-Three months later-

“Umma!!” I heard my daughter call me from the living room “Umma! Come play!”

“Just a minute!” I told her from the kitchen where I was finishing up the dishes from lunch.

I walked into the living room and sat on the floor playing house with Hana. Jonghyun had bought her a large doll house a few weeks ago after he saw it in a toy store on his way home from work. Jonghyun had returned to work two weeks after bringing Hana home while I had quit my job as an idol stylist in order to stay home with our daughter. Jonghyun wrote and composed songs for a major entertainment company with his best friends Onew and Minho.  It was a perfect arrangement for the two of us. Staying at home allowed for Hana to get all the attention she needed and deserved and Jonghyun made more than enough money to keep us comfortable. I felt like I was living the dream.

About a month ago Alice had passed away. Though we knew it was going to happen eventually there was no way for us to prepare ourselves mentally for the sadness we felt. This was the woman who had given us the biggest blessing of our lives and she had left us. We held a candlelight memorial for her and invited all her friends and to our surprise even her students attended. We were really surprised when Onew, Minho, and my younger "brother" (he was more like my best friend since birth and we just called each other brothers since we were always together) Taemin showed up too. Everyone said kind things about Alice and it brought tears to my eyes to see how many lives this woman had touched in her 30 years on Earth. I hoped that by the time I die I can touch as many lives as she had. After the candlelight memorial Jonghyun, Hana, and I went to America so we could bury her with her husband. We felt that since she never kept in contact with her family that the least we could do was give her a proper burial.

Hana never really understood what was going on, she was still too young for her mind to fully process it. All she knew was that Aunt Alice had to go somewhere far away to be with her uncle, and even though she was gone, she would always be watching over her. And for the time being Jonghyun and I felt that this was an appropriate explanation. We planned on explaining everything to Hana once she got just a little bit older.

It was almost time for Hana’s 6th birthday. It was so funny to us how much she had grown just in the three months we had her. I had already had to buy her new shoes because her feet grew so quickly. However, I didn’t mind, I loved getting to show off my beautiful daughter and buy her new clothes. She enjoyed it too, I could tell she was going to be a very girly girl as she got older. She loved the color blue and obsessed over sparkly things. If she could have things her way, every item in her closet would be sparkly.

“Umma, can we watch Mulan when Appa comes home?” Hana asked me in fluent English.

Alice had taught Hana both English and Korean, so our daughter was fluent in both. Since she was so bright, sometimes she would get bored by things other kids her age would struggle with. We had learned this early on when we discovered our daughter knew how to read and write in English and had learned simple math. Both Jonghyun and I had been stunned but also insanely proud of her.

In school she had no problem keeping up. They had begun learning the Korean alphabet last year in the first grade and now she was learning to spell simple words. She was so smart that sometimes she didn’t even need Jonghyun and my help. Regardless, we would still sit at the table with her while she did her homework and when she did need help, we would jump in. We still marveled at how perfect our daughter is.

“Of course we can watch Mulan with Appa. But only after you finish your homework.” I told her

“Okay! I’m going to go do it now then!” She chirped running into the kitchen grabbing her Blues Clues backpack on the way.

I just laughed and walked into the kitchen and began making dinner while she worked. Every so often I would glance at her to see how she was doing. This time she was leaning over her paper, pencil in hand, writing something with her tongue sticking out, completely concentrated on what she was doing. It was so cute I had to take out my phone and take a picture. That’s when a knock came on the door.

“Coming!” I shouted on my way to the door

I opened the door only to have someone grab me into a bear hug knocking the breath out of me and catching me completely off guard.

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A/N:

I feel very accomplished right now, I have uploaded 4 chapters in one day and am working on writing a 5th chapter! I already have subscribers too! This makes me happy :)

So my thought process when I was writing this:

I thought that when it came to developing Hana's personality that she should be very smart. I also felt like since her parents were from America and they spoke English, that she should be able to speak both and I thought she probably would've been taught how to read and write in English too. Since children that are bilingual or multilingual tend to be smarter (i.e. higher scores on verbal and written tests) and they are better at multitasking, better focus, they tend to be more creative and are better at problem solving and have better logic skills (makes me happy that I understand Spanish :) I'm self concious about speaking it but I can definitely read and write it. Now I'm learning French and my Spanish is just messing with me :p). Can you tell I did research just to be sure I had my facts right?

As far as Alice's death goes, I wasn't too sure how to "kill her off" (I can't think of a kinder way to phrase that). I did use some personal experiences to write about her death. I had a very close family friend (he's been friends with my mom & aunts since they were all in high school) who had 3 brain tumors and had brain cancer. He sadly ended up passing away last August, so I used his attitude towards life to make up Alice's personality (omg, I'm about to cry!). The candlelight vigil was also personal experience, I have lost 7 friends since my sophmore year of high school (two within a week of each other) and I am now a sophmore in college, so I tried to incorporate that into that "scene". The student's showing up to the funeral was taken from my friend Bryton's funeral (hit by a drunk driver last year while playing with his 5 yr old neice and 3 yr old nephew in his front lawn at 1 pm. All three of them ended up passing away), he taught at a local dance studio and every single student at the studio, whether they knew him or not, showed up (all 250 of them).  As far as her being buried at the cemetery, my great-grandpa died in WW2 so I asked my grandma how that process works. I tried my best to be as considerate as possible when writing about Alice and her husband because I know that some people have experienced this sort of thing before. 

Okay enough with the sad part! I told you I would INTRODUCE 2min and Onew in this chapter and I did :) The next chapter will have more of them in it I've already written that part!

Anyway, feel free to leave comments and I would love to hear any ideas you guys may have about what I should add into my story :)

PICTURE SPAM TIME :)

<--- le truth!!