jeon jΟ
ngΔΈooΔΈ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lovestrippedbare) wrote2019-09-01 10:05 pm
lovestrippedbare) wrote2019-09-01 10:05 pm
Entry tags:
ππ π ππ π₯π
You're just like your father.
The sentence was a familiar one. His mother always did say that Jungkook's looks took more after his father's than they did her own, and Jungkook had reason to believe it. On difficult days, he knew it to be true when he went out with his family, never quite matching the way they carried themselves. Strangers would remark, never realizing the effect such statements would have, that this son didn't seem to take exactly after either mother or father. Sometimes, Jungkook's mother would rush forth to point out a couple of little details — the shape of Jungkook's mouth, the curve of their cheeks.
But Jungkook didn't mind. In some ways, it was comforting to have something indelible and tangible to hold onto, a legacy left behind by a father he forgot more of, day by day. At least when he looked in the mirror, no matter how forced the expression, he could see a bit of his father smiling back at him.
Yet though the words were familiar, they rang differently that time, muttered after Jungkook declined to join for dinner for what must have been the dozenth time in the past month. Hagwon was good for that much. The length of Jungkook's daily classes gave him an excuse to escape the silence of his room, walls too dark and confining. When he did finally return, it was often to do little more than shower and slip under the sheets, waiting to see if sleep took hold.
He ate less. Rarely smiled.
It was surprising to Jungkook that his mother rarely tried to comfort him.
Why aren't you eating, Jungkook-ah?
Ah, I was... thinking about Namjoon hyung.
Mm, yes. I'd heard from the ladies in the neighborhood, that the Kims moved away. Well, that's too bad, but — it would have happened sooner or later, with everyone heading off to university. Don't trouble yourself too much.
The reflection in the mirror looked less like his father with each passing day.
Jungkook rifled through photo albums, his fingers lingering over each picture, so many them showing a child wrapped warmly in the much larger arms of his father. Smiles so bright that one could almost hear the laughter.
Slipping one out of the album, wrapped in its plastic sleeve, Jungkook went into the bathroom and carefully balanced it on the corner of the mirror. He stretched his lips, stiff and chapped, until they matched the shape of his father's smile. The wrinkles that formed at the corners of his eyes were right; the slope of his nose matched. Yet Jungkook couldn't make himself resemble that man.
Tell me the truth. Is there something going on with a girl? ...You know, when I said you could date, I never meant that you should let it interfere with your studies. There isn't a single person in the world who's worth risking your own future for. Take it from me, Jungkook-ah. Listen to your mother.
Mom...
There will be others, okay? Stop thinking about it. The more you think about it, the longer it'll take to move on.
There was one picture that gave him pause. Where the arms around the child were that of his mother, not his father. It was hard to pinpoint exactly why this threw off the balance in the image — after all, Jungkook remembered plenty of times when his mother was the one to hold his hand, the one to carry him during trips to the store.
But something didn't sit right. Something about the slope of his shoulders, perhaps.
It looked like Jungkook's reflection in the mirror.
Sometimes the world feels so heavy.
You think I've never felt that way myself? But I've learned that you always find a way. If you love your mother, you'll realize that you're strong enough to handle this.
You're not going to class today, either?
Where were you? Do you know how late it is? If your father weren't already asleep...
The rattle of his bedroom door makes Jungkook jump, hands scrambling to slip his phone underneath the pillow. Not minutes ago, he sent a message to Yoongi. One of many, though perhaps one of a few that spoke his truth, gentle though he tried to keep the words.
He knew, as the date approached his birthday, that to hope for Yoongi's return would be foolish. No arbitrary date would suddenly right their future, and too long had passed without a word for a sudden reappearance to fit into the narrative. But hope is as difficult an emotion to abandon as it is to maintain, and so Jungkook's hand never left his phone over the course of the day, waiting for it to vibrate. Checking every time the screen lit up. A reunion was too much to ask, but perhaps a word, even if only written on the screen.
In the days leading up, Jungkook was careful not to mention that dream to anyone, lest it prevent his wish from coming true. Maybe that silence was why when the door creaks, Jungkook's gaze flickers up immediately, lips parting. Searching for a flash of blond hair.
Instead, his mother steps inside, a small box in her hands.
"Mom..."
There had been cake. Forced smiles that were easy to expose with a glance, though perhaps in photos, it was harder to tell. But for the first birthday in years that Jungkook had spent the majority of at home, it was a somber affair, and his mother's expression reflects that now. The mattress sinks slightly under her weight, an arm's distance between them.
"I had planned on waiting until your twentieth birthday for this," she confesses, gaze flickering up to meet Jungkook's. Soft skin on soft palms, cold to the reach, clasp around his wrist to press the box into his hands. "But with the way things have been with you lately, your mother thought, it's important to warn you away from your father's mistakes."
He doesn't understand. Sits under the weight of her gaze for a few moments more, before carefully lifting the lid on the plain wooden box. A pile of envelopes sit inside, postmarked, his name written in the center.
"Your father didn't die in a car accident, Jungkook. He left and abandoned his family."
Jungkook lifts the first envelope. The second bears the same handwriting, written to the same address. The postmark, again, reads late August.
"There was no excuse for it. He had a wife and son that needed him, and a steady job that wanted him, and yet it wasn't enough. Said he felt empty. It didn't matter that there were people depending on him. He left, because none of that mattered enough to him to stay."
The envelopes stop before ever reading their current address.
"That's..." Jungkook isn't sure that he's breathing, his chest feels so tight. "The altar in the house, the grave — we've visited. Every year."
His mother smiles, tight-lipped, hands folded neatly on her lap. "What do you think the neighbors would have said if they'd known? The world is hard enough for a widow. How would it ever smile favorably upon a wife who could not keep her husband?"
The words are distant. Calculating. Incongruous with the image Jungkook's held of his mother, the shades with which he paints her on the canvas. (No, maybe it's not such a stretch. Lately, after all...)
Jungkook's fingers bleed white where they grip the box.
"I assume he's passed away by now, as I haven't heard from your grandparents in years, and the letters stopped coming. Or maybe they gave up on him, too." She heaves a breath, a few strands of hair falling out of place. "Just let this be a lesson, Jungkook. Don't sit in your sadness. Otherwise you'll become just like him."
She spits the words at the direction of the box, and it slips from Jungkook's fingers, hands retracting as if burned. The contents spill over his sheets, the lips of each envelope reaching aimlessly in the air. Only when he feels the mattress lift back up from under her weight does Jungkook's gaze reach for his mother.
Does she still have his grandparents' contact information?
He doesn't remember how to write his father's name in hanja.
Did she try to reach out to him? Find him?
Instead, his voice finds—
"Does he know?"
For a second, surprise settles on his mother's features. She turns, gazes through the door in the direction of her bedroom, and the sudden relief in her shoulders is palpable.
"He does. I had to tell him, before we were married." She turns to him with a smile, and it's — it's wrong, it doesn't fit, and yet there's no denying that there's something genuine there. "That's why I keep telling you, Jungkook-ah. He's good to you. He took you in when even your own father wouldn't."
Minutes later, and Jungkook doesn't remember how she leaves. Doesn't remember if the door clicked, or creaked, or if there were any retreating footsteps. His ears won't stop buzzing.
Carefully, he reaches for the first letter.
The sentence was a familiar one. His mother always did say that Jungkook's looks took more after his father's than they did her own, and Jungkook had reason to believe it. On difficult days, he knew it to be true when he went out with his family, never quite matching the way they carried themselves. Strangers would remark, never realizing the effect such statements would have, that this son didn't seem to take exactly after either mother or father. Sometimes, Jungkook's mother would rush forth to point out a couple of little details — the shape of Jungkook's mouth, the curve of their cheeks.
But Jungkook didn't mind. In some ways, it was comforting to have something indelible and tangible to hold onto, a legacy left behind by a father he forgot more of, day by day. At least when he looked in the mirror, no matter how forced the expression, he could see a bit of his father smiling back at him.
Yet though the words were familiar, they rang differently that time, muttered after Jungkook declined to join for dinner for what must have been the dozenth time in the past month. Hagwon was good for that much. The length of Jungkook's daily classes gave him an excuse to escape the silence of his room, walls too dark and confining. When he did finally return, it was often to do little more than shower and slip under the sheets, waiting to see if sleep took hold.
He ate less. Rarely smiled.
It was surprising to Jungkook that his mother rarely tried to comfort him.
Why aren't you eating, Jungkook-ah?
Ah, I was... thinking about Namjoon hyung.
Mm, yes. I'd heard from the ladies in the neighborhood, that the Kims moved away. Well, that's too bad, but — it would have happened sooner or later, with everyone heading off to university. Don't trouble yourself too much.
The reflection in the mirror looked less like his father with each passing day.
Jungkook rifled through photo albums, his fingers lingering over each picture, so many them showing a child wrapped warmly in the much larger arms of his father. Smiles so bright that one could almost hear the laughter.
Slipping one out of the album, wrapped in its plastic sleeve, Jungkook went into the bathroom and carefully balanced it on the corner of the mirror. He stretched his lips, stiff and chapped, until they matched the shape of his father's smile. The wrinkles that formed at the corners of his eyes were right; the slope of his nose matched. Yet Jungkook couldn't make himself resemble that man.
Tell me the truth. Is there something going on with a girl? ...You know, when I said you could date, I never meant that you should let it interfere with your studies. There isn't a single person in the world who's worth risking your own future for. Take it from me, Jungkook-ah. Listen to your mother.
Mom...
There will be others, okay? Stop thinking about it. The more you think about it, the longer it'll take to move on.
There was one picture that gave him pause. Where the arms around the child were that of his mother, not his father. It was hard to pinpoint exactly why this threw off the balance in the image — after all, Jungkook remembered plenty of times when his mother was the one to hold his hand, the one to carry him during trips to the store.
But something didn't sit right. Something about the slope of his shoulders, perhaps.
It looked like Jungkook's reflection in the mirror.
Sometimes the world feels so heavy.
You think I've never felt that way myself? But I've learned that you always find a way. If you love your mother, you'll realize that you're strong enough to handle this.
You're not going to class today, either?
Where were you? Do you know how late it is? If your father weren't already asleep...
The rattle of his bedroom door makes Jungkook jump, hands scrambling to slip his phone underneath the pillow. Not minutes ago, he sent a message to Yoongi. One of many, though perhaps one of a few that spoke his truth, gentle though he tried to keep the words.
He knew, as the date approached his birthday, that to hope for Yoongi's return would be foolish. No arbitrary date would suddenly right their future, and too long had passed without a word for a sudden reappearance to fit into the narrative. But hope is as difficult an emotion to abandon as it is to maintain, and so Jungkook's hand never left his phone over the course of the day, waiting for it to vibrate. Checking every time the screen lit up. A reunion was too much to ask, but perhaps a word, even if only written on the screen.
In the days leading up, Jungkook was careful not to mention that dream to anyone, lest it prevent his wish from coming true. Maybe that silence was why when the door creaks, Jungkook's gaze flickers up immediately, lips parting. Searching for a flash of blond hair.
Instead, his mother steps inside, a small box in her hands.
"Mom..."
There had been cake. Forced smiles that were easy to expose with a glance, though perhaps in photos, it was harder to tell. But for the first birthday in years that Jungkook had spent the majority of at home, it was a somber affair, and his mother's expression reflects that now. The mattress sinks slightly under her weight, an arm's distance between them.
"I had planned on waiting until your twentieth birthday for this," she confesses, gaze flickering up to meet Jungkook's. Soft skin on soft palms, cold to the reach, clasp around his wrist to press the box into his hands. "But with the way things have been with you lately, your mother thought, it's important to warn you away from your father's mistakes."
He doesn't understand. Sits under the weight of her gaze for a few moments more, before carefully lifting the lid on the plain wooden box. A pile of envelopes sit inside, postmarked, his name written in the center.
"Your father didn't die in a car accident, Jungkook. He left and abandoned his family."
Jungkook lifts the first envelope. The second bears the same handwriting, written to the same address. The postmark, again, reads late August.
"There was no excuse for it. He had a wife and son that needed him, and a steady job that wanted him, and yet it wasn't enough. Said he felt empty. It didn't matter that there were people depending on him. He left, because none of that mattered enough to him to stay."
The envelopes stop before ever reading their current address.
"That's..." Jungkook isn't sure that he's breathing, his chest feels so tight. "The altar in the house, the grave — we've visited. Every year."
His mother smiles, tight-lipped, hands folded neatly on her lap. "What do you think the neighbors would have said if they'd known? The world is hard enough for a widow. How would it ever smile favorably upon a wife who could not keep her husband?"
The words are distant. Calculating. Incongruous with the image Jungkook's held of his mother, the shades with which he paints her on the canvas. (No, maybe it's not such a stretch. Lately, after all...)
Jungkook's fingers bleed white where they grip the box.
"I assume he's passed away by now, as I haven't heard from your grandparents in years, and the letters stopped coming. Or maybe they gave up on him, too." She heaves a breath, a few strands of hair falling out of place. "Just let this be a lesson, Jungkook. Don't sit in your sadness. Otherwise you'll become just like him."
She spits the words at the direction of the box, and it slips from Jungkook's fingers, hands retracting as if burned. The contents spill over his sheets, the lips of each envelope reaching aimlessly in the air. Only when he feels the mattress lift back up from under her weight does Jungkook's gaze reach for his mother.
Does she still have his grandparents' contact information?
He doesn't remember how to write his father's name in hanja.
Did she try to reach out to him? Find him?
Instead, his voice finds—
"Does he know?"
For a second, surprise settles on his mother's features. She turns, gazes through the door in the direction of her bedroom, and the sudden relief in her shoulders is palpable.
"He does. I had to tell him, before we were married." She turns to him with a smile, and it's — it's wrong, it doesn't fit, and yet there's no denying that there's something genuine there. "That's why I keep telling you, Jungkook-ah. He's good to you. He took you in when even your own father wouldn't."
Minutes later, and Jungkook doesn't remember how she leaves. Doesn't remember if the door clicked, or creaked, or if there were any retreating footsteps. His ears won't stop buzzing.
Carefully, he reaches for the first letter.