Echo || NCTau ||

8 - About vacations

"Yo-Yo, should I prepare some tea for you?"

Yeoreum glanced at her mother over the dishes she was drying.

Her mother was a sweet, tiny woman with sad, round eyes and greying hair despite her not being very old. As she stood in the doorway to the kitchen, her gaze was zeroed on Yeoreum as if she was studying her daughter's every move. "I heard you coughing even though you shouldn't", she explained her suggestion as she stepped into the kitchen when Yeoreum didn't reply. "I'll prepare you some tea."

"I can cough", Yeoreum mumbled as she continued to dry the dishes. "It just doesn't – "

"I'll make you tea and you'll drink it", her mother interrupted her.

Yeoreum didn't want to upset her mom so she didn't say anything.

No matter how many times she visited the house her mom and brother had lived in for the past years, Yeoreum could never feel quite at peace. She walked close to the walls, peeked through the windows constantly to see if anyone was watching, and always felt out of breath as soon as she got out.

Of course, the organization kept an eye on the house and its occupants – they had to, considering how the entire family was tangled up in and suffocated by its tentacles but still she wished that they would've left her mom and brother alone. Both Yeowoon and Yeoreum were too deep into the organization to stand up against it, and mom had paid a heavy price for her insubordination, ensuring that she wouldn't rebel again. Keeping tabs on them wasn't necessary because they couldn't afford to cause trouble.

The only way to be freed was to pay back the debt.

It was supposed to take Yeoreum close to a decade to pay for everything but dr. An had shortened her sentence. By killing Park Jisung, who was just an ordinary guy, she could be free. She could free her mom and brother.

While Yeoreum put the dishes back to their places, her eyes were drawn to the picture on the wall next to the window.

It was an old family picture where all of them were gathered together and grinning at the camera. In the photo, young Yeoreum hugged her dad and her eyes were full of life and hope.

Without all the pictures scattered around the house, Yeoreum wasn't sure if she would've even remembered what her dad looked like, even though he hadn't died until she was ten. She had been old enough to remember every single detail about him but had chosen not to. It was useless to reminisce about the past.

When she turned her back on the picture, she was faced with her mom who blocked her access to the rest of the dishes.

"The other day, I spoke with couch Lee", her mom said. In her hands, she had a big glass for Yeoreum's tea. "He told me that you weren't really excited about teaching the self-defense course."

Yeoreum moved her mom gently by her shoulders.

"Was it your idea to make him ask me?" she asked while picking up the next pot. "It was surprising that he was aware that I was coming back to Seoul." Not that she'd had the time or energy to think about couch Lee's information sources while staking out the boring Australian trust fund guy.

Who, by the way, had not exhibited any symptoms of planning to double-cross his brother because he was very much dependent on someone else making money for him.

"It wasn't my idea. He himself mentioned that he could ask you", her mom defended herself swiftly. "Their current self-defense teacher wants to go back to university and can't teach anymore, and couch Lee wants a teacher he can trust. He said that he doesn't want to teach the classes full-time himself because almost all of the students are women and he doesn't want them to be uncomfortable."