Strawberries | SKZITZY

19 ~ Don't breathe

"It's fine now." Hyunjin patted Yeji's hand as she tried to hold back her tears.

They were sitting on the grass, with the river body facing them. Yeji mindlessly threw pebbles into the river. The sky was darkening.

"My dad cheated on my mom." Yeji said plainly. She turned to look at Hyunjin who was already watching her intently.

"You know... I thought of him as the perfect dad. For some reason, my mom and I never saw eye to eye. She was unbendingly strict hence we argued alot. Little did I know... that was just her way of protecting me." Yeji reminisced bitterly.

"You know when I told my mom that I saw my dad with another woman, she was more shocked that I found out instead of the fact that my dad was cheating." A forlorn chuckle escaped her lips.

Yeji thought back to the day when she saw her dad come out of his office building. She ran up to him and just before she could call him, a lady, way younger than her mother but quite older than herself, called her dad by his name ; adding a whiny "oppa" to it. Yeji instinctively hid behind the tree. Her heart dropped as she saw her dad being intimately chummy with the lady. She walked back home weeping uncontrollably.

"She already knew about it. Imagine the guilt I felt when I found out that she was still with him only because she didn't want me to lose the connection I had with my dad. At least, her words, until I turned 18." Yeji sighed indignantly. "She didn't even listen to my older brother."

Yeji's older brother lived abroad and was who her mother turned to mostly when she was having difficulties forming bond with her daughter and husband.

To Yeji, that was a groundbreaking phase of her life. She barely held it together feigning bravery until her parents were through with the divorce. She never talked to her dad even once since.

There were times she had pondered whether she should have listened to his point of view. Maybe gave him the benefit of doubt but the suffering inflicted upon her once the rumors had spread, left quite a bitter impression of him hence leaving no room for forgiveness nor confrontation.

It's not that she didn't see the divorce coming, it was something she thought would eventually happen given the constant quarreling of her parents. But she had never once expected it to be because of a cheating scandal. A scandal that soon spread in the small town she lived in which changed the trajectory of her life. Middle school students can be extremely harsh, to the point where you lose all your sanity.

"It must have been so hard." Hyunjin sympathised as he pulled her by the nape, so that her face was buried in his chest. As if signalling her to let the tears she was holding back stream.

"You can cry all you want. I won't look at you." He rubbed comforting circles on her back.

He felt a twinge in his chest once he heard soft sobs escape her mouth. He still couldn't get out the image of her shaken look when she met gazes with the man at the restaurant.

"It's him." She had whimpered when the man turned. He walked up to them.

"Yeji, Its me... dad." He smiled woefully.

Yeji had gone completely mute, her widened eyes fixated on the man claiming to be her dad. Her lips pursed in distress.

Hyunjin stretched out his arm to squeeze Yeji's hand as he sensed her anxiety. She turned her gaze to Hyunjin as if pleading him to take her somewhere far away from there.

Hyunjin slightly pushed the man who was crouching to the side and made his way out of the restaurant while gripping Yeji's hand tightly. He, himself had his fair share of parent indicted trauma, so he seemed to telepathically understand her.