The Brothers Kim

Subin sighed contentedly. Dad"s definitely back. "Dad!" she shouted. "Dad, are you here?"

In just a few moments, Subin saw a burly man with a round face appear from the living room. He smiled at the sight of his daughter and son as he approached them. "Subin-ah, Yoongi-ah!" He had his arms outstretched to hug her and Subin noticed the sweat patches near his pits. She avoided him completely.

"Dad, you haven"t showered yet, have you?" she asked with a hint of disgust.

He chuckled, "You"re as sharp-tongued as usual, Subin-ah. The first thing you ask your dear appa is whether he"s showered yet..." he put his hand to his heart and mimicked being shot, "I"m hurt."

Yoongi sighed at the sight of his dad. "I told you to shower and go to sleep already. Don"t you still have jet lag?"

He shrugged. "Yeah, but I feel so wide awake at the moment so I decided to tidy up." He gestured for the Min siblings to follow him into the living room where he had his two large suitcases open.

Subin gaped at the eccentric souvenirs their father had bought. There were a lot of food items that they couldn"t buy in London but what intrigued her most was an antique looking thing that she found next to, what looked like, a pile of dirty laundry.

"What"s this?" she queried as she delicately picked up the book to inspect it. The t.i.tle was written in Hangul so Subin couldn"t understand.

Her father looked up from where he was hunched over. "Oh, that was your grandmother"s magnum opus."

"A what now?"

"Magnum opus" Yoongi repeated for her. "It means "masterpiece" in Latin."

Subin peered down at the large book in front of her and decided to open it. When she did, she saw that the book had a lot of printed Hangul with a few ill.u.s.trations of old-style Korean paintings and calligraphy. To her, it looked like some sort of History book.

"Your grandmother was a historian" her father explained as he sauntered over to her. "She dedicated most of her life trying to prove that your mother"s family was related to someone famous in history."

At this, Subin looked at her father curiously. "Someone famous?"

He nodded. He looked over her shoulder as Subin flipped the page to a painting of what looked like a young, rich woman adorned in vibrant silk robes. "She was adamant to prove that you were related to someone called Kim Gyuri." He pointed at the picture and read out the caption beneath it, ""Kim Gyuri, the deadly princess who infamously brought down the thriving House of Kim.""

Subin stared at the picture and immediately felt intrigued. "We were really related to someone famous in history?"

"Not we," Yoongi clarified, "you."

"Huh?"

"It"s from your mother"s side of the family" he explained. "We"re only half-siblings so my side doesn"t count."

"Well, we don"t know for sure if your mother"s side of the family really was related to this Kim Gyuri" their father added. "Most of the evidence burned down during the feudal era so your grandmother could only speculate but...oh!"

Subin and Yoongi glanced at their father who suddenly started scavenging through his suitcase as he searched for something. "I almost forgot... this is for you, Subin-ah."

"What is it?" she questioned as she took a small leather box from him. "Please don"t tell me you bought gaudy earrings again."

Her father frowned at the mentioning of his last birthday present to her. "I"ll have you know that those earrings were not gaudy."

Yoongi snorted and their father glared at him.

Subin opened the box and was astonished to see a ring made with the clearest colour of green jade. It had a simple design and as Subin picked it up to inspect it, she saw that there was something engraved inside the inner ring in what looked like ancient Chinese characters.

"It belonged to your grandmother," her father told her. "It was mentioned in her will that you inherit it."

Subin continued to peer at it. "Is it real jade?" she enquired. "It kinda looks like a plastic ring. You know, like ones you can get from Claire"s or Accessorize."

"I"m pretty sure it"s real" their father replied. "It"s been in the family for a long time so you should take care never to lose it."

Subin slipped the ring into her forefinger and admired it at arms" length. It was a little loose around her slender finger but she had to admit that the ring was pretty from afar.

"I"m gonna go and start my report" Yoongi declared as he started shuffling towards his bedroom. "You should probably start on your essay now too, Subin, since you have your grandmother"s book now."

At this, Subin jumped to attention, "Oh yeah. I can use grandma"s book!" Subin stared down at the large book in front of her, pleased that she somehow found something to use for her essay without having to look too hard for it. If she really was related to someone famous in history then, she"d be able to write something intriguing that will hopefully b.u.mp her grade up in her coursework. And that was something she was desperate to do so that she could enter the college of her dreams.

"You should clean up your room first, though, Subin-ah" her father advised her. "The apartment doesn"t look like it"s been cleaned since I left so I can already guess that your room is no better."

Subin tried her best not to roll her eyes at her dad. She hated cleaning up the most. "I"ll do it later" she replied dismissively.

"You should do it now."

"But dad-"

"Subin-ah," his voice was stern. "You have to learn to keep your room clean. For a young lady like yourself, I"m quite disappointed. Even your brother"s room is cleaner- and he"s a guy!"

"Yah!" Yoongi complained, "I"m still here, you know."

"Just because I"m a "young lady"," Subin repeated while making quotation marks with her fingers, "doesn"t mean I have to be tidy all the time. Why do you have to be stereotypical for, dad?"

"Because I feel like I"m failing your mother whenever I see the state of your room" he answered her honestly. "Just tidy up, okay? Before you end up tripping over something and hurting yourself."

Yoongi smirked, "Dad"s got a point. Your room is so messy that I won"t be surprised if you end up buried alive in there, what with all those stacks of folders everywhere."

"Shut up, Yoongi. It"s not like you"ve never done GCSEs before."

"Yeah, yeah. But that doesn"t really excuse your pigsty of a room. Just make sure you don"t end up dying in there," and he chuckled. "Imagine that, "death by folder avalanche"."

Subin waved her hand dismissively as she made her way to her room. She hated it when her dad used her mom in that way- he knew that she would always end up doing what he"d ask with the slight mention of her. And she abhorred it, even more, when her brother was compared to her.

Subin opened the door to her room and she was immediately greeted by the piles of strewn papers and dirty clothes that she hadn"t had the time to put in the laundry basket. There was clutter everywhere: she had pencil shavings on the floor, piles of revision books and folders formed mountains, and her collection of shoujo mangas lay forsaken on the last pages she had read. Subin was aware that her room was a mess- heck, it actually did bear some resemblance to a pigsty- but it was her mess and she knew where everything was.

She plopped herself on her bed, carefully avoiding her laptop which was charging on the floor. "Let"s see what else I can find out about this Gyuri chick" she murmured to herself as she opened the front page of the book again.

Subin squinted as she stared at the lines and lines of Hangul.

Oh, c.r.a.p, she thought and started laughing at her misfortune. I forgot that I can"t read Hangul.

Subin sighed as she started flicking through the pages, admiring the pictures and taking note of the fashion. They looked pretty ancient and very Asiatic. Subin hardly knew anything about Korean culture or history as she had been born in the UK and had lived there all her life. She didn"t really care much that she didn"t know a lot about her culture or her language; all she really cared about was the fact that she could at least understand Korean even if she couldn"t speak it.

As long as I can watch K-dramas without subt.i.tles, life"s good, she thought.

But she knew that her ability to understand came with shortcomings as it meant that she always had to rely on a native"s a.s.sistance. And that normally meant Yoongi or her dad.

She sighed dejectedly as she realised that she would have to go to Yoongi for help in translating her grandma"s book.

Forgetting that she had her laptop charging close by, Subin got up from her bed and failed to notice that her foot was not standing on firm ground. In a quick instance, Subin"s world suddenly turned before her eyes as she fell backwards, slipping on her laptop which had skidded forward across the wooden floor.

A flash of bright light blinded her vision as she tumbled backwards, later submerging her in a dark and unfamiliar abyss...