King of hearts • d.sc

26

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"Oh." Haneul laughed slightly as she realised she could enter the room with a simple push, thinking it had been locked for the past six or so years. She's never been allowed inside and due to that she was never thought much of it. Though today she was curious, and this time there was nothing stopping her.

The temperature in the room was significantly colder, the scent of her mother's orange blossom perfume lingered beneath the empty smell of an unoccupied space. Her eyes darted around the room, taking in everything at once. The pictures on the wall, the trophies on the shelves, the wooden furniture with accented green tones that decorated the room. It felt eerie and safe at the same time, like she wasn't supposed to be there, but was being told to do so.

Everything was left untouched, as if every trace of her existence was put on hold, left to be forgotten.

"Is this your mother's office?" Winwin asked as he looked over the pictures of her mother on the walls, her smile was bright for the camera's, the only smile Haneul had ever seen her in.

"Yeah." She answered, walking behind the classic wooden desk, the only thing decorating it being a box of pens, one of her many awards and a picture of herself. Her mother had narcissistic tendencies, though that was what she tried to show others. Haneul knew she never really got to see the true side of her mother. She ran a hand over the table, rubbing the dust between her two fingers.

"What actually happened to her?" Winwin asked, the question she knows many would like to ask, and one she had never known how to answer.

"Oh how different would things would be if we knew." She sighed as she opened up a drawer. "I woke up and she was just gone, the only thing that was left out of place was a bottle of Olanzapine I found scattered on her bathroom floor." She lifted a brow at the coincidence as she pulled out an orange prescription bottle she found amongst many others in her mothers desk drawer. "Funny."

"She must have been sick then." He watched as Haneul stared at the half empty bottle, a familiar gut feeling settling within her. It had scratch marks on it, and based on the amount, it wasn't taken well either.

"She's schizophrenic. As I learned a few years too late." She placed it back amongst the sea of bottles. Her eyes catching sight of the photos that revealed themselves as the bottles rolled. She pushed the orange plastics aside as she fished out the two photos.

"Weird." She muttered as she stared at a photo of young Haneul and her mother, her father was completely ripped out of the photo as she caressed the edges softly. Her mother had always told Haneul that she loved her, however she never exactly showed it. It stirred a sense of reminiscence within her as she looked at the smiling faces. Haneul couldn't quite remember where it was taken, but the grass was green that day. As their relationship must have been.

"Who's this?" Winwin showed her the second photo, pointing to a young boy in her mothers arms. Her mother was laughing in the photo, a rarity, and unlike the one with Haneul in it, it wasn't torn. Another point of difference was that the photo was almost completely white with snow. Haneul thinks back as it clicked in her head.

"My older brother I think." She answered as she looked closely, standing beside Winwin. "He died a bit after I was born, his name was Byunghan." She never really knew him, she just knew her parents must have been very different people when he was alive.

"Oh I'm sorry to hear that." Winwin apologised. "Your family is a little complicated."

"Yeah no shit." She laughed, looking at the photo once more. She turned it over, expecting a date as she had seen on the photo with her in it. Instead, in small writing at the bottom, was a message, addressed to her.