“Jiyu, why aren’t you answering? Didn’t you hear what Mommy said?”
Aejeong raised her voice.
Only then did Jiyu lift her head from her book. Afternoon sunlight streamed through the living room window, where the blinds had been lowered halfway. Dazzled by the brightness, Jiyu narrowed her eyes.
Beyond the window overlooking the Fifth Avenue sidewalk, pedestrians hurried past. The blinds concealed their upper bodies, leaving only their moving legs visible. The sight was faintly unsettling.
Fifth Avenue, which had remained quiet throughout the summer, was unusually crowded today. The Upper East Siders who had scattered to the Hamptons on Long Island and Nantucket in Massachusetts to escape the heat had returned en masse around the first Monday of September—Labor Day.
Dust drifted like snowflakes through the sunlight slanting across the living room floor. Jiyu liked watching the particles float in the air. They appeared only where the sunlight struck them directly, then vanished completely whenever they entered the shadows.
Sometimes she wished she could disappear from people’s sight just as easily. Especially when an adult suddenly approached, stared at her intently, and asked questions she found difficult to answer.
Her heart would pound, her mind would go blank as though it had been flooded with white paint, and even the simplest question would reduce her to a fool incapable of responding.
Jiyu looked up at Aejeong and blinked vacantly. Aejeong took the five-year-old’s narrow, delicate chin in her hand and tilted it upward, coaxing her with forced patience.
“Jiyu, you have to become friends with Hunter. Do you understand what that means? Do you have any idea how much effort Mommy put in last semester to arrange a playdate with him? Well, of course a five-year-old wouldn’t understand.”
Then she frowned and tightened her grip.
“Jiyu Parker, what did Mommy tell you? When someone speaks to you, don’t avoid their eyes. Look straight at them and smile! I’ve told you so many times. When you don’t smile, you look too… sullen. Americans like bright, smiling faces.”
Aejeong bared all her teeth in an exaggerated smile to demonstrate. Jiyu mechanically stretched her lips, revealing the gaps where her baby teeth had fallen out.
“That’s it. See how pretty you look when you smile? Your dimples show so nicely.”
Aejeong immediately dropped her smile and jabbed one of Jiyu’s dimples with the sharp tip of her fingernail. Then she held several outfits from a hanger beneath Jiyu’s chin, chattering to herself while Jiyu lowered her gaze back to her book.
“The Hamilton family spent the entire summer in Europe and the Hamptons. What a charmed life they lead, coming back to New York only when September is nearly over. I’m so jealous. I happened to run into his mother in the lobby and was lucky enough to secure this playdate, so you have to do well, Jiyu. Make sure you become friends with Hunter so we can arrange more playdates in the future. Understand? If you listen to Mommy, good fortune will come to you even in your sleep.”
Jiyu, who had only half listened to Aejeong, raised her head from the book.
Mommy sometimes said strange things.
A trace of fear entered Jiyu’s large eyes.
“…Eat Hunter?”
Aejeong clicked her tongue and corrected her.
“No! Not eat Hunter. Become ‘best friends’ with Hunter. Do you understand?”
Jiyu nodded and buried her head in the book again. Then she cautiously lifted only her eyes to check her mother’s reaction.
“…Don’t want to. No… way.”
Her voice was barely louder than a whisper.
“What? I told you not to mumble when you’re talking to Mommy! Speak up.”
“Don’t like tteok. Won’t eat it.”
Jiyu raised her voice slightly. She hated the sticky texture of tteok clinging to her teeth.
“What on earth are you talking about? You’re scratching someone else’s leg in your sleep.”
Aejeong muttered to herself as she pulled a dress from the hanger and made Jiyu stand. She was putting an unusual amount of effort into choosing her daughter’s outfit today, fussing over every detail.
“You have to dress nicely when you’re going to a rich person’s house. Let’s try this one first.”
A rich person’s house.
The phrase was woven into Aejeong’s vocabulary as naturally as breathing. Even though Jiyu did not know precisely what it meant, she vaguely understood that it referred to a large, glamorous home. Aejeong always seemed happiest whenever Jiyu had a playdate with a child who lived in one.
The book was snatched from Jiyu’s small hands and tossed carelessly onto the living room floor. Her nightdress was stripped off in an instant and replaced with a scratchy dress.
After repeating the process several more times, Aejeong finally smiled in satisfaction. She had chosen a white cotton dress.
“The last time I went to the Hamptons, everyone—children and adults alike—was wearing elegant, sophisticated white dresses like this. It must be the latest trend among rich people.”
Muttering as though to herself, Aejeong changed into a white sleeveless dress of her own and examined herself in the full-length mirror standing in one corner of the living room. Then she turned as gracefully as a model reaching the end of a runway.
Aejeong had once worked as a fashion model, and she still possessed a slender figure and excellent posture. She knew it well and favored bold, eye-catching styles.
Jiyu watched her mother for a moment before quietly retrieving the book from the floor. She climbed back onto the sofa and opened it again.
Despite having lived in New York for nearly twenty years, Aejeong did not know that Labor Day marked the unofficial end of summer. Nor was she aware of the unspoken rule among the upper class that the white clothes worn at summer estates should no longer be worn after Labor Day.
Labor Day had passed two days ago.
To Aejeong, money and class were one and the same. Whoever had the most money was automatically a member of the upper class.
Unfortunately, the people she had chosen as her models were strivers desperately attempting to break into conservative, exclusive high society. They draped themselves in luxury brands and flaunted their extravagance because, at least on the surface, they appeared to possess the most wealth.
Aejeong had no understanding of how much importance the American upper class—keenly aware of their country’s short and unimpressive history compared to Europe—placed on that very history and its traditions.
For a time, she had closely observed and imitated a Chinese woman rumored to make the largest donations to the preschool. The woman carried a different-colored Hermès bag for every day of the week.
But when Aejeong heard rumors that she was the mistress of a high-ranking Chinese official, she was horrified. No matter how wealthy the woman might be, Aejeong declared, she could never imitate a mistress.
So she chose a new model.
After careful consideration, she settled on a tall, slender blonde beauty from Eastern Europe. The woman, who dressed from head to toe in luxury brands, was in her early thirties and married to a CEO in his late sixties.
She was his fifth wife.
Dazzled by the glamorous exterior, Aejeong failed to notice that the woman, like herself, merely hovered at the fringes of true high society.
Aejeong fastened a Rolex around her wrist and layered it with two highly convincing S-grade counterfeit Cartier bracelets. She inserted into each earlobe the one-carat diamond earrings her husband had given her as a push present after Jiyu’s birth.
Finally, she proudly hooked a twelve-year-old gold Hermès bag—rescued from a consignment shop—over her forearm.
Then she approached Jiyu, whose nose was once again buried in her book. Aejeong straightened the large ribbon positioned perfectly on the crown of Jiyu’s head and urged her to get up.
“Close the book. It’s time to go up to the penthouse for your date with the Hamilton family heir.”
Aejeong burst into laughter at her own words, apparently finding them hilarious.
Jiyu did not understand what was so funny, but seeing her mother in a good mood made her happy as well.
Aejeong abruptly stopped laughing. Her expression turned serious as she tugged on Jiyu’s arm.
“All of this is for you, Jiyu. For your future. You should understand how lucky you are to grow up in an environment like this. When Mommy was little…”
She suddenly broke off.
With a bitter smile, she smoothed her already immaculately styled hair and murmured,
“Seong Aejeong, who had to walk to school because she had no money and couldn’t even afford college. And now she’s made it all the way to Manhattan’s Upper East Side. I made it. I really made it.”
She took a compact mirror from her bag, pursed her lips as she touched up her makeup, then held out her hand to Jiyu.
“Let’s go, Jiyu.”
Jiyu took Aejeong’s hand and left the apartment. Her short legs moved quickly as she struggled to keep pace with her tall mother’s long strides.
She knew there was a boy named Hunter who attended the same preschool. She was familiar with his name because she heard it so often, but his face was only a hazy memory. They had never been in the same class, and besides, she disliked noisy boys who did nothing but run around shouting.
‘I wonder if Hunter’s house has a lot of books. I hope it does.’
Only then did Jiyu feel the faintest spark of curiosity about the playdate.
Aejeong tended to buy her far more dresses and ribbons than books. Jiyu had already read and reread every fairy-tale book crammed into her low, three-tiered bookcase more times than she could count.
She did not understand why her mother kept insisting that she become friends with Hunter.
But if there were plenty of books in that rich person’s house, perhaps becoming his friend would not be so bad.