❝ Share a personal problem and ask your partner's advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.❞

"Oh." Yumi bit her lip, wondering if she should say it. The biggest thing outside of her problems with her parents at the moment sounded pretty pathetic in her head. "I don't think it's really worth it..."

"Nothing is considered stupid as far as the confessions we're doing right now go."

"Yeah, but..."

"Are you afraid I'll judge you? Because I'm afraid of the same, but I'll go for it anyway."

"So you're saying your problem is kind of dumb too?"

"Yep. So what's stopping you? You know I won't call it that. Because chances are that it is serious to you. Some things may sound dumb but matter. Go for it."

"Okay..." she took a deep breath. "I'm jealous of my cousins."

"You are?"

She continued, not allowing him to question that. "They've always been the golden kids of the family. The ones who've never stepped a foot outside the ridiculous rules and boundaries their parents have set them no matter how much they hate it. The ones my grandparents can't stop fawning over and telling me to be more like. It's as if because I don't have siblings, they're the replacements. They know I hate it and they hold it over my head, too. 'You'll never be as good as us, Yumi,' 'you will never win their approval going the way you are,' crap like that. Always. Whenever I see them. It's unbearable."

"So it's resentment, too, isn't it?"

"Yes." She stared at the window without seeing it. "Every time they're here, I try to get out of the house as fast as I can. Just seeing them makes me so annoyed and ruins my entire mood. I remember my birthday last year. It was supposed to be just me and my friends, but of course my mom had to invite those—" she paused, stopping herself from pointless name-calling "—them. They're family, but I was going to go out with my friends before the party the family was having that night. She forced me to take a few of them along and it was absolute hell. The whole time we were walking there..."

"They sound nasty. Like my sister."

"Honestly, your sister sounds like she'd get along great with them."

"Do you want me to assess your feelings about it?"

"Sure."

"I think you're justified to feel jealous and resentful," Jaemin announced. "Mainly since they're being jerks about it. But also, and this might sound hypocritical coming from me, you should try to...reconcile with them? Did you ever have a good relationship?"

"Nope. As far as I can remember, it's always been like this."

"I see...well, I think you should try to mend it, then. They're still family. And if that doesn't work, remind yourself that you're still better than them. You're not the one being a jerk about everything, are you?"

"No."

"Then? I think you have something to pride yourself on!"

"Okay, you've proved your point," Yumi said, laughing. "You're adorable when you get like this, you know. Proving your point with logic and summarizing everything."

"Glad to know you think I'm adorable," Yumi heard the smile in his voice as he said it. "Ready to hear my dumb problem?"

"In your words: some things may sound dumb but it matters. Give me a glimpse into the bad side of your life yet again."

"When you put it that way..." he paused, as if to gather his thoughts. Yumi let him stay silent for a few seconds, taking the chance to resettle her position on the bed, facing her closet door instead. In the semidarkness, it was hard to make out, but the pictures of herself in her childhood with her parents, a few shots with her friends, another huge one of the art club members with her art piece that won second place, provided some amount of comfort to the heaviness in her chest.

"I fought very badly with my sister last night, and it wasn't pretty," he said so quietly that it was hard to make out what he said at first. "It was about how our parents treat us differently. I told her in a moment of anger that she had no right to keep ragging on me when I'm already so weighed down by what I have to deal with from my parents. I told her how I hated the way they keep scrutinizing every detail of my mistakes, how I can't take the pressure much more before I break. And she said..."

"Jaemin, what did she say?" Yumi asked softly when nearly a minute passed in silence.

"She said I deserve all that I get from them." The hurt and the betrayal was so starkly evident in his voice that it hurt Yumi in a way, too. "She said I deserve it because I am the one who gets even that much attention from them. She said because they just let her do whatever these days...she resents me for that, Yumi. She resents me and she's horrible to me at every given chance because of that. It descended into a shouting and screaming match my mother had to come upstairs and intervene. Nothing we said was particularly horrible in the sense of name-calling, but the way it struck our sensitivities, I regret many of the things I said. What if she's right, Yumi? What if I do deserve it?"

"No, she is not," Yumi said firmly. "She's absolutely incorrect. What have you done to deserve it? Nothing. You only fight with her because she keeps at it, isn't it?" a murmur of assent. "Then what? Because your parents apparently can't do their job right, you're supposed to deserve all the bad things you get from all three of them? No, Jaemin, that will never be right.

"I understand your sister's resentment, I really do. But she's going about it the wrong way. Has she ever tried to talk to you about it?"

"No. I never realized until last night, either."

"Bottom line is: you both really need to talk to your parents about the way things are at the moment in your family. Tell them about their unfairness, even if they don't want to hear it. I believe that we must always try to do right by our parents, but to the level of ridiculousness. If they're doing something wrong, they should know."

"Isn't that what you should be doing, too?"

"It's what I'll be doing tomorrow night, after my cousins go to bed," she said firmly. "I should have done this long ago, but talking to you for so long tonight has given me so much more courage than I thought I would have. Anyway, will you, do it?"

"I will if you will. We're making a compromise here."

"I will. Will you?"

"Yes," Jaemin said. His voice wavered slightly, letting some of his fear and nervousness out—sounding almost exactly like the fear and nervousness churning around inside her at the moment—but in it Yumi heard the note of truth and determination. "I'll finally step up and say what I need to. We both will."

"That's right," she said, imagining the worst possibilities, not at all deterred. "We will."

A long, long silence—almost five minutes. Yumi could only imagine her horrific phone bill within a couple of days, but that was okay. She could handle one obstacle at a time. This silence with Jaemin, it felt nice. Even if he wasn't physically there, it felt like it. It felt like he was right there next to her, his arm around her, his soft breathing in her ear and indication of his comfort at being with her.

Idealistic and kind of assuming, but she knew he wouldn't disagree with her.

"Hey, Yumi?" Jaemin finally spoke, his voice low and affectionate. "I love you. Will you accept me?"

"I love you, too," she responded, curling into a little ball, a wide smile on her face. "And yes. I accept you. Tomorrow's hang-out after the mural thing can be our first date."

"Movies and a romantic walk around the city?"

"It's a deal," she agreed, thinking about her idiotic and lovesick her smile must look. It didn't matter, though. Anyone, even her parents, could walk in, and she could never be embarrassed of this smile that she wore in Jaemin's presence. "Good night, Jaemin. See you tomorrow."

"Good night, Yumi." A click and the beep signaling the end of the phone call.

For a long time after the call ended, Yumi lay on her bed on her back, staring up at the ceiling, imagining what her first date with him would be like. Imagining the smile on his face when they met up at school tomorrow. The goodbyes they'd exchange when it was time to call it a day.

The smiles and kisses again when they met up for their first date as an official couple. Oh, yes. She could lie here fantasizing about that date for the whole night.

✧✧✧

WORD COUNT: 1541

A/N: epilogue + note will be up as soon as possible ❤️