2.5 years back

Jisoo and her parents were sitting at Moshulu, a restaurant aboard a clipper ship in the Gangnam harbor, waiting for Jisoo's sister, Sowon, to meet them for dinner. It was a big celebratory dinner because Sowon had graduated from H Penn undergrad a year early and had gotten into Aisle's Wharton School of Business. The downtown Gangnam townhouse was being renovated as a gift from their parents to Sowon.

In just two days, Jisoo was starting her junior year at SNHS and would have to surrender herself to this year's jam-packed schedule: SATS, Acting club, speech writing club, and then 3 letter writing competitions. since everyone knew that the best way to get into an Ivy was to get into one of their pre-college summer camps. But there was one thing Jisoo had to look forward to this year: moving into the converted barn that sat at the back of her family's property. According to her parents, it was the perfect way to prepare for college-just look at how well it had worked for Sowon! Barf. But Jisoo was happy to follow in her sister's footsteps in this case, since they led out to the tranquil, light-flooded guesthouse where Jisoo could escape her parents and their constantly barking Labradoodles.

The sisters had a quiet yet long-standing rivalry and Jisoo was always losing: Jisoo had won the Presidential Physical Fitness Award four times in elementary school; Sowon had won it five. Jisoo got second place in the seventh-grade geography bee; Sowon got first. Jisoo was on the yearbook staff, in all of the school plays, and was taking five AP classes this year; Sowon did all those things her junior year plus worked at their mother's horse farm and trained for the Gangnam marathon for leukemia research. No matter how high Jisoo's GPA was or how many extracurriculars she smashed into her schedule, she never quite reached Sowon's level of perfection.

Jisoo picked up another mussel with her fingers and popped it into her mouth. Her dad loved this restaurant, with its dark wood paneling, thick oriental rugs, and the heady smells of butter, red wine, and salty air. Sitting among the masts and sails, it felt like you could jump right overboard into the harbor. Jisoo gazed out across the river to the big bubbly aquarium. A giant party boat decorated with Christmas lights floated past them. Someone shot a yellow firework off the front deck. That boat was having way more fun than this one was having.

"What's Sowon's friend's name again?" her mother murmured.

"I think it's Joowon," Jisoo said. In her head, she added, As in scrawny bird.

"She told me he's studying to be a doctor," her mother swooned."

"Of course he is," Jisoo quietly singsonged. She bit down hard on a piece of mussel shell and winced. Sowon was bringing her boyfriend of two months to dinner. The family hadn't met him yet-he'd been away visiting family or something-but Sowon's boyfriends were all the same: textbook handsome, well mannered, played golf. Sowon didn't have an ounce of creativity in her body and clearly looked for the same predictability in her boyfriends.

"Mom!" a familiar voice called from behind Jisoo.

Sowon swooped to the other side of the table and gave each of her parents a huge kiss. Her look hadn't changed since high school: her ash-blond hair was cut bluntly to her chin, she wore no makeup except for a little foundation, and she wore a dowdy square-necked yellow dress, a pearl-buttoned pink cardigan, and semi-cute kitten-heeled shoes.

"Darling!" her mother cried.

"Mom, Dad, here's Joowon." Sowon pulled in someone next to her.

Jisoo tried to keep her mouth from dropping open. There was nothing scrawny, birdlike, or textbook about Joowoon. He was tall and lanky and wore a beautifully cut Thomas Pink shirt. His black hair was cut in a long, shaggy, messy style. He had beautiful skin, high cheekbones, and almond-shaped eyes.

Joowoon shook her parents' hands and sat down at the table. Sowon asked her mom a question about where to have the plumber's bill sent, while Jisoo waited to be introduced. Joowoon pretended to be really interested in an oversize wineglass.

"I'm Jisoo," she said finally. She wondered if her breath smelled like mussels. "The other daughter." Jisoo nodded toward the other side of the table. "The one they keep in the basement."

"Oh." Joowoon grinned. "Cool."

"Isn't it strange they haven't asked you a single thing about yourself?" Jisoo gestured at her parents. Now they were talking about contractors and the best wood to use for the living room floor.

Joowoon shrugged, and then whispered, "Kinda." He winked.

Suddenly Sowon grabbed Joowoon's hand. "Oh, I see you've met her," she cooed.

"Yeah." He smiled. "You didn't tell me you had a sister."

Of course, she hadn't.

"So Sowon," Mrs. Kim said. "Your dad and I were talking about where you might be staying while all the renovations are happening. And I just thought of something. Why not just come back to Seoul to live with us for a few months? You can commute there, you know how easy it is."

Sowon wrinkled her nose. Please say no, please say no, Jisoo willed.

"Well." Sowon adjusted the strap of her yellow dress. The more Jisoo stared at it, the more the color made Sowon look like she had the flu. Jisoo glanced at Joowoon. "The thing is...Joowon and I are going to be moving into the townhouse...together."

"Oh!" Her mother smiled at both of them. "Well...I suppose Joowon could stay with us too...what do you think, honey?"

Jisoo had to clutch her chest to keep her heart from exploding out of her chest. They were moving in together? Her sister really had some balls. She could just imagine what would happen if she dropped a bomb like that. Mom really would make Jisoo live in the basement-or maybe in the stable. She could set up shop next to the horses' companion goat.

"Well, I suppose that's all right," her father said. Unbelievable! "It'll certainly be quiet. Mom's in the stable most of the day, and of course, Jisoo will be in school."

"You're in school?" Joowon asked. "Where?"

"She's in high school," Sowon butted in. She stared long at Jisoo as if she were sizing her up. "Same high school I went to. I never asked, Jisoo-are you president of your class this year?"

"VP," Jisoo mumbled. There was no way Sowon hadn't already known that.

"Oh, aren't you so happy it worked out that way?" Sowon asked.

"No," Jisoo said flatly. She'd run for the spot last spring but had been beaten out and had to take the VP slot. She hated losing at anything.

Sowon shook her head. "You don't understand, Jisoo-it's soooooo much work. When I was president, I barely had time for anything else!"

"You do have quite a few activities, Jisoo," Mrs. Kim murmured.

"Besides, Jisoo, you'll take over if the president, you know...dies." Sowon winked at her as if they were sharing this joke, which they weren't.

Sowon turned back to her parents. "Mom. I just got the best idea. What if Joowon and I stayed in the barn? Then we'd be out of your hair."

Jisoo felt as if someone had just kicked her in the ovaries. The barn?

Mrs. Kim put her French-manicured finger to her perfectly lipsticked mouth. "Hmm," she started. She turned tentatively to Jisoo. "Would you be able to wait a few months, honey? Then the barn will be all yours."

"Oh!" Sowon laid down her fork. "I didn't know you were going to move in there, Jisoo! I don't want to cause problems-"

"It's fine," Jisoo interrupted, grabbing her glass of ice water and taking a hearty swallow. She willed herself not to throw a tantrum in front of her parents and Perfect Sowon. "I can wait."

"Seriously?" Sowon asked. "That's so sweet of you!"

Her mother pressed her cold, thin hand against Jisoo's and beamed. "I knew you'd understand."

"Can you excuse me?" Jisoo dizzily shoved her seat back from the table and stood up. "I'll be right back." She walked across the boat's wooden floor, down the carpeted main stairs, and out the front entrance. She needed to get to dry land.

Out the Landing walkway, the Gangnam skyline glittered. Jisoo sat down on a bench and breathed yoga fire breaths. Then she pulled out her purse and started to organize her money. She turned all the ones, fives, and twenties in the same direction and alphabetized them according to the long letter-number combination printed in green in the corners. Doing this always made her feel better. When she finished, she gazed up at the ship's dining deck. Her parents faced the river, so they couldn't see her. She dug through her tan Hogan bag for her emergency pack of Marlboros and lit one.

She took drag after angry drag. Stealing the barn was evil enough, but doing it in such a polite way was just Sowon's style-Sowon had always been outwardly nice but inwardly horrid. And no one could see it but Jisoo.

and then Jisoo smirked, she knew how to get a revenge

She'd gotten revenge on Sowon just once, a few weeks before the end of seventh grade. One evening, Sowon and her then-boyfriend, Mino, were studying for finals. When Mino left, Jisoo cornered him outside by his SUV, which he'd parked behind her family's row of pine trees. She'd merely wanted to flirt-Mino was wasting all his hotness on her plain vanilla, goody-two-shoes sister-so she gave Mino a peck good-bye on the cheek. But when he pressed her up against his passenger door, she didn't try to run away. They only stopped kissing when his car alarm started to blare.

Time skip to when Joowon & Sowon moved in

"I am going to check the barn now, meanwhile Jisoo please make us some coffee," Sowon politely requested Jisoo as she and Joowon just finished setting up the things. Mr. Kim was right now in the barn while Mrs. Kim was in the court, she had an emergency call from her client.

Joowon stood up from the couch. "You all right?"

"Whatever." Jisoo wasn't about to talk things over with her sister's new live-in boyfriend who'd just stolen her barn. "So where are you from?"

"Busan. My Dad's British, though. He moved to South Korea to go to study and ended up staying. Everyone asks."

"Oh. I wasn't going to," Jisoo replied, even though she had thought about it. "How'd you and my sister meet?"

"At Starbucks," he answered. "She was in line in front of me."

"Oh," Jisoo said. How incredibly lame.

"She was buying a latte," Joowon added

"That's nice." Jisoo fiddled with the pack of Coffee beans

"This was a few months ago." He raggedly took another drag, his hand shaking a little and his eyes darting around. "I fancied her before she got the town house."

"Right," Jisoo said, realizing he seemed a little nervous. Maybe he was tense about meeting her parents. Or was it moving in with Sowon that had him on edge? If Jisoo were a boy and had to move in with Sowon, she'd throw herself off Moshulu's crow's nest into the River. Jisoo added 4 spoons of sugar in her coffee, as Joowon asked, "Isn't that way too much sugar?"

"I like it that way," she said

He added. "I hope it's okay that I'm going to be staying in your house."

"Um, yeah. Whatever."

Jowoon licked his lips. "Maybe I can get you to kick your sugar addiction."

Jisoo stiffened. "I'm not addicted."

"Sure you're not," Joowon answered, smiling.

Jisoo shook her head emphatically. "No, I'd never let that happen."

Joowon smiled. "Well, you certainly sound like you know what you're doing."

"I do."

"Are you that way with everything?" Joowon asked, his eyes shining.

There was something about the light, teasing way he said it that made Jisoo pause. Were they...flirting? Jisoo smiled

Joowon was staring at her. He rubbed his fingers over the fridge. She slid her Tiffany Elsa Peretti heart ring up and down her finger, afraid to speak. Joowon took a step forward, then another, until he was right next to her. Jisoo could see the light smattering of freckles over his nose. The well-behaved Jisoo of a parallel universe would have ducked around him and shown him the rest of the barn. But Joowon kept staring at her with his huge, gorgeous brown eyes. The Jisoo who was here now rubbed her lips together, afraid to speak, yet dying to do...something.

So then she did. She closed her eyes, reached up, and kissed him right on the lips.

Joowon didn't hesitate. He kissed her back, then held on to the back of her neck and kissed her harder. His mouth was soft, and he tasted a tiny bit like cigarettes.

"Am I interrupting?"

They both pulled away and turned their head to see Somi. While Joowon was confused, Jisoo gulped

"Y-You should probably go to the barn," Jisoo lightly said as Jowoon moved out

"Came here to return your notebook, your dad said you were in here, but maybe I had the wrong timing," Somi said as she kept the notebook on the kitchen counter, and took a sip of coffee from Jisoo's mug

"Too much sugar, you wanna get fat?" Somi asked as she eye-rolled

"So who was he?" Somi asked again when she noticed, Jisoo had no plans of speaking

"My sister's boyfriend," Jisoo answered in a very low-monotone

"Disgusting, you are such a bitch, stealing your sister's boyfriend?," Somi asked in disgust

"I won't do it again, please, don't tell anyone," Jisoo said keeping her hand on the top of Somi's

Somi stared at her for a minute or two, before finally saying, "Fine,"

--------------------

CURRENT DAY

Jisoo was right now seeing the pictures her sister had sent her from her and her husband's honeymoon in Vietnam. Her sister finally found the perfect husband for her, Jeonghan. They just got married a few weeks back.

As Jisoo looked at the pictures, a message came