ONE
LOST! - RM
“Oh my god.”Lia Mertola blinked away the last of the eyedrops that she’d used to soothe her dry eyes. She reached out blindly for her younger brother’s arm, gesturing for him to hand her the other thing he was holding for her while taking the eyedrops from her.
Lia pressed down on the head of the spray bottle. The moisturizing mist was cool and very lightly scented, and she could feel her parched skin soak up all that delicious moisture, even if it was only a temporary fix. It was in fact, so delicious that she sprayed her face one more time, moving the mist across her face evenly with her wrist.
“Oh my god,” she repeated, finally feeling like she could take a deep breath without her skin shrinking back into itself. “Smeeeellll.”
“What?” her brother, Teddy, asked beside her, one sarcastic eyebrow raised as he watched his older sister.
“You don’t know smeeelll?” Lia repeated, exaggerating each syllable nasally as she sprayed her brother’s face.Teddy’s skin must have been really dry too, since he didn’t flinch or jerk away, he simply let the moisture hit his skin while glaring at his sisterlike an annoyed cat. She sprayed him again. “Teddy, we just landed in Korea, you don’t know smeeellll?”
“Ate stoop, I don’t know smell!” Teddy flapped his hand in front of his face like he could swat away all that tea tree-scented goodness.
“I need to expand your second gen KPop education.” She tutted her lips and shook her head. “Parodies were a thing, and this one needs to live in your brain like it does mine.”
“The plane was not that dry.”
“My entire face would beg to differ.” Lia sighed dramatically, as she handed Teddy the face spray to put back in her travel kit, then retrieved the nasal spray. “Ate Frankie was so right. Things just start to dry up in your thirties.”
“Dry up…?” Teddy asked the thin air, but he dutifully placed the face spray back in the kit and handed it over to his sister. “What is happening.”
“And plane travel just makes it all worse.”
“Why are we talking about this?”
“It happens in the most random parts of your body.” Lia put the nasal spray back in the kit and took out her lip balm. “Your face, your nose, the skin on your legs, your vagina…”
“Am I dead?”
“And not to mention our reliance on caffeine,” Lia continued, finally zipping up the kit and squeezing her baby brother’s cheek before putting the entire thing away. “Also, we’ve both been up since 4AM. Probably a good idea for us to eat something before we get coffee. Remember Teddy, we’re both in our thirties now, and our stomachs are a delicate garden of probiotics, and?—”
“I must be dead,” Teddy said like he hadn’t heard a single thing his sister said. “Does this mean you go to Seoul when you go to hell?”
“Does this mean me coming with you on this trip is hell?” Lia wiped down her glasses with a proper lens cleaning cloth beforeputting them back on. Wow the sky was really that grey, huh. No wonder white people got seasonal depression. And this wasn’t even peak autumn yet!
“No.”
“And are you going to tell me who your secret KPop client is?”
“No,” Teddy repeated, pushing the cart that contained his luggage, her luggage, and some of his equipment, which had about fifteen “fragile” stickers stuck to it despite Teddy hand carrying the thing. Music producers. Can’t live with them, can’t understand why they need to bring so much stuff.
Although Lia couldn’t really complain—she had come to Seoul on Teddy’s invitation, his saling kit for this particular work adventure. She didn’t know much of anything about this trip, which was rare. All he told her was that he’d been hired by a second gen Korean band to work on a big comeback, that it would be a while, and how did one apply for a Korean visa?
“Why do you keep asking? You said you weren’t a KPop fan.”
“Just curious,” Lia lied, pulling her denim jacket closer to herself and stuffing her hands in her pockets, which gave her an excuse to not look at her brother. She definitely needed more layers than this. She was an old hand at denial, that long, long river in Egypt that she’d been sailing on for—what, five years now? It wouldn’t help to tell him that there were only a handful of second gen South Korean bands fully active on the KPop side of the industry, and even less who were due for a comeback. And East Genesis Project was currently filming a vacation special in Palawan.
She didn’t say any of that, of course.
“It’s not every day your siblings conspire—I say that with love—to get you on a sad girl vacation.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” What was there to talk about, really? Her life was life-ing itself outside of her control, and she wasn’t dealing with it well. It was something that happened to everyone (probably) and she just needed to not think about it. Hence, Korea.
She lost her job. Which, after ten years of steady rising through ranks and the stability of a salary (less taxes and contributions, which was a lot), was terrifying in this economy. Then there was—ontop of the usual things—friends on social media getting engaged, getting married, having kids, having lives, unprecedented times, shitty presidents, living in a country where politicians could give less of a fuck about their people. Lia could hardly blame herself for not wanting to leave the house some days.
