I think I'm just lonely.

It's the right decision for me, but is it the right decision for you?

I think the only one who knows what's best for you is you.

Even I'm not sure what I want anymore.

I know I need this, but I'm not sure I need it from you.

Whatever happens, I will always love you.

Tiffany is as good as a sister to her: they go to school together, they spend all their time out of school together, they live together, hell, they were even born in the same hospital. Jessica’s been friends with her for as long as she can remember. To be fair, Jessica's memory doesn't extend that far back.

She vaguely recalls a time when her family lived together and a little sister who use to trail after her to her eternal annoyance (and secret enjoyment) and a father who's strong hands used to ruffle her hair, but those days are long past. Though a divorce never officially went through, stubborn pride and unsigned paperwork blocking that escape, Jessica's parents are as good as seperated and her little sister Krystal is as good as a 'hostage' back in South Korea under the care of her distant and aloof father, more concerned with money than the emotional needs of children. At least, that's what Jessica thinks.

Jessica and her mother have made the best of their lives in America and, to his credit, at least her father doesn't starve them of money, even if he's never permitted so much as a phonecall to or photo of Krystal. Life goes on after all and newly adult Jessica is scrambling to get hers together in her first important job after graduating university. It's a miserable job at the bottom of the ladder and at the beck and call of obnoxious supervisors, but if it's for her dream she can muddle through. Thanks to her dependable friend Tiffany, she's been able to fend off the worst of her doubts and fight to make it through school. Though distance from her friend is painful, it's a neccesary step to trying to move on and become a success. Friends grow up, but do they have  to grow apart? And why does Jessica feel so worried about not being friends in particular? With a late gained sense of direction in life after her carefree and somewhat rebellious high school days lashing out against the absent spectre of her father, Jessica wants nothing more than to not look back and make her mother proud without having to lean on her friends to keep her standing. 

If only things were the same for Tiffany. A model student through high school, she came to the brutal realisation that, thoguh she was a big fish in a small pond back in high school, university is populated with just as many bright-eyed, hard-working overachievers. After struggling through university and having her dreams crushed to tiny pieces by the heavy reality of internship after summer internship, Tiffany stumbled through something of a quarter-life crisis trying to find direction again after what she thought she wanted to do with her life turned out to be anything but that. In a bid to try and do something productive, she elected to finally listen to her parents and get more in touch with her cultural history, opting for a language study programme in Korea. She aimed to find some inspiration and got a bonus of romance and is so sappy lovesick over it, Jessica's hardly been paying attention to her rambles over webchat. It's a pity that romance will likely be cut short by the end of her study-aborad programme, but maybe fate has other things in store, especially since her love interest might be studying in the States, rendering the agony of a long distance relationship all the less painful.

Speaking of news, Jessica's mother finally gets informed by her estranged husband that Krystal will be graduating high school and looking for universities in America this year. Her favored choice seems to be one in the very college-town that Jessica and her mother live and work in to this day. Darling baby Jung will need some supervision, but is she really the kid Jessica has vague recollections of? How much does time and distance change a person? Can the sisters be close again after so long or does Krystal even need an older sister when she's practically an adult with her own life? (And a more put together romantic situtiaon than Jessica, apparently?)

Although some people are preparing to find out how to start the next chapter of their lives, other are desperately trying to delay their. Taeyeon's student visa is rapidly expiring with her recent graduation from university. After finally escaping the heavy scholastic pressures and expectaions of her parents and the Korean school system, she's in no interest to hurry back home, espcially since college gave her the gay awakening she'd been repressing all the way through high school. Caught between her utter failures to find a job in the states or a place in Grad School, she's wallowing in self-pity, worrying about the next step in her life and how she's supposed to break the news to her parents that the former pride of their family, their scholarship to study abroad at a prestigious university kid, isn't going to be making that big foreign money but is, in fact, one of those barely to pass the graduation line and floundering in life and also, you know, not the least bit straight. Her only respite is this temporary job acting as a student guide over the summer, shepherding scores of impressionable prospective students through campus and giving them advice like she actually knows how to go forward through life. Maybe one of those young, naive kids actually holds the answers to dealing with adult responsbilities, though. For instance, this one kid who seems way to world-weary and cynical for her age...

Krystal's always just been one to go with the flow. In the absence of much else for direction, that's just been doing what she was told and hoping for the best. A good kid, praised for being polite and obedient, her quiet shyness is often mistaken for aloof coldness. But after getting used to being alone for so long, it's a little hard to know how to fake a smile to stop people from worrying or getting the wrong impression. She has a sister, apparently, and she knows this because of those photos her father shows her, those hazy dreams of childhood that edge in the corners of her sleep, and this feeling in her heart, longing for that sort of support. A bright and shining language student from the States steps into her life and brings a light that's a bit like upgrading from grayscale to colour and it's good, but she can't help feel it's not romance she wants in life but an arm to loop around her shoulders and pat her on the back. That is, that's what she thinks she wants but there's also an uneasy feeling in her stomach that's telling her romance is exactly the thing she needs.

Warnings ahead for love triangles. Love dodecahedrons. Complicated webs of unrequited love and bad coping mechanisms. Unreliable narrators. Also, poor romantic choices made by participants. Poor choices made in general. Emotional baggage too. That's a given.