'Why, you all think you could handle me?'
'Yeah, I'm pretty sure we could take you.'
'I'd let you.'
❥︎❥︎❥︎
Eliana Costas, a quarter Korean by ancestry, would never imagine in a million years that she would one day fall in love with not one, but all...
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'Yᴇᴀʜ, ɪᴛ's ᴄʀᴀᴢʏ, I know!' Jieun Costas laughed into her phone, chattering away with her best friend in the kitchen. 'Demetres wants to have another baby, and I was like, boy, you better be prepared to push that baby out of your own hooha because there ain't no way I'm doing that again. We already have two teenagers!'
Eliana held back a snort as she listened to her mother detailing all the reasons why she was unwilling to have another child. She stretched in her seat in the dining room, letting out a satisfied sigh when her back cracked loudly.
'Oh, Eomma, did you sign my field trip forms?' Eliana called out, doodling on a sheet of paper as she waited for Ajax to finish his attempt on a math problem.
'Hold on, Chaeyoung-ah,' Eliana heard her mother say to the receiver before responding to her question. 'Yes, baby. I left it on your desk.'
'Okay, thank you,' she called out, finishing her doodle by drawing a pair of mustache on a caricatured version of her brother. 'Alright, whatcha got?'
'Uh, twenty three?' Ajax said unsurely, scratching his head in confusion.
'The options were either one or zero, Jay,' Eliana giggled. 'You're guessing again.'
'It's because I don't know,' he groaned, putting his head on the surface of the dining table.
'Calculus again?' Demetres Costas swooped into the dining room and stood over his two children, peering over their shoulders to look at the sheets of paper spread out across the dining table. Ajax nodded defeatedly.
Demetres Costas was larger than life, with his white button down shirt straining against his broad, muscular chest. The fine grey hair scattered near his temples were almost lost in the sea of his jet black hair, conveying the wisdom of a life well-lived.
'Yikes, hang in there, champ,' he winced, patting Ajax on the shoulder in consolation.
Demetres waltzed into the kitchen, loosening his tie as he pressed a sweet kiss on Jieun's cheek before walking towards the refrigerator to grab a drink of cold water.
'Hello? Hello? Chaeyoung?' Jieun repeated into the phone, puzzled by the sudden echo of the dial tone.
'What happened?' Eliana asked curiously, turning around in her chair.
'I don't know,' her mother replied, just as confused, randomly pressing the buttons on the phone. 'The line suddenly went dead and now I can't even make any more calls.'
'Maybe it's the battery,' Ajax suggested, not looking up from his homework.
'Lemme see that, honey,' Demetres reached out his hand for the phone. 'Huh, that's weird-'
He was suddenly interrupted by the piercing sound of broken glass. Eliana gasped as she flung herself off the chair and onto the floor, covering her head as bullets broke through the windows, shattering the glass and tearing into the back of the chair where she'd been sitting not two seconds before.
