“Who should I get him to make it out to? Leah Kim, My Darling Future Wife?”
She screams again, falling back on the couch and kicking her legs up in the air in delight. “I’d die! No, first I’d frame it. Then I’d die.” She sits up, grabbing my hands. “Promise you’ll bury it with me.”
I laugh.
We hear the front door open and Umma’s voice calling out for us. Leah and I exchange glances. We lock pinkies, each of us leaning forward to kiss our fists and bump our cheeks together, our special Kim sister pinkie promise we created years ago.
Umma enters the living room, carrying a bag full of takeout from Two Two Fried Chicken. Dinner. Umma is a linguistics professor at Ewha Women’s University, and with her tenure review coming up, she’s usually too tired to come home and cook. Not that we complain. Umma’s idea of a home-cooked meal is cracking an egg over a pot of Shin Ramyun and topping it off with a slice of American cheese—delicious but not easy on the stomach. Plus, I feel like she feeds me noodles on purpose to make me bloated when I go into training the next day. Like some kind of subconscious, calorie-based sabotage.
“Hungry?” she asks, holding up the bag.
We dig in, pulling out boxes of steaming fried chicken and an array of banchan, including daikon kimchi and crisp salad smothered in what tastes like Big Mac sauce. It’s chilly for April, so the heated floor underneath our kitchen table is on, making it nice and toasty as I sit down and reach for a piece of yangnyeom chicken, the sweet and spicy sauce already sticking to my fingers, while Umma sets aside a few pieces of the green-onion chicken, Appa’s favorite. He’s at the gym late tonight, giving the punching bags their weekly scrub down (which is really code for his class in Intellectual Property Law), so it’s just the three of us for dinner.
“So how was your day, Leah?” Umma asks.
Leah chatters away about Kang Jina in Electric Flower (“She’s so pretty”), Jason Lee (“I heard he’s starting a charity to bring music therapy to young kids in Korea. Isn’t he just the sweetest?!”), and the latest K-drama on Netflix (“If Park Dohee on Oh My Dreams doesn’t get her memory back soon, I swear I’m going to stop watching”). Umma nods along, smiling distractedly as she picks at her salad. I carefully peel the skin off my chicken and wait for her to ask me how my day was. It’s Saturday, so she knows I’ve been at DB.
Finally, Leah’s chatter slows down and I mentally prepare, dreaming that, this time, Umma will ask me how my day at DB was and be sympathetic and understanding as I tell her about Mina and Mr. Noh and give me her blessing to go to the trainee house tonight. But when she finally turns to me, she says, “Did you finish your homework, Rachel? And the chores I asked you to do?” She shoots a pointed look at the sink full of unwashed dishes.
Poof. Dream gone.
My jaw tightens as I clench my teeth. “My day was great. Thanks so much for asking. I was training all day, and then I went to see Appa at the gym.” I pause. “Sorry about the chores,” I add, choking the words out like a chicken bone stuck in my throat. Not that I’m sorry for focusing on training, but her eyes are narrowing at me in that “I will make you regret the day you were born” way that she used to get whenever Leah or I were misbehaving on the subway during rush hour in New York.
She sighs, reaching into her tote bag on the table. “Always training. Why don’t you try something different? It’s not healthy being so obsessed with one thing.” She pulls out a huge stack of papers and hands them to me. I glance down and see UNIVERSAL COLLEGE APPLICATION stamped across the top. I feel dizzy with panic as my mom claps her hands, a huge smile on her face. “Rachel! I brought these home for you—tomorrow at Ewha there’s an educational seminar! It’s meant to prepare high school students for the college-application process. Why don’t you go? They can help you start to fill these out, and maybe I can even show you around the campus after.”
My chest fills with heat as I raise my hand to push away the stack of applications. But then I see Umma’s face—lips smiling, eyes hopeful—and a wave of guilt washes over me. We’ve been here for six years and I’ve still never seen the campus where she works—a far cry from the hours I used to spend reading books under her desk while she held office sessions. I pull the applications toward me with a sigh. “Umma,” I say carefully, “you know I would love to see Ewha, but I just… can’t. Tomorrow is Sunday.”
“We’re talking about the rest of your life, Rach, not just one day,” Umma says lightly.
“Sure. But… training is the rest of my life. Isn’t it? I mean, isn’t that why we came here?”
Leah puts down her chicken, her eyes moving between us worriedly. She’s used to me and Umma tiptoeing into these arguments.
Umma looks down at her plate and sighs. “There are… a lot of reasons why we came to Korea.” She opens her mouth like she’s about to say something more, but then she shakes her head slightly. She turns to me, and when she does, I can almost see tears in her eyes, but her voice is even and clear. “You know I used to be a volleyball player.” I resist the urge to roll my eyes—is Umma really going to compare her high school volleyball days to my K-pop training? “But where would I be now—where would our family be—if I had given up everything for that dream?”
“But that’s exactly what you’re asking me to do—to give up everything I’ve been working for just for some college seminar.” I shove a piece of chicken in my mouth, skin and all. To hell with the extra calories.
Umma shrugs, looking sad but determined. “I’m just suggesting that maybe you should keep your options open.” She picks at a piece of seasoned watercress on her plate. “You never know what the future might hold, Rachel. And if things don’t work out with your training… I just don’t want you to feel surprised.”
My eyes fill with tears, and I blink hard, unwilling to let them spill onto my face. Even after six years, my mom’s attitude toward my training still gets to me. Sometimes I wonder if she regrets moving to Seoul—if she wishes she had just sold Halmoni’s apartment and washed her hands of the whole thing. Or if she even believes in my talent. I bite my lip, about to excuse myself from dinner, when Leah jumps in, pushing herself onto her knees as she turns to face Umma.
“Actually, funny you should mention that seminar, Umma,” she says. “The Cho twins are having a weekend-long study session to prep for college. They’re even hiring a private tutor and studying late into the night. A study slumber party, I think they called it. Right, Unni?” She smiles innocently up at our mom.
I straighten up. It’s now or never, Rachel. “Right,” I say slowly.
“How did you know about that?” Umma asks Leah, raising her eyebrows.
“I overheard Rachel talking to Hyeri on the phone,” Leah lies easily.
I focus on chewing my chicken, trying to keep my face neutral. My sister, ladies and gentlemen, the future Oscar winner.
Umma’s gaze turns to me. “Why didn’t you mention this, Rachel? This is just what you need to get you on the right track.”
I nod, swallowing down a fresh surge of frustration along with my chicken. “I just… didn’t want to spend the night away when I haven’t even gotten to my chores yet.” I glance toward the full sink. “Sorry,” I add again for good measure.