As the twins and I head for the locker room after class, I see a huge poster advertising next month’s career day. HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT YOUR FUTURE? MARK ZUCKERBERG AND MEGAN ELLISON ARE HERE TO HELP YOU! I wince. I know my mom would want me to go to that. It’s part of the reason she and my dad sacrificed so much to send me and Leah to this school. Halmoni left Umma some money when she died, and I know that most of it has gone to paying our tuition—instead of helping Appa get more business for his boxing gym. “Think of the opportunities,” she said, shushing me, when I told her I was fine going to the public school down the street from our apartment.

What is my future? I think to myself, warm water rushing down on me from the waterfall showerhead in the locker room. It’s been three days since the audition and I have no idea how I’m going to get noticed. I think back to tennis class and the way Somi and Kyungmi talked to me for the first time. But that was because of DB’s Instagram post. There’s no way they’ll ever post about me. Will they?

After we wash up, I follow the twins out of the locker room, nearly coming nose to nose with a boy with floppy brown hair parted straight down the middle and wire-rim glasses. His face is deadpan as he raises a hand in greeting.

“Daeho!” Hyeri says. Her cheeks grow pink as a small smile spreads across her lips.

“Hi.” He looks past my shoulder. “Ready to work on our project, Hyeri?”

“You didn’t have to come escort me. I could have met you in the engineering wing.”

“It’s fine,” Daeho says. He glances at Juhyun. “I don’t mind. How are you, Juhyun?”

“Fine, thanks,” Juhyun says. She links an arm through mine, wiggling her eyebrows at me. “Shall I escort you to the student lounge while Hyeri nerds it out in the engineering lab? I hear the patbingsu bar is back now that the weather’s warmer.”

Daeho’s ears perk up. “You like patbingsu? I just so happen to be an expert patbingsu maker. I’ve created a perfect recipe based off a scientifically proven ideal ratio of shaved ice to red bean. I even invented my own ice-shaving machine.”

“Uh… wow, Daeho. Who knew you had such hidden depths?” Juhyun says. I bite my lip, stifling a laugh while Daeho looks on, beaming at Juhyun’s comment.

Hyeri glances between Juhyun and Daeho. “I love patbingsu too,” she offers. “Maybe you could make it for me sometime? Your recipe sounds excellent.”

Daeho nods, his hair flapping around the sides of his face. “Definitely.”

Hyeri perks up.

“I’ll make it for you, and you can share it with Juhyun.”

“Oh… right. Well, sure. Sounds good, Daeho.” She gives us a half-hearted wave as she follows Daeho down the hall. “See you guys later.”

I give her a sympathetic wave and glace over at Juhyun, who’s checking her eyebrows on her phone, totally oblivious to the love triangle that just played out in front of her eyes. For a smart girl, she can be really noonchi ubssuh.

“Come on,” she says, throwing her phone into her gym bag and steering me down the hall. “Patbingsu awaits.”

I drag my feet as we walk down the hall, sunlight streaming in through the school’s gigantic glass and steel windows. The student lounge is the last place I want to be right now. It’s always teeming with students all crowded around big-screen TVs blasting the latest K-pop music videos. I’m really not ready to be bombarded with questions about Jason and Mina.

“How about we go hide in the Stained-Glass Library instead?” I turn around, trying to lure Juhyun to the cavernous library on the other side of campus, so named for the stained-glass replica of the opening scene from Beauty and the Beast that an art student did for their senior project years ago.

“What, so you can sulk alone in some library corner?”

“I wasn’t planning to sulk,” I say. Which is technically true. I was planning to curl up in one of the library’s squashy armchairs and watch reruns of Vampire Diaries on my laptop.

“Sorry, Rachel, what you need now is tough love. Not Klaus-and-Caroline-shipping emotional therapy.”

Damn. She knows me too well.

As we approach the student lounge, I hear the unmistakable buzz of excited students. “Put it up on the big screen!” I recognize Kyungmi’s squeaky voice and freeze. Are they putting up the photo of Jason and Mina? I just managed to escape my Instagram shame spiral and I really don’t need to be sent down another one right now.

“So about the library…,” I start, but before I can finish, Juhyun pushes me through the door of the lounge. A big crowd of students is gathered around the flat-screen TV, sitting on plush leather sofas with bowls of patbingsu on their laps, leaning forward to watch… a YouTube beauty blogger? Huh. That’s not what I was expecting.

Kyungmi turns around to see me and Juhyun approaching. “Look at this new beauty blogger! Some girl down in Suwon. She can do things with eye shadow that I’ve never even seen.”

Next to me, Juhyun freezes. “How many hits does she have?” Juhyun asks.

“Oh, it’s wild—almost half a million hits in twelve hours. It’s totally viral. And she has almost four million followers!”

“But… I don’t even have four million followers,” Juhyun stammers in disbelief, stalking away to the patbingsu bar.

I watch as the girl on the screen coats her face in smooth, silvery foundation before transforming her eyelids into a dazzling array of vivid-pink cherry blossoms bursting off tiny branches, each one topped with a small jewel. Juhyun shoves a bowl of shaved ice into my hands, but even as the ice melts, forming a soup with the condensed milk and fruity syrup, I can’t look away. This video is mesmerizing.

“Isn’t that wild? One second she’s just a normal girl, playing around with makeup in her bedroom, and the next she’s a celebrity.”

I blink, taking in the comment from my classmate. It is amazing how much impact one viral video can have. The wheels in my mind begin to turn as Juhyun loops her arm around mine. “Ugh. It sucks here. I’m ready to go to the library.”

I laugh, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek. “That girl isn’t half the beauty blogger you are. Did you notice the products she was using weren’t even organic? Hyeri would have a fit!”

Juhyun smiles, looking mollified, as I dig into the last of my melting patbingsu.

“Delicious, right?” Juhyun says. “Isn’t this exactly what you needed?”

“Oh,” I say, smiling over my spoon. “You have no idea.”

Six

When I first started my training at DB, I was homesick a lot. Whenever it got really bad, Yujin would hide me away in her office and let me cry. She would rub my back and I would breathe in the fresh smell of eucalyptus from the plants that covered her bookshelves and her desk. To this day, the smell of eucalyptus reminds me of home as much as the smell of those sugary roasted nuts that you can find on every sidewalk corner in New York.

“Take a seat,” Yujin says, ushering us through her office door after Akari and I bow our heads in greeting. She gestures to the white leather-backed seats in front of her desk. She squints at my face. “What happened to your eyebrow?”