Next to kimchi, Koreans have perfected one other thing: The Dramatic Pause. It’s that moment right after an epic reveal that lasts only a minute but stays with you forever. After bingeing countless hours of K-dramas, I have yet to find one episode that doesn’t have The Dramatic Pause. It’s like the Lee Min Ho of K-dramas; it never gets old.

I have somewhat expertly (see aforementioned amount of episodes watched) broken down The Dramatic Pause into three broad categories:

(1) The good: Two star-crossed lovers finally meeting face-to-face after missing each other one too many times. Often in the rain and almost always without an umbrella. (Swoon.)

(2) The bad: The main character finding out they lost their entire family fortune in a terrible economic investment and are now destined to a life of destitution and degradation. (The shame!) Extra pause if this was orchestrated by their best friend, who secretly hates them because they are embroiled in a love triangle.

(3) The unexpected: The main character discovering that their father is not actually their father and that their life is about to change . . . dun. Dun. DUN! (Like in the episode Hazel and I are watching now.)

Every Friday after school, Hazel, Seb, and I have a standing appointment to binge K-dramas at my house. Since today is graduation, I wasn’t sure if they’d be able to make it. But here we are, crammed onto my twin-sized bed, watching a much-needed episode of the K-drama My Professor, My Father on Hazel’s laptop.

Since Seb likes to pretend he isn’t into K-dramas like Hazel and I are, we sent him on a very important errand that should take precisely three minutes.

“Chloe Chang! Some of us have to read the subtitles.” Hazel taps me on the shoulder. “Any closer and you’ll be in the screen.”

I give her a pointed look. “Just because I’m one hundred percent Korean doesn’t mean I don’t have to read the subtitles either.” Technically, not quite 100 percent Korean, but close enough.

“Okay, but . . .” She motions at the space I’m taking up, which happens to be in direct view of her screen. I scoot back, only mildly embarrassed. As my best friend since forever, Hazel knows I lose all sense of time and space when it comes to Dad discoveries.

We would’ve been less cramped at Hazel’s, but she has five sisters (yes, five), each with very strong and very different opinions about everything. Even though she lives in a six-bedroom McMansion, Hazel claims there isn’t enough space to avoid what she calls the ¡Qué quilombo!, or the shit show of personalities. Real-life drama, Hazel claims, is not as much fun as K-drama.

When I inch closer to the screen again, Hazel shoots me a dirty look.

“You’re doing it again! Great, now I missed what he said!”

“He said he can’t believe that all this time, his professor was his father!”

“Oh my god! Finally!” She squeals with me.

Then it comes: The Dramatic Pause.

We hold our breaths and watch as if in a trance as the camera pans from one character to the other. Cue the surprised look on their faces. Cue the single-tear trickle. Cue the original soundtrack. Ugh. Even when I know to expect it, it gets me. Every. Time.

Then, as we knew it would, the episode ends abruptly, leaving us completely hanging.

“Noooo!” I yell up at the ceiling.

“Arrghh! Why do they always do that?” Hazel protests with her fist in the air.

I smile at her ridiculously. Hazel and I have reached that level of obsession with K-dramas where we’ve started to mimic their exaggerated reactions ourselves. “How much time do you think we’ve wasted watching K-dramas?” Just hours after our last day of high school, and already I’m feeling nostalgic.

“Wasted? Omo!” she gasps with a hand to her chest. “You mean invested.” She checks her phone and says, “And for the record, according to MyDramaList, we’ve watched five hundred and sixty episodes, which is roughly twenty-three days of continuous viewing. I have no regrets.”

I laugh. “You’re right. It was totally worth it.” We lie side by side on my bed, staring up at the popcorn ceiling. All those memories of Hazel, Seb, and I holed up in my room bingeing K-dramas will somehow have to sustain me for the next four years without them. Pretty soon, Hazel and Seb will be off to California.

While I’ll still be here, in same old Oklahoma.

Seb walks in right in time with some comfort food.

“Did someone order a bowl of Shin Ramyun?” He sets down a tray with two steaming Styrofoam bowls of instant noodles on my desk.

We don’t dignify his question with a response and instead grab our bowls, snapping our wooden chopsticks apart. Seb knows that when it comes to the Shin, we don’t joke.

“Sebastian Elias, you are the best.” Hazel gives Seb a quick peck on the lips before mixing her noodles around with her chopsticks.

How do I feel about my best friends suddenly having feelings for each other? Psshhhh . . . totally fine.

And, at the same time, not fine at all.

The three of us have been hanging out together since middle school, geeking out over our shared interests in fashion and TikTok dances. The summer before junior year, however, Seb grew five inches, developed muscles, and basically became objectively hot. He was the same Seb to me, though. The brother I never had. I thought Hazel felt the same way about him, until they came out to me as a couple at the beginning of our senior year. I should be used to it by now, everyone moving on while I’m standing still. Story of my life.

We both take turns inhaling the noodles, then coughing up the spicy soup base that somehow always goes down the wrong pipe.

“Whoa, heavy episode? You guys seem slurpier than usual today,” Seb says.

“It’s been a day,” I manage to say while chewing the noodles. “Just glad it’s over.” Big events, the ones where families are expected to attend, send my nerves into hyperdrive. Maybe it’s because I don’t have a “normal family” like everyone else. My dad was killed in a car accident less than a year after my parents left Korea, which changed everything for my mom, who was six months pregnant with me at the time. Now, she’s all the family I’ve got. I swear, my life sounds sadder than a K-drama when I think about it.

“Hey, I’m sure your mom will make it up to you. She always does,” Hazel says, setting her chopsticks down and putting a hand on my shoulder.

“Theresa Chang may not be around to make the Shin–,” Seb says, motioning to the bowls of noodles.

“Or come to graduations,” I mutter loudly.

“But”—Hazel smiles with her head cocked to the side—“you know she loves you.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Other than my mom, Hazel and Seb know me better than anyone. They know that sometimes when Mom’s at the hospital, she just plain forgets about everything, even me. Like the time she couldn’t make my eighth-grade art exhibition where I showcased my first fashion designs, or the school performance where I played the role of Chip in Beauty and the Beast, or parent-teacher conferences—every one of them. I know it sucks now, but Hazel and Seb are right. Mom might have missed my high school graduation, but I know it doesn’t mean she doesn’t love me.

We’re like the Korean Gilmore Girls, except without the cute boyfriends and rich grandparents. So, like, the poor, lonely reboot version.

“I was kinda hoping Ted Takahashi would show up.” Hazel nudges me, snorting.

“Whatever happened to the 23andMe test we got you?” Seb asks.

“Oh, that,” I say, setting the bowl of Shin Ramyun aside.

It was last year that Seb first noticed my uncanny resemblance to Ted Takahashi, the weatherman on our local newscast. Seb wasn’t totally off base—I look nothing like my mom, while Ted and I have the same widow’s peak hairline and almost identical low-bridge noses and full lips. Since I don’t know anything about my dad, we convinced ourselves that I must be Ted’s daughter. Anyway, Seb and Hazel got me one of those DNA kits for my eighteenth birthday back in March. It wouldn’t exactly confirm whether Ted Takahashi is my dad, but it would at least point me in the right direction, since Mom is Korean and Ted Takahashi is proudly Japanese.

The test was supposed to be a joke, but to be honest, I wanted it to be true. Not that I dream of being the illegitimate daughter of Ted Takahashi. But lately, I’ve been feeling a bit, I don’t know, left behind. I always felt different next to Hazel and Seb, who both have these big families with not only a mom and a dad, but also siblings and cousins. Over time, there were other glaring differences. Like when Seb joined a robotics club and Hazel enrolled in a film class that took up their spare time. I tried to ask my mom about taking fashion design classes, but if regular extracurriculars cost money, fashion classes cost beaucoup bucks that we don’t have. Now they’ll both be off to college, leaving me behind once again. So when Hazel and Seb spun a fantastical story about my parents’ ill-fated romance worthy of any makjang drama, I wanted it to be true. That way, if Ted was my dad, I’d at least know something about him.

As it turns out, science does not take into account a person’s wishful thinking, no matter how much they want it. I had to learn that the hard way.

“Got my results this morning. I’m 95.1 percent Korean. Ted is Japanese, so not my dad. Sorry to disprove your...