"So," Jeonghan's dad started saying when the tea was brought forth and each of them had a little cup in front of them, steam escaping from the open surface. "Are you two 관계?"
Jeonghan nearly choked on his tea at his father's words, having not even thought about how it must have looked to his parents.
"관계?" Ophely asked, not sure to understand what his father meant by those words (relationship).
"Dating." Ophely's eyes widened, by themselves they clearly meant that they weren't and that she hadn't even thought about it.
"Ah, no." She said, quickly closing down that idea. "We are not dating, he is too old for me." Ophely didn' mean her words to act like a jab to Jeonghan, but it did just that. He felt like an old man at that moment. 'Too old.' he repeated to himself while his parents looked even more appalled by Ophely.
"Too old?" His mother asked her incredulously, what did that mean? Her son wasn't very old, just twenty-three years old. "How old are you?" She finished by asking the young girl who was drinking her tea.
"I am seventeen years old." She said.
"Eighteen." Jeonghan rectified. "Korean age." Hoping that that would make it less worse for his parents.
It didn't seem to help much, because he had the two questioning gazes of his parents on him.
"I'm coming to it." He said as he finished his cup of warm tea and served himself another one. "Why did I come here with a foreign eighteen year old high school girl when I am not dating her? I know." That was perfectly what his parents were asking themselves. What were they, as a duo, here when her son could have come on his own without any issue? "Ophely, here, is French. And she arrived in Korea about less than a month ago, when Soobin came to visit me in Seoul." He gulped down the tea he was drinking, and waited for his parents to do the same. "She came to Korea in my body." His mother didn't seem to understand what he meant, and his father much less. "And I found myself in her body in France. We don't know how that works." He finished by saying.
"And we swap back to the wrong body from time to time."
"And how do you get back to the 'right' body?" His father asked more calmly, seemingly having grasped the concept slightly.
"Skin touch." Ophely immediately answered, but immediately backtracked "That sounded wrong. Didn't it?" She asked no one in particular, though looking at Jeonghan from the corner of her eye.
"A bit." He said back.
"But, wait." His mother cut them all off in that slightly awkward moment. "Did you say that you come from France?" Ophely nodded. "Such a beautiful country isn't it? I have always wanted to go there, you too Jeonghan? You have yet to go there with your concerts ... How beautiful is that country? Please tell me about how your home is over there?"
"Uhm - different?" Ophely managed to reply to the onslaught of questions, looking at Jeonghan for some potential help, she had no idea how to react to his mother. It seemed that neither did he. "I can't compare it very well to Korea because this is the first time that I actually left Seoul." But these questions were all that was needed for the atmosphere to be joyous again. The older woman was back to serving tea to everyone, even bringing out some biscuits to enjoy too.
-
"I'm home." The young girl called out as she removed her shoes and slipped on her house shoes. She stopped moving when she put her second one on, not hearing the usual answer that she used to have when coming back home. "Anybody there?" She called out louder. As an answer, this time, she heard banging and someone cursing from upstairs. And then a girl coming down the stairs wearing her old slippers, holding onto her elbow. She must have hit it.
The two girls stared at one another for some time, unsure of what to say. The darker haired girl was the one to speak up first.
"Who are you?" She asked, coming out of the entrance lobby and dropping her bag on one of the chairs close to her. It seemed to break the other one from her frozen state.
"Ah, I'm sorry. I am Ophely. Nice to meet you, you must be Soobin." She said, coming down the last steps. "I am a friend of Joenghan's, he and your parents are currently gone shopping for tomorrow." She tried to explain as best as she could. Though she knew that Joenghan would have done that much better than her. It was then that Ophely looked more closely at the elder's face, noticing something familiar.
She had similar features to Jeonghan, that was a given because of the fact that their parents were the same, but something else too. T didn't take long for Ophely to remember where she had seen that face.
"I was the one instead of Jeonghan that night in December." Soobin had been that girl she had woken next to. The one she had scared of and the one that had called Joshua. "You called Joshua because wasn't the same. It was me."
Well, that wasn't very comforting. Coming home after school to find your house empty with, instead, a foreign girl her age claiming to have been there when her brother had a total freak-out when she had gone to meet him the previous month. When the girl continued to look at her asif she was crazy, which she sounded like, Ophely took out her phone and called Jeonghan.
"Hey," She said once he picked up. "Your sister is home, I don't know what to tell her."
"Ah," Jeonghan quickly told his parents that he would answer the call outside of the small shop, "Can you give her the phone? I think that me explaining will help her understand." Ophely did agree with him, if it was her brother explaining, then it would seem more believable than a complete stranger that she had never seen before.
"Soobin." Was the first thing he said once Ophely had given the phone to the older girl, "It's Jeonghan." As apprehensive as the girl had been, his voice was the thing she needed to relax.
"What was the name of the natural science teacher at the academy?" She wanted to make sure that this, on the other line, was really her brother.
"Bo Namhyun?" He answered, unsure of the answer. He hadn't spent as much time as his sister in that academy. Soobin looked down at the phone, still sceptical that this was her brother, but his answer was right. However she didn't answer because she had looked at the name of the person being called on the phone.
윤정한 - body stealer
"What does 'body stealer' mean?" She asked him, knowing that it was her brother on the other side of the line.
"It means that we sometimes steal each other's bodies..."
"She said that she was in your body when you had your freakout in December."
"That's true." He tried to explain, but doing so over a phone wasn't as easy, as he couldn't see the other person. "Ophely was in my body back then. And I ended up in hers. We don't choose to do so, it just happens and we still don't know how to stop it. So that is why Ophely is currently with us, because we just exchange bodies from time to time." Soobin looked from the phone to the foreign girl sitting not far from her.
Ophely had preferred to stay in her line of sight just to appease her, knowing that if she had left back to Jeonghan's room she wouldn't have felt at ease in her own home. "And why does she have my slippers?" Her question slipped out of her before she had even finished thinking about it.
Ophely immediately looked at her feet and laughed, she heard Jeonghan doing the same from the other side of the line.
The entire situation seemed to have been forgiven. Soobin also cracked a smile when she realised what she had done. She thanked her brother for the explanation and turned to Ophely to give her her phone back. She smiled shyly at her. Finally looking at the girl for what she was instead of an intruder.
"Hi." She finally said, taking her hand out for a handshake. "I'm Soobin." Ophely immediately realised how she was putting effort as her words were clear and well enunciated.
"I'm Ophely, nice to meet you." The younger of the two took out her hand in turn and shook hers. "I hope that we can get along." She said, tentatively smiling, hoping she didn't get the wrong message from the girl in front of her.
"Me too."
-
"We're home." Jeonghan called out inside the house when he walked through it, both hands filled with heavy grocery bags. "Everything alright?" He asked aloud again, while he put the bags inside the house, ready to go back to the car to help his parents. But he stopped before going back outside as he saw the two girls talking over the dinning table while making beaded bracelets. Jeonghan knew what the box held. He didn't call back to them and went back outside, a smile on his face.
His parents brought in part of what was left, but he still went to the car to take the rest and close the vehicle.
He had hoped for the two girls to get on, their characters were very similar and both were attracted to anything creative. He knew that the way they had met, with her not knowing that a girl was with him, was not the best. But he was glad that in the hour that passed since the call they had started talking to one another and even started exchanging.
"Good evening, Soobin." Her mother purred as she pulled her daughter in a hug after such a long day. The elderly woman kissed her youngest's cheek before pulling Ophely in another hug. They had seen each other not long ago, but it seemed that Mrs Yoon was a touchy person. Ophely was glad, she took the hug with happiness, already missing her own parents. "And hello again, Opely dear." She didn't say anything when her name was mispronounced, she knew how her name was unusual, the boys had done the same. At least for those who had wanted to learn her name.
"Hey mom." Soobin answered as she stood up, going to the grocery bags to tidy them in their respective places.
"We'll be going out tonight, for your graduation Soobin." Her father said when she was next to him in the kitchen. "Because most people will go tomorrow after the graduation itself." He gave her a little hug as well.
Ophely tried to stand up to help the family but was pushed back by Jeonghan's mother into her seat. "You are a guest, you don't help." Well, that was helpful. She now knew that she wasn't allowed to do anything while in Hwaseong, and this house in particular.
She didn't enjoy that part while she stayed with the family. She was very well taken care of, but not in the European way. At least the French one. Because if you came it was unsaid that you had to help in some way. As we said, you couldn't just put your feet under the table. But here she had no choice but to do just that here.
And it went on for the entirety of her stay. Not that she didn't like it - well, she did, she hated just twiddling with her thumbs while everyone was active around her.
The only time she was somehow away from the family was when she found herself outside of Soobin's high school the day of her graduation, in the midst of boys and girls her age. It had been long since she found herself fitting in, but she also thought of herself as a hurdle at that moment. She was waiting with the Yoons, while seeing students graduating or their younger siblings, everyone seemed to have been so joyous, stressed but happy. It was weird when you thought about it.
Ophely didn't really understand the entire event, but people were active, with flower bouquets or wreaths and hugging anybody they could see. But she wasn't part of these festivities. She didn't have any friends in the crowd, nor did she look like she could easily blend in with the others. She stood out like a sore thumb.
And that scared her, because she knew that in a few short months she would be in the middle of these people, like any other student. That had no Korean blood running through her veins. Her culture being just that of someone who had stayed two months there, with people older than her. She didn't have the young and teen Korean culture, but that of an adult working in the idol industry. She hadn't really been swimming in the people, but rather sitting by the jacuzzi, she was by the pool with everyone else, she was by the side.
That's how she felt when the whole graduation ceremony went through.
Like an outsider.
She missed being with the boys, not because they were nice to her (at least not all) but because they were true to themselves. They didn't act like she wasn't there or that she knew everything. They had their conversations and jokes she could only imagine understanding, but at least she was in the same car as them, rather than walking to the same place by foot.
"Thank you Oppa for these flowers." She heard Soobin say before she hugged her.
Him.
She should have known that she would swap back with Jeonghan during that afternoon. "You're welcome Soobin." She answered, clearly not trying to sound like Jeonghan, she could never be that fluent, "He was quite stressed that you wouldn't like them." She continued saying, knowing that that was the truth and might also have been the reason why they had swapped then. Pulling out of the hug Soobin smiled up at her.
"Thank you also, for taking care of my brother." The eldest of the two smiled again,