“What is this?” Wansu is the one who feels left out now.
“When I took Hara out to eat, I told her every restaurant has its own banchan like Italian chefs have their own limoncello.” Yujun will never allow someone to feel excluded.
The mention of my date with Yujun dims Wansu’s pleasure, and her lips flatten. I clench the back of my teeth together. Yujun pretends nothing is amiss.
“Should we go to the Banyan Tree tonight?” he suggests. “Sangki is doing a short set. We could invite Bomi and your friends from the Airbnb.”
Wansu and I are the two clouds in Yujun’s life, squeezing the sunshine behind our dark glowers. I resolve to do better. “For the Summer Splash thing? I forgot that was tonight, but yeah, that sounds like fun. Now that you’re back I won’t have to sit with Mr. Lee.”
“Mr. Lee? Oh, you mean Sangki’s manager. I don’t think he ever sits, does he?”
“Only in the car.”
We share a small smile, which goes on for too long, because Wansu clears her throat. “It will be nice for Yujun to introduce you to some of his friends. Perhaps you should invite Lee Sikook.”
Yujun cops immediately to Wansu’s plans. “Lee Sikook is dating Ryu Sooyeon these days.”
Wansu spears a piece of a cantaloupe. “Is that right? They would make a nice couple. Ryu is a pharmacist, isn’t she? And Lee is a biochemist. What about—”
“I don’t think anyone you would like will be at this party, Eomma. It’s an influencer crowd.”
“I see.” The edges of her nose flare in obvious disgust. The influencer crowd must not be one she approves of.
Yujun is unperturbed. “We will have fun.” He pulls out his phone. “I’ll text Sangki and let him know to put our names on the list. Who else?”
“Bomi and Jules.”
“Kim Bomi?” Wansu interjects with a narrowed glance. “My Kim Bomi? That is not a crowd to which she belongs.”
“It’ll be fun for her and Hara. It’s not like either of them are going to start a YouTube channel. Are you?” He looks to me.
I shake my head vehemently. “No. Never.” While I watch a lot of videos, I can’t imagine starring in one myself.
“There.” He nods to his mother. “No one is joining the influencer crowd. We are going to have drinks, eat food, and listen to good music.”
And that was that.
* * *
• • •
“YOU DON’T SEEM to be in a party mood,” I murmur to Jules over the noise. “Maybe this was a bad idea. We should’ve invited your other roommates.”
I pull the calf-length sheer sweater closer around my frame and tuck my wedge-clad feet against the leg of the black stained rattan bench. Half the girls here are wearing less than me, but fancy pool parties are outside of my experience, which was mostly bars with sticky floors and dozens of big screens blasting the latest Hawkeye or Cyclone sporting event.
Since we arrived, Yujun has been mobbed by a bunch of people who exclaimed that he had been gone a decade. Right now, he’s on the other side of the banquette having an in-depth discussion about the flight of international businesses from Hong Kong to places like Shanghai and Seoul due to the political unrest. It’s an interesting topic, but while it started in English, they’ve unconsciously slipped into Korean.
“They already had plans.” She’s glum, too, but not because she’s self-conscious about her severe black one-piece with the large circle cutouts on the sides.
“Are you and Bomi fighting?” The other girl had quickly turned down Yujun’s invite.
Jules sends me a suspicious look. “Did she say something to you?”
“About you two dating or you two fighting?”
“Both.”
“No.”
“How did you figure it out, then? We’ve been so careful.”
I fiddle with the umbrella in my piña colada. “Your knees touched.”
“Huh?”
“The other night at Casa Corona, your knees touched.”
“Bullshit. There’s no way you guessed we were seeing each other from our knees touching. Bomi must’ve said something.”
“Nope. I figured it out. Sangki, too. You guys looked like a couple.”
“You and Ahn Sangki-nim look like a couple,” Jules shoots back. “And you aren’t one.”
I laugh out loud at this. “We do not.”
“Whatever.” She huffs out a sigh but it’s obvious Sangki and I have zero chemistry. We’re friends and anyone looking at us would know that, just like anyone looking at Yujun, whose hand didn’t leave my back until his friends pulled him away, knows that we do not act like siblings. “I think she’s avoiding me because I got mad and walked out of Casa Corona, but what was I going to do? Listen to her declare that being with me will ruin her life?”
“That’s not what I heard her saying. She was warning me to be careful.”
“She was warning both of us. She was saying that a relationship with me is as impossible as a relationship between you and Yujun, which isn’t even true. There’s no law that prohibits you two from being a couple, whereas Bomi and I could be fired for indecency if it got out that we were dating.”
My eyebrows fly up. “Wansu would fire Bomi over that?”
“Theoretically, although I don’t know where Choi Yujun’s mom stands on it, to be honest. But most older Koreans are against it. Younger ones say that they aren’t, but there are plenty of people with prejudices who don’t like to admit it.”
I’ve run into that at home just being Korean in America. The people you least expect think certain ways about you because of how you look or whom you love.
“The thing is that it’s all about family here,” Jules continues. “Take Chuseok. It’s centered around honoring the ancestors and it’s a big deal. The women start to prepare a week in advance. You have to make certain dishes and even place particular foods on different parts of the table. There’s a rule about how many times you bow and when you’re supposed to drink the special rice wine.
“They hold these charyes twice a year. Once at Chuseok and once at Seollal, the Lunar New Year. Gijesa is held on the anniversary of the dead person and they even observe sije, a ceremony held seasonally. This country’s traditions are all built around the family and the continuation of the family. If her family learned she likes girls, they might try to take her siblings away. Her brother is the eldest son, and he’s supposed to carry on all the family traditions.”