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Nani awoke to a dark room save the small light coming from someone’s phone.  She crawled out of bed and headed towards the light source.

“Jinie?”

Jinie jumped in surprise and was quick to hit the home button on her phone.  This went unnoticed by Nani.

“What time is it?”

“Um…” Jinie looked down at her phone. “Midnight.”

That meant it was two in the morning back home.  What was Jinie doing awake?

“Why are you still up?”

“I wasn’t tired,” Jinie shrugged.

“I see.  Do we have any food?”

“Jae and I only bought a few things tonight.  We figured we could get some other things if we needed them.  We got some muffins.  Do you want one of those?”

Nani nodded. “Anything.  I’m starving.”

——————–

The next day, the four of them hit the town hard.  They visited nearly every shopping center they could find, and Nani was sure they’d spent more than they should’ve.  Jae insisted they try the Japanese restaurant they’d found at one of the centers.  So, they were stopping there for lunch.  Nani was just happy to get off her feet.  She could tell Jinie wasn’t too happy.  That girl seemed to be able to run off of water alone.  But the rest of them needed to stop, so they did.

They were cramming their mouths with egg rolls and sushi twenty minutes later.

“You know, Jae, you have an excellent eye for restaurants.” Nani mumbled around a bite of rice.

“Well…you know my mom is a terrible cook, so I had to eat out a lot,” Jae mumbled back.

“Yes…we know.” Jordan replied. “Don’t you remember that one time she tried to grill hot dogs when we were all over and we ended up having to order pizza?”

Jae paused. “Yes…I remember it well.  That was the first time I’d brought girls over.”

“Ha…I still remember your sister looking at me like she was going to bite me when I told her her drawing looked weird…” Jinie commented, staring down at her plate.

“I mean…I can’t really blame you.  It was a freaky drawing,” Nani laughed.

“True that,” Jae shoved another piece of sushi in his mouth.

——————–

That evening, Nani settled on the couch next to Jordan.  They’d be alone tonight at the hotel.  Jae and Jinie were both going to visit old friends in town.  Jae’s best friend from primary school lived here, and Jinie had some mysterious dinner date that she refused to say more about.

But in all honestly it didn’t really come as too much of a surprise.  Jinie was the type of person to do things and be mysterious about them.  Then she’d tell you on a later date what had happened.

Nani and Jordan spent their night surfing channels.  Every so often, they’d come across a show they’d like and watch the rest of the episode, but other than that they just crammed their face with popcorn and joked about how they were being left out of Jae and Jinie’s outings.

“Think of it this way,” Jordan offered, “at least we’re all still single.  I’d be so jealous if one of them had a date tonight instead.”

Nani laughed. “Yes, that’s true.”

——————–

By the time the door creaked open at 11, Nani was half asleep.  Jordan had been sound asleep hours ago.  Nani sat up slightly to see if both Jinie and Jae were back, but ultimately gave up and lay back down.  She was asleep within minutes.

The next morning, she was awoken by a ping of someone’s phone.  After a bit of investigating, she discovered it to be Jinie’s phone.  She’d gotten a text.  The contact name was completely different than the other ones Nani had seen in Jinie’s phone.  Not only was it in Korean, but it also had a few emojis next to it.  And Nani knew enough Korean to know what it read.