Chapter Text
“Please listen!”
A still-shocked Dahyun tailgated the two executors out her front door as she tried to get her most important thoughts on the matter to stumble out with her.
“Wha—you can’t just tell me—I can’t just—”
The taller executor, Byul-yi, sighed and turned around in Dahyun’s walkway, shielding the poor girl from the glaring sun and, in doing so, acquiring a dramatic halo that went well with her suit and sunglasses. “The documents are clear, Miss Kim. One year, at least, or it goes to the state. It’s your choice.”
“But—I have a job! I can’t just leave!” Dahyun stammered. She lowered her voice to a frustrated whisper. “She’s not around to enforce it anymore, is she? Can’t you do something? This is not standard!”
The other executor, Yong-sun, stepped to her partner’s side and draped an arm over the taller one’s shoulder. “If it’s in the will, then it’s the law. Nothing we can do, sweetheart.”
Byul-yi nodded sagely. Dahyun imagined that she closed her eyes behind the shades, to properly take in Yong-sun’s wisdom. “Anyway, she left you more than enough cash to get yourself a car, or an Uber every day. The estate’s basically right here, so work shouldn’t be too much of a problem.”
“You know, you could have brought all this up back when we were inside,” Yong-sun complained. “It’s sweltering out here!”
“You’re the ones who chose to wear suits,” Dahyun retorted. “A-and anyway, can you blame me for being in shock? You can’t just come in and drop that on me! My grandma died and you drop that on me?”
“So now you want us to respect your grandmother’s wishes.”
“Agh, God! I can’t even deal with you two!” The distraught inheritor brought her face into both of her hands.
The executors shared a look. Or, Dahyun assumed that they did, through their sunglasses.
“Look, kid,” Byul-yi leveled with her, “we’re in charge of making sure this gets done right. It’s what your grandmother wanted, specifically. Just be glad you got stuck with us and not the other girl.”
Dahyun peeked out between two fingers. “…who’s the other girl?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“And you’re not gonna!”
“‘Cause you’re with us, now, kid.”
“We’ll see you next week.”
“At the house.”
“Right,” Dahyun parroted drily, “at the house.”
Yong-sun clapped her hands. “Great! So glad you came around.”
Byul-yi smiled and dusted off Yong-sun’s hands for her. “Take care, kid.”
With that, the two harbingers of some of the most perplexing news Dahyun had ever received took an about face and marched into the distance—the distance from her front door to the curb, where their purebred Toyota Corolla sat with one front wheel entirely on the sidewalk. Dahyun watched as Byul-yi graciously opened the driver-side door for Yong-sun (she heard the bottom of the door hit the asphalt) and then scurry into the passenger seat.
As the women drove away, but before they honked at a parked car, Dahyun heaved her shoulders with a heavy breath and turned back inside. She stood there, yet to turn around and close the door, and shook her head, twice for good measure.
What just happened?
Those two show up unannounced and tell her that her dear sweet grandma Ji-eun, whose funeral she attended just last week (come to think of it…hm, she might have seen those two when she was there), left a decent smattering of legalese behind that the executors seemed to appreciate, but that made absolutely no sense to Dahyun. She had only started to pay attention when they mentioned something about her grandma’s Seoul property, which, as far as Dahyun had known, was not a thing. As it had turned out, it was very much a thing—a multimillion dollar thing. And Dahyun would get to inherit it, on the one teensy weensy condition that she had to live there for a whole year…starting next week!
Now, there were many questions that maybe should have begun to cross Dahyun’s mind at that information. blah blah blah
But she hadn’t gotten to any of that, yet. What Dahyun cared about was how this would impact her commute. She loved her job, her kids were fantastic, and the only thorn still sticking in that tapestry of her career was that the damn school required her to be there promptly at 8am. Every. Single. Morning. She already had enough trouble getting out of the house on time, and she lived two blocks away! What was she going to do, traveling from a house out in the countryside outskirts of the city? Impossible!
And what about her girlfriend, who currently lived next door and was perfect and beautiful and perfectly located and—oh, shit, Dahyun should probably tell her about this.
She reached into her pocket for her phone, only to find it already buzzing with some elongated pattern. Ugh. She should probably pick up, in case it was more stuff about her grandma’s funeral expenses or something.
“Hello?” she started, putting the call on speaker. At first she didn’t hear any noise, and then she heard a good deal of obnoxious shuffling. She had to turn the volume up before she could make out two hushed voices.
“Ok, tell her.”
“No, you tell her!”
“I thought—fine, I’ll—give me the phone.”
More shuffling.
“Kid.”
“Ah!” Dahyun started as the word rang out at max volume. She hurriedly and annoyedly pressed the sound level back down.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle ya.”
“No, I just—”
“One more thing we forgot to mention.”
“One more? Oh, come on…. Wait, how did you get this number? My grandma didn’t have a phone.”
“Doesn’t matter. So, this thing. Like I said, we forgot.”
“But we remembered it just now. Don’t worry, it’s in the papers,” Yong-sun chimed in.
“Yup, page 98. Gotta get eight other broads to live at the house with you, too. Requirement.”
“Honey, we don’t call people broads anymore.”
“What, are we in Portland? I can’t say broad? I can’t say you’re a leggy broad?”
“The kids in Portland would probably love it if you said that to them.”
“Shit, let’s go to Portland—”
“Honey, the phone.”
“Oh, right. Yeah, so, get on that. Gotta have ‘em in two weeks. Ciao!”
Click.
By the time Dahyun un-trouted her mouth to speak, she was already hearing the hang-up tone, which, in turn, sent her back into trout mode.
Did they seriously just do that? Did they seriously just call me and tell me that and then hang up and they didn’t even let me say a single word?
Wait…EIGHT???
She must have misheard. Dahyun crossed her living room, the front door long forgotten in her wake, and cautiously approached the small library of documents that the executors had left on her coffee table. She poked it once to make sure it was dead.
The elemental deities must have sensed her immense fear of long and inscrutable words: suddenly, a gust of cold wind blasted in from the ajar entrance and picked up the useless papers, scattering them throughout the room—on the rug, on the couch, on the cat!
Dahyun shrieked in terror, but, after she was done smoothing down her (she now knew) easily flappable skirt, she realized the peculiar assistance that the gods had afforded her. There, untouched among all the displaced ruckus, lay a single deadly page, which—Dahyun leaned closer and squinted—was foretold! Yes, right there at the top of page 98: if Dahyun were to maintain inheritance of her grandma’s lucrative sentimental estate, the living trust absolutely required that she reside there with eight roommates of her own choosing for a duration of one year.
Wait, there was something down at the bottom….
“At least 30% of the residents of the property must hail from the country of Japan.”
Damn it, Grandma! Dahyun facepalmed. She should never have told her grandma about her penchant for Japanese women. Leave it to the old muffin to stick her into some sort of predicament like this!
Where was she going to find two more Japanese girls? Well, she knew that Sana had a friend, so maybe only one more…but with their two limited social circles between them, she doubted it would be easy to find someone else to make a snap decision like this.
Pang. All the thoughts of that disastrous confession to her grandma got Dahyun remembering something else. Someone else. But surely that was a terrible idea. Horrible!
…unless…
The woman clasped her hands together and faced the ceiling. “Dear Lord,” she quickly turned her body toward her southern wall, “and Sana,” she squeaked, “please forgive me for what I’m about to do.”
But today was a fateful day for her phone, for when she reached into her pocket once more, the screen had already lit itself up with precisely the right—wrong—caller.