🏆 THE AMBY AWARDS 2023 TOP PICK - DIVERSE LIT 🏆
It's Rin and Hye-jin against the world. Or so it should have been.
Nagara Rin and Joon Hye-jin, college sweethearts and passionate gamers, have lived a fairytale marriage. Not even a decade after did...
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The lock to the door clicked shut the moment Hye-jin made it inside the house. Weight dug against her chest and stomach as she balanced herself on one foot at a time to kick off the worn shoes off them. She stepped into the ante, dreading the amount of work bound to greet her the moment she turned on the lights.
So, she didn't. Instead, she stalked in the dark, taking memorized and measured steps towards the kitchen counter. She passed the living room, where an empty couch sulked. There had been a time when that couch had been a place of happy memories, moments where she laughed as much as she could. Moments she thought would never end.
But the curtains have closed and opened. This time, a brand new scene awaited them. And it was lost on her how fast the transition went and how it flew below her nose only to rip the rug from under her feet. On the niches nailed straight into the wall, a lone vase standing on some sort of a destined pedestal caught her attention. Like all the days she glanced at it, no flowers bloomed over its lip.
Hye-jin shuffled to the kitchen counter as if someone chased her. Her arms couldn't wait to be free of the weight of the paper bags still smelling like the putrid air of the grocery. She pushed the bags deeper into the counter, the dark succeeding in keeping her company. With a sigh, she stuck her hand inside the nearest bag, the one containing the soaps and other non-edible substances. The bottle of dishwashing liquid hadn't even left the bag when the sound of distinct crying reached her ears.
Alertness seized her heart. The grocery bags were forgotten as she rushed from the kitchen towards the only bedroom in the house. She threw the door open to find a woman with messier hair than her staring at a wailing infant who was already pulsing red in the face.
"Okaa-san!" she screamed, jolting the older woman back from whatever reverie she was in. Hye-jin slid over to the infant and held him close, muttering words of comfort under her breath. "I told you to watch over him!"
Her own son. Leaving her daughter-in-law to play a role she couldn't—how cruel could this world be to Hye-jin? "Rin would kill us both!"
"My boy wouldn't hurt anyone," Okaa-san said, her gaze melting into a dreamy look. Oh, dear. Not this again. "He would never hurt anyone."
Hye-jin winced as the infant's wails drowned out the rest of her mother-in-law's incoherent mumblings. She shouldn't have left them on their own. But what about the groceries? Someone has to go, and Rin wouldn't be home until well after midnight. They need to have something for dinner, too.
She rocked the infant, shushing him. Come on, little one. What's wrong with you?
It's a good thing she learned how to take care of children when she helped around with her cousins. If she could just get him to shut up quickly. Dinner wasn't going to cook itself. "Okaa-san, what would you want for dinner?" she asked, peering at the older woman from her pointy elbows. Her mother-in-law hasn't risen from her kneeling position. "I'm thinking of doing jjajangmyeon and gimbap today. Is that alright? We can do dishes from home tomorrow. I'll look for shrimp in the morning market tomorrow."
