ASAP

I wake the next morning with the blankets kicked to my feet and my arms outstretched above my head. Abruptly I sit up, grabbing a pillow and bringing it to my chest. When I turn, I find Nathaniel still asleep. He’s lying on his stomach, his head turned toward me, strands of his hair falling across his bow. He’s so handsome, with the sunlight streaming over his face, that I forget my embarrassment entirely. I reach out to push the hair from his eyes.

My stomach growls. I haven’t had a proper meal since an early dinner the day before, and I’m starving. But I don’t want to wake Nathaniel, not when he’s sleeping so peacefully.

I edge toward the side of the bed.

“Sori?”

I peek over my shoulder to see Nathaniel sit up groggily. The muscles in his arms flex as he pushes himself up off the bed. Catching me admiring him, he smiles, which turns to a frown as he reaches beneath him to pull out a Pikachu.

“Sori, how can you sleep like this? I feel like I’m being watched.” He tosses Pikachu off the bed. I follow its trajectory until it hits the floor, joining dozens of my stuffed animals that Nathaniel had presumably chucked off the bed while I was asleep.

I meet his eyes. “How could you?” I whisper accusatorially.

He’s unrepentant. “They’ll live.”

“This is their bed. You’re the intruder.”

“I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed their freeloading existence and probably scarred them to boot.” He grins, dimples showing.

He looks confident, too confident—which makes me feel vulnerable—so I pout, biting my lip.

He immediately turns conciliatory, shifting closer to me. “I’ll apologize to each and every one of your stuffed animals if that’ll make you happy.”

I nod.

He kisses me, dragging the pillow away.

It’s midmorning by the time we finally break apart and emerge from my room. I give him one of his shirts, which I’d discovered the day after he left.

“I cleaned and pressed it myself.” I hand it over to him and he immediately draws it over his head. “Ajumma was on a spa vacation with her girlfriends.”

Nathaniel frowns. “You were here by yourself all week?”

“Yes, don’t you feel awful for leaving me?” I don’t point out that I was the reason he left. He doesn’t either. Because he’s smart.

“Yes.” He nods seriously. “It won’t happen again.”

We head downstairs, raiding the kitchen. While Nathaniel makes toast and sets the dining table, I cook eggs and bacon in a pan.

It takes us longer to make breakfast because we keep on stopping to kiss, but only fifteen minutes to eat it, both of us starving.

“I’m going to run down and get iced coffee from the convenience store,” Nathaniel says. “You want anything?”

“I’m okay,” I say, taking the dishes to the kitchen. I’m loading them into the dishwasher when I hear Nathaniel come back into the house.

“That was fast,” I stay, stepping out of the dining room.

My father stands in the middle of the foyer.

“Abeoji,” I say, a sudden coldness in my stomach.

He doesn’t say anything, just looks at me, and I know he knows that Nathaniel spent the night. He must also suspect that I’d broken it off with Cha Donghyun.

The door opens and I have the second shock of the morning when my mother walks through the door. She doesn’t look surprised to see my father. She must have known he’d be here. Did he tell her to come?

“Wh-where’s Nathaniel?” I ask her. There isn’t any way they didn’t see him; he’d only been gone for a few minutes.

“I sent him home,” she says, her gaze averted from my face. Only last night, she’d accepted her award from my hands, pride in her eyes. Now she can’t even look at me.

“He doesn’t have his things,” I say. His wallet and phone are still in my room, along with his suit jacket.

“He’ll be fine,” my mother says curtly. “Secretary Park is taking him back to his apartment. We’ll return his things to him later.”

I stare at them both. “Why are you here?” It’s a reasonable question. My mother hasn’t been at the house in weeks, my father in years.

“This is my house,” my father says. “Why shouldn’t I be here?” I flinch at his tone of voice, which he’s never used with me. Though I’ve heard him use it with his aides, Secretary Lee, and even with my mother, when we lived together. “I wanted to see for myself if my daughter was truly lying to me behind my back.”

It’s because your back is turned from me, that I lie to you, I want to say, but I’ve never spoken like that to my father.

“Sori-abeoji,” my mother chides. “What is this all about? So our daughter had a boy over to the house. This is the twenty-first century. Do your constituents know you’re so close-minded?”

My stomach sinks. She doesn’t know that Nathaniel’s been living here. My father’s face hardens. Does he know?

“Follow me.”

Without explanation, he heads into the media room, turning on the television. He presses a button, and the feed from the external video surveillance cameras around the house appear on the screen. He highlights one of the cameras labeled “Front Gate.” Rewinding to last night, he plays it backward.

I watch, numb, as on the screen the car service pulls up outside the gate. I see myself climb out and hurry to open the door while Nathaniel pays, then we’re passing through the gate together.

My father rewinds it to earlier this week, and I feel a sharp pain at the memory of that night. I see myself stop outside the gate by the vine-covered wall. When I start to cry, Nathaniel rushes back to embrace me. He leaves a few minutes later, and I drop to the ground, breaking down in tears.

My father clicks his tongue in disgust, pressing the button to rewind. I glance at my mother, wondering what she thinks of all this, but her expression is carefully blank, the only evidence that she feels something is the slight trembling of her hands.

On and on my father rewinds, showing with irrefutable proof that Nathaniel had been living at the house with me.

Nearly every day for two weeks we’re shown walking up to the house, usually at the same time.

And in every video, we’re laughing.

I don’t know what my father expects me to see watching all this back, but it only serves to remind me of how happy I was those weeks with Nathaniel. Not only were my days filled with hard, satisfying work—training with Hyemi, being a part of ASAP’s team under Director Ryu’s leadership—but my nights were filled with laughter and love.

My father turns off the television.

“You were living with a boy,” he seethes, “under my roof. One you specifically told me you weren’t seeing. Was meeting with CEO Cha’s nephew a lie as well? How am I supposed to believe anything you say?” He swipes his hand down his face. “Do you think, after you’ve shown how irresponsible you are, that I’ll give my shares to you?”

“What do you mean?” my mother asks sharply.

My father blinks, having apparently forgotten she’s in the room.

“Sori,” my mother says, frowning, “were you meeting with CEO Cha’s nephew in exchange for your father’s shares of Joah?”

“Never mind that,” my father interrupts before I can answer. “I’m disappointed in you, Sori. I thought you were like me, but you’re not. You’re weak-minded and lack discipline. You betrayed my trust. But you can make up for it, prove to me that you’re serious, by breaking up with that boy. Maybe then I’ll consider giving you the shares.”

He’s giving me an ultimatum: either choose Nathaniel or save the company.

“Don’t,” my mother says.

There’s a sharp silence.

“Don’t break up with Nathaniel.”

I gape at my mother. “That is,” she says, “you don’t have to break up with him, if you don’t want to.”

She turns to my father, her eyes flashing. “I can endure you speaking down to me—I care so little of your opinion, it hardly matters—but not to my daughter, never to Sori.”

I’ve never seen her stand up to him, not like this. “Get out of my house.”

My father’s face turns a curious shade of red. “You’re both ungrateful, after all I’ve done for you... Let’s see if you can survive on your own.”

He begins to walk from the room, stopping in front of me. “It’s not too late, Sori. Come with me now and I’ll forgive you. I might even forgive your mother, in time.”

I take a deep breath, meeting his gaze. “You say I betrayed your trust, but I think it’s the other way around.”

He bristles. “How dare you speak to me like that. You’re my daughter.”

“I don’t feel like I am. If love is conditional between us, mine is that you respect and love me without conditions.”

My father watches me for a second, his gaze never leaving mine, and then he stomps from the room, slamming the door on the way out.

I sink to the floor. What have I done? Have I doomed Joah? My plan was getting my father’s shares. Without them, my mother will have to sell the company.

She starts to speak but stops when her phone chirps. Mine does as well, vibrating in my pocket. It’s a message, from Secretary Park, sent to both of us:

Woo Hyemi’s been in an accident.