Twilight | ATEEZ

Chapter Thirty-Three

The car ride with Wooyoung and his father is silent aside from the numerous times that his father runs over the rumble strips on the side of the road. He may not be drunk, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't drive like he is.

As soon as Wooyoung step foot into the house behind his father, he's turned around and pushed into a chair at the dining table by his shoulder.

"What the hell are we going to do about these, Wooyoung?" His father's voice sounds more akin to a growl as he throws the stack of overdue bills at his chest, letting them scatter onto Wooyoung's legs and onto the ground, "What the fuck are we doing to do?" He repeats with more anguish than Wooyoung thought his father would ever let out while completely sober.

The only time he ever has seen, or rather, heard, his father in emotional pain or suffering has been when he's hungover... And outside Wooyoung's bedroom door pounding on it as he sobs out apologies. Wooyoung hates to admit that he would rather be destroyed physically when his father's actually drunk than have him destroy him mentally when he's not.

"W-We'll figure it out, dad," Wooyoung says as he tries to gather all of the envelopes, piling them onto the table before he starts to open them and feast his eyes on just how much money they owe.

Wooyoung is speechless as he stares at the first number when he sees it's six digits long. He shakily sets it down before going through the others that encase hundreds of thousands of won that he knows his father doesn't have. Of course, he doesn't have, Wooyoung mentally thumps himself. He would've paid it if he could've... Right?

Wooyoung's father, Hyunwoo, is sitting across from his son with his face in his shaking hands, "I just don't know, Wooyoung... I can't hold down a damn job."

Wooyoung understands that sentence as his father got let go again, likely fired. He should've known sooner, but sometimes he can't tell if when he's out, he's at work or at bars instead. All of the money he had left from his last job, that he hasn't had for who knows how long, must've been spent on his alcohol addiction.

His father hasn't been hospitalized from alcohol poisoning in a while, but he can see it in his near future if he's lost his job again.

Wooyoung sets down the final envelope that holds another six-digit number and he looks over at his distraught father. Looking at him like this makes him think about when his mother left the two of them here to travel to Russia with a rich man she'd met. Neither of them knew about it until Wooyoung came home from school to his father at this very same table, same position, but tears leaking from his eyes and a crumpled-up letter in his hands.

His father, Hyunwoo, stood up when Wooyoung came in and left the letter sitting on the table as he went back to his and his wife's room.

"Daddy? What's wrong?"

Young Wooyoung sat himself down on one of the dining chairs and slid the letter over to himself, flattening it out for him to read when his father left him there without responding.

Hyunwoo,

I hate to be sitting here writing this to you, my dear, but I've met somebody else. By the time you're reading this, it's too late. I've already packed up all of my things and have left Korea to move onto bigger and better things. You know that this mundane housewife life was never for me, dear. I hope that you will understand. It wasn't you, or Wooyoung, but after meeting Viktor, I realized that he had the life I'd always wanted and now I have the chance to live it.

Take care of Wooyoung. He's a good kid.

♡ Aiko