Chapter 64: Arriving in Endless Succession

"Hello, Oppa. We are Minjeong's friends."
Kim Chaewon, Kim Chaewhyun, and Ning Ning politely bowed and greeted Myeong-yeon.
Every time Kim Minjeong heard her friends address her uncle as Oppa, her teeth would ache. For some inexplicable reason, she had suddenly dropped an entire generation in seniority.
"Hey, shouldn't you guys be calling him uncle, too?" Kim Minjeong decided to put up a brief struggle, though it yielded no results.
The three girls nudged one another, their eyes entirely fixed on Myeong-yeon.
A handsome, domestic-style older guy—missing out on staring at him a few more times would be a huge loss.
Myeong-yeon pretended not to know what his niece was worrying about. "Minjeong, it's fine. However your friends want to address me is totally fine. We can each use our own terms."
"Minjeong, Oppa is right." Because she had been here once before, Kim Chaewon spoke with greater ease.
"Come on in and sit down. Chaewon, we met last time." Myeong-yeon beckoned the three girls inside. "Kim Chaewhyun, right? May I ask, are you related to Chaewon?"
"No, we aren't. We just have very similar names."
Kim Chaewhyun had been a bit nervous at first, feeling both the awkwardness of meeting a celebrity and the shyness of encountering a handsome man, but after making a small joke, she felt much better.
Her name and Kim Chaewon's were indeed quite similar.
Myeong-yeon then greeted the last girl in Chinese, "Hello, Ning Yizhuo."
"Y-you speak Chinese?" Taken completely by surprise, Ning Yizhuo forgot to use any honorifics altogether.
"My Chinese is pretty good." Myeong-yeon smiled and explained, "I heard from Minjeong that you pronounce your name Ning Yijiao. I was wondering what kind of name that was, but the three characters of Ning Yizhuo sound very pretty."
"Thank you~"
Ning Yizhuo's face turned as red as a tomato.
A fourteen-year-old girl had very little defense against Myeong-yeon's warm smile; a seasoned playboy usually possessed quite a few natural talents.
Kim Minjeong looked to the left and then to the right, feeling that the current situation was entirely wrong.
Today was clearly her birthday, so why was the attention of these three troublemakers focused entirely on her uncle? Valuing romance over friendship, she thought.
And that object of romance was her own elder!
"Minjeong, go get some drinks for your friends."
"Oh, I know."
Kim Minjeong dragged her three useless friends into her room. If they stayed outside any longer, who knew what kind of embarrassing things might happen.
Besides, the little one certainly didn't want to hear them calling Myeong-yeon "Oppa."
"Wow, Myeong-yeon Oppa is so handsome," Kim Chaewhyun exclaimed the moment she entered the room, excitedly grabbing Kim Minjeong's hand.
"That's my uncle."
"I thought he looked really handsome on TV, but in person, he's even more striking."
"That's my uncle."
"This is already my second time seeing Myeong-yeon Oppa. Certified."
"That's my uncle!"
Kim Minjeong had to raise her voice a notch. Why hadn't she realized before that her newly made friends were actually a bunch of looks-obsessed fans?
Kim Chaewon asked gossip-for-gossip, "Minjeong, does your uncle like younger girls?"
She was the oldest in their tight-knit group of best friends, already seventeen years old this year, not so young anymore.
"No, he doesn't," Kim Minjeong snapped back defensively. Her uncle's circle was filled with gorgeous women; how could he possibly fancy little girls who lacked everything?
Kim Ji-soo and Im Nayeon—those two unnies were already stunning, and Myeong-yeon hadn't even made a move on them yet.
Her uncle was a man of great moral integrity.
Lee Elijah: *Little girl, did you even notice what brand of lipstick that was?*
"Minjeong probably just doesn't want us calling her our little aunt." Ning Yizhuo was practically cackling with amusement.
Fifteen- or sixteen-year-old girls gathering together and making jokes like this was completely normal.
"Hey Minjeong, you're guarding him so closely against us, what are you going to do if someone else snatches him away?"
"My uncle would never!"
...
Kim Ji-soo was the second to arrive.
"Why is it so lively in Minjeong's room?"
"She invited some friends over." Myeong-yeon handed a spoon to his good friend. "Ji-soo, try the seaweed soup I made."
Kim Ji-soo poked her head forward to take a look inside the pot. "You made this for Minjeong?"
"Yeah, it's her birthday."
"At least you have a heart." Kim Ji-soo knew what was going on in Myeong-yeon's mind; it was nothing more than feeling bad about hurting the little one's feelings on her birthday and wanting to find an opportunity to make up for it.
"Taste it and see how my cooking is."
"You just want to know if it tastes better than Minjeong's, right? How old are you, still competing with a kid."
Kim Ji-soo and Myeong-yeon had grown up together since childhood, belonging to the kind of friendship where you only needed the other to twitch a muscle to know how many bowel movements they had; at a single glance, she could tell what this guy was up to.
Myeong-yeon hurriedly covered his friend's mouth. "Keep it down, don't let Minjeong hear."
"Hey, take your hand away." Kim Ji-soo instinctively struggled for a bit, only to find that he didn't budge at all. "Ahem, don't use those taekwondo moves on me."
"Sorry, force of habit."
The moment he heard Kim Ji-soo speak, the image of Choi Ae-ra subconsciously floated into his mind.
That character had Kim Ji-won's face and Kim Ji-soo's personality.
Kim Ji-soo finally cleared her throat, scooped up a spoonful of seaweed soup, and tasted it. "Not as delicious as Minjeong's."
"You only took one bite."
"One bite is plenty." Kim Ji-soo couldn't be bothered to spare this guy any face.
"By the way, there's something else I want to tell you."
"Spit it out."
"Today... Jiwon Unnie is coming, too."
Myeong-yeon sighed. He had regretted agreeing to that unnie the moment he got back; putting someone on the blacklist was something he could do at any second.
Kim Ji-soo looked a little surprised. "Wait, if I didn't misunderstand, that means your ex-girlfriend is coming to your niece's birthday party. Is that what you're saying?"
Saying that whole chain out loud was actually quite a mouthful.
"That's about it." Myeong-yeon nodded.
"Did something else happen behind the scenes that I don't know about?"
Myeong-yeon thought about it. Apart from casting Lee Elijah aside, nothing else seemed to have happened. "No."
"Then there's nothing I can do to help you. Jiwon Unnie probably just can't bear to let you go."
"It's precisely because she can't let go that it's terrifying."
Kim Ji-soo rolled her eyes hard. This guy's bad habits—probably only she could understand what he was talking about.
When Kim Minjeong came out, she discovered that Kim Ji-soo had already arrived. As expected, this unnie's appearance elicited gasps of awe from the three little girls. After all, BLACKPINK was a monster rookie girl group riding a massive wave of popularity.
Sure enough, an entertainer's friends were all entertainers; this trip had definitely not been wasted.
Seeing the pretty young girls, Kim Ji-soo instinctively looked at Myeong-yeon first, only to realize a second later that they were Kim Minjeong's friends.
With more and more people gathering at the house, it was getting a bit crowded to accommodate everyone, especially since the two-room and one-living-room layout was still a bit small. Therefore, Myeong-yeon led the bustling group ahead of schedule to the restaurant where they would be dining.
Kim Ji-won and Im Nayeon would arrive directly at the location shortly.
Outside the restaurant, those two had already bumped into each other.
"Kim Jiwon-ssi?"