Spring Flower (A Seventeen Fanfiction)

Chapter Three: Home

A hand shakes my shoulder, startling me awake. I shriek as I roll off the couch, face-planting on the floor. My head bangs against the living room rug which barely softens the blow of the hardwood floors beneath it, sending my head spinning. What a way to wake up.

"Mom!" I whine as I grip the couch cushion and get to my feet. "What was that for?"

"Kang Chun Hwa, I raised you better than to sneak a boyfriend home overnight!" she yells, her hand shaking in my face. That's when you know she's mad. And I have no creative lies to weasel me out of her anger.

And there's no way Soon Young or the rest of the house didn't hear her now. I rub my forehead as I get to my feet. "He's not my boyfriend," I mumble.

"Then what is he? A stranger you picked up on the street?" she shoots back. Her hands have traveled to her hips and her chest is puffed out in anger—a sure and true sign that I truly messed up this time.

"Well, yes!" I snap. Better throw myself under the bus now versus deal with the truth being revealed later. Later was never better in my house; I learned that the hard way when I was a teenager.

My mom takes a step away from me. Whatever answer she was expecting, it certainly wasn't that. "Is that why I found a man sleeping in your bed when I went to wake you up for work?"

I huff and wrap my blanket around myself. My laptop sits on the coffee table, half-opened and battery drained, from where I left it before falling asleep last night. Or was it actually taking a nap? I wince as I recall the message I sent to Pledis's DMs. Hopefully, they don't think I'm crazy and believe me. Or trust me enough to manage their missing k-pop idol since they're doing such an amazing job of keeping him safe.

"His name is Kwon Soon Young and he's from Korea," I explain. "I was wandering around in Chicago when I bumped into him and he needed help. But, both of our phones were dead and he didn't know how to get back to his hotel... So that's why we're both here."

My mom's eyes shrink as she glares at me. "And you didn't think to call your father or I to help you figure this out? You just decided to bring a stranger home was a perfectly safe course of action? What if he was a serial killer or a kidnapper? What if he robbed me of my life savings?"

"Dead phone? Remember?" I shake my head. "But he's not either of those things. I made sure to verify his identity before letting him in the car with me."

Mom rolls her eyes. "What, is he an idol or whatever it is your sister loves so much?"

Footsteps thunder down the stairs. My sister's slight frame bursts into the living room, breaking up the confrontation between myself and my mom. Her hair is a bird's nest and blue bags rest under her eyes, but she doesn't seem to notice or care. Her overly sized Seventeen t-shirt—that she most likely bought from Redbubble or something—falls to her knees.

"What?" she gasps. "Is Hoshi doing in our bathroom?"

My mom turns on me slowly. "You brought home an idol." It wasn't a question, but a statement.

I bury my face in my hands.

*****

Soon Young shifts next to me. My sister has plopped herself across the table from him and is staring at him, occasionally pinching her arm to make sure that he is real.

"Is this really happening?" she whispers to me in English, poking at the egg roll on my plate with her chopsticks.

I shoo her hand away. There's something about social anxiety that always gets her touchy-feely with my food. She's been like that since she was a child; at one point, it was endearing. Now, as we're both adults, I'd rather she kept her hands to herself. Especially when the last meal I ate was over 16 hours ago.