Peppermint

Chapter 2: Hyungwon

~Tokyo~

When the damp night brightened into Saturday morning, I was thrilled to see a big yellow sun high in the sky, streaming in golden light from the window by my bed. Checking the weather information on my phone gave me another gem of good news: the high would be sixty-two degrees-in January! I admit, when we first arrived yesterday and the sky had been pouring Persian cats and Chihuahuas, I'd been slightly nervous that rainy weather was Silverton's norm. I don't know why, but I'd always thought of mountain towns as being dominated by gray weather and tall, shadowy trees. Silverton definitely had the trees-and mountains, of course-but they were beautiful and not at all as depressing as I'd imagined. In fact, I could picture myself falling in love with the charming little town very soon.

I rolled out of bed at around eight, and started the day by putting some music on and getting ready while decorating my room some more. My old room, albeit cute and cozy, had been cramped as heck. Now I finally had the much-needed space to turn this into the dream room I'd always wanted. Plus, the fact that my sister and I had the basement all to ourselves was pretty dang awesome. We seriously lucked out with this new house.

Speaking of my sister...I started hearing her moving around in the bathroom separating our rooms around nine-thirty, so I decided to go greet her and see if she was as happy about the morning's sunny weather as I was.

"Hey sis, can I come in?" I asked, knocking softly on the door.

"Uh-huh."

Walking in, I found her dressed in a loose t-shirt and dolphin shorts, staring into the mirror as she combed through her wet curly hair. "You've already showered?!" I exclaimed. "How long have you been up?"

"Oh, since about four," she said casually as if it was nothing.

My eyes bugged out of their sockets. Chynna usually always rose earlier in the morning than I did, but four?!?! That was a bit much, even for her. "Why the heck were you up so early?"

"Couldn't sleep," she explained. "I kept thinking about what Jae said..."

I sighed, remembering how scared she had been when she came back to my room last night with our pizzas. All the details of Jae the pizza weirdo and the story he told her had come rushing out of her mouth like a waterfall, and even after I tried to take her mind off of it with a funny, lighthearted movie, she never went back to normal. She'd been mulling over it for the rest of the night, and had even seemed reluctant to go back to her own room for bed. I hadn't seen her that nervy since the first day of middle school.

"I told you not to worry about it too much," I said, noticing the dark circles under her eyes that even her shower hadn't washed away. "That guy sounds nuts if you ask me. He's probably exaggerating the story-if there is even a story. He said the case made national news?? Well I've never heard of it! And neither has Dad, and you know how he's into current events and all that. Plus, if there was any real danger, I'd think the realtor lady would've mentioned it to us before we bought the house. So honestly, don't even give it another thought. It's probably nothing but town gossip."

She looked at me, her dark brown eyes hopeful. "Really, Toki?"

"Definitely!" I grinned at her confidently. If I was completely honest with myself, the case of the Equinox Hunter creeped me out a bit too, but it was my job as the older sister-well, older by sixteen minutes, at least-to keep her from getting too terrified. "I know what you need-a walk!"

"A walk?" she groaned. "No, what I need is a nap. I've been up since four, remember?"

"I know, and you can nap later. But it's sixty-two degrees and sunny right now! Come on, let's just take a walk together for thirty minutes or so. Who knows when winter will get over its identity crisis and go back to giving us brutal cold weather? We need to take advantage of this now! Plus, I kinda wanted to explore the neighborhood."