FOUR PILLARS

Chapter 16: To My Youth (나의 사춘기에게)

The weather is nice today, a contrast to his ongoing inner turmoil. Can he call it that? When it's just himself feeling bored with band practice.

He didn't meet anyone that matters today, or at least after he reached school because sport's day is in less than two weeks and being a perfectionist he is, he wants the performance day to be perfect. As the saying says, practice makes perfect.

Bright just realized he has so many things to do. An art project to work on, football practice that he hasn't attend for at least a week and he's their captain for god's sake, and to top it all off, he has a lover in the making to woo. The burden of his life is already heavy and maybe having a lover during the last year of school is a stupid decision.

But who is he lying? Falling for Win is the least stupidest thing he had done, far from it actually. That brunette makes him actually wants something, a person that he can call his without a doubt. A life in the world that feels like bitter death. Also he is trained to be an heir, of course he can manage everything no matter how hectic his schedule can be but from the ringing of his phone and seeing the sender's name makes him wonder if he really is ready for more problems.

Mother: You have to come home by tomorrow. Your father is asking for you

A sigh left his lips. Another thing that God throws in his way.

He doesn't hate his mother. Well, not really, but they don't really have the best mother-son relationship in the world. It's just maybe if his world is not about greed and money, his mother can love him freely. He knows his mother loves him, he can see it in her eyes and smiles but he also understands that she has expectations to fulfil.

His mother was an actress but also a woman born into the world of aristocrats. Her decision to choose the path of entertainment makes the grandfather of his mother frowned upon her, making her practically disowned by them. And the world of entertainment is not so merciful too. Saying that she got good roles in dramas and movies because of her father instead of her talent. It's idiotic to think so as he watched his mother's acting in the television and it was amazing but talent is nothing when the world is not forgiving. Then his mother broke, the path that she chose stabbed her in the back. It turned away from the poor girl she was once. So his mother's family take her back, and made her marry his father.

Since then his mother keeps being an actress, she acts like the perfect daughter-in-law all the time. She acts like the world didn't kill her youth and brought her back as a mindless zombie. She lives like a typical rich woman, who laughs but the joke is not even funny, whose smiles never reach her eyes, and sleeps with more regrets than a small body of hers can muster.

And he hates his mother for it. He hates that his mother cut off her wings because of some stupid comments people made. He is mad that world treats his mother badly that she can never lets him go into the world of music and do what he loves. He hates how his mother had so much love for the world but the light in her eyes were robbed because they were born into the world of wealth. He hates the world who broke his mother deeply that he never knows who his mother really is.

Now his mother is the perfect corporate woman who values her work more than her son's happiness. She moulds him into the perfect heir, like she was expected to because he is the sole heir of Cosmic Group. She had to make him perfect, Bright knows he has to be perfect because the inheritance should be his and his alone. His mother cannot give him her wealth because once a woman bears another last name, you are technically not a family.

Now it's a stupid world of greed, money and sexism. Nice.

'Sorry mother. Sorry that I can't be you. Sorry that I can't hate the thing I love,' he whimpers silently. He knows he will move the world for Win and he knows he will drop everything he has just to be with him. Bright understand the risk of loving Win, and even the consequence of it. Maybe loving a man is not as frowned upon as it used to be but loving a commoner? His family will shatter if they know about this.