Chapter Text
“Seriously?” One blink, then another. She was sure that her eyes were as wide as saucers, and only growing vaster by the second. “People still… do that?”
Her mother’s gaze was far from astonished, and the woman across from her seemed to be fighting back the urge to roll her eyes back into her skull. “Yes, Mira, they do that. You went to Sana’s wedding a couple of years ago. To the CEO of that tech startup. Have you already forgotten?”
Mira set her jaw as pictures rose to the forefront of her mind: visions of flowers and white flowy gowns and a few too many glasses of champagne. “Right,” she mumbled, eyes dropping back down to the sheet of paper before her. Mira’s mother, frustratingly analog, requested that all emails addressed to her be printed so that she might respond to them by hand, sending her written responses to her secretary to be transcribed and then sent digitally. Mira held the unfortunate result of her mother’s oddities between her fingers: a marriage proposal printed in Times New Roman, double-spaced, with the e-mail signature of a Choi Enterprises glaring at her in bold at the bottom of the page. Choi… Mira scanned through the names she kept neatly filed in the recesses of her brain. Nothing of note came to her, and she let the paper fall to the ground with a huff. “Who are they?”
Her mother raised an eyebrow. “New money. They have ties to Microsoft, somehow, but they’ve been advancing in the tech sector as of late.” The way her mother’s voice drawled through the sentence meant that the Chois were nothing special. Mira knew how to read her mother by now, but she knew that the woman across from her never would have even shown the invitation to her if they weren’t an adequate acquisition for the Kang family.
Mira didn’t recall any headlines mentioning the Chois, but then again, she never kept up on the latest news. That was more of her brother’s forte. The news just tended to make Mira angry. “Okay,” she pinched the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes shut. “So what do you want me to do?”
Her mother barked out a brisk laugh, the dry sound clattering around the room. “You’ll take it,” she huffed, like the answer had been clear. “No one with a pedigree would even look twice at you now, not after that scandal.” Her gaze was scorching, and if Mira hadn’t been facing that blaze her whole life, she was sure she would be cowering. But Mira was prone to disappointing, and she assumed her mother expected nothing less from her only daughter. She hadn’t responded for a couple of seconds when she heard her mother’s voice ring out again, clearer and sharper this time. “You will take it,” she reiterated, warning clear in her tone.
Mira groaned.
“Enough,” her mother snapped. “Behold the consequences of your actions. You could’ve ended up like your brother if you didn’t throw everything away,” she scoffed, averting her eyes. Her jaw clenched, and seeing her vein begin to pop made Mira consciously relax her own jaw, feeling a soreness immediately creep into her muscles.
“You should be grateful,” Mira muttered, crossing her arms, “at least now I’ve been proposed to.” She knew she should just drop the subject, but it was in her nature to fight.
Her mother’s gaze immediately bounced back to her, eyes narrowing. Mira knew what she was holding back from saying: getting married to a woman would never be equal to what she could have had if she had maintained her image. A high-ranking CEO, an action film star, an investor, some heir to some company, some man. By some stroke of luck, her mother seemed to swallow her bite, pressing her lips together as if to seal her emotions inside. “So you’ll accept it?” Mira knew it was never a question, but she picked up the letter to scan over it again anyway. It was so formal, so cold. She supposed that the world that she had been born into warranted nothing else. Mira would never truly get what she wanted. Who knew if the Choi heiress was even into girls? Maybe she just saw an opportunity to weasel her way into the Kang family and took it. Mira couldn’t really blame her. Something about the thought of it made her strangely calm; at least the two of them needed each other. What did they call it in her biology class? A symbiotic relationship.
To Kang Mira, young heiress of the Kang family, we would be honored to offer a proposition. Choi Zoey, heiress to the Choi’s newly acquired fortune, would be delighted to become acquainted with the Kang lady. Thus, the Choi family requests the attendance of Kang Mira to discuss the cohesion and potential merging of the families. Talk of a further relationship may commence after the meeting, if all goes well.
“Yes,” Mira gulped, voice coming out shakier than she meant it to be. She cleared her throat, paper creasing underneath her fingernails as her grip tightened. She could make out the words “cordially invited” underneath her hands. That’s exactly what she intended to be, then… cordial.
“Tell them I’ll meet them for dinner. But it has to be at Solange.” Let's see if the girl can handle some spice...