Welcome to Your Last Race (Street Racers #3)

31. Jungkook

Our apartment is, as usual, busy since morning. Yeeun and Wooshik are doing their thing at the table in the living room, Taehyung is hanging around before therapy, watching Car Battles, and I am hanging over the phone. Because yesterday I met my sister, and we're supposed to get to know each other. I guess I agreed to it, without a clue how to do it or how to bring myself to do it.

Yeeun got her phone number yesterday, and I've been trying to do something with it for an hour now.

I don't have a problem with her. Maybe it could actually be cool to get to know each other (a hypothesis), considering she seems like someone I'd get along with. The problem is that she reminds me of everything I don't want to be reminded of. Her fault or not, she reminds me of our parents, of the fact she was supposed to be my replacement, of the fact I was supposed to not care. I was never supposed to care.

It's much harder than I thought it would be. Because what do you do with an eighteen year old sister you've met for the first time? What do you do with your siblings in general? Are we supposed to be kind to each other? Bicker? Fight? I. Don't. Know. I don't even have anyone to compare it to. Yeeun is an only child. So is Wooshik. Taehyung and Yoongi are a special case. Hyun shouldn't even be called an older brother.

I've been an only child myself for twenty seven years. And I should still be a goddamn only child.

"Jungkook!" Yeeun calls from the living room. When I walk in, she's stretching out her arm, phone in her hand.

"To you," she says. She and Wooshik are playing Scrabble.

I stop in the middle of the room and look at her, as if she was going to help me not take that call. I blink and she makes that 'just take this goddamn phone and talk' face. And I make the 'what am I supposed to say' face. And she drops her head, shaking it, so I give in and take the phone, carrying it back to the kitchen.

"Hello?"

"Yeeun told me you've been hanging over the phone for a while now."

I sigh to myself. "Yeah, I'm waiting for an important call."

Sunhee scoff. "From me, I know."

She's... okay, she's kinda funny sometimes.

"I was wondering," she says, "if you could take me to see grandma and grandpa. And our uncle, maybe."

"Today?"

"Yes, today. Now, preferably. Yeonjun is working, and I'm bored. I could find a car and go there myself but I don't know Seoul that well, you know."

"Uh, I-"

"Unless you're busy. Or don't want to."

"No, I... we can go. Sure. Have you met them before?"

"No. Only spoke with them on the phone from time to time."

"Okay. I'll... pick you up, then."

"Okay."

"Okay."

"God, Jungkook, stop doing that." She laughs. "Don't be so scared of me."

"I'm not scared of you." I'm scared of myself.

"I'll be ready in fifteen minutes," she says and the call ends.

Before I leave, I ask for encouragement, and I get a choir of 'you're not gonna fuck it up'. It does nothing to make me calmer, but I appreciate the efforts. I only remind myself I'm old enough not to be a coward now, and that I've done things scarier than this, and then I leave.

After 10 minutes, I park in front of the building. Yeeun did some professional searching last night and found Sunhee's Instagram account, which has clearly been directed by our parents up until now.