Matryoshka Doll - NoRenMin ✔︎

Chapter 27

"Mom?!" Jaemin asked, hands moving to grip behind his back nervously and shakily.

"What are- Explain what I just saw."

Jaemin swallowed heavily, Jeno and Renjun glancing at him nervously as they stayed statue still besides the movement of their eyes. His hands felt wet, and his throat closed around him for every breath he took before slowly releasing and then surprising him with another choke.

He could do it.

He could come out, ruin his family, and get it over with.

Easy.

"Well, they're both my boyfriends," he explained slowly.

A moment of silence passed, as if she were waiting for the punchline. The moment Jaemin would burst out laughing and yelling, 'GOT YA!' Before continuing that it was a bad joke and they were just doing normal bro hugs. But that anticipation of a punchline passed and the words registered harshly in her as she analyzed Jaemin's nervous face.

"WHAT?!"

Her loud shriek carried across the house, catching the attention of nearly everyone else who had been fooling around in a Jaemin's room which meant it was bad because it was in a completely different part of the house. Seconds passed as a loud set of footsteps echoed through the house.

"Mom?" Jaehyun asked, popping into the living room to see the three in a weird stance.

Realization seemed to cross over him and instantly, his eyes widened. He knew he should've forced them upstairs but it was too late and he was certain everyone could assume the same since they had heard her loud yell.

"Tell me, Jae, tell me that those two aren't like your boyfriend," she whispered, hand against a wall. "I know one of them is his brother but just tell me its family difference and he isn't like him. It'll make it all the worse."

Jaemin didn't know the severity and depth of that question, opting to tell her exactly who they were because frankly, he wouldn't care if she hated him or them because he only felt love when surrounded by their presence.

"Jen is Wiccan but Junnie is a Satanist."

Her face paled, her feet automatically taking her to sit on a couch as she took deep breaths. To any regular person, she was clearly overreacting but Jaehyun sensed why she really had to take a seat and breathe. He had heard her sermons she had given his little brother. Sermons that instructed him to never, no matter what, date a Satanist. But here Jaemin was bringing her the biggest disappointment and shock of the century.

"Na Jaemin. Tell me," Mrs Na whispered. "Tell me why you decide that of all people, you must go and date men and not just any men. Men that are Satan's children. Men that will manipulate and take everything from you before leaving you? Men who don't know anything but the evil of Earth?"

Jaemin's mouth hung open. Hands balling as he heard her and for once, he could see how awful he had sounded at the start when he had insisted that Jeno and Rejun were Devil's children. He couldn't take it.

More than anything else, he hated her accusations she threw around when in reality, it was he himself he should've been pissed with for he had taken from her words first and used them.

Taken his boyfriends happiness of who they were, take their beliefs and trashed them, taken their thoughts of him and turn them bad. That's what he had taken first until they resolved everything and set things right.

His Mother could change too, right?

Right?

RIGHT?!

Wrong.

She couldn't change because as the saying went, 'You can't teach an old dog how to bark.'

It applied the same here and he couldn't teach an old woman to unlearn her ways unless she really tried.

The room was quiet, no one knew what to do─ groceries completely forgotten─ until she motioned for them to take a seat and that's when Jaemin knew that whatever would be said, that would determine their future.

Jaehyun, too, took a seat on a single couch, simply there as either moral support or as a median, no one knew, but he was there and Jaemin was once again reminded that Jaehyun had always had some secret advantage over arguments.

Jaehyun had always known to some extent. Always known about the one situation that managed to get his little brother whatever he wanted and between his parents and himself, it was a secret that no one should've ever found out. It was one that not even a word of the entire bribing method should get out. But now, the one tool that he had used all his life was beginning to slip and in seconds, there'd be no other choice but to let that one secret out.

There were three things that couldn't be hidden. The sun, moon, and the truth. Now was the time for the truth to come out.

Because the truth would always prevail.

"Mom, you have to tell him," Jaehyun whispered aggressively, not wanting Jaemin to fully hear what he said while he was still burning in rage. "You can't just tell him he can't date a Satanist and a Wiccan without giving a valid explanation besides you hate him being gay! You either tell him or I will and lord knows the difference between our explanations."

Mrs Na inhaled with a stuttered breath, her hands shaking as she painfully looked at her son being wrapped by two sets of arms. Two sets of arms that had loved him more than she ever had in her entire life. Two sets that had met him, started off on the wrong foot and grew to know him and care. Two sets that hadn't left him even though they knew his family wouldn't support them. Two sets that were there for him no matter what.

It was more effort than she had ever done besides raising him.

"Jaemin?" She called out, watching the way he lifted his head to glare holes into her. "Can you listen to what I have to say? I want to tell you something I should've told you years ago."

He blatantly refused, screwing his eyes shut and turning away before hiding his head behind Jeno like an adorable toddler.

"Just hear her out. Quickly," Renjun whispered, delicately patting Jaemin's leg.

Mrs Na watched silently. Pressure formed behind her eyes to see that not only had her son grown up to find himself his own relationship but grown up to make decisions of his own without waiting. Those were things that should've come to him quite some time before but in the condition they had been living─ him being homeschooled for the first years of his life and struggling to meet people and be detached from his brother─ it had seemed as if it would be a struggle for him to ever learn things like that and now, he grew up horribly fast in the span of less than a year.

"I don't want to. She said mean things about you two and I didnt like it," Jaemin responded stubbornly.

"Min, we wouldn't have come if we didn't expect this. We knew what'd happen and we still came because we love you. Just hear her out, okay?" Jeno asked, an adorable eye smile in place as he looked at his boyfriend.

Jeno always had a way of making things seem okay. He had a way of speaking that just made you want to listen and so, Jaemin, against his will, sat properly to face his Mother.

"Make it fast. I'm mad."

From the corner of his eye, he could see Jaehyun smile at him, pacing sounding from upstairs where everyone else awaited the verdict.