The holiday season was always something that Aeri dreaded. Back when she was a trainee, it was no problem for her to go a week without being able to train at the company seeing as she was still able to at home.
But now that she had debuted, she couldn't just go to another country—let alone continent—as she pleased.
Before, Heeseung had managed to convince her to spent the holidays with him and his family. But now that they weren't on speaking terms, she assumed the offer didn't stand anymore.
"Are you sure you don't want to come to my house? Riki's coming already. I don't think one more person would bother my parents," asked Jay as he rolled his suitcase towards the exit.
Ever since the others noticed that the two oldest wouldn't be going on holidays together, Jay had been asking her to come with him.
But if it took nearly a week for Heeseung to convince her before, it wouldn't take a few days for Jay to do so. She just didn't want to be a burden and crash to anyone's house.
It was family holidays. For family. As much as she loved her members, she wasn't part of their family. She didn't share a similar DNA with any of them nor had she grown up with them.
They were just asking her to come with them out of sympathy anyway.
"Don't worry, some old friends from Belgium came to Korea last week, I'll probably spend time with them," she told him with a smile while pushing him outside of their dorm.
"Really? You didn't tell me that before," he raised his eyebrow, standing at the doorstep.
"You didn't ask," she shrugged, moving from the doorway to let the others pass through.
While everyone said their goodbyes to each other, Heeseung and Aeri barely looked at each other.
Was she really spending holidays with friends? Was she that unbothered by their friendship's downfall?
But he was too busy thinking about what he was going to his parents to stay focus on those questions.
He had been talking to his family about this girl he was going to bring with him for weeks. Telling them about how they were going to love her because of how polite and well-mannered she was.
Now, he was going to show up alone. He was sure that his parents were going to ask him a million question about this and he didn't know if he'd be able to answer them.
After Aeri closed the door behind them, she sighed and went to their room. It was so quiet. She usually loved silence but not this one.
This one felt lonely.
She couldn't stay in this place with the constant reminder of how alone she was during a time of the year where it was supposed to be filled with love.
So she decided to pack her bags and leave.
It wasn't as impulsive as it seemed to be. She had been thinking about leaving the place for holidays ever since her argument with Heeseung and now that she was finally alone, her decision was easily made.
Her bags were filled to the top when she left the building and went to her old apartment. Walking inside her room, she opened her wardrobe to fill it with her own clothes.
She remembered when she lived there, it would always be messy. Clothes were everywhere except in the compartment they should be in.
She also remembered how different her style was when she first arrived in this apartment compared to now. Before, she'd wear dresses and skirt all the time, loving the feel of the wind caressing her skin. Now she didn't even think she owned any of those items anymore.
She used to love them. She still did.
But her life was different now.
Even back when she was fifteen, it would attract unwanted male attention and she felt so unsafe that she had stopped wearing them in public. But she still liked to wear them inside.
Then after a while, she just threw them away.
Because the more she grew up, the more her body changed and the more she hated it. She hated the body puberty gave her. She hated it so much that she started to exclusively wear large pieces of clothing, her limbs drowning in the fabric.
When she turned eighteen though, she started to feel more comfortable in her own skin and began wearing tighter clothes. The journey to her actual style had been long and hard, but she managed to wear the things she wanted to without caring about how it would make her body look.
Her wardrobe was filled with almost as many things as it was before but sadly, dresses never returned.
Her thoughts were interrupted by her phone ringing in her pocket.
"Allô?" she called to the phone when seeing her sister's call ID.
"Where are you staying for the holidays?" Bin-Na asked, seeming out of breath.
"The apartment Mom and Dad bought for me, why?"
"Great, I'm in front!" she said before hanging up.
Aeri rushed to her balcony and looked down at her doorstep to see her sister wave at her in a similar way as middle aged women do when they saw a friend of theirs.
She went to press the button to open the front door of the small apartment complex. Opening the door her apartment, she waited in front for her sister to get out of the elevator.
Once the elevator ringed, she was met by the sight of her sister with a different suitcase in each of her hands.
"What are you doing here?" asked Aeri a smile taking over her features.
"Mom told me that you wouldn't be able to spend Christmas and new years with us but that you'd be going to that guy's house," she began before walking right in front of Aeri to get inside. "But since you told me you two weren't on speaking terms, I figured I should come and cheer you up."
Aeri didn't miss the way her sister avoided saying Heeseung's name.
"What did you tell Mom?"
"That I missed my sister so much and that I couldn't spend the holidays without her otherwise it would be too painful. You know her, the moment I mentioned our sisterly bond, she agreed," she said, overdramatizing most of her words.
Their mother had grown up an only child so there was a lot she never really understood when it came to her children and their way of showing affection towards one another.
So any time they'd give her the slightest mention of their love towards each other, she instantly melted and cave in to whatever they wanted. She didn't bother to ask what was their father's reaction.
"How did Ja-Hoon react?" asked Aeri, curious about her little brother's reaction to the news of his two sisters not being there for the holidays with him.
"He cried. But he cries all the time so it's not that big of a deal. And when mom told him him that he could spend the night at our grandparents' house, he forgot it all," she shrugged while looking around the apartment.
"This place hasn't changed since the last time I came."
She was right. The only thing different from last time was the two girls standing in it. One was now a world famous idol while the other finished her studies as a hair and makeup artist.
They always found it funny how they seemed to complete one another. Aeri was in charge of looking good and Bin-Na of making her look good.
It was always the way it was between them. She couldn't remember the amount of times she begged her sister to do her makeup and her hair when she was still a little girl. Each time they were done with the looks, they'd go into their living room acting like Aeri was some sort of celebrity walking into a red carpet.
In a way, they were destined to be where they were.
"I didn't know you dyed your hair," pointed out Aeri.
Her sister's hair had gone through every color of the rainbow when she was a teenager. Her dad always used to come up with nicknames according to the color she wore on her head.
Last time they saw each other, her sister had blond hair. She had kept this color for nearly eight months but it seemed like she got bored of it because it was now a bright pink.
"Yeah, I did it a few days ago. It's a new brand I wanted to try. It looks good but I didn't have enough time to see how well it holds."
"It looks good," she said, trying to touch her sister's hair but her hand was immediately swatted away.
"Want me to dye your hair as well!?" Bin-Na suddenly asked, her eyes sparking with interest.
"I don't have control over my hair color anymore."
"What are they going to say anyway, it's not that dramatic, you've always wanted to dye your hair."
"I could loose my job."
"But then ENHYPEN would loose their only girl. That's not good for business," her sister raised an eyebrow, her lips slowly forming a smirk.
Slowly but surely, a smile of her own began forming on Aeri's face, making Bin-Na jump around when she saw that she had successfully convinced Aeri.
For hours, the two were stuck in the bathroom trying to bleach Aeri's hair. Usually, Bin-Na was pretty good with hair but her sister was fidgety so what was supposed to be a cute sister moment consisted of the two practically screaming at each other in annoyance.
But after a lot of yelling and useless arguments, they finally managed to get Aeri's original black hair to a beautiful sandy blond.
"This is a work of art," Bin-Na complimented her own creation.
"I look so different," she told her while she touched her hair and looked at her reflection in the mirror of her bathroom.
"Why are you still wearing those?" her sister asked, pointing to her pierced ears.
Something about Aeri that always made her sister mad was that she never changed her jewelry. No matter for how long she had been wearing them, she was just too lazy to change them. Especially her ear piercings.
The moment she turned eighteen, she started to pierce every place of her ears that could be pierced, which meant that changing them took her more than the usual five minutes.
"What's wrong with them? I think they're nice."
"I'd hope so, you've been wearing them for a year and half!"
"What would I even wear if not those?"
"I am so glad you asked!" she smiled, bolting out of the bathroom to her suitcase that was still in the living room.
"I originally bought you these for Christmas but since we're doing an entire make-over, why not put them on now," she said before handing her at least twenty different piercings.
"I don't know if I should be offended that you bought me new piercings just so I could change the old ones or be thankful."
"Be thankful, that was expensive."
When the holiday season came to an end, Heeseung decided to leave his family a little earlier than he had originally intended just to join a certain girl that he didn't speak with anymore.
But when he arrived at their dorms, it was empty.
Was she actually spending the holidays with her friends like she told them?
He checked the entire place to see if she wasn't just focused on something and didn't hear him come inside but no one was there.
After checking their room, he noticed all of her stuff gone. Did she leave? Was it because of what happened between them? Had she decided that she had enough of them?
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the front door opening accompanied by a sound he knew all too well.
"I don't understand why you absolutely need to see our dorms," laughed Aeri while opening the door for her sister.
Her laugh was quickly turned into an expression of shock when she met eyes with Heeseung.
Bin-Na was planning on leaving in two days and she had forced her sister to show her where she lived with ENHYPEN. Said girl agreed after her sister nagged her for days, what she didn't expect was that Heeseung would be back.
"Why are you just standing there, move out of the way I want to see," complained Bin-Na, pushing her younger sister out of the way. She stopped in her tracks when she saw the person that had caused Aeri to freeze.
For a few seconds, the two just stood there, staring at each other in silence. Both were looking at each other as though they were strangers recognizing an old friend.
Heeseung was the most shocked one out of the two. He had been the only one in the group who still hadn't seen Aeri's new appearance. She didn't really think he'd want to pick up a call coming from her just to show him her hair after she dyed it.
"Nice to meet you, I'm Aeri's sister—Shin Bin-Na. You are...?" she asked him even though she knew exactly who the boy was, snapping the two out of their daze.
"Lee Heeseung," he bowed to the girl, looking as if he hadn't noticed her presence before.
"You're the Australian one, right?," she said, purposefully mistaking him for Jake.
One thing about Bin-Na was that she had a gift to piss off the people she wanted to piss off. And it was clear that today, Heeseung was her target.
"No, that's Jake, I'm Korean," he told her awkwardly.
Had Aeri never talked about him to her sister the way he talked about her to his brother?
"Bin-Na just wanted to see the dorms but since you're here, we'll just leave," said Aeri, bowing to him in apology as if they were two strangers living in the same place.
"No we won't. I want to see the place. Why don't you give me a tour Ji-Seung," she said, once again using the wrong name in purpose.
"It's Hee-seung. With 'Hee' in the front," he corrected her.
If eyes could kill, Heeseung was sure that he'd be lying dead in the ground because of Bin-Na's glare. "But Jiseung is fine," he added.
"Great. Now, how about my tour?" she smiled at him. A smile that didn't reach her eye one bit.
"Yes, of course. Follow me," he told her looking at her with those eyes that made him look so similar to a deer. Eyes that Aeri loved.
During the entire tour, as short as it was, Aeri was sure that Heeseung would be afraid of her sister for the rest of his life because of the way she stared at him without blinking or letting her eyes wander elsewhere.
When the tour finally came to an end, Heeseung bowed to her sister goodbye. The older girl had to retain her laugh when seeing how low his bow was.
After two Shin sisters left the building, Bin-Na finally bursted out laughing while Aeri tried to contain her own laugh and hit her sister.
"Stop laughing, it's not funny! You scared him shitless," she said, hitting her sister's back.
"I think that was probably the funniest thing I've ever seen! I'm gonna pee myself!"
"Stop laughing!" Aeri told her once again but this time, the urge was too strong and she began laughing as well.
They both ended up laughing until tears brimmed their eyes. Something Aeri didn't think would happen again if Heeseung was the cause of it.