crack in the mirror | gayeon 🪞

-3-

Maybe he overestimated his father. After all, when thinking about him, he concluded that he didn't do anything very bad to him. His father raised a hand at him maybe once or twice when he was extremely mad, but despite it, he barely bothered Jooyeon.

What if it was Jooyeon who was the problem? He could perhaps be too demanding. His father had so many things on his head already; he had to earn money, so he worked a lot, he had to bear with a son and a wife, so he drank a lot.

Sometimes he argued a lot, and whenever it happened, Jooyeon hid in his room, his head buried in the cushion, afraid he would irritate him even more. His mother quarrelled with him. She was strong, but sometimes it was not enough.

The most important thing was that she knew Jooyeon was to blame, he didn't belong to them fully—or rather, they wished he didn't.

He was supposed to never be born at all. The birth certificate his mother received was a shameful document that marked their next years.

She wanted to rip that document back then. Even now, sometimes she still does.

She wanted to get rid of it, but somehow her parents convinced her not to do it. They promised to help her take care of the child, which they never did.

She was seventeen, and the father of her child ran away—no one ever wanted Jooyeon. He was hated from the very beginning; there was not even an option to change his dim future, and somehow, even he didn't try to help himself out of the situations he was getting into that were making his parents angry. He knew there was no way out.

They wouldn't like him anyway—why would he care? From the moment of his exit from her body, it had been a hopeless case.

Everything started the moment she came back home from the hospital with him; it wasn't the plan, it wasn't supposed to fucking happen! 

He was supposed to die or be sent to an orphanage.

But for god's sake, she had to bring him home. He wasn't even Jinyoung's child. How could he love him when he was the fruit of some fun his wife had with some other man? It wasn't possible, so he clenched his jaw and decided to tolerate him.

After all, what else was he supposed to do? Bora took care of him, and he took care of his own ass. That was enough at first.

Even though they didn't want him to exist, he made it his goal to live his life to frustrate them. He wanted to have so much fun that they would feel stupid—stupid for never wanting anything good for him.

And Jooyeon liked vengeance. 

If desperately trying to gain his father's attention to show him how disconcertingly he behaved could be called revenge, he was good at it.

He only wished he would notice him once. Think of him for once, let alone say a thing about him. He wasn't as successful as he wished he were.

Jinyoung did think about him, but he treated him as if he were invisible. Non-existent. Never born. Exactly to his liking.

Many years had passed, and yet their attitude towards each other never changed. That was partly the reason why he had joined the school, which his father felt disgusted by. After all, this was an art school and not some sports school—not something his father would call manly.

His only son (he didn't even want to recognise him as such) was a burden and of no use to him. He didn't care about him at all. Still, he wished Jooyeon could be better, he wasn't someone Jinyoung wanted to brag about. He was... well, the last time they talked, he called Jooyeon a meaningless creature. Something that shouldn't have the right to live.