a complaint is already halfway up her throat, almost to her lips, when she bites it down. the warmth a very necessary welcome to limbs that were nearly tinted blue from the cold.
does lili say her thanks — no, instead she smiles and says, “but this coat doesn’t match my dress.” all while buttoning the coat up and swallowing herself into its warmth. admitting defeat in the most quietest of ways.
it was parker, she thought waving a white flag this once in his presence would be fine.
her first white flag of the year — who knew it would happen this soon.
she muddles over the information parker passes over, almost whining as he skips over the best parts — “okay, but what about the dirty stuff, they sound nice and all but they have to have some cons, right?”
and it wasn’t lili if she didn’t have a good pro and con for everyone she met. like for parker — pro: he was kind, con: he was so kind he was a bit naggy in a do what i say or it will break my heart kinda way and lili didn’t like to make a habit of letting people down like that.
least of all the people she thought of as hers.
Parker plays up the pain of Lili’s kick with a hop away and a small hiss, though barely any pain registered. He had certainly been kicked harder by his real sisters, but even as he had somehow become the older brother of some, especially the group he was meeting up with for Lunar New Year, he couldn’t pretend to be completely mature.
“It’s the girl who’s going to be sick the rest of the break,” he comments with a roll of his eyes. He is already shrugging off his coat and forcing it over Lili’s shoulders with the roughness of someone who already knows they’re going to be refused but has no intention of taking their coat back. A bit of his red button-down can be seen between his scarf and the thick half-zip he had on under his coat; it’s warm enough for this distance to the restaurant, though he is not thinking about how he’s getting home yet. Maybe a drink or two will help. “They’ll like you just fine as long as you’re not sick over dinner.”
He tips his head to indicate she should follow him but in truly Lili fashion she’s already pulling him along. “You really don’t need to impress them too much; they’re trainees like you are— or well… one of them is.” It’s been so long since he’s talked to Yuxi that sometimes he forgets she more than six months prior. “Yichen is really nice, and Yuxi…” he faulters in his steps to think of the best way to describe the other girl. “Honestly, I think you’ll like her. She’s a wannabe cool girl like you.”
There really aren't very many people around the point they meet up, but the closer they get to Daerim-dong, the more people seem to pop up. While a good deal of the Korean residents are with their families, the official Chinatown shows more life with red and gold decorations.
lili had always been an only child.
( and she definitely acted like one, too )
fortunate for her as she never wanted siblings and she had always wanted more attention than any of her respective legal guardians could ever give. but a sibling arises in the form of one parker su. it was funny, really. how quick they clicked, how odd that despite being from the same state — sure, california was big but it wasn’t that big — that despite it all, she found his presence to be not as annoying as she would have expected. is this what a sibling relationship was like for others?
( she wonders if her grandma would adopt parker, too )
rather than seeing him, lili hears him and can only guess to what is causing his burst of concern. and while it wasn’t unwarranted, lili — sincerely — couldn’t find what was wrong with her outfit.
did he find it offensive that she was wearing a dress from last season?
she snorts, toe of her heel meeting with his ankle gently as a jab for his nagging. “lilian?” an amused brow rises, “who’s that?”
then she frowns at his fussing — hands making no move to do as he says because this ensemble was not meant for a coat to cover ( the coat was but a mere accessory to withstand the chill but other than that, lili was bound by the inherent belief that she’d rather die pretty than badly dressed ) — her hand running through her hair as she lets his words go from one ear to the other before lips purse and she groans, “you said i was going to be meeting your friends, of course i had to make a good impression. don't i look like someone you'd want to meet your friends?”
sure, her personality was rough around the edges but lili assumed that a pretty dress and smile would at least soften those jagged parts — kind of a trojan horse a la miu miu sort of thing?
yes, that shall be her optimal reasoning for wearing the sheerest dress possible on what could be the coldest day of february. tugging on his arm, she pulls him along, amidst his english woes, “okay, okay — i hear you. i’ll make sure to stay close to the radiator at the restaurant. let’s go — like you said, it’s freezing.” at least her gloves could fight off the frostbite, she thinks.
@lgclili and parker spend some "sibling" time together
At this point, it was pretty par for the course for Parker not to go home during any breaks, even when he had them. For as long as the flight was back to California, the time that was typically allotted seemed way too short, but as a trainee, it had seemed more doable just based on how much he missed his family; however, that had been simply out of the question this year. Even more so when the Seollal break was only four days, but this year Lunar New Year seems a little less lonely. For one, he had Hyuk to spend time with, but more than that, somewhere along the line, he managed to sort a dinner together with some of his favorite people: Yichen, Yuxi, and Lili.
It was about a quarter to six when Parker’s cab pulled up not too far from Daerim-dong. Even when a good deal of Koreans were taking the time with their own families, he could still see a few people making their way here in there. Thanking the driver, Parker adjusted his scarf and looked around, hoping to spot a Lili. She hadn’t met either Yichen or Yuxi before and had insisted on meeting up with him beforehand, a request that Parker couldn’t refuse. Even if they weren’t related, all three held a special familial place in Parker’s heart, but especially Lili.
“Ah! Are you crazy!” he called out when he called her. Parker’s furrowed his bows and switched to English to sound more like his own mother. “Lillian, you’re going to catch a cold! Yes, your dess is cute. Button up your coat!”