“Mate,” he scoffed, “you’ve never tried to learn English. Believe me, it’s harder.”
“Never said it was a competition, chum.”
“Life is a competition.”
I sighed. “I’m getting that idea.”
“Anyway, enough about me. Tell me about you.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Tell me about how you’re doing at being a real journo.”
“How do you about that, by the way?” I didn’t bother trying to hide my surprise.
“I know everything, mate.”
“That’s creepy, Min Taeyang,” I scolded.
He laughed. “I’m kidding. I only know because I follow you on social media.”
“Do you?” I asked, astounded. You’d think I’d have noticed a name like that popping up in my follows.
As if he heard my train of thought, Tae clarified, “I use a different name for my casual account. No profile picture, that kind of thing. I saw you linked some of your articles. So, tell me; how’s it all going?”
That made sense. I knew some of GVibes had throw-away accounts, so I guessed this shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
“Wow, okay. Well, it’s going great actually,” I admitted, although it was still a struggle not to down play it. “I’ve written a handful of articles and they’ve all done pretty well, I think. I mean, no Pulitzer's yet, but it’s early days.”
“I read that first one you did. Not bad, Pom.”
I flushed at the unexpected praise.
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
“Hows your mum?”
“Better actually. Or, rather, she’s completed her course of chemo and radiotherapy. So, now we wait to see what the scans look like.”
“Hey, that’s great!”
“We’ll see.”
Unthinking, I raised my thumb nail to my mouth, before I heard Becka’s voice scolding me in my head. A hard habit to break.
Quietly, I wanted to celebrate, but it felt too soon, and too much like tempting fate. She seemed better, but… I couldn’t bear it if it turned out to be false hope, so I just chose the nearest form of neutrality I could.
“Message received,” he said. “What else is going on in Kaiya Thompson’s life? Did you notice I know your surname now? Buddy?”
I snorted. “Yes, well done, you.” I inhaled deeply, hesitating before saying- “I enrolled in college. For journalism.”
“What?” He exclaimed, loud enough to force me to pull the phone away from my ear. “Ky, that’s fucking amazing!”
His praise made me feel like I’d just graduated from Oxford with a distinction, as opposed to enrolling in an online course at a polytechnic.
“Yeah, yeah, alright,” I mumbled.
“I bet Jihoon is sweating bullets that his missus is suddenly part of the enemy hoard, huh?” He chuckled, and even I let out a wry huff.
