The sun rose before Maddie. In the light of day, the room was a mess. Clothes lay strewn across the floor, underwear discarded like litter amidst the garment heap. A crack of light crept through the gap between her curtains, spreading throughout the room and highlighting the dips and curves of two bodies tangled in one duvet, the contrast of Maddie's skin against Peter's pale tone. Peter, on his back, let out soft snores every couple of breaths, while Maddie slept silently on her side with her knees pulled up to her chest.

It was the rumble of an engine too close to home that eventually roused Maddie from the deepest sleep she'd had for a long time, bringing her back into the land of the living. She opened her eyes but her vision was obscured, her face pressed into the warm side of the pillow that she had wrapped her arms around. The first couple of seconds of consciousness were seconds of blissful peace, until she saw the mess of clothes on her floor and the night lurched back to her like the drop of a rollercoaster. Beside her, Peter snuffled and rolled over so that his nose touched the back of her neck and she almost jumped out of her skin at the unexpected contact.

So that had really happened. Her dream had not been a dream so much as a recollection of the night she had spent with him, and he was still there as though the bed was his own. She rolled onto her back and stared at the swirls of paint in the ceiling, trying to get her head around what had happened. The pact was fulfilled. Peter had taken her virginity, or she had given it to him: whatever it was, it was gone, and a whisper of elation simmered in her chest.

"Hello? Maddie?"

Maddie stirred at the sound of her father's voice, suddenly aware of her nudity, not to mention the very naked Peter beside her. Pushing the duvet aside, she pulled on something to wear and slipped out of the room. She heard her father downstairs and jogged down to join him: if she didn't respond, she knew he would come looking and she wasn't sure he would appreciate what he would find in her room.

"Hey, Dad," she said, smoothing down her hair and trying to persuade her shorts to cover a little more skin.

"Ah, there you are," Jung-min said. "I was just about to come looking for you." He stood behind the kitchen counter, unpacking two reusable shopping bags. "Whose car's in the drive? Where's yours?"

"It's Peter's," Maddie said, not one to lie to her father. "We went out last night and he drove me back. Mine's in town."

"Oh, ok," Jung-min said, and then he frowned. "Is Peter here?"

"He's upstairs. I should head back up, actually," she said, backing towards the door. Never mind the fact that she was twenty-one, or that Peter had spent more nights at her house than she could remember, she couldn't help but feel like she had broken some kind of rule by having him in her bed.

"Ok," said her father with a smile as he arranged his groceries into piles of refrigerated and non-refrigerated. Taking a banana from the bowl of fruit that was kept religiously stocked, she crept back into her bedroom and the creak of the door did nothing to rouse Peter. He always had been a deep sleeper and if his snores were anything to go by then he was out for the count. Maddie lay back down and crossed her hands over her stomach, staring at a diffeent patch of ceiling to the one that usually greeted her. Somehow, Peter had ended up with her side of the bed and he was snoring all over her pillow.

Everything was different. That was all Maddie could think as she stared down at herself. With just one night, everything had changed. No longer was Peter just her best friend from secondary school: best friends didn't sleep together. When they did, things tended to fall apart and a lump rose in Maddie's throat at the thought that she could have just made a huge mistake. Although Peter hadn't been as huge a part of her life recently as he once had, she didn't want to just throw away the pieces she was left with: she wanted to put them back together in a haphazard jigsaw of their life, along with the pieces she had found last night.

From the pocket of Peter's jeans, somewhere on the floor, his phone began to ring. It wasn't until the third ring that he raised his head for the first time. For a coupleof seconds he frowned at Maddie before the source of the sound registered and he almost fell out of bed when he rolled over to grab his jeans, answering his phone just before the final ring.

"Hello?"

Maddie sat up, pulling her knees up to her chin and wrapping one arm around her legs after peeling the banana. Peter, listening intently, snuck a glance at her and stifled a grin at the sight of her eating. The smile soon fell though, and he held the phone to his ear with his shoulder while he found his boxers and pulled them on, followed by his stiff jeans. Maddie's eyes wandered over his body, the skin she had come to know so well the night before, and all she wanted to do was stand behind him and wrap her arms around him, the she had always imagined he would do to her, but she judged by his expression that he was about to tear away from her.

"Ok," he said into the phone. "On my way." It fell from his shoulder, landing on the bed with a soft thump, and he grimaced at Maddie. "I need to go."

She put the half-eaten banana on her bedside table. "Ok."

"I forgot my brother has some kind of award ceremony this morning." He picked up the phone again to check the time, wincing at the answer. "Shit. I'm going to be late."

Maddie passed him his shirt, a thousand questions beating in her throat but none making it past her lips, so she stood helplessly beside her bed and watched Peter pull the shirt on. Everything was creased after a night on the floor, a sure sign that he had been up to something.

"Where is it?" she asked, the last question that she cared about the answer to.

"Somewhere in town," Peter murmured, pausing to do up his fly, and he looked up at Maddie. "Want a lift?"

"What for?" she asked, tipping her head at him.

"You left your car."

"Oh, shit. Yeah. Do you mind?"

He grinned that irresistible grin that sent even more of a current coursing through her now that she knew what he was capable of. Her toes curled into the carpet at the fresh memory, a pink blotch tainting her cheeks.

"Of course I don't mind, Mads. But we need to get a wiggle on."

She was dressed in a fresh outfit in less than two minutes, promising herself that she would take a much-needed shower when she got back, and she ran a brush through her hair to smooth down the tangles Peter's fingers had created. When he brushed past her, a trail of goose pimples crept up her arms and she swallowed a shudder as she followed him downstairs and awaited her father's reaction to the very tousled young man with whom she had shared a bed. He needn't know that, though.

"Morning," Peter said with a static wave when he reached the bottom of the stairs. Jung-min, tidying the hallway, offered him a smile.

"Good morning, Peter," he said, his face betraying nothing other than his default cautious warmth. His eyes flickered to Maddie and back again. "Are you two heading out?"

"Yeah," Maddie said. "I need to get my car."

"Don't forget about imo," Jung-min said, and at Maddie's confusion, he said, "She wanted to see you. I imagine something to do with your birthday. Don't forget, ok? I told her you'd be round when you could."

"I will," Maddie said with a definitive nod. She loved her aunt, but sometimes it could be exhausting to spend more than twenty minutes with her. A gossiper at heart, she spent her life gathering and sharing the bits and pieces of news that she picked up on and if she got the slightest sense of Maddie's situation, she would never let it go. "See you later, appa."

*

It was hard to know what to say, or what she could say, as she sat beside Peter. Town was a twenty-five minute drive from her house on an average day and the last thing she wanted to do was to say the wrong thing at the beginning of the journey. Was last night the kind of thing she was supposed to talk about, or was it the kind of thing that just happened? Once Peter dropped her off, would that be it? In ten years of knowing each other, he had never shown any sign of liking her in any way other than a friend, and if she was to believe what she had heard from too many of her friends, then as a guy, sex was nothing more than sex to him. No strings attached.

Seconds turned into minutes, which accumulated and flew by as Maddie searched her mind for something to say. When the song on the radio ended and the sound faded, she pushed through her barriers.

"Thank you."

"What for?" Peter asked, but Maddie said nothing in response and he looked over at her, a smile softening his features. His left hand moved from the steering wheel to Maddie's knee and he squeezed so lightly that she wasn't even sure she had felt it, but the rush of giddy adrenaline that followed was unmistakeable. Her hand made its way onto his. A new song started.

"You know," Peter began as town grew closer, "there's a party on Saturday."

"Oh yeah?"

"Maybe you'd like to come? I could take you." He lifted a shoulder and snuck a glance at Maddie. "You don't have to. It's just a house party, one of the guys from tennis."

"I'd like that," Maddie said. She'd forgotten Peter played tennis and an image popped into her mind, far too inappropriate for so early in the morning, and she pressed it down. "Haven't been to a house party for a while."

"Really? What about at uni?"

"Only for pre-drinks," she said, recalling many a night of getting suitably tipsy before stumbling into town with her housemates and then inevitably stuffing her face on pizza and three in the morning. "Sounds good to me."

"Cool," Peter said, and for a couple of seconds, he looked like he was going to add something else but he closed his mouth and kept it shut.

"What?" Maddie asked.

"Huh?"

"You looked like you were going to say something."

"I was just wondering if we should get something to eat beforehand. On Saturday. You're not supposed to drink on an empty stomach and all that."

"Sure," Maddie said, her heart lifting. That was a good sign. At least he wasn't desperate to flee and never see her again, and with a summer of nothingness looming ahead of her, she had something to look forward to.

A couple more songs played, with cringeworthy commentary and natter between them, before Peter pulled up outside the car park where Maddie had left her battered Fiat the night before. He waited with his window rolled down, elbow sticking out, until Maddie was sitting behind her own driver's seat.

"See you on Saturday," he said, saluting her, and she hardly had time to put together any sort of coherent response before he had left, the wheels kicking up loose grit.

Alone again. Maddie heaved an enormous sigh and stared straight ahead. The running engine murmured low enough not to intrude her thoughts, of which there were many. For all that she had considered the consequences of sleeping with Peter, she hadn't thought a great deal about what would happen next, or how she would feel about him after she got to know him that bit better.

Nevermind how she would feel about herself. She had heard more than enough horror stories of her friends losing their virginity for it to have put her off the idea of sex while she was still at school, but she felt good. Great, even. It wasn't like she had lost part of herself, rather that she had filled in a missing piece.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the parking warden approaching for the morning shift so she eased the car into first gear and peeled out of the car park to avoid a ticket. She was surprised she hadn't had one already: the car had been parked there for fifteen hours, but she counted the warden's laziness on her side, half an hour late to his shift.

As she drove aimlessly through the quiet streets that surrounded town, not quite sure where to go, her phone buzzed in her pocket and she pulled over in a thirty minute bay to read the message.

Maddie wasn't sure how to respond. Her feelings flipped between satisfaction and dread: she had done what she had wanted to do for longer than she liked to admit, but the future was an unknown.

Forty minutes. There was a lot she could do in forty minutes, most of it involving unnecessary stress, but there was one thing she needed to do. With the protection of a time limit, she brought the car to life again and headed to her aunt's house.

*

Hye-eun had lucked out in life. She lived ten minutes outside the town centre, in a leafy suburb that Maddie envied in comparison to the estate of identical modern houses she lived on. The houses grew bigger and bigger, and further apart, the further from town she got, until she reached the pillars that signified Hye-eun's part of town. Trees lined the road and filled the expansive gardens, stretching out behind the grand houses that rose up from gravelled driveways and enormous front doors.

Number thirteen. Two expensive, gleaming cars were parked beside each other in the wide driveway, one of which Maddie was sure belonged to her cousin, Ryan. Like her, he was an only child, but unlike her, he took advantage of being the only object of his parents' affection. Clenching her jaw, Maddie pulled up behind them, her car instantly devaluing the property, and slammed it with the exact pressure the door needed to shut properly.

Hye-eun was at the door before Maddie even knocked, pulling it open and greeting her with arms wide open and a cloud of perfume hanging from her like a halo.

"Joka, my darling, it's so lovely to see you," Hye-eun said in an accent that sounded too forced, the words still catching on her native tongue.

"Hi, imo," Maddie said, holding her breath as her aunt wrapped her arms around her, but the perfume hit her tongue and she grimaced before her aunt let her go. "How are you?"

"Well, well, we're all doing well," Hye-eun said, beckoning Maddie into the kitchen. "Hyeongbu said you'd be over at some point. "How are you, joka?"

"I'm good, thanks," Maddie said, following her aunt into the spotless kitchen, which looked as though a meal had never been prepared in it. Sunlight poured in through the huge windows that monopolised the rear wall, glinting off the granite. "How's sachon? And imobu?"

"Very good, thank you, darling." Hye-eun put the kettle on, and Maddie was sure that was the extent to which she knew how to use her kitchen. It was more like a show-home, presenting the finest gadgets and technologies in pristine condition. "Ryan is here, somewhere, actually."

Maddie held back a grimace. She wasn't particularly fond of her cousin who, despite being two years younger than her, had such an air of entitlement about him that it was a struggle to be around him for, well, any amount of time at all. She perched on a stool at the counter at the instruction of her aunt, who disappeared upstairs in search of her son. This was a different life altogether, Maddie thought, and she couldn't help but wonder what life would be like if Hye-eun had been her mother, or if her mother hadn't died. Maybe it wouldn't be much different – she liked to think that, anyway. And she certainly didn't want Ryan as a brother. Then again, maybe a sibling was all he needed.

"Come on, adeul, Maddie's here," Hye-eun said as she swept back into the kitchen, followed by her son who looked younger than his nineteen years. A poor attempt at a moustache speckled his upper lip, which curled at the sight of his cousin.

"Hi, sachon," Maddie said, inflecting as much warmth into the words as she could muster.

"Hello," Ryan said, looking down his nose at her. At five foot nine, he had somehow surpassed his father's height by a couple of inches, and he wore that badge with pride.

"How're you?" she asked, though she struggled to care. It was sad, really, she thought: they lived thirty minutes apart and with only a couple of years between them, they could've been so much closer than they were, but as far as Ryan was concerned, Maddie was beneath him.

"Well," he said, and nothing more, but Maddie was persistent in her efforts to be the bigger person.

"How was your first year?" she asked, in a weak attempt to break down the barrier he had forced between them a long time ago. "How did your exams go?"

"Very well," Ryan said, and Maddie gave up a sigh of defeat. He clearly had no intention of staying for long, and he acted as though he had some kind of grudge though for the life of her, Maddie couldn't think of anything she had ever done to hurt him. He was just that kind of person, she concluded. He took a bottle of water from the fridge and twisted the cap, decanting it into a pint glass before adding ice from the dispenser in the freezer door.

"Cha?" Hye-eun asked, holding the pot over a second bone china teacup, and Maddie nodded with a smile.

"Yes please, imo," she said, and once her aunt set the cup down in front of her, she added, "Dad said you wanted to see me."

"Oh, yes, of course." Hye-eun took the stool beside Maddie, elegant hands clasping her cup until the heat seared her skin. "I couldn't ignore your twenty-first, joka! I would have come over to see you but I just haven't had the time."

That was a lie and Maddie knew it, and she was sure her aunt knew that she knew it. People like Hye-eun tended to stick to their neighbourhoods, less they be assumed to live anywhere else: with her diamond earrings and clothes made from evidently expensive material, she would stick out like a sore thumb outside Maddie's home.

"It's ok," Maddie said, running her thumb over an almost undetectable chip in the china. "I was in town anyway and my friend won't be in until ten, so I thought I might as well come and say hi."

"Good, good, that's very good of you," Hye-eun said, and she stood again. She was a constantly moving woman who seemed completely incapable of standing still, or sitting for longer than it took to finish a cup of tea or a meal. "Hold on one moment."

She disappeared and Maddie was left with Ryan. He gave her a sideways glance, not even bothering to turn his head a few degrees to look straight at her. Mustering up an ounce of effort, she tried to converse with him once more.

"How's your dad?"

Ryan straightened his back and inhaled a long, deep breath before he dropped his shoulders and shook his head. "Let's not bother with the pretence that either of us care," he said, his eyes cold, and Maddie's skin prickled with a chill. If this was how he treated her for no reason that she could think of, then she couldn't imagine how much worse it would be to get on the wrong side of him.

Hye-eun returned with two envelopes, one a pristine white and the other a little yellowed. She held out the white one first, and Maddie took it with no intention of opening it in front of Ryan. "This is a token from nampyeon and me," Hye-eun said, and she then handed the yellowed envelope to her niece. "This is from your mother."

Maddie took it before the words registered, and then her hand froze. "Wait ... my mother?" she asked, any questions about Peter replaced by far more concerning questions regarding the woman she didn't remember. "What do you mean? How?"

"She left it for you before she died and told me to give it to you when you turned twenty-one," Hye-eun said. "It's been in my safe all these years, waiting for you. Now it's yours."

The faded script on the front was her mother's handwriting. Maddie recognised it from the backs of photographs dotted around the house and tucked into albums, and here the envelope bore two simple words in that cursive font that seized up her heart and stung her eyes: For Madeleine.

+ - + - +

how are you finding the story? the reception to 21NS has been amazing! i planned to wait a little while before post chapter 5 but i managed to write it, and i just can't wait to post! what do you think is coming up? a few people have asked about some of the terminology used in this story so you can find a translation index as part iv! this chapter is dedicated to blueasthesea for her awesome support! today's graphic is a gif of ryan, aka the hot twat