Super Fake Love Song - David Yoon Page 0,4

was working, even though it was a Sunday. She wore a cream-colored work blouse incongruously paired with yoga pants and horrible orange foam clogs, because Video meetings are from the waist up.

“I’m not a nerd,” I said from behind my face shield. “I’m an innovator for nerds.”

“Right, Jesus, okay,” said Mom, hands raised.

By the time Monday evening came around, I was up to version twelve of the Raiden’s Spark. I turned off the lights. I aimed my hand at the door, thumbed a button, and let fly a ragged cone of neon-bright wires.

The wires streaked across the stone chamber in a brilliant flash and wrapped Gunner’s steel helm before he could even begin a backswing of his bastard sword. The rest of my party cowered in awe as a nest of lightning enveloped Gunner’s armored torso, turning him into a marionette gone mad with jittering death spasms, with absolutely no hope for a saving throw against this: a +9 magic bonus attack.

The wires of Raiden’s Spark retracted smoothly into the spring mechanism via a small hand reel. Gunner lay steaming on the flagstone.

I turned the lights back on. I flipped my face shield up. I blinked back into my room.

I opened my lab book, which I had meticulously decorated into the hammered-iron style of medieval blacksmithery.

DIY FANTASY FX—SUNNY DAE

From the tiny arms of a tiny standing knight I took a tiny sword that was not a sword but a pen, and muttered words as I wrote them.

“Raiden’s Spark, success.”

Fakery

You’re not wearing that,” said Mom.

“I always wear this,” I said.

“Not to dinner at the club, you’re not,” said Mom. She had traded her usual WFH yoga pants for a long gray wool skirt.

I looked down at my clothes. Glowstick-green vintage Kazaa tee shirt. Cargo shorts the color, and shape, of potatoes.

Dad appeared in a suit and tie, which is what he always wore. He put down his phone, sighed at my room and its many white plastic storage containers, at the newly completed Raiden’s Spark, and at me. He shook his head.

“Still with the toys,” he murmured to Mom. “Shouldn’t Sunny be into girls by now?”

“The book said kids mature at their own pace,” murmured Mom back.

“I hear everything you’re saying,” I said. “And the Raiden’s Spark is hardly a toy.”

Dad went back to his phone. Dad also worked twenty-four-hour days. Dad and Mom worked at the same company, which they also owned and operated.

“We’re at the club tonight,” said Mom. “Please wear slacks and a button-up and a blazer and argyle socks and driving loafers.”

“And underwear and skin and hair and teeth,” I said.

“And a tie,” said Dad, eyes locked to his screen.

“Get your outfit in alignment—now, please,” said Mom, and turned her attention back to her buzzing phone.

I changed my clothes, hissing. Then I prepared to descend the stairs. I hated stairs. People slipped and fell down stairs. Our old place back in Arroyo Plato had not been cursed with stairs.

Gray, my older brother, once called me fifteen going on fifty.

He didn’t call me anything now.

* * *

—

Dad’s blue-for-boys Inspire NV wound silently through the spaghetti streets of our neighborhood: Rancho Ruby.

Rancho Ruby was developed all at once in the late nineties as a seaside mega-enclave for the newly wealthy. It was the setting for Indecent Housewives of Rancho Ruby. It had its own private airstrip for C-level executive douchebags of all denominations.

If you thought Playa Mesa was fancy, that meant you’d never seen Rancho Ruby.

Rancho Ruby was 99.6 percent white. We, the Daes, were one of the few minority families, and one of two Asian families, possessing the wealth required to live in such a community.

Being a minority in a crowd of majority meant having to prove yourself worthy, over and over, for you were only as credible as your latest divine miracle. For Mom, this meant seizing the lead volunteer position at my school despite her unrelenting work schedule. For Dad, this meant pretending to care deeply about maintaining an impeccable address setup and swing amid the endless poking and ribbing at the Rancho Ruby Country Club.

Mom and Dad’s company, Manny Dae Business Management Services, was started by Dad’s late father, Emmanuel Dae, a first-generation Korean immigrant who gave his only son his name, his charisma, and his client list. Once upon a time, the company was run out of his old house in Arroyo Plato, which after his death became our house.

This was the time when big brother Gray and I would rattle the floors