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“Four is the special number. The heart has four chambers, four auscultation points, four valves, four—” She was cut off mid-ramble when some guy tripped right… into her. “Excuse me?!”
She recognized him instantly.
“Good morning, hothead.”
Mira choked on the nickname.
“Sorry?”
“Forgiven.” Abby flashed his usual stupid grin.
They were in the cafeteria. Mira was balancing a book in one arm and a sandwich in the other. Her hair was half-tied in a hopeless attempt to keep it out of her face while she read. And Abby, just like her, was alone.
“What’s this? ‘Introduction to Cardiovascular Semiotics’? You haven’t even had that class yet.” He pointed, then bit into his sandwich and rested his head on her shoulder to read the tiny letters better.
“It’s next week’s lesson.” She shrugged, nudging him away. So he’d been snooping through her class schedule again…
“Hm.”
God, he was unbearable.
Or at least that’s what Mira had thought of him ever since high school, when they first met. Abby was one of her older brother’s friends and a year ahead of them. Back then, he was on the swim team and in the film club.
“What are you even doing here?” she asked, uneasy with how close he was standing.
He rolled his eyes. Abby knew Mira found him annoying, but he also knew that if she truly didn’t want him around, she would’ve scared him off already — in far more creative ways, as he’d seen her do to plenty of other guys. She had a reputation, one might say.
“Just checking if you ate anything besides that sad piece of bread, because between us, it would be a crime to call that a sandwich. And inhaling Porto & Porto doesn’t count.”
“Tell my brother to stop making things up when my family asks about me, if he’s not in the mood to check on me. That’s not your job.”
“Why don’t you tell him?!” Abby muttered.
“You’re the one who shares a dorm with him, not me!”
“And you’re the sister!”
She sighed, letting out something close to a growl. He could be really stubborn when he wanted.
Somehow, the three of them ended up here, at the same college, stuck with each other for the next six years — whether she liked it or not.
…
Four years earlier…
“Mom, I’m home!” Mira heard her brother shout from upstairs. He was usually quiet, which could only mean he’d brought friends.
She shot up from her desk, abandoning her homework halfway and letting the pencil roll to the floor.
She rushed down the stairs with impressive speed, trying not to make any noise, and stopped behind the kitchen door. Something about her brother’s friends intrigued her — specifically, the fact that they existed at all. Her brother had a terrible personality, so how did he manage to have friends? And such… cool ones.
Maybe it was just because she was the sister, so she knew his annoying side better than anyone. But, well, she was curious.
“I managed to get the pool released for Saturday so we can do preseason training,” her brother was saying.
“Thank God, I thought we wouldn’t be able to train this weekend.” One of them — the shaved-head one — replied. Mira had nicknamed him Shorty because of his height. He was the smallest among the three. Seeing him in the school hallway was almost comical; sometimes he even looked at her with a bit of… fear? She knew she could be intimidating sometimes.
“Thanks to Abby.” Her brother added. And voilà. The source of Mira’s curiosity appeared like smoke.
She would never admit it — not out loud, not even to herself — but there was something about the pink-haired boy that drew her attention.
“OH MY GOD, DUDE!” Shorty yelled.
“He’s not the captain for nothing, Ryu. Since Rom graduated, Abby’s taken his place pretty well.”
“It was nothing. We just have to clean everything afterward.” He finally stepped into her very limited line of sight. Peeking through cracks had never been her strong suit.
The boys moved in and out of the kitchen, making snacks and grabbing fruit from the fridge. One thing she’d learned after a year of observing was that swimmers ate a lot. Any athlete did, of course, but those three could’ve been born calorie-counters.
When they were about to head to her brother’s room, Mira was too distracted to notice the door she was leaning on swing open.
“Ah, shit!” She rubbed her forehead.
“What was that? Mira?! What were you doing there?” And all she managed to say was something between “I don’t know” and “I was just about to come in!” — directed at Abby, the person responsible for the bump growing on her head.
…
Present day…
“Could you relax for a second?!” Abby said, and Mira had to restrain herself from taping his mouth shut.
“Could you shut up and focus?” They were at the movie theater.
Whatever that outing was — it definitely wasn’t a date. Especially with her brother sitting between them.
“You two, shut the fuck up, okay? Jesus Christ…”
The tradition was simple: go to the movies once a month, watch something fun, grab food afterward, and head back to the dorms. It was something they used to do in the film club back in high school and had decided to continue in college. The only difference was that, before, the movies were projected onto a tiny wall in the club room, and after eating, everyone went home. It was fun, it gave Mira a break from thinking about school, and her relationship with her brother looked healthy for at least two hours straight.
“She started it,” Abby muttered.
“Me?!” Mira snapped.
“Shut up or we’re getting kicked out again!”
Right. They had forgotten about that part.
Both crossed their arms and turned back to the screen, her brother smirking as he enjoyed their bickering — and the popcorn — all to himself. The movie even felt more entertaining that way.
An hour later, the film ended, but Mira and Abby’s disagreement didn’t. By the end of the night, Mira’s brother decided he didn’t want to deal with the argument and walked ahead, leaving the two of them bickering the whole way back.
“That movie was garbage,” Abby said, and Mira immediately disagreed. “The only actually good scene was when Jane asked about Dan’s love.”
“How can you even say that?!”
“You don’t have a single argument that could change my mind about this movie. Not one. Give me at least one.”
“I—”
“And don’t try to say the movie was worth it because of Natalie Portman’s pink wig!” He pointed a finger at her. “Verisimilitude doesn’t count as an argument here.”
“…”
“God, I hate that movie. See? No arguments.” Abby started walking again, until Mira said:
“She had a point.”
“What?”
“Jane. When she said lying was the most fun a girl could have without taking her clothes off.”
Abby stopped. Hands buried inside his jacket pockets, breath visible in the cold air. Mira walked past him without another word, leaving him there, frozen, with the undeniable certainty that she’d won.
…
Five years ago…
The first time Abby saw Mira wasn’t when he visited his friend — her brother — but at the opening ceremony on the first day of school, in the gymnasium.
It was impossible not to notice her. A tall girl with pink hair and a perfectly neat uniform. She looked like a hurricane pretending to be a gentle breeze. She caught his attention instantly.
“Hey, who’s that?” he asked the boy beside him.
“That’s my sister.” The boy raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Nothing. It’s just…” Abby pointed at his own head. “We’ve got the same hair and all.”
He definitely wasn’t about to tell his teammate he thought his sister was pretty — not yet. He’d save that for when he knew her better.
“Oh, thought it was something else. She has a terrible personality.”
Do all siblings talk about each other like that? Abby wondered, but just nodded.
“I didn’t know you had a sister. I go to your house every week,” Abby murmured.
“She used to study at a boarding school on the other side of the country.”
“Oh, got it.”
One word described the Kang family perfectly: discreet. Abby had never heard Mira’s name mentioned, not once during all his visits. And the only clue that another person lived there was a locked door at the end of the first-floor hallway, beside Minsoo’s room.
“She used to get into trouble all the time as a kid. Still does, but… with more discretion, I guess. That’s why she studied far away and only came back now.”
Discretion. Right. He understood that.
Abby might’ve believed him — if he hadn’t quickly learned that Mira was the opposite of “problematic.” In the following weeks, he saw with his own eyes: best grades, best assignments, perfect attendance — she had never missed a single day.
Were they even talking about the same person?
One afternoon, while he was at swim practice, Mira walked by carrying several pool noodles. He’d heard she’d become a PE assistant in the second semester, but he’d never really believed it.
“Hey, Abby!” Romance shouted from across the pool. “What’s up with you, man?”
“What? Why?”
“Minsoo beat you in freestyle for the first time.”
“He could’ve just improved,” Abby said, not taking his eyes off Mira for even a second.
“Hm.” Romance swam to the edge and muttered, “Hope he doesn’t find out he only won because you were too busy checking out his sister.”
If Romance weren’t in his last year as captain — about to graduate — Abby swore he would’ve drowned the bastard right then and there.
…
Present day…
“I swear I can’t see anything there,” Mira said, resting her elbows on the table and her head in her hands, a clear sign of despair, because she always understood everything. Well, almost everything, apparently.
“That’s the point. It’s air. All you need to see is this line that shows where the lung ends and the pleura begins,” Abby explained.
In their first year of med school, juniors had to pick an upperclassman to be their “mentor” — or whatever the term was. Basically someone to answer questions and give informal guidance. Mira had chosen her brother, obviously. But he could be pretty absent most of the time, which irritated Abby enough that he ended up taking over every time Mira needed something.
“Weren’t you supposed to be dumb? How did you even get into med school?!”
“Excuse me?! My grades were some of the best in the class, I only came behind your brother in high school.”
“Behind him, huh?” She waggled her eyebrows, never passing up the chance to tease him.
“Oh my God. How old are you? Five?” If he hadn’t been stuck with her for the last three hours, he could’ve sworn Mira was drunk. And maybe she was. Radiology was entirely to blame.
“God, I’m spending way too much time with you.” Mira shook her hair like that alone could stop her thoughts for a moment.
“I don’t make those kinds of jokes. You’re the one spending too much time with Zoey.” He shot back.
“She’s my roommate. Avoiding her would be impossible.”
“Alright, enough imaging for today.” Abby closed the book and grabbed her bag to put it inside.
“What? Why?”
“The joke about your brother gave it away.”
“Abbyyyy,” she whined — and he covered her mouth with his hand.
“It’s eleven-thirty, you’re in the boys’ dorm, and your brother isn’t here. Have some decorum, or people will start talking about us if they hear you.” He whispered, genuine concern slipping into his voice.
She nodded.
As soon as he removed his hand, she shouted even louder while grabbing her things to leave:
“Aabbbbyyyy!”
“Jesus, Mira!” He stood up behind her.
If no one had known she was in his room… they definitely knew now. Troublemaker, he thought.
…
Four years ago…
He knew Mira watched him with a certain frequency. Especially whenever he visited her house. Abby and another classmate used to spend Friday nights at Minsoo’s place — eating, gaming, or watching movies. Whatever helped them unwind after a long week of training and studying for the college entrance exams.
It was around then that they decided to start the film club. Some meetings took place in a room the school had authorized for the club — they liked it because they could use the projector. Other afternoons, the meeting happened at their friend’s house, especially when the movie was longer than two hours and they didn’t want to get home too late. That’s how Mira learned about the club.
Abby assumed she had zero interest in cinema. After the kitchen-door incident, he couldn’t help thinking she had only joined them to stare at him again. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
Once she joined, it was as if the club came to life — at least for him. For the boys, watching movies was just a way to forget reality for a while. But Abby had the bad habit of looking for hidden meanings in everything. And apparently, so did Mira.
That’s when they had their first argument.
The credits of American Beauty were rolling on the TV as they debated whether the movie did or did not have an open ending.
“It obviously didn’t,” Abby said. “We know who killed Lester.”
“But so many things are still unanswered! A film doesn’t end just because the main conflict is resolved!” she shot back.
“That’s exactly what defines the ending of a film!”
“Oh my God, are you stupid?” she muttered, already heading up the stairs toward her room.
“Excuse me?”
“Excused.” She slammed the door.
…
Present day…
“Is your boyfriend picking you up for the movie night today?” Zoey asked, while Mira frowned, confused.
“What boyfriend?”
“Oh, come on. The handsome guy from fifth semester.”
“Jesus Christ, Zoey. Abby is not handsome.”
“I never said it was Abby.”
Caught red-handed.
With a resigned sigh, Mira went back to rummaging through her closet, looking for something to wear for the traditional post-exam movie night.
“Seriously, the whole campus won’t shut up about ‘the girl screaming Abby’s name,’ and we both know who likes to visit the boys’ dorm every time she needs to talk to her senior.”
Mira snorted a laugh. At least they weren’t saying her name everywhere.
“All because you two don’t know how to text like normal humans in the 21st century,” Zoey went on, dropping onto Mira’s bed with a thud. “What movie are you guys watching today?”
“The Count of Monte Cristo,” Mira answered, heading toward the vanity.
“They still show that in theaters?”
“It’s a special screening. It’s revenge week.”
“Wait—seriously?” Zoey sat up.
“No, I was messing with you. But the special screening is real.” Mira finished her makeup just as someone knocked on the door and called her name.
“I think Mr. Handsome is here.”
“ZOEY!”
“Watch your tone, the walls here are thin. People might think you were the one screaming Abby’s name.”
“I hate you, you know that?!” Mira grabbed her jacket, cheeks still flushed, and left.
“I love you too!”
…
Her brother didn’t show up this time.
Abby said he had to go to the hospital to observe an emergency laparotomy — or something like that. Leaving the two of them completely alone to argue and get kicked out of the movie theater if they wanted.
When the movie ended, the staff member nearly congratulated them for behaving so well, and Mira and Abby laughed so hard their stomachs hurt.
“All that because of a woman…,” Mira began, commenting on the movie while they waited for their food, and Abby could already feel the peace fading.
“She was his fiancée.”
“I’m talking about his friend, Fernand. Imagine accusing your own friend of treason just to steal his woman?!”
Abby had to admit she was right. Sabotage was something he hoped he would never be capable of.
“But this adaptation is very different from the book and—”
“Stop. Please.”
“What?”
“We don’t discuss books here. Only movies.”
“Oh my god, Abby. You have the depth of a cereal bowl.”
He realized he loved annoying her. Maybe it was the adrenaline of the argument — or maybe the way her cheeks turned that cute shade of pink.
“If you want to discuss adaptations, we can do that next time with a movie whose book I’ve actually read. Let’s be fair. Something like Love, Rosie or Persuasion.”
“You’ve read Persuasion?!” Mira rarely got surprised, but this time her jaw actually dropped.
“For an elective last semester, yes. I have the book if you want to borrow it.”
And that’s how she ended up, once again, in the boys’ dorm after eleven thirty at night.
“For this assignment… could you choose the book? Or did it have to be a 19th-century classic?”
“I could choose. It was a project where I had to compare two stories: one from the 19th century and another from the 21st.”
Mira sat on his bed, studying the titles on the nightstand. “What are the similarities between Love, Rosie and Persuasion?”, she asked.
“How do you know I used Love, Rosie as the comparison?”
“It was the other book you mentioned when you said you’d seen the adaptation.”
She paid attention, he thought.
“In both stories, the couple takes forever to get together.”
They laughed.
“Years?”
“More than half a decade.”
“Ugh. I could never.”
“In Love, Rosie, it takes them around thirty years.”
“What?!”
“My professor said that was the point of the story.” Abby sat beside her.
“The point? The torture of waiting?”, Mira asked, trying not to look at him. Abby was very close, too close, and being alone with him in his dorm room wasn’t helping.
“Exactly.” He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, making her finally look up at him over her round glasses.
The room was warm, the yellow bedside lamp making the air feel even hotter, despite it being November.
“I think I’d hate that book,” Mira whispered.
“Why?” he murmured back, not pulling his hand away, instead sliding it down her neck, sending shivers through her.
“Something about waiting too long for something I want right now.” She leaned in first.
Abby removed her glasses and placed them on the nightstand, lowering her beneath him.
His shirt went first, followed by Mira’s dress.
“It really is better,” she said between breaths and bruised kisses.
“What is?”
“When the fun involves taking clothes off.”
…
The next day…
Her brother only got home very late that Saturday, giving Mira more than enough time to leave without leaving any trace that she had spent the night there.
“Abby, you should’ve seen it!” He walked excitedly into the room they shared. “I thought it was going to be a suprapubic laparotomy, something that would show just part of the intestine and the pelvic organs, but they had to extend the—” He stopped as he tossed his backpack onto the bed. Abby was slightly disheveled and shirtless, reading a book on his back.
“Did something happen?” Minsoo asked.
“No, why?” Abby tried to hide the nervousness in his voice. He had cleaned the entire room that morning right after Mira left and convinced himself there was nothing to hide.
“You’re usually studying or at the gym at this time, not lying down reading a book.”
“I’m just trying to switch up the routine.”
“…Alright.”
“Go on, I was listening.”
“Okay. Where was I? Oh! The pelvic organs.” Minsoo spent another ten minutes rambling about the surgery from the night before when he finally noticed something. “Abby?”
“Mm.”
“Why are my sister’s glasses on your nightstand?”
…
“I feel like Edmond Dantès,” Minsoo said.
“What? Gross! I’m your sister, not your fiancée,” Mira replied, sitting across from him and next to Abby in the cafeteria.
“You know what I meant.”
“No, I really don’t.”
“Fine, Mercédès Herrera.”
“I have to agree with her, that analogy was terrible,” Abby said, taking a long sip of his juice.
“I’m surrounded by traitors!”
“Just don’t plan a revenge plot and we’ll be fine,” Mira shot back, and Abby wrapped an arm around her.
“Disgusting.”
“We’ll pretend you don’t also turn into a lovesick puppy every time your girlfriend is around.”
“Pardon?”
“Forgiven.” they answered in unison.