To be your ONLY option (Namkook)

That Kid

2006

9 years old Jungkook woke up in middle of the night by the unbearable noise that seemed to be coming from the living room. It wasn't new for him, rather he was used to it. So he pressed his little palms over his ears and closed the eyes tightly forcing himself to sleep again.

He has always seen his parents fighting over everything, even silly ones since time immemorial. He was just bothered with the noise when he was younger. With time, he realised this is not what a happy family looks like and that's what started tormenting the little boy.

Recently, his family moved from Busan to Daejeon due to his father's transferable job. His mother, Jeon Seong was a high school teacher who had to quit her job in Busan due to the transfer. This deteriorated her relationship with her husband Jeon Him-chan.

They had been together since college, both were in same year. Everything was just perfect. They both were crazily in love with each other, even ready to leave their families when Seong's parents forbade her to date Him-chan. Fortunately, Him-chan's parents accepted the relationship for the sake of their son and convinced Seong's family.

Things started go downhill when Him-chan started going on office tours for days, sometimes months and it created a misunderstanding to Seong that he was cheating on her while the exactly opposite was the only truth. Now they were hoping for their relationship to get better as the tours will be considerably less frequent due to Him-chan's transfer, but the seed for the arguments has grown into a plant now which is growing bigger day by day.

Him-chan loved his wife more than anything in his life, even more than his son. He longed to be with her during his tours. But his job was really important to provide sufficiently for his family. Seong was a very broad minded, independent woman, she wanted to share the household expenses even though her salary was almost half of her husband's income. But somehow her husband's male ego came in between.

Both the husband and the wife loved each other deeply. They were ready to sacrifice their own happiness for the other. Unfortunately, they ended up compromising the love for their only child. They were so engrossed in their own conflict that they barely paid any attention to the little boy who desperately wanted to be loved, to have a happy family with his parents.

Jungkook came back home from his new school on a Friday afternoon. Changing the school uniform, he went to the kitchen where he found some sticky rice left in the rice cooker and  some leftover roasted eggplant from last night's dinner in the fridge. He sighed as his mother had forgotten about his allergy to eggplant again. Last night just had the rice with kimchi. But today he wants to eat something delicious.

Checking the pantry, he found all necessary ingredients and started making gimbap. He always had a knack for cooking but this was for survival. Her mother would often forget to prepare anything for him. He used to feel sad seeing his friends and classmates bringing bento boxes filled with delicious food while he would be buying lunch from the school canteen.

He wanted things to be different in their new home but that dream was not something to turn into reality any soon.

Suddenly, he heard the front door bell ring and rushed to check. Being a 9 years old he is not able to reach up to the peep hole on the door, so picked up a foot stool from the living room and placed it in front of the door. He stood over the stool and through the peep hole he saw a beautiful woman, almost the age of his mother.