to thank her I said I’d treat to coffee sometime! We really hit it off and one thing led to another so the next thing you known just poof we’re dating! How much time did it take? Barely any time at all, right?”

“When the official ‘are you my girlfriend’ stuff happened or when we just started dating without official being girlfriends?” Krystal says with uncanny, razor-edge precision.

“The sooner one.”

“Oh, like a week or something.”

“A week, I see,” Jessica says. Gears click together in her head.

The timeline is all there. It all adds up. Jessica does the math and aligns all the time stamps in her head with the information that Tiffany told her.

Oh. My. God.

More to the point:

“You were dating a high schooler that whole time?” Jessica bites out, face awash pink in some sort of form of embarrassment or maybe horror, on her part of Tiffany’s behalf she can’t even tell anymore, no that she’s that sure she wants to know where the feeling should be coming from.

“When we met, it was just by chance on the street. She said she was a student. I thought she meant, you know, like college or something like me. But, you know, she turned out to be eighteen so it’s all good. I didn’t do anything illegal. I wasn’t creepy at all.” She raises her hands up. “Eighteen, right, Krystal?”

Oh my god, Jessica thinks. Tiffany should not be appending a sentence like ‘eighteen’ with a clarifying phrase like ‘right?’

Krystal gives her a scathing, annoyed look, that’s tempered with a patience that only comes from affection and being very, very used to irritating habits. Jessica knows because she’s pretty sure she’s sent the same expression over in Tiffany’s direction a few times. It feels…odd seeing it in real life, in real time, and not on videos uploaded to SNS after Tiffany’s semi-failed attempts at surprise parties or ‘cute’ jokes. There must be some difference, but staring at Krystal’s face right now, like this, is going to give the wrong impression. She tears her eyes away and hopes she wasn’t being too obvious.

“Yes, eighteen,” Krystal says, voice dry and eyes only just barely not rolling to the side. “It’s because you kept getting confused which way I was counting.”

“She said twenty at first!”

“I meant Korean age,” Krystal says. “If you wanted, I could have said the year I was born instead but you told me not to.”

“Sorry for being bad at everything,” Tiffany huffs. Krystal pinches her cheek and Tiffany slaps the hand away with a frown. Jessica doesn’t feel anything at all, nope. She’s absolutely fine. “Anyway, if you thought it was weird to date someone my age, you could’ve just said no! You knew how old I was. You looked at my ID. I couldn’t have known how old you were.”

“What are you talking about? Five minutes after we met you saw my student ID.”

“Where did ID come into play? Did you try and take her clubbing or something?” Jessica tries to calm down. It’s barely been an hour. She can’t go on overprotective tirades about underage alcohol consumption regarding someone who is essentially a stranger to her. Tiffany knows her better anyway. Which is weird. But the compulsion to cover Krystal in squishy safety blankets at all time has come up out of nowhere and is probably, in Jessica’s opinion, a good sign that their whole sibling relationships can be salvaged some time soon. Or at all. No need to put a time pressure on it or anything.

“To make a long story short,” Krystal says, her hand muffling Tiffany’s whines, “and clear up any misunderstandings, she got lost and asked for directions but couldn’t remember the name of her own school or its dormitories.”

“That’s why you had to look at her card?”

“That’s why I looked at her card. Ah, but I couldn’t remember the word. So I had to show mine as an example.”

“That was in the really early days, okay? I got way better with time.”

“Yes, you did,” Krystal says, an appeasement, patient.

“And your English got better too.”

“Excuse me, my English was never bad.”

“I didn’t say it was. But you couldn’t remember what a student card was, huh? Huh? Why not? Were you flustered? Were you? Were you? Was it because I’m so pretty?”

“Uh, um, so what if it was?”

“Was it?”

“It’s not like you can confirm if it was, or if it wasn’t.”

Tiffany claps her hands, excited and reaches over to pat her on the head and pinch her cheek. It’s a sudden reversal in the dynamic and Krystal squirms, flustered, chin tucked down, cheeks colouring, as Tiffany cooes praises and baby-talk at her, teasing. She turns her head away.

“Are you getting embarrassed in front of your sister?” Tiffany says. “That’s adorable! But you don’t need to pretend.

“No, no, no,” Jessica says. “Be embarrassed. I need to make up for all these years of giving you an easy time.” 

Accordingly, Krystal scoots away from Tiffany and secures her seatbelt properly. It clicks into position.

Tiffany’s cheeks puff up in annoyance. “Ah, Jess, stop ruining our couple time.”

“No PDA in the back seat of my car,” Jessica snaps instead.

Tiffany giggles. Krystal keeps her head down and, dejected, looks out the window. As appeasement, console-ment, or maybe just to annoy her, Tiffany leans all the way over, one hand straining to give herself more slack from her seatbelt and murmurs something into Krystal’s ear, half-concealed by hair that’s not been brushed away and her hand.

Jessica turns up the radio so she doesn’t have to hear Tiffany whisper. 

There’s only one bathroom in the house and if the Jung sisters have anything in common, it must be their deference to Tiffany when it comes to shower priorities amongst a great deal many other things. 

They can keep on spending their time trying to argue which one of them should have the shower next (Jessica insists it should be Krystal who also had a long flight, while Krystal keeps advocating for Jessica since she went through the effort of driving them all the way here, after all, and doesn’t she need to freshen up for work the next day) or they can try and have a conversation about something else. That second option seems like a dangerous prospect but Jessica took a webinar on business strategy and a bit of risk taking is conducive to success, isn’t it?

She clears . Krystal looks up from staring at her hands, thumbs twiddling over one another, to pay diligent attention to her words. It’s a little unnerving how she snaps to attention like that. Jessica feels like a military drill sergeant or an intimidating teacher at school, strange as it is to say considering Krystal is the one with the cool stare, instead of an older sister trying to have a conversation with her younger sister.

Krystal curls herself up weirdly at the edge of the couch, knees up to her chin, one bony elbow digging into the armrest, head resting on it in a lazy, carefree way that would almost look comfortable if Jessica couldn’t also tell how stiff her back and shoulders and neck all were. 

She doesn’t know how it makes her feel, exactly. Discomforted, maybe. There a definite sense of distance there, but she guesses that’s only natural. After all, just who would expect her and Krystal to just click all of a sudden like that?

“So,” Krystal says, looking around and observing the house. “Is this where you grew up?”

“Basically,” Jessica says.

“You never moved around or anything?”

“No, just this house,” Jessica says.

Krystal nods to herself. “It’s big.” She pauses, “I mean, it seems big and all. That’s nice.”

“I guess it is nice,” Jessica says. The real estate cost must be a whole lot better per square foot that Seoul, that’s for sure. Krystal should enjoy it out here, the high ceiling, giant rooms, no overhead lighting…

Krystal nods again to herself, like she’s noting something important down in her head. Quietly, she says. “I’m glad. That’s nice. That’s good.”

“…So…” Jessica tries to return. “What was it like in Seoul?”

“Apartments,” Krystal replies.

“Yeah,” Jessica says. “I figured. Small?”

“Hmm, yeah. Small. Way smaller than here.”

“Oh. I guess what they say is true about the real estate and all.”

“Yeah,” Krystal replies. “It was small.”

“Was it nice?”

“Oh, yeah, it was pretty nice. I had my own room. It was okay. I mean, it was good. I mean I liked it fine.”

“That’s good,” Jessica says. If they lived in Seoul, altogether, would they have shared a room? They probably wouldn’t have, here in the States. If they shared a room, would Jessica have resented it? Would they have gotten along? Would they have been annoyed by each other?

“She didn’t know I was your sister,” Krystal pronounces carefully, neutrally, an observance more than anything else. Jessica notes it is distinctly absent of any sort of accusation.

“H-huh?” Jessica says, even though she’s pretty certain she knows what Krystal’s talking about and a lump is catching in .

Krystal doesn’t repeat her question. Jessica doesn’t blame her. 

She wonders if it would hurt more to hear her sister say it, or to be the sister who had to ask it at all.

To break the heavy pause settling in the even heavier air, Jessica just says, “I never mentioned your name. She knew I had a sister.”

“So you never mentioned my name.” Krystal speaks really clearly, like she’s thinking too hard about whether she has an accent or not. Well, more accurately, she’s probably thinking about what to say. Jessica sure would be. “I see.”

“I guess it just never came up.” 

. 

No. 

Bad answer. 

Bad answer.

Krystal makes a quiet hum of acknowledgement. She looks down, inspects her phone. Jessica can make it out the display, even across the modest distance of the couch that separates them — a distance that now seems like leagues upon leagues of ocean. Krystal checks the time, still set to Seoul’s time zone, and locks the screen again, with an audible click.

“Her brother’s named Leo,” Krystal says. “Her sister is named Michelle.” 

“Yeah, I know,” Jessica says, an instinctual response coming out as fast as she can to fill the silence. “She’s told me.”

Oh.

Oh.

“But some people are just like that,” she hastily amends.

“Hm.”

Krystal plays with her phone, picking at a plastic corner of the case that has a few cracks in it, loosening the grip. Did she drop it once? How did that happen? Did she drop it often? Does she drop it often There was a story there. Maybe she could ask. Know what kind of person Krystal is. (Jessica’s never really dropped her phone, but she does have a lot of trouble finding it in the house — and it’s always on silent so it all turn into, a game of stay quiet and look for the suspicious vibrations.) 

She feels a bit weird trying to squeeze information out of insignificant details like that, like Krystal was a movie character to be picked apart instead of a flesh and blood person who might have just been making strange decisions for random reasons.

“Tiffany told me her best friend was named Jessica. So I guess it’s my fault,” Krystal confesses, interrupting the river of her inner monologue. (Really, for the best.) “ But to be fair, Jessica must be like the sixth most popular girls’ name in America. Was I meant to assume?”

“I guess I can let it go,” Jessica tries to joke, to put her at ease. Krystal tenses up a little more and it feels more like the took it as a serious comment, a fleeting pardon, an admonishment. Jessica wants to kick herself.

“Thank you for making the sign,” Krystal mutters, quiet and into her sleeve in what might be an apology or an effort to change the conversation topic or even the only thing that popped into her brain at that moment. Jessica has to wonder if she’s supposed to be hearing it or not. Her expressions seems to tell Krystal as much because she snaps to attention and says, much clearer, “Thank you for making the sign for me.”

“It’s fine. I mean, what else could I have done, right? We had to find each other somehow.”

“I would have recognised you,” Krystal tells her, assures her. “I’ve seen enough pictures.”

Jessica keeps quiet. It’s not like she can reply in kind. 

Tiffany asks to stay the night. She has the decency to call Jessica’s mother, at least, and Jessica worries for a second that there won’t be enough room in the house with two surprise guests, but she still owns her old sleeping bag from when sleepovers and camping were more of a thing that she still did, and they got a new pull out couch anyway, and Jessica’s bed got upgraded to the luxurious state of being queen-sized instead of single after college ended so, somehow, one way or the other, they would find a way to accommodate all the bodies that needed rest overnight.

In any case, Tiffany is as good as family (and maybe that’s a little too insensitive to say when Krystal, family as good as a stranger, is around) so of course her mother agrees, especially with Tiffany’s whole family being off on a vacation this time of year. (It’s Tiffany’s own fault for chaining the return dates on her ticket from Seoul. Now, at least, Jessica has an inkling of why she did that…)

Tiffany hates being alone, anyway. It’s better if she just stays at their house for a while. She’s terrible at feeding herself alone, that’s for sure. Tiffany has a lot of strong points, but cooking is not one of them. (It’s not one of Jessica’s either but…)

The household seems like it will be a lot livelier than usual. Tiffany is good for the noise of two people, which seems like it will have to do since Krystal is about as quiet as half a person, maybe less. Jessica is still holding out on  the hope that she’ll warm up, eventually. She recalls, dimly, that Tiffany mentioned her girlfriend was shy.  (But wow is it a feat of mental gymnastics to remap all mentions of ‘Tiffany’s girlfriend’ to ‘little sister’. It’s just blind-sighting.)

She washes up her face and off her make up. She has half a mind to leave it on, actually, at least until Krystal turns in for the night. God, she’s obsessing even more than she did in her last relationship.  It shouldn’t be any problem at all for Krystal to see her bare face, but going make-up free like this just makes her feel . Krystal’s pretty. That’s youth, she supposes. It’s not like Jessica is that old anyway but… It feels likes she should give a good impression. Krystal must have had some expectations, right? It seems weird to just shatter the illusion straight away, sitting on the couch in sweatpants and her barefaced, headband pushing her hair out of the way as she waits for her clay mask to do its work.

So she goes makeup free but skips the mask tonight. It’s not like one missing step from her skincare regiment this time is going to make a difference. Ease in to the whole thing. Krystal would know, she’s sure — it’s not like she’s welcoming back a little brother — but Jessica wants to stay looking her best. (Besides, leaving her makeup on so late at night might also send a weird impression, like she does pursue the proper maintenance regiment for her skin.)

Krystal comes out of the spare room. That reminds her — Tiffany will be taking the sofa tonight, that is, if she doesn’t end up just sharing Jessica’s bed again like they used to when they were kids — so she should set that up, even if it doesn’t see full use. Her mother put out the blankets already, after all, right before heading out for her shift at work.

But right—back to the present. Krystal is walking over to her. Her pajamas are decidedly un-cute — a T-shirt with what appears to be a band logo on it and flannel pants. Jessica relishes in any clues she can to try and puzzle out the kind of person her sister is. She also thinks about buying her more pajamas. Are those her usual style, or did she just pack something she wouldn’t mind losing for her trip out here? 

Krystal’s words break her out of her stupor. She’s being talked to. She tunes back in to pay attention.

“How should I call you?” Krystal says. For someone who’s hasn’t stepped foot on American soil or been in a place where there was nothing but English to speak in almost ten years, her pronunciation seems almost perfect. Still, Jessica can hear the traces of a Korean accent leaking in. Ending Ds that are under pronounced T sounds, for instance. Just flickering hints that remind her, even if Krystal is here pretending everything is fine with them, they haven’t spoken in years. The phrasing itself might be a little awkward too.  

Krystal frowns. She says, again, with clearer enunciation but much less causal fluidity, “How should I call you?”

Jessica blinks. In the background of her head, she wonders if her pause made Krystal uncomfortable—insecure about her English when she doesn’t have any reason to be. The foreground remembers that she’s just made Krystal repeat a sentence and scrambles for a reply. “Huh?”

“Did I say it wrong?” Krystal tilts her head and scrunches up her brow. It’s kind of adorable.”

“Say what wrong?” Jessica says, and she tries to put in the the most approachable voice she can muster without sounding like a condescending jerk. (She thinks she still sounds a little condescending though. .)

“We’re speaking English,” Krystal says. “Do you still want me to call you unnie? It’ll sound awkward. Jessica? Whatever you like.” Her lips press into a thin line. “I’m not sure and it’s making me uncomfortable.”

“What would you like to call me?” Jessica offers. 

“You should pick.” Krystal looks down and kicks the white toe of her black converses through the dirt, shoving her hands into her pockets. “You’re older.”

“You can call me either of those things. Any of them. Really, it’s fine. Just…try them out until you see which one feels like it fits for you.”

Krystal’s foot stills. She brushes away the uneven lines she’s carved in the ground with the side of her shoe until it looks semi-flat, and neat. At least she tidies away her messes. “Okay. You can too.”

“Sorry. What was that?”

“You can call me whatever you like too. While we’re figuring things out.”

Krystal smiles. Jessica knows it’s forced.

“I can’t sleep,” Krystal tells her. Jessica wonders if they should be speaking in Korean. They’re not, but she wonders if they should be. Does her sister think she can’t or is she just comfortable like this? She can’t think of a way to mention it without seeming presumptuous or condescending.  

“Jet lagged?”

“I guess.”

“Where’s Tiffany?” She had already taken a shower, right? 

Krystal shrugs. “Ten step moisturising.”

“Right.”

Yeah, this isn’t awkward at all.

Krystal says, “Where’s…” She pauses. Swallows. Jessica sees the hard lump fall down . 

“Mom?” Jessica offers.

“Yeah,” Krystal says. “Where is she?”

“Still at work. It was a last minute thing.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“She wanted to come back and see you,” Jessica assures. “It really just came out of nowhere.”

“I said it was okay.”

“Right. Right, it’s okay.”

“Hmm.” 

She wishes Krystal would stop making those ambitious noises. But she’s probably making a big deal out of nothing. Jessica’s resting face, back when the days she was too inattentive to those things, used to draw a myriad of complaints from uninformed onlookers. Krystal probably just inherited that, and a tendency to make vague noises. She can ask Tiffany about it later. Tiffany should know.

Click.

Jessica is saved by the telltale sound of the door being unlocked. 

Krystal springs in to action, suddenly standing up and trying to make her rumpled sleepwear look presentable.

Their mother looks tired. Krystal is stuck looking at her, like her, like deer in the headlights. Jessica can’t even imagine what’s going through her head.

She breathes, “Soojung.”

Krystal bows. A set greeting, basic manners that must have been instilled in her since she managed to form full sentences by herself. The usual, Annyeonghaseyo.

It’s a little to proper for their mother, who manages to restrain herself from flinching. But Jessica still recognises the cold, distance in her eyes reflected back from Krystal’s. A little hurt, a little isolation.

“Sorry,” Krystal says, the first the she does when she sees their mother. Right after she actually looks at her when she comes up from her right angle bow. She looks down. “I didn’t call. Sorry.” 

Mom reaches out her hand to clear the distance. Krystal is taller than the both of them. Her outstretched arm moves towards Krystal’s face.

Krystal flinches like she’s going to get slapped. It makes her sad. Mom more so, but she continues, gentle and tries to tilt Krystal’s chin back up so she stops staring at the floor. Her hand cups her jaw. In this light, Jessica’s starting to understand the similarities a little more. 

“You’re here now, Soojung.”

“Mmm.” 

Jessica sets down the glass in the sink and tip toes her way around Krystal, who can’t even look their mother in the eye.

Should…should she do her usual thing? Go in for a hug? Or would that be like rubbing it into Krystal’s face rather than like pretending everything was A OK back to normal.

“I wrote letters,” Krystal says. “But I never sent them. Sorry.”

There is a pause too pregnant with too many things. Krystal averts her eyes, studying the carpet intently. Jessica watches her mother examine Krystal with the same focus, trailing down her face, the bridge of her nose, the slope of her jaw.

“Your Korean is better than your sister’s,” their mother remarks wryly, a grimace upturned into a smile on her face, in English now. Jessica makes a show of pouting, defusing the tense mood. “Make sure you teach her some while you’re here.”

“Hey!”

“Okay,” Krystal says, a gush of air flowing out of her lungs. Her chest is finally moving. Jessica realises she must not have been the only one holding her breath. “Whatever you say.”