Accept Me

Chapter Two

KIMI

Well.

Hyuk Jae seems like kind of a dick.

I watch Hedda floating in the pool of our new penthouse home. My brother is sneaking up on her to cannonball and splash the fuck out of her, while I sip a gin and tonic from on the outdoor sofa and contemplate if I'm willing to get my hair wet just to have a swim. God knows if I put a bathing suit on and go anywhere near water Arthur is there immediately to play at pretending to drown me.

Oh, the things you can rely on.

It's hot today in Seoul at the end of August but the breeze up high like this is refreshing and I'm not too hot since the sun has begun to set. I note how beautiful the view is of the city at this height as the lights start to come on.

It's much busier than I'm used to.

Certainly busier than the small southwestern Connecticut town I grew up in, but busier too than the San Francisco Bay Area where me, Arthur, and Hedda just moved from.

I can't say I'm all that surprised since Nana died that I'm being offered up as the sacrificial marriage lamb to keep the Ahn family and Johnson Green family intimately connected.

My parents couldn't give two shits about me as long as I mind my manners and never get into the news for anything embarrassing. Without Nana here anymore there's no one to love me but Arthur and Hedda, I miss Nana like a physical pain. I don't think I realized how much I leaned on and looked to her for support and love.

I have no issue with marrying Ahn Hyuk Jae...eventually. I hadn't really thought of marriage for myself, frankly. Anyway, Hyuk Jae will do. I'm sure it'll be fine.

It's not like we have to be around each other much. I doubt we have anything in common. Especially given he was at the airport with his friend when we arrived last month and either didn't recognize me and my brother or decided against greeting us. I lean towards it being the latter.

Such a warm welcome.

Of course I've seen pictures of him before. My Nana considered him her de facto grandson even though they aren't related really. I was more related to Nana, at least legally, than Hyuk Jae was. Anyway, it follows he would've seen pictures of me.

I mean, come on. Really? He has to have. Who in the world isn't curious enough about the woman they agreed to marry that they don't even know what she looks like?

So. He knew it was me. I knew it was him. I gave him two opportunities to greet me, going into and out of a bathroom I did not need to use...and he chose not to.

A hundred bucks says that Auntie told him to come get us. He saw us and decided not to get us.

Whatever.

We're not dumbasses, we can make our own way.

Auntie has been wonderful since we moved here, of course, she's always been wonderful even though I hadn't met her in person up until now. Nana was always so proud of her, of how she turned out to be a nice person despite the money. That was always a subtle dig at my own mother, Nana's stepdaughter. Probably it was a dig at my father too, given that they are not nice people and it's probably because of the gross excess of money the Johnson Green family controls.

I still haven't met Uncle in person, but then, I know he's busy and he did video chat with me and Arthur a few times since we arrived and sent over a case of wine and some baskets of fruit along with a box of beef.

He seems very nice. I don't know where they got this asshole son from.

But there he is.

This weekend we'll have a "family" dinner at the Ahn's family home. Something I'm dreading and looking forward to.