one-shots

she's getting married

She's Getting Married..
by Irene Bae, Editor-In-Chief of Vogue Korea

As you all know, our magazine is celebrating it's 10th year anniversary(yay!) but if you have following us since the beginning, the last time I wrote a piece was when I was invited to The Met Gala and sat side by side by Anna Wintour. Come to think of it, it was already 3 years ago and I haven't written anything since. I chose to stay behind the scenes approving the layout, the articles to be released and the amazing people to grace our front covers. We had Anne Hathaway and Olivia Rodrigo last year and it feels like I am living the dream.. the dream that I envisioned since I was six while watching my mom answer the Sunday cross-word puzzles on our coffee table at our house back in Busan. My dad left when I was two.

So the question is, why am I writing? And what's with the title? Am I getting married? I'll answer them one by one but let me first tell you a story.

When I was eight, there was a delapidated house beside ours. It was an eyesore and everyone in our town thought so and come to think of it, I thought so too. One day, we found it being demolished and someone informed us that a family chose to build a house on the lot. The owner(who we haven't met yet) frequently sent us food from the restaurants around town to compensate for the daily noise. Being raised by a single mother, we welcomed the food as it helped us save for other things.

In six months, the house was finished. The once revolting view of a house became a bungalow with a pool at the back. I used to peek behind the hedges of my mom's overgrown santans to see the house's progress and once it's done, it left the other houses within the street behind when it comes to design and uniqueness. One of our old neighbors, a man called Siwon laughed at the house because 'a pool where it snows doesn't make sense', he shut up when one of the engineers said that it's a heated pool. Why do I have to talk about the house? That's the same house where I learned how to swim and that's where I met the love of my life.

In another six months, we met our mysterious neighbors. It was when a basketball accidentally when through mom's beloved cabbage patch and couple of our napa cabbages were uprooted. If there's one thing that my mom hates, it's everything to do with her beloved garden. She treated everything she planted like they were her own children. My mom marched to the new neighbor's door and knocked. I was behind her clutching her dress when the door opened where there is a gangly kid with black hair staring at her. My mom ranted in Korean and as she spoke, the kid frowned as if she didn't understand. Well it turns out she really didn't. The kid left the door open and went back inside. Not a minute later, she's pulling a grown up that looks like her mom. My mom explained what happened and thankfully the woman understood and apologized profusely.

That's how I met my bestfriend, Jisoo. You all know her from her movies, the Korean adaptation of The Notebook and from the remake of Thunderstruck.. No. She's not the love of my life, though I'd catch a bullet for her.

Lalisa Manoban. She is the quiet kid and Jisoo's younger sister.

I met Lisa when she was seven. Unlike other younger siblings, she didn't follow Jisoo around. She was always locked inside her room and used to read Harry Potter. When I first met her and told her I read Harry Potter too, the first thing she asked me was "Do you know how many Hogwarts staircases are there?"

I was fifteen when I had my first boyfriend, right at the time when Jisoo had hers too because you know, bestfriends. It was our friend Hanbin's birthday and everyone who lives around the street were invited. Lisa was there too. At that point we've known each other for almost seven years but whenever I am around her, she doesn't really talk or let alone acknowledge my existence and I was fine with it since Jisoo loves to talk a lot. My boyfriend then asked everyone the most cliché birthday game ever - seven minutes in heaven. I know he was banking on some alone time with me to snatch my first kiss. And just like the movies, that ended with Lisa and I kissing inside Hanbin's parents' closet. I broke up with my boyfriend the day after.