Before her marriage, Lauren Hamilton’s full name had been Lauren Nayeon Han. Her father, Dr. Han Jonggu, was a renowned neurosurgeon who had even served as the president’s personal physician.
He firmly believed that a person could not become a proper human being without knowing their roots, so he spoke to Lauren only in Korean. Whenever she addressed him in English, he simply refused to answer.
During summer vacations, while her friends went off to camp, Lauren spent her summers in Korea. Thanks to that, although she had been born and raised in America, her Korean was as fluent as that of the average 1.5-generation Korean American.
That did not mean Korean came more naturally to her. English was unquestionably her native language, and Lauren had never been able to impose Korean on Hunter as strictly as her father had imposed it on her.
As a result, Hunter had difficulty communicating with his maternal grandfather. The stubborn old man scolded Lauren every time they met, accusing her of failing to teach Hunter Korean.
As a last resort, she hired a Korean tutor once a week to teach him Hangul, but Hunter showed little interest.
Fortunately, Miran de Lafayette, the Marquise de Lafayette, whose family had maintained close ties with the Hamiltons for generations, was also Korean. Whenever they met, she never tired of boasting about how well her son Rex spoke Korean. Eventually, Lauren and Miran joined forces and arranged for Rex and Hunter to take Korean lessons together.
But Hunter and Rex, two of the Upper East Side’s most notorious troublemakers, started bickering the moment they saw each other. On the rare occasions when they did get along, they invariably teamed up to cause trouble instead. They had already driven away a second Korean tutor, and qualified replacements were not easy to find.
Yet the sight of Jiyu reading to Hunter that day gave Lauren an idea.
When Aejeong had boasted that Jiyu was already reading chapter books, Lauren had assumed it was merely an exaggerated display of maternal pride. But seeing Hunter so completely absorbed in the book Jiyu was reading came as a genuine shock.
‘Was my son ever capable of sitting still like that?’
Lauren began to hope that adding such a calm and intelligent girl to the Korean lessons might improve the atmosphere. The fact that Jiyu was fluent in Korean made the idea even more appealing. Children, after all, naturally picked up language from one another.
Hunter hated losing. Having a child beside him who was better at both Korean and reading would surely provoke his competitive streak. He might even begin excelling without anyone having to pressure him.
Fortunately, although Hunter and Rex fought with each other constantly, they never laid a hand on girls. More precisely, neither of them had any interest in girls whatsoever.
Lauren beamed at Aejeong.
“Aejeong, actually… Hunter is learning Hangul with a boy named Rex. Do you think Olivia might be interested in joining them? The lessons are here at our house every Saturday morning for two hours.”
Aejeong’s eyes widened at the proposal, and she answered without so much as pausing for breath.
“Of course she would be interested! When can she start?”
***
What had been intended as a one-time playdate soon became a regular occurrence. Jiyu was easy to invite over whenever Hunter had free time, since they were the same age and lived in the same apartment building.
No matter how suddenly the invitation came, Aejeong never once declined a playdate with Hunter. She would even cancel plans that had already been arranged.
When the mothers happened to meet in the lobby on the way to school, they sometimes walked there together. In urgent situations, they even shared nannies.
Every Wednesday, Jiyu received math tutoring at Hunter’s house. She also attended Korean lessons with him every Saturday until he learned to read Hangul.
Hunter found Jiyu unbearably irritating.
He had felt that way from the very first day they met. When he threw the ball at her as she stepped out of the elevator, he had only meant to invite her to play. He had never intended to strike her in the forehead and knock her unconscious.
He had not imagined that anyone could be stupid enough to miss such an easy ball flying straight toward them. When he told Lauren as much that evening, however, he was the one who got scolded.
The memory of Jiyu falling backward in slow motion remained vivid in his mind. It even haunted his dreams.
In the dream, the small ball he threw struck the forehead of Jiyu, who was wearing a dress covered in ridiculous frills, and she suddenly began swelling into a giant.
She grew until she towered so high above him that he could no longer see her face. Then she toppled over Manhattan.
Just like in a movie, catastrophe swept through the city, and Manhattan crumbled like cookie crumbs. The Hamilton residence vanished without a trace as well.
No matter how desperately Hunter tried to pull her back and stop her from falling, his body would not move, as though he had been tied down. He could not even scream.
It was such a horrifying nightmare that merely remembering it made his teeth chatter.
Because of that accident, Hunter experienced punishment and deprivation for the first time in his life. He was severely disciplined and stripped of his freedom over something he had never intended to happen.
He was banned from both the playground and the playroom for an entire week.
He would rather have gone without food for seven days.
And the person responsible for all of it was that pretentious little goody-two-shoes, Jiyu Parker.
He could not understand why his mother kept inviting the tiny girl, who irritated him at every turn, into their home. Her only use was reading books aloud while he played. For some strange reason, when she read, the story entered his ears clearly and stayed there.
But he could have lived with or without that. It would have been better if she had remained completely useless.
Unfortunately, it was not long before Hunter made the shocking discovery that Jiyu was absolutely essential to him.
It was, in every sense, a horrifying realization.
***
A few months earlier, on the first day Jiyu came to watch one of his tournaments, Hunter had crushed an eleven-year-old opponent and become the champion.
It was the first tournament victory of his life.
As a result of that match, his UTR, his Universal Tennis Rating, finally rose into the four-point range.
‘But that was because I played well.’
His victory had absolutely nothing to do with Jiyu being there.
Not long afterward, however, his mother invited the scrawny bookworm and her fussy mother to another tournament.
It was completely unnecessary.
In the first round, Hunter’s opponent was a full head shorter than him. Intimidated from the outset, the boy lost the first set 6–0, then forfeited in tears, claiming his stomach hurt.
Hunter advanced through the second round with ease, winning the first set 6–2 and the second 6–1. The semifinal was not much different.
But in the final, Hunter faced a fairly strong opponent.
Sean Peterson was twelve years old, had a UTR of 5.8, and stood a head taller than Hunter. In fact, they had played several times before.
Hunter had lost every match.
Before the final began, while he and Sean stood across the net tossing a coin to decide who would serve first, Hunter suddenly spotted Jiyu in the stands.
She had supposedly come to watch him, yet her head was buried in a book lying open across her knees.
She was an appalling spectator.
Sean took the first set 6–3.
Hunter won the second 7–5.
The third set became a grueling battle. Eventually, with the score tied at 6–6, they entered a tiebreak to decide the winner.
The first player to reach seven points would win.
“Go, Hunter!”
Lauren and Aejeong cheered loudly from the stands.
After a rally that seemed to last forever, Hunter won a point in dramatic fashion, and the crowd erupted.
Only then did Jiyu glance up.
She looked around, offered a few lifeless claps, and immediately lowered her head to the book again.
For some reason, that infuriated him.
‘Is that book more interesting than my match?’
Hunter could not accept such an insult.
He gritted his teeth and raced across the court with everything he had. Whenever his focus faltered and Sean began dominating him, Jiyu kept reading. Only after Hunter fought his way back and made the outcome uncertain again did she finally raise her head and watch.
That day, Hunter played far beyond his usual ability and defeated Sean to become the tournament champion.
After the match, the four of them went out for dinner at a Korean restaurant in Fort Lee.
There, Lauren said something entirely unnecessary to Jiyu.
It was the beginning of an ominous development.
“Thank you for coming, Jiyu. Come to think of it, Hunter becomes the tournament champion every time you’re here. You must be his lucky charm.”
Hunter protested with an expression as though he had bitten into a caterpillar, insisting that it was absolutely not true.
Jiyu did not attend the next tournament.
Hunter was eliminated in the quarterfinals.
Strangely, he had been unable to concentrate throughout the match.
At the tournament after that, he reached the semifinals but suffered a humiliating defeat against a player with a lower UTR. That day too, something had felt wrong from the very first serve.
As Hunter tried to determine the reason, he suddenly remembered what Lauren had said to Jiyu over dinner.
The realization struck him like a blow to the back of the head.
There was no possible way that scrawny little bookworm was his lucky charm.
‘But if she’s a jinx…’
Then there was only one way to find out.
“I have to invite her to the tournament and confirm whether she really is a jinx or not.”