CHAEBEOL | minsung

twenty-seven

'' ~ ୨୧ ♡ ·

Minho lets smoke curl around his fingers, warm but bitter, thick at the tip and then billowing into hazy clouds. He doesn't smoke from the cigarette - he never does. He just likes the feeling of it, squishy yet firm between his fingers, and the acrid smell it leaves behind.

He would light up a joint instead, but Minho was raised poor. He knows better than to waste good weed on bad feelings.

There's a humming feeling in his chest and he tries to blink the sting out of his eyes. Tries harder not to think too much. Stinging, and thinking, prevail.

"You were a fucking embarrassment to me tonight." It had been said calmly. Too calmly.

"I didn't do anything!" Minho had tried to defend himself, face all screwed up in protest.

He hadn't done anything, either. He had sat through a dinner, him and the man who had shaken his life up like a snow globe, with around eight other men who Minho had barely looked at.

He'd been as quiet as a mouse, hands tucked in his lap. Offered little more than a nod when appropriate, a forced smile whenever his name was mentioned, an affirming hmm on the rare occasion that someone asked a question in his direction.

"Exactly," the man shot back. "You didn't do anything. You think that the most important businessmen in the country will want to do business with someone who can barely string two words together?"

"You think I want to do business with them? You think I want any of this?" Minho bit back. For a moment, he had forgotten himself. Spoke out of turn.

After the dinner, he had stood by the man's chair, both bowing at the departing guests. Once they'd left, the man had shot Minho a cold look, and then stalked off to another room in the house. Minho, purely out of fear of what might've happened if he hadn't, had followed him.

The man had taken a seat in a sitting room a few doors down from the dining hall. Minho's mother was waiting there for him with a smile and a hot teapot full of spiced tea. The man had curled his lip at the teapot, took himself instead to the array of glass bottles tucked in a drinks cabinet in the corner of the room.

Minho tried not to watch as the man poured a single glass of amber liquid.

Instead, he glanced around at marble flooring, ornate décor, the few couches in the room made of plush fabric and edged in sparkling, unscathed gold. He could fit his house into this house a hundred times over.

A quiet voice in his head tried to correct him; isn't this our house now?

"Minho, you shouldn't talk to your father like that-"

"How many times do I have to remind you that he isn't my fucking father?"

Minho's mother's voice had been soft, timid, a world away from the harsh edge that started to grow louder every time Minho spoke to her these days. Even further removed from the jarring sound of glass shattering and drops of whiskey dripping down onto polished wood.

"You made me waste my good whisky." Even as Minho and his mother had cowered around him, spooked by the sudden noise, the man's voice was still scarily calm.

The man had taken a long slug from the drink. He had pulled it between his teeth, savouring the taste, swilling it around hollowed cheeks. And then he had pulled back one arm and launched it at the wall opposite him.

"I'm sorry," Minho had mumbled.

It was scary, how quickly a sound or a smell or a feeling can suspend you in time, the sound of expensive whisky hitting the floor no different to that of cheap beer. Glass shatters loudly, sure, but plastic cups still make a noise when they break.