Bittersweet ≈ Seonghwa [NEW!]

Prologue: Happy Never After

On her 3rd month of pregnancy, Mom suffered a miscarriage and it broke her so hard, she went straight to depression.

She would sigh a lot, she gets irritable and wouldn't clean up after herself, she refused to cook nor have time to take care of herself.

Dad tried so many things to help her out and make her feel better. So at the age 14, we moved back to South Korea.

If leaving behind everything we've built in Singapore would help make my mom recover, so be it. I was willing to make sacrifices.

We got a new house, not an apartment like the ones we had in Singapore. An actual house. It wasn't anything fancy, but it was affordable. Seeing there was only one master bedroom, one room in the attic, one storage room, one bathroom and one kitchen, we had to make do with whatever we had.

I, of course, took the attic.

I spent hours and hours of my days catching up with the new syllabus for the schools in korea as well as the korean language, that I was clueless of the ruckus happening at the very living room of my own house everyday.

"Can't you just snap out of it?!??"

"How would you know?! You've NEVER understood was this pain feels like!"

"DON'T yell at me! I tried everything to help you! But I can't help you if you won't help yourself!"

"What do you mean? Are you giving up on me?"

"GOSH you're so ANNOYING! I shouldn't have married you if I had known you're so pathetic! Everything always has to be about you! No wonder that man left you."

"I can't believe-"

"I don't want to hear another word, get out now! You're stressing me out!"

*front door slams*

15 year old sleepy me with a messy bun and glasses in my hair, trudged down the stairs, rubbing my eyes.

"Dad? What's with the shouting?"

Little did I know, that very day, was the day my own world came crashing down on me.

Eversince mom left, Dad started drinking and smoking. A lot. It even got him fired from his office job. Now, he "works" as a street cleaner though I feel like he is the mess that needs to be cleaned.

When he's not working, he would sit for hours in front of the tv with the lights off. The whole house was a mess.

If I did anything that upsets him, he would hit me. Sometimes with his bare hands, sometimes with glass bottles and the worse was with his own belt.

I went from being strong and outspoken to silent and timid .

I still have no idea where my mom went, what happened to her and why did she ever leave me behind.

I would love to find out, but I spend days working at different places to earn enough for school.

Weekday mornings I work at the cafe, weekday nights I work at the convenience stores, weekend mornings in the barbeque restaurant and weekend nights at the cinema.

With dad stealing money from me too, made me take so much more than a year of non-stop working with overtimes until I collected enough to go to school.

By then...I turned 17. And this new school, was beyond my expectations.