Work Text:
“Ahjumma,” comes a whiny voice from her doorway. “Ahjumma.”
“What,” Sooyoung bites, then immediately regrets it. It isn’t Yoo Mia’s fault that this chapter has been fighting her for the better part of three days. As an apology, she shuts her laptop and swivels her chair around to give the girl her undivided attention. “What is it, Mia?”
The girl in question pouts at her, unconvinced by the display. “I’m hungry,” she says, rocking on her feet. “Can we have lunch?”
Sooyoung snorts, then turns back to her computer. “You don’t need my permission. There’s cup ramyeon in the pantry.”
“I don’t want cup ramyeon. I want real lunch.”
“Then ask one of the others to take you. I’m busy today.”
“Ahjumma —”
“Look, I’m sorry, kid,” she says, pausing in her typing to throw what she hopes is an apologetic glance Mia’s way, “but I’ve really got to finish this chapter, okay? I’m already behind as it is.”
She’s halfway back to her laptop when Mia delivers the killing blow: “Oppa said you would take care of me.”
It’s almost embarrassing how effectively the words hit their intended target. In the span of a single sentence, Sooyoung goes from grinding her teeth in frustration to feeling like her insides have been split open, viscera spilling out onto the floor. The fingers of her left hand curl into a fist, trembling, while her right hand claws hollows into her knee, and all she can do is stare at the carpet and try not to lose herself in old, useless thoughts. She can’t even take a breath. It’s honestly impressive. Sooyoung would praise her if she weren’t so busy trying to force air into her lungs.
It was a cheap shot, and they both know it. They also know that Sooyoung will cave far sooner than Mia will ever apologize.
Not that she needs to. This whole situation is Sooyoung’s doing, after all. Whatever the kid wants to throw at her, she can take it. The least she can do is give the damn kid a real lunch.
Even so, she stares hard at the floor, counting out ten long seconds before lifting her head to see Mia watching her curiously, head tilted to the side.
She wonders, not for the first time, if someone else is watching her right now, too. If he can see the dark circles beneath her eyes, the deep grooves between the tendons of her hands. If he can see the ways she flounders, constantly, in looking after this child, as she tries and fails to fill the void left by her brother. She wonders if it's his disappointment crawling down her spine, tightening like a noose around her throat.
Or maybe it’s just her own guilt, settling thick and heavy in her stomach.
“Fine,” she grunts eventually, once she’s sure she can smother the shake in her voice. With perhaps too much force, she shuts her laptop and stands up, stretching out her back in defiance of her still-rolling stomach. “Grab your coat. We’re leaving in five.”
“Yes!” Without a single ounce of remorse, Mia grins at her and scampers away.
What a brat.
If Sooyoung had her way, they would’ve looked up a restaurant with good reviews online, driven there on the route most recommended by one of her three driving apps, and come straight back after paying the bill. If Sooyoung had her way, they would’ve wrapped up in under an hour, and she’d have wrestled that chapter into submission well before dinner and started on the next two before putting Mia to sleep.
But this is Yoo Mia’s outing, and Yoo Mia has Sooyoung wrapped around her devilish little finger. So instead, “lunch” turns into “visiting three street markets and every side alley in between,” which is the loosest definition of “real lunch” Sooyoung has ever heard of. By the time they board the subway home, they’re stuffed with a dozen and a half servings of all sorts of street foods each, with more to carry home, and their arms are laden with two to three grocery bags apiece, each filled with vegetables and meats and sauces and snacks that Sooyoung has never bothered to stock before. It’s appalling. It’s mortifying. It’s fascinating. It’ll definitely go to waste.
Mia cares about none of this; she simply rummages through the spoils of victory as passengers come and go around them. She’s set most of her bags down by her feet, two between her legs and one between hers and Sooyoung’s, with the last balancing on her lap, holding her phone in place as it plays some silly animal video on mute.
Sooyoung, meanwhile, has the rest stacked around her like a throne of groceries. They have displaced at least three people from the space that normally exists between the door and the seats, but somehow no one bothers them about it. She thinks it’s probably more because of who they are than any kind of politeness commuters might’ve learned in this post-scenario world.
An announcement overhead informs them of the approaching stop, and most of their car gets up and shuffles around as they wait for the doors to open. Sooyoung can’t help but stare at the sheer mundanity of it all. The office workers hefting their laptop bags over their shoulders, the school children laughing and shoving each other over a stupid joke, the parents grabbing their children’s hands to make sure they don’t get lost in the crowd — it’s all so ordinary and familiar it makes her dizzy. Sure, the rest of these people have had decades to move on from the scenarios, whereas she’s only a couple of years out, but — still. They’re riding the subway. On the evening commute. Does that really mean nothing anymore? Have these people really made it back to their ordinary lives despite all that they’d lost to get here? Is that what she’s going to become in a few years — someone who's grown more comfortable with loss than with the people that loss belonged to?
Or maybe it won’t be a few years. Maybe it’s just around the corner. She’s just come back from a street market, of all things. She’s sitting beside her best friend’s sister without a single weapon on her, chatting about what to make for dinner as if this is just a normal day of babysitting. As if said friend isn’t lightyears away from them, floating in the vacuum of space in who knows what state, unsure if he’ll ever make it back home but pressing onward for the faintest chance they have at reviving their other best friend — by sharing a dramatized biographical web novel across the universe.
Their lives are the furthest things from ordinary, and yet this is the ending they’ve arrived at. And somehow, despite herself, despite her insistence to everyone who asks that she’d imagine a way better ending given half the chance — she does like it. She does have a renewed appreciation for waiting in traffic, for reckless jaywalkers running in front of her car. For waiting in long lines at cafes, for running into old acquaintances on the street, for forgetting her keys inside the house and having to kick off her shoes and climb the stairs all the way back, only to realize they were in her pocket the whole time. Even for sitting in the subway like this, something she thought she’d swear off forever after everything that happened.
It’s a shitty ending, without two of the people she cares most about, and she actually likes it. Even without them, she finds parts of it to enjoy. Somewhere along the way, she’d grown used to their absence, and she doesn’t even have the excuse of twenty years.
It still hurts, though. That’s the only saving grace she can cling to — that however far away they drift from her, there are still days where she misses them with an agony so fierce she can barely get out of bed.
What if it never stops hurting, though? What if this is all for nothing, and she never sees them again, and the pain never eases?
What if it does?
What’s worse: learning to live with it, or never being able to?
“When my brother comes back,” Mia says, oblivious to the crisis Sooyoung is having beside her, “we should have a feast. We’ll invite everyone, and we’ll all eat together again.”
“Yeah.” Sooyoung tries not to dwell on the nonchalant confidence running through that statement, the “when”s hiding the “if”s she knows they both feel. When Yoo Joonghyuk comes back. When Kim Dokja wakes up. When the rest of the company can stand to be within three feet of her again for anything other than work.
When, when, when.
“We have to learn how to cook a lot more before then, though. This is just beginner stuff.”
“Right.” If they say it enough, it should become true, right?
“And Seolhwa-ahjumma has to teach me about poisons, too, so I can make Oppa’s dish properly.”
“Y — what??”
“He deserves a little poison,” Mia says, petting the mushrooms in her bag with a little too much care, “just enough to knock him out for a week so he doesn’t get up and leave too soon. He would do that, you know? He’s allergic to naps.”
Sooyoung doesn’t know what to say to that, so she just nods.
“These aren’t poisonous, though,” Mia assures her, as if she can read Sooyoung’s thoughts. It’s a little creepy. “We’ll start off at level zero, and then work our way up to poisons. Unless…do you have a good poison tolerance, Ahjumma?”
“I — don’t know? It’s never really come up, somehow.”
“Oh.” Mia doesn’t elaborate after that. It takes more conscious effort than Sooyoung will ever admit to not to lean away.
Eventually, it’s their stop, and the two of them pick up their too-numerous grocery bags and step off the subway onto the platform below. Mia, ever the impatient preteen, struts toward the exit, but Sooyoung falters, one foot in front of the line, one foot behind. For reasons she doesn’t want to think about, she turns around to look behind her one last time, scanning the car for anything they’d forgotten. As if this time, if she just looks hard enough, if she just stares long enough, she won’t leave anything behind.
(“We are getting off together, right?”)
The car is empty when the door hisses closed. Sooyoung watches it pull away from the platform, her reflection in the windows wearing an expression she doesn’t recognize, the white collar of her coat fluttering in the wind that it kicks up.
Maybe she should’ve worn a different coat today.
“Ahjumma.” There’s a hand tugging the sleeve of her outstretched arm — when had she raised it? “Ahjumma, let’s go.”
“Of course,” she says faintly, blinking at the empty rails where the subway used to be. “We should.” She stoops down to pick up her bags and follows Mia out of the station.
As they make their way back to the house, weighed down by their self-inflicted grocery burden, Sooyoung casts a cautious glance up at the night sky. The moon hangs round and full above the horizon, casting a faint glow over the entire city. Whatever stars remain up there are washed out by its cool light, painting the sky a peaceful, uniform navy.
Against her will, Sooyoung shivers. Though the Star Stream has been gone for decades in this world line, it still feels like everything she does is being watched and weighed. As if it can still be taken away from her in the blink of an eye, if she doesn’t perform adequately.
Not that her only reader would do that to them. This is the ending he chose, after all, shitty as it is, and even if his subconscious has scattered to the farthest reaches of the universe by now, he never would’ve imagined something like that.
But even so.
Even so, now that he’s not consciously there, now that the universe is running on autopilot, now that they’re trying in their own way to create a path for him, all of him, to come back home to them —
Even so, she wonders how long it will take before anyone else realizes she’s the last person that deserves any of this.
“Wow,” Mia murmurs, staring into the pot. “How did you survive to become an adult?”
“Cheeky little brat, you wanna die or something??” It’s only Sooyoung’s third attempt at cooking rice in her entire life; a little credit is deserved, she thinks.
For some reason, the corner of Mia’s mouth twitches up. “I will if we eat this.” Wielding the spatula the way one might a dagger, Mia hacks away the charred remains of what used to be a pot of jasmine rice with grim determination. “I can’t believe you managed to do this even with a rice cooker.”
“Look, I didn’t grow up with this kind of thing, okay?”
Mia stares at her incredulously. “It’s a rice cooker. Who doesn’t have a rice cooker growing up? Besides, weren’t you rich or something? Or did someone else do all the cooking for you?”
The barb cuts deeper than Sooyoung expects, and perhaps deeper than Mia intends, judging by the discomfited look she gives her as Sooyoung goes still.
If it were anyone but Yoo Joonghyuk’s little sister, she wouldn’t hesitate to rip them apart in equal measure, and with vindictive pleasure. But it’s not, so instead, she clenches her teeth, counts to ten, and reminds herself that she’s already killed this brat over a thousand times.
…It works a little too well. “Right,” she mutters eventually, “something like that, I guess.” It’s a complete non-answer, but Mia doesn’t ask her anything else. With an uncomfortable prickle down her spine, she leaves Mia by the sink with the rice pot and walks to the island in the middle of the kitchen, where half a head of cabbage sits along the edge of the cutting board. Beside it rests Mia’s knife, abandoned once the smell of smoke had gotten too strong to ignore. Sooyoung picks it up, admiring the worn wooden hilt and the sleek silver blade, when an engraving at the base catches her eye.
To my sous-chef. Happy birthday.
The knife clatters loudly against the cutting board, audible even over the gush of the sink. Sooyoung stares at it, then at her empty palm. Despite the sudden ache in her hand, there’s no mark where she’d held it. For no reason whatsoever, her eyes begin to sting.
Not for the first time, Sooyoung wonders exactly what the hell she’s doing here. Standing in the middle of a kitchen she barely uses, using someone else’s knife and playing house with someone else’s sister as if she belongs here, as if she has any right to have a hand in this child’s life after everything she’s done — what the hell was she thinking, agreeing to this? No, it was worse than that — she’d practically volunteered. Obviously Yoo Joonghyuk had to know that almost any other member of the company would’ve been a far more competent choice — his actual former wife, for one, or literally any other adult — yet he’d asked her.
And she’d accepted, selfishly. She hadn’t even hesitated. She’s known all along she’s no good at this sort of thing, yet she’d jumped at the chance to look after his sister the very moment he had asked.
And how couldn’t she? She’s failed everything else; this is the last promise she still has a chance of keeping.
Angrily, she scrubs her eyes and glares down at the cutting board. This is so stupid. It’s a knife . Besides, if Yoo Joonghyuk really hadn’t wanted her to use his things, he could’ve just arranged to have Mia’s clothes and comfort items sent over instead of the contents of their entire apartment. As far as she’s concerned, that means everything is fair game.
Which also means she can use however many of his knives she wants and no one can yell at her for it. She yanks open the drawer next to her and pulls out a different knife, one with a cheap black plastic handle and a blade dull with age. Ignoring the cabbage, she reaches for an onion from one of the many bowls on the counter and peels off the papery skin before getting to work. The satisfying crunch of the bulb beneath the knife, the sting of onion juice in her eyes, the hard thwack of the blade against the cutting board — if she focuses on it hard enough, she can almost pretend she doesn’t feel the eyes boring holes into her back.
They work quietly for a while, until Mia slams something into the sink with a decisive huff. “That took forever,” she groans. “I can’t believe it actually worked.”
Sooyoung brushes the last of the carrots into one of the vegetable bowls with the flat of her knife. Carrots, cabbage, onions, eggplants, mushrooms, radishes, baby corn, spring onions, bean sprouts, bok choy, string beans, garlic, not to mention all the various sauce mixtures Mia had prepared — it’s far too much for the two of them, but Sooyoung has long since learned the futility of arguing with either Yoo sibling about how to run their kitchen. “What worked?” she asks, setting the knife down and wiping her hands on her jeans as she walks over to the sink.
“This.” Mia grins down at her handiwork with her hands on her hips. In the sink lies a shining steel pot, slightly scuffed but free of rice. Aside from the occasional scorch mark, it looks as if they hadn’t even used it yet.
Sooyoung blinks, then blinks again. “How did you do that?” she asks, not with a little bit of awe.
“Boiled it in vinegar water, then scrubbed it within an inch of its life.” Mia’s fingers twist in the hem of her shirt. “My brother showed me how, once,” she says quietly, staring at the pot. “Before…before everything.”
“…Ah.” This must be the thousandth wave of guilt to crash over her today, and they haven’t even had dinner yet.
“Anyway,” Mia continues, discreetly scratching her eyebrow, “it’s getting pretty late, so we can just stick to a few side dishes for tonight and leave the rest of the ingredients for tomorrow. I can get started on those, if you want to set the table and stuff. ”
“What, that’s it? I can hel — hey, what’s with that face??”
Mia schools her expression into something slightly less horrified than someone who’d walked into a high school sports locker room and smelled a year-old sock left in the back of a locker for the first time. “You can set the table,” she repeats.
“That won’t take long, I can —”
“You can set the table.”
“I can set the table,” Sooyoung agrees, and sets off to do just that.
In the end, more than half the vegetables end up back in the fridge, chopped and ready for their next cook-a-thon, but Mia stills pulls off an impressive spread of side dishes, interspersed between the leftovers from their street market adventure. She even makes a fresh pot of rice and lays it steaming in the middle of the table, completing the artful arrangement.
Sooyoung’s contribution, meanwhile, amounts to: two chipped plates, a couple of bent forks, and two glasses of lukewarm water. She pulls her chair back and takes her seat, cheeks warm and shoulders hunched.
Mia slides the oven mitts off of her hands and stares at her place setting before picking up her glass of water. “I prefer ice,” she mutters, walking toward the fridge.
“Ah — right. Sorry.” It’s been months, and she can’t even remember his sister’s water preferences. Beneath the table, Sooyoung picks at her fingernails. Her stomach churns; she wonders how long it’ll be before Mia finally decides to leave her for someone who can actually look after her.
Mia returns with a glass half full of ice, a handful of napkins — and a pair of chopsticks, Sooyoung notes. She takes her seat at the table and stares back at Sooyoung, raising an eyebrow. “Did you want some too?” she asks, clicking her chopsticks together.
“Oh, no. You go ahead.” Sooyoung shakes her head. “Sorry, I was — I should’ve asked.”
Mia’s mouth twists as if she wants to say something else, but she just scoots her chair forward and reaches for the rice. A muscle in her temple twitches as if she’s clenching her teeth. Sooyoung swallows and begins filling her own plate, toes curling against the wooden floor.
It really is an impressive spread. Sooyoung’s plate is already full without even touching the leftovers, and Mia’s looks like a sampler one might get at a restaurant. They make it through nearly the entire meal in a companionable if slightly awkward silence — at least, Sooyoung thinks so, until Mia slams her chopsticks down. “Can you stop looking at me like that?” she snaps, eyes flashing.
It’s an impressive glare for a…something-year-old. It also takes a surprising amount of effort not to look away. “Like what?”
“Like you expect me to hate you.”
Whatever words she’d been about to say die in her throat. Her fork clangs loudly against her plate as it slides from her slack grip.
“Wh —”
“Do you think it would be easier?” Mia continues, relentless. Her cheeks are a splotchy, bright red, and her eyes glisten brightly in the kitchen light. “Do you think this would be easier if I hated you?”
“I don’t —”
“I should, right? This is your fault, after all.”
It’s one thing to know a truth; it’s another thing entirely to hear it spoken aloud by someone else. The weight of it knocks the breath from Sooyoung, and her arms fold around her waist like she’s been hit. It certainly feels like she has; she feels just as dizzy and sick with pain as if someone had driven the heel of their boot into her stomach. Amid the dull pounding in her ears, it takes a moment for her to realize that Mia is still talking.
“— east, that’s what you think, isn’t it?”
Sooyoung stares at her plate, willing the blurry colors to look like food again. It takes several long, deliberate breaths, but eventually she’s able to sigh and scratch her ear with a nonchalance she doesn’t feel. “I mean, yeah,” she says, shrugging. As if the admission isn’t torn from her throat, bloody and raw. As if she isn’t one wrong blink away from losing her composure completely. Do you disagree?, she wants to taunt back, but — Mia might actually answer her honestly.
“Is that why you just take it?”
At that, Sooyoung looks up with genuine confusion. “Take it? Take what?”
Mia stares at her in disbelief. “I’m so rude to you! Why don’t you ever say anything?”
“What do you…what, are you mad at me for…not yelling at you more??”
“You snap at Gilyoung-oppa and Yoosung-eonni for so much less, but you don’t even react when it’s me. You just…take it. Do you really think you deserve it? Or are you just ignoring me and hoping I’ll take a hint?”
“I’m not ignoring you, I just — I don’t —”
“So you think you deserve it, then.”
A gaping silence sprawls between them, filling in answers where Sooyoung has none. Mia’s face darkens, and she glowers at her with an anger Sooyoung doesn’t understand.
“Do you honestly think hating you would be the easier thing to do? Do you think it will make him come back faster or something? If you hate yourself that’s one thing, but don’t act like you’re doing this for my sake. I never told you to stay away from me. I never asked to live like strangers in the same house. I never wanted you to look at me like all you can see is the pitiful thing my brother left behind!”
Something horrible hardens in the pit of her stomach as she takes in the shine in Mia’s eyes, the faint tremble of her frame. It makes Sooyoung want to reach across the table and grasp her by the shoulders. Instead, her fingers dig into the wood of her chair. “Mia, no, that’s not — that’s not it,” she says, leaning forward. She needs to explain herself somehow, she needs Mia to understand that this is entirely Sooyoung’s problem — but where she reaches in her mind for the right words is the same yawning void that’s been haunting her all week. She bites her lip, searching frantically for anything that might keep those tears from spilling over.
“Then what is it?” Mia sniffs, unable to maintain her glare. “If it’s not me, then what’s the problem? Because — because I don’t need distance. I don’t want it. But you always…I thought — I th-thought, if it was Oppa’s best friend, if it was someone who understands — I-I thought, wouldn’t it be better to miss him together? Wouldn’t it — wouldn't you — b-but it’s like, like I can’t even talk about him with you, because you’ll just ignore me, or leave, or — !”
“Yoo Mia.” Her chair screeches across the linoleum as Sooyoung stands abruptly. This is unacceptable, she thinks to herself, maneuvering around the table in two quick strides. Absolutely unacceptable, she thinks as she grabs the sobbing girl and holds her to her chest. Mia’s arms tighten around her waist, fingers digging into her back, and Sooyoung feels like the tiniest, most repulsive worm in the whole world. She wants to grind herself into the asphalt under her own heel. Is this how she’s come across all this time? Has she made Mia feel this way from the very beginning? “Of course I miss him,” she says quietly, ignoring the burn in her eyes and the ache in her throat to wrap Mia in the tightest embrace she can manage. “Of course I want to talk about him with you, Mia. I was just being stupid, I thought — I am so —”
“I want to talk about him too!” Mia interrupts, squeezing her tighter. “I want to talk about how annoying the way he peels carrots is, and how long it takes him to wash one stupid bowl of rice!”
“How does he peel his carrots?” She has no idea why those are the only words that make it out of her mouth, instead of the apology she hadn’t finished making. This conversation has already spiralled so far out of her control. All she can do is continue stroking Mia’s head like she’s watched Yoo Joonghyuk do so many times and hope it amounts to something.
“Circumferentially!” Mia wails, leaning into her. “It’s so stupid! Who peels carrots like that? He does it just to annoy me and I — and I — I miss it! I miss those stupid spirally carrot peels! I miss all of it!”
“I’m sorry.”
“And stop saying you’re sorry, like this is somehow your fault — I hate that! He’s the one who left, he made that choice for himself, so when he gets back, he’s the one who should say sorry.”
“Mia,” Sooyoung rasps, voice catching in her throat. Her hand trembles where it rests against the nape of Mia’s neck. “He only left because — because I couldn’t —”
“Couldn’t what? Rewire his dumb brain? Become an aerospace engineer and build a bigger ark?”
“I couldn’t save him.” She hates the way her voice cracks, the way her breath hitches in her throat like she’s about to cry. She hates the way it makes Mia go still, how it takes Mia’s hands from around her back to her arms, grasping them gently as if Sooyoung is the one that needs to be comforted. She wrenches her head to the side before Mia can look up and meet her eyes. Outside, clouds have begun to sweep in front of the moon, dimming its light. “I couldn’t convince him to come with us, and then I couldn’t even save him. And now your brother is out there risking his life because I couldn’t just move on like everyone else.”
“Oppa didn’t move on either,” Mia says quietly, looping her arms back around Sooyoung. Whether it’s tact or something else that has Mia closing her eyes to rest her head against Sooyoung’s chest, Sooyoung doesn’t know, but she takes the opportunity to drag her sleeve across her eyes, sniffling as discreetly as she can. “Oppa wants to save him too. That’s why he went.” Mia hiccups, then says in an even lower voice, “He’s the best one suited for it, anyway. He explained it all before he left. You wrote him like that, so he has the best chance of survival.”
Sooyoung freezes, hot and cold all at once. “I —”
“If you say you’re sorry again I’m going to break your legs,” Mia threatens. “Besides, it wouldn’t even be true, would it?”
She’s right, the damn perceptive twerp. Sooyoung can’t regret writing that shitty third-rate web novel any more than she can regret taking everyone to the 1865th turn, or confronting what was left of Kim Dokja that day by the river. She can’t even really regret that Yoo Joonghyuk was the one to take the ark instead of her; he probably needs to traverse the stars as much as she needs to write this story. As his friend, the least she can do is allow him the dignity of that choice.
But she is sorry about what they’ve had to endure to get here. Clearing her throat, she says as much.
“Yeah, but we are here, aren’t we?” Mia says, looking up at her with bloodshot eyes. “We’re still living, and Oppa is going to come back some day, so what does that other stuff matter? If you’re worried about that, don’t bother. I forgive you. I mean, I don’t think it’s really something that needs to be forgiven, but if it makes you feel better, I do. Oppa does too, I bet. We just have to live well so we can really let him have it once he returns.”
A wet laugh bursts past Sooyoung’s lips. “You can’t just say things like that, you know.”
“Why not? It’s true.”
Sooyoung sighs, dragging a hand over her face. If she’s being honest with herself, in the years since their group regression, the last few months have felt like the only time she’s been able to take steps toward a future that she can actually stomach being a part of. Maybe, out of the three of them, between the protagonist, the reader, and the writer, she’s the one that least deserves to be here living out this ending, but Mia is right about one thing at least; she’s the one that is here. What else is there to do but live well?
Now that both of them have calmed down, Mia releases her, so Sooyoung returns to her side of the table and begins stacking her plates. “…I still don’t understand how you don’t hate me for all of this,” she says eventually. “I would, if I were you, so it’s okay if you want to. I’m never going to be able to fill your brother’s role, but —”
“Oh my god, you’re so annoying.” Completely ignoring Sooyoung’s indignant squawking, Mia sweeps the remaining food into several tupperware containers that have somehow materialized onto the table. “Didn’t we just go over this? I don’t need you to be him; I just want someone to remember him with. Just be you. That’s enough.”
The sudden sting of tears is unexpected, as is the derisive laugh that accompanies it. “That’s never enough,” she hears herself say, in a voice that’s a bit too honest. Dammit, she’d thought she was done with embarrassing displays of emotion for the night; how does this girl always manage to strike her right where it hurts most?
Mia just rolls her eyes and stacks the tupperware containers beneath her chin as she heads to the fridge. “Well that’s stupid,” she says, placing them inside the door before swinging it shut, “and whoever told you that is stupid too.”
“Yeah, well — hey, what are you doing? Mia. Mia, seriously, give those back. I may not be a great cook, but I am capable of washing dishes, you know.”
“That’s all right. As sorry for making you cry, I’ll do the dishes today.”
“Wh — I’m not crying, you brat, I’m — this is just —”
“It’s okay, Ahjumma. Grown-ups can cry too. And as thank you for today, I’ll let you work on the rest of your chapter before dessert.”
“For the last time, I’m not —” Mia doesn’t even grace her pathetic lie with a passing acknowledgement. She just stacks the plates in her arms and walks gingerly toward the sink. Sooyoung hears the hiss of the tap as it turns on, followed by the sound of too much soap squirting out of the bottle. Mia hums a quiet tune as she works, a melody that Sooyoung doesn’t recognize. In the quiet of the kitchen, she watches this glimpse of the Mia that existed beyond the margins of her story.
With a deep sigh, Sooyoung turns around and massages her eyes with her fingers, then glances out the window. The moon has crept higher now, appearing small and distant as it blankets the world in its gentle light high above the horizon, but in reality it’s no farther away from her than when it hovered just above the treeline a few hours ago. In fact, it’s impossible for it to be any farther away from her than it already is. A faint smile tilts Sooyoung’s lips. Tidally locked — that’s the word. “Your sister’s a jerk,” she says flatly, watching the last wisp of cloud drift past it. “And amazing. She’s everything I wish I was at that age. I would love to unleash her on my parents. So…” And here she has to clear her throat, rub her eyes again so she can say it clearly — “So don’t worry. We’ll be okay. Just — come home. Whatever else happens, you better come home at the end, you bastard.”
Tapping her fist on the table, she gets up and walks toward the kitchen. Rolling up her sleeves, she nudges Mia to the side with her hip and submerges her hands in the soapy water beside her, grabbing one of the many plates at the bottom. With her other hand, she reaches for one of the spare sponges from the stack left carelessly on the windowsill, but at the last second, she swipes her hand across the surface of the water, spraying soap suds into the air. A dollop lands on Mia’s nose, with more caked on her hair and sliding down onto forehead. Sooyoung can only cackle at the outraged expression on her face.
“What was that for?! Ahjumma, you — hey! Stop laughing, I mean it!”
“You’re laughing too,” Sooyoung snorts, the corners of her lips pulling up as she wipes her eyes with the edge of her palm.
“No I’m not!”
“Yeah, you are.”
“I’m not!” Mia says, trying vainly to smother a smile. “I’m mad at you!”
“Yeah? Mad enough to poison me?”
“Stop!” But Mia can’t hold back her laughter now. “You’re awful! I hate you!”
Sooyoung pauses, a wry smile overtaking her lips. “Do you really?”
Mia glares at her before letting out a long-suffering sigh. “No, obviously not,” she mutters, rolling her eyes. “We just went over that.”
“Because if you do, you’d better tell me right now while I’m willing to hear it. Otherwise you’re stuck with me.”
“Fine. But that means you’re stuck with me too.”
“Fine, guess we’re stuck then.”
“Fine!”
“Why are you still shouting?”
“I don’t know! Why do you ask so many stupid questions?” Before Sooyoung can even try to respond, a spray of soapy water catches her square in the face. Coughing and spluttering, she frantically drags her tongue along the bottoms of her teeth, swearing as she tries to get the awful taste out. Next to her, Mia clutches her stomach, tears beading the corners of her eyes as she doubles over in laughter.
“Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be,” Sooyoung says, wiping her mouth. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, runt.” Mia barely has time to widen her eyes before a wave of foamy water splashes her from head to toe. It’s a bit more water than she’d intended, and Sooyoung almost apologizes, but the moment she opens her mouth it’s full of soap again; a small hand has slapped its sudsy fingers across it, smearing white foam all over her face. Its owner grins at her cheekily, bubbles smeared in her hair and across her face and between her fingers, and she darts nimbly away as Sooyoung chases after her, sponge in hand.
It’s certainly not the worst ending, she admits to herself, long after Mia has gone to sleep and the moon has begun sinking back toward the horizon. In the privacy of her own mind, she gives Kim Dokja the tiniest modicum of credit she can possibly concede as she taps away at her keyboard, smirking as the Jung Heewon on her screen finally smacks that idiot across the back of his head.
Outside, the moon twinkles brightly.