Teenage Love

Chapter 36

Days passed after Danielle met Haerin.  The Alpha was dismayed at what she had done by looking for a rather strange sort of atmosphere between them at school.

Sometimes glances met and sometimes even smiles fell from their directions but the gestures were so fleeting and frivolous that they seemed to be made out of friendship.

  The sour taste of the love they had consummated that afternoon had made her mind broken.  Haerin had always been serious and detached from reality but these days her mind did what it wanted.

She decided to walk a little to remove that bad taste of remorse in her mouth for not having asked for anything other than a simple shared sex out of an animal instinct.

Only then did she realize that she had passed down the same street as Mrs. Park.  Since the beginning of her move, Mrs. Park had looked at her with dreamy eyes as if her figure were partially celestial and untouchable.

But Haerin knew well that her mind could play tricks on the woman.  Mrs. Park was a widow who lived across the street where Haerin happened to pass in order to get to her house more quickly. 

It took two minutes from her house to Mrs. Park's and even though they weren't close, Mrs. Park had eyes for her like a mother.  Mrs. Park was an Alpha who taciturnly watched everything from her gazebo placed next to her house, always giving a glimpse of the wonderful flowers that her gardener planted for her. 

Ms. Park had been a widow for a long time and the only thing that forced her to live were her grandchildren and her family from her deceased wife, Kim Jisoo.  The two had fathered two healthy children who went in different places than Mrs. Park. 

Despite the financial possibilities that Mrs. Park had, the woman had always felt that her old house was the best of hers since she had chosen it as her wife.

  Haerin sometimes felt immense suffering watching her alone in that gazebo with a tea in her hands and staring into space.

She really wanted to climb over the fence of the house and go jump it but she was too apathetic and shy to do.  It was always Mrs. Park who spoke first.

"Kang! Where are you going?"  asked Mrs. Park, standing up and waving her hand at Haerin.  Although she was engaged and old for the age, her widowed look was impossible to recognize: the woman was in her fifties and had thick blonde hair falling to her shoulders.

The Australian accent that she picked up from her hometown felt like her when she spoke that sometimes Haerin thought she was talking to a foreigner. 

The Alpha stopped in front of the fence, looking at Mrs. Park and then giving her a shrug.

“If you have nothing at all to do, you could see my granddaughter for these days,” Mrs. Park said with a smile on her lips.  The definitive breakup with Mrs. Park's daughter and her husband was already very popular but the man had remained here while her wife was in Busan with her new boyfriend. 

For now the husband was there with Mrs. Park's niece.  She lived two blocks away, right by Haerin's school.  They were similar in age so she couldn't understand why she was asking her this favor.

  "That girl is a real pest! She's run away twice in the last few weeks to see her friends, her father is always out and can't control her. Could you take care of her?"  asked Mrs. Park, confessing the girl's rebellious situation.  Haerin sighed, hoping that this distraction would make her forget about Danielle for a while.

  "When should I go?"  Haerin asked about her, putting her hands in her pockets, "You could start tomorrow too, around seven in the evening. I'll let the father know, he'll be happy," replied Mrs. Park, clapping her hands for joy. 

Haerin leaned against the fence tired and saying she would be on time tomorrow.

  “Is something wrong, Kang?”  Mrs. Park asked leaning her head to the side of her trying to figure out which direction was best to understand things that were in the Alpha's head.

"Nothing is just the weather..." she said as she looked towards the sky thinking that everything that was happening to her was caused by external forces and make no mistake of hers.

  Mrs. Park raised an eyebrow and then said, "Your problem is an Omega, right?"  Haerin froze in place, running out of air and turning red with shame at being discovered so quickly by Mrs. Park.

  It felt like her head was getting hot.  She could feel her body burning and her tongue shortening in embarrassment.

"I think so," Mrs. Park whispered to herself as she saw Haerin's physical reaction to hearing those words.

Obviously Mrs. Park was more experienced than her in these matters, when she was young it was said that she was a womanizer.

Her wife had fought hard to keep Mrs. Park away from trouble and possible betrayals.

Sometimes Mrs. Park said that it was fate itself that had decided it: it had made her immune to the courtship of all the Omegas who had asked her out before and after her wife's death, making her feel the sadness and fatigue that her wife had in that old teenage days.

"Try to get yourself together," Mrs. Park said with an encouraging smile, letting her footsteps make inaudible movements as her figure glided carefree into the house thinking back to that rebellious and messed up life she had had when she was a teenager and her family stiff on his shoulders. 

Haerin stared at Mrs. Park's house and walked towards her house.  But why didn't she have the courage to go to Danielle instead of looking like a depressed fool in the middle of the street?

What was different from other times?  That always tired smile and those eyes of hers that were always half-closed and sour towards others had always made her look like a depressed and apathetic Alpha.

Why couldn't she destroy those layers of falsehood in her heart and reveal her true nature to Danielle?

  Was she too shy like Professor Kim told her or was she too in love like Mrs. Park thought?

  Or was she a coward who couldn't even utter a word to the person she loved?