WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ My Platinum-Blonde Childhood Friend Is Too Pretty ◈

Chapter 71: 27. After the Winter of Seventeen, Eighteen Passed Like a Dream in the Night

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After spending that one night with Santa Elli.

We enjoyed time with our families gazing at the beautiful Swedish lake in Sigtuna, snow beginning to fall from the early morning hours.

Then over the next two days, we leisurely toured the sights around Stockholm.

"Come visit again after you two get married. It's fine to come just the two of you."

"Elli, Do-yoon. I'll pray that blessings always find their way to you."

"We'll definitely come back. Thank you so much."

"Marriage... hmph. We'll come visit then."

William and Vera saw us off with a warmth that wouldn't have seemed out of place from our own grandparents, similar to Korea in some ways yet different, and we came home.

It really had felt like stepping inside a fairytale, that time in Sweden.

And just as Uncle Mark had said, the snowy scenery of Sigtuna was so beautiful that our whole family ended up standing there in a daze for over an hour, unable to look away.

I was grateful that I'd gotten to spend that happy Christmas holding Elli's hand.

The flight over had been around twenty hours, but the flight back stretched to nearly thirty, and somewhere in the middle of all that time in the air, Elli and I talked about someday.

"Next time, if our parents are busy, should we just come the two of us?"

"Not a bad idea. We'd have to save up a ton from part-time work though."

"If we work hard enough... but William said to come back after we get married."

"...So?"

"I was just thinking that's a long time from now. Even if we do it right after I finish the military, that's five or six years away."

"......"

"Oh, never mind."

"What do you mean, never mind."

"Well, once we turn twenty and start living together, isn't that basically the same as being married? You said that before. So if we save up money around then and go..."

"Hey."

"Yeah?"

"......Come here."

"Now? Mmph...!"

"Mhm..."

Since our seats on the return flight were quite far from our parents, Elli made her move before I even realized what was happening.

She grabbed my lips and wouldn't let go, absolutely relentless about it, and right at that moment a flight attendant walked past us. A little embarrassing.

Still good, though.

Anyway, the Sweden trip had been even more fun than I'd expected, and when we got back, we were welcomed by the new year of being eighteen.

Then Lunar New Year arrived.

"Our Elli is so, so pretty. Ji-eun-ah, thank you~"

"I bought it because I thought it would suit her, but it really is strange... why does a hanbok look this good on Elli with her platinum-blonde hair?"

"Thank you, uh..."

"If you call me 'mother-in-law,' I'm pulling that right off you."

"...Auntie."

"This little fox... anyway, it does suit you. You're beautiful."

Mom had given Elli a refined, traditional hanbok as a Lunar New Year gift.

Elli wore her hair up with a binyeo pin, dressed in a combination of pale sky blue, soft pink, and navy. The sight of her like that was...

What more could I say.

Stunning.

Mom and Auntie Ye-rin kept fussing over the fit of Elli's hanbok without any real reason to, pouring out endless compliments.

"You're beautiful, my daughter-in-law. You could walk right into a wedding like this."

"Who's a daughter-in-law? What wedding? Absolutely not yet."

"Thank you, Father."

"Wh-, what?! Father?! You...! Do you want that hanbok ripped off?!"

"Hmph. You said only not to call Mom that."

"This girl, honestly...!"

Even Dad, who could apparently pull off a grin this wide, was delighted beyond what I'd ever seen, going on about what a lovely daughter-in-law she was.

And Uncle Mark, on top of that.

- A tear streaks down his cheek.

"She's beautiful... Elli. My daughter..."

"Don't come over here, Dad. Don't even think about hugging me while you're crying. I mean it."

"......Ugh... Ji-eun, thank you. Best gift ever."

He was actually crying.

He looked a little sad about being refused by Elli, but he was at least capturing his beautiful daughter in phone photos.

Right beside him, I was wearing a hanbok just like Elli's, and I couldn't take my eyes off her.

'...She's so pretty.'

That was the only thought in my head. Just like Mom said, Elli looked entirely Western in every feature, and yet the traditional Korean hanbok suited her perfectly.

What I liked even more was that the hanbok I was wearing was a perfect couple's set with hers.

Mom claimed she hadn't accepted Elli as a daughter-in-law yet, but she'd still gone ahead and ordered a matching set for me too.

Thanks to that, we were dressed in a perfectly matched couple's hanbok like a pair who'd already exchanged vows, and Elli was calling my mom and dad "Mother" and "Father."

I loved those names more than I could say. It felt like we were already family.

"Do-yoon looks so handsome too... how do you two match each other so perfectly?"

"My son is the best, obviously. Really, he's so good-looking, I don't know where he gets it."

"Seriously. Yi Mong-ryong himself would weep~"

"Right, right. Although I don't know why I bothered giving one to that little fox. Calling me 'Mother' and 'Father,' of all things..."

"Ji-eun-ah. Should we have both a wedding dress and a hanbok made for the kids when they get married?"

"What do you mean, married already!"

"Oh come on~ We have to start planning now if we want to see them looking their best~ Look at Do-yoon. Isn't he handsome?"

"That's... well, it would be a shame to put our Do-yoon in just a tuxedo."

"Exactly~"

Honestly, even I thought the hanbok suited me well.

While the two of them chattered on using me as the new subject, Elli sat down quietly in front of me.

She carefully smoothed her skirt as she settled into place. The only word that came to mind was "lovely."

"......"

"......"

We stared at each other for a moment.

I was falling for Elli's gentle beauty all over again, and she had a faint blush on her cheeks, apparently liking how I looked in the hanbok.

"......Pfft."

"......Heh."

We both burst out laughing at the same moment. I wasn't even sure what was funny, it just happened.

My childhood friend, my girlfriend.

Platinum-blonde hair, blue eyes.

I had no idea how she managed to look this pretty in a hanbok. Or why the goreum ties at the center of the jeogori at her chest were somehow this attractive.

But staring at her, a question crossed my mind.

I was genuinely curious how her figure, which was anything but flat, had been hidden well enough to look so smooth from the outside.

"It's suffocating. They wrapped fabric around and around on the inside."

"...Oh."

She must have read the thought from my gaze, because Elli mentioned it without any fuss. That answered it. Just simple compression.

"But wearing it this way actually shows off the lines better, so it's nice. I think this is how hanbok is meant to be."

"Yeah. You look beautiful. When we get married someday, let's definitely wear hanbok too."

"Hmm... at the wedding...?"

"What?"

"You want to take off my jeogori..."

Elli started to say something, then glanced around at the adults nearby and leaned a little closer to me.

She put her lips to my ear and whispered, very quietly.

"You want to take off my jeogori... don't you?"

"......"

"No? Be honest. If you lie, I'm never wearing it again."

Honestly, my imagination hadn't gone that far in detail.

Rather than picturing something like that, I'd just been thinking in the most simple, one-dimensional way that she was incredibly pretty, and at most wondered how she'd hidden that figure of hers.

But the moment Elli said it, every kind of image came rushing through my head all at once.

If I pulled on those goreum ties. If the jeogori naturally fell open to either side.

What would I see.

I wanted to find out.

"...Yes. That's correct."

"Hmph."

I bowed my head in surrender, and Elli gave a little scoff before continuing.

"The wedding will be in a dress. The hanbok can come after, if there's ti..."

"...After?"

"...Do you want to die?"

"Out of nowhere?"

"What do you mean wedding, when you haven't even proposed yet. Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

"Even without a proposal, talking about it seems fine... no, you're right, I was wrong."

"If you want to see me in a hanbok again that day, you'd better behave yourself. Hmph."

Elli turned her head away. The peach flush on her cheek was adorable, and with her hair pinned up, the line of her slender neck was exposed by that movement, and that was pretty too.

Well, anyway.

We took hundreds of photos just that one day, spent Lunar New Year in our hanboks, and from there the days until the new semester came and went quickly.

We became second-years.

"Do-yoon! We're in the same class!"

"Take care of me this year."

"Me too!"

It was a disappointment to be in a different class from Elli again, but I ended up with Lee So-yeon.

And on top of that.

"It's been such a long time since we've been in the same class, hasn't it?"

"It really has. Take care of me."

"Hehe, this should be fun."

Joo Hye-ryeong too.

Elli pouted about it, but Hye-ryeong had always known where to draw the line, so it never blew up into anything serious.

Still.

"I don't like Joo Hye-ryeong."

"Ah, So-yeon said she was meeting up with her for a bit this weekend? Elli, you could just come along... oh wait, do you have a shoot this week?"

"...So annoying."

Rather than jealousy toward me, it was more that So-yeon had started quietly hanging out with Hye-ryeong here and there, and Elli seemed to be more bothered by that, if anything.

Anyway, second year of high school wasn't all that different from first.

Day by day, week by week, month by month, the time was full.

Elli being by my side was a given, I spent plenty of time with friends, kept up my hobbies of drawing and guitar without letting them slip, and studied harder than the year before.

Looking back, the time had somehow already flown.

Spring meant dates walking arm in arm everywhere, summer meant the beach and Elli in a bikini, fall meant buckling down for exams...

And when my birthday came around again.

"Meow."

"......"

"Meow~"

"......"

"...Why are you looking at me like that. Do you want to cease to exist?"

"You're so... cute and pretty... I think I'm losing my mind."

"...Meow!"

I got to see Elli in a cat cosplay, barely any different from a bikini, devastatingly sexy.

Dressing up in something that revealing was nothing to her at all by now, but making little "meow" sounds out loud, that she found embarrassing.

So I had this haughty, reserved cat in front of me, sharp and cool-looking, stuffed full of flustered pride.

Cat headband and tail, platinum and black.

This meowing girl of mine.

- Settles on top of me.

"Coward. You can only touch my butt even now?"

"...Anything past that is going to have to wait about a year."

"Hmph. Nom...!"

"Ngh..."

She taunted me for only touching her butt, then bit at my face and neck, and that was... that was genuinely hard to endure.

I sincerely hoped she'd do the same cosplay again when we were adults.

Because then I wouldn't hold back. I'd touch her as much as I wanted.

Two months later, on Elli's birthday, I spent the entire day playing guitar and singing beside her, just as she'd asked.

Watching my girlfriend sway her body and head gently to my music, I thought she was incredibly precious.

Like that, another year slipped by in an instant, and we became nineteen-year-olds facing the college entrance exam.

With the CSAT less than a year away as third-years, I set aside most of my other hobbies and focused on studying, except for the time I spent with Elli.

Then, after the first midterm exams ended.

Elli made an announcement.

"I'm not going to college."

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