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“Ari-yah, why don’t you smile more? You’re scaring away our customers!”
I sigh, rolling my eyes. “Eomma, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we don’t have any customers!” I gesture openly at the clearly empty aisles of the cluttered and colourful giftshop, annoyance tingling at my spine.
“Because you look like a dark spirit!” my mother spits back. “Look at you, all in black, with that hood and that scowl. You’re going to get so many wrinkles, you know!”
“Wouldn’t you love that, so that people can mistake me for the ahjumma!” I retaliate just as a bell tinkles. Looks like we have customers.
“Hello!” my mother calls out cheerily, before shooting me a loaded look. I roll my eyes again before sarcastically plastering a semi-creepy smile on my face, cocking my head as if to say, is that better?
My mother looks so done with me.
Eventually the customer wanders up to the counter with a scented candle and a jar – that’ll be five dollars! – before we are left alone again.
“Ow, what was that for?” I exclaim in English, clutching my arm where Mum whacked me.
“Oh, so you do feel pain,” she remarks dryly. “I guess you aren’t completely dead then.”
“Yah!” my mum whacks me again. “Don’t yah at Eomma, haven’t I raised you well?”
I mumble incoherent things, pouting. I can never argue with Eomma, especially when she brings the haven’t I raised you well card. Of course she has raised me well. She is the only one who raised me. My father left for a younger, less Korean woman years ago, and it wasn’t like my mother was going to do the same – snag a nice young bachelor for herself – because she had me to take care of.
Not that I would’ve let her. I hated strangers of any kind – bawled in their faces whenever they tried that coochie coochie coo crap on me. Everyone in my family thought I hated them.
I haven’t tried to change their minds since.
“Sorry, we are closed!” my mother waves away our potential customers, even though there is half an hour left until closing time.
“Eomma! What are you doing?”
My mum winks at me. “Let’s go to a restaurant. I’m feeling spicy.”
I groan at my mum’s use of the word spicy. She’s been trying to make up her own slang lately, and I gotta say, it hasn’t been catching on.
“Mum, nobody says that!”
She just cackles as we close up, emptying the cash register and switching on the alarm before dragging down the security barricade. The keys are extra jangly in my mum’s slender fingers as she sings under her breath, clearly in a spicy mood.
“What to eat, what to eat. Baby, what do you want to eat today?” she slings an arm around my shoulders, even though she is shorter than me, and I can’t help but smile as I hum in thought.
“Hm, I dunno, maybe…kimchi?”
I laugh as she thumps my chest, just as expected. “Yah, I’m sick of kimchi. All we ever eat is kimchi. Kimchi every day, every night – even my dreams smell like kimchi!“
The sun is setting as our laughter ricochets into the growing night, the street lights blazing orange against the deep blue of the sky, reflecting in our eyes like fire sparks. It feels fun, it feels nice, and once we reach the restaurant – Mediterranean, because we were both craving olives – we had even more fun trying to pronounce the dishes on the menu, even though they weren’t that difficult. It is sad, but it is true: my mother is my best friend. The only person I can fully trust in this world, even if she does drive me up the wall.
Our tummies are bloated and our cheeks are flushed as we leave the restaurant, thanking the staff in terrible Italian accents, even though the staff aren’t Italian. Mum clings to my arm as she wobbles, high on happiness, but mostly high on wine. I had to stop her once she got to her third glass because the volume of her voice succeeded that of all the diners at the restaurant, and although people didn’t care, they still noticed. Especially when my mum began openly flirting with the waiter who was young enough to be her son. Her son.
Aish, why is my mum so embarrassingly extroverted?
I swear, if I didn’t share the same cat eyes and full lips as my mother, I would’ve certainly believed I was adopted.
I know for a fact my father was not like me, in any way. He craved adventure, he craved a different life. He wanted to fit in so he could stand out, whereas I just wanted to blend into the background, unbothered and unknown.
Who even am I anymore?
I am so involved in my thoughts that I do not notice where we are.
“Where are we?” I ask aloud, hoping that my mother led us here for a purpose, but judging by how sketchy the area is, with gangs of tall built men clad in leather and openly smoking suspicious substances while calling out to any female that walks by, be it old or young, fat or thin – there’s no way this is on purpose.
“Korea,” my mum replies giddily, and for a second I can believe her. Why is everyone here Asian? And why do they look like they came straight out of an old Korean gangster film, like Friend?
So we are friends now.
I shudder at the sudden invasion into my thoughts, and I almost have to glance around, as if someone said it from right behind me.
There’s someone behind me.
It’s like I have a sixth sense or something for him, because whenever that feeling niggles at my spine, prickles at my neck and itches in my brain, I just have to look.
We have the perfect view of them. There he stands, hands in pockets, hoodie up, bright brown fringe poking out. But the fringe is rustled by the tall thick-limbed man with a black crew cut streaked with red. And the hoodie is pinched by another man, shorter, with a tiny bun on his head and tattoos snaking up his neck. They’re smoking, all except Taehyung, who stands there, forcing a smile, faking a laugh, and even softly punching the guys in the arm the way ‘bros’ do.
But the punch he receives is no bro punch.
I hear myself gasp as the men blow smoke in his face and squeeze his cheeks, the largest one even hooking him into a headlock and mussing up his hair. They punch him again, laughing, and you can clearly see the wince of pain Taehyung tries so hard to cover up, and I can hear them making fun of him, saying he’s a little p*ssy, a little baby, and that they should sell him for adoption.
All that time he never walks away, never leaves them, and I wonder why he chooses to stay, when he can easily just go.
Maybe he doesn’t have a choice. Maybe he can’t just go.
Those guys look like they could beat you up in a matter of seconds, and getting on their bad side would be the last thing you want to do. But still, why is he involved with them in the first place?
“I’m cooold,” I peer down at the tiny intoxicated woman at my arm and sigh, realizing that I shouldn’t be worrying about a complete stranger who I just met today when my mother needs to be taken home.
“Okay, Eomma, let’s go home.”
With one last glance at Taehyung and his ‘friends’ I steer my mum back up the street to where our own small apartment block is located. Such a small place for such a small family.
Once I put my mother to bed, I decide that I too should sleep.
But all I can think about is that puppy-like boy, hanging out with those pit-bull-like men, and I hope to God that he’s okay.
【★】
I don’t know about you, but I LOVE her mum she’s so funny 🤣
Looks like Taehyung is hanging with the wrong crowd oh no
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