Vexing Mister Kwon

Another story

  The sound of the door knocking makes Jihoon raise his head to look at the intruder. The moment he sees Wonwoo he flops back into his bed clutching onto his stuffed tiger tightly, over the past week, Jihoon has realized how much comfort the tiny thing would give him that he could no longer sleep without having it in his arms, maybe it was his nesting instincts hyper fixating on something but either way he did not mind it at all, it was nice to pretend to talk to the old tiger, at least it would not speak back to him or tell him how much of a stupid person he is.

  Wonwoo flops onto his bed both of them on their backs as they stare at the top of the bed, the roof of it had so many engravings and scribbles all over the surface that were full of random musical notes and doodles that his siblings snuck into the room to do when they were young, now it was just nostalgic to look at them. "I have not seen that tiger in years, where did you find it?"

  "The attic." Wonwoo hums but does not move instead he pulls on a pillow behind his head and gets more comfortable. Jihoon rolls his eyes at that knowing that the other is preparing for a whole conversation. 

  "I thought you had sworn off letting anyone go to the attic or even get close to it a few years ago." Jihoon shrugs bringing the tiger closer to his nose.

  "I was looking for something and I guess being in the attic was not as bad as I thought It would be." Wonwoo turns to his side eyeing Jihoon curiously.

  "Dad gave you that one on our 4th birthday, I remember it clearly because I have a matching cat in my room." As expected Wonwoo would not beat through the bush to tell him what he was thinking and he was spot on.

  "Yeah," Jihoon nods slowly. "I was thinking..." Jihoon stops for a moment then turns to his side as well to look at his twin properly.

  "Thinking about what?"

  "What do you say to sorting through that stuff together? I think it has been long enough of avoiding the past and Father does not deserve to be forgotten in the way we all erased his existence." Wonwoo's eyes soften as he stares at him fondly.

  "What brought this on suddenly?" Jihoon shrugs back. 

  "Everything that has been going on lately I suppose, then the death of the Viscount made me realize that we have not moved on at all from where we have been 4 years ago, we're all still stuck there. We just collected everything and locked it in the attic and stayed stuck there. We never properly healed, we never talked about father, his pictures are nowhere in the house and no one says his name anymore. When we were at the Kwon's, the pain felt as fresh as it was back then, we have not moved on as we thought we did. And I know it is mainly my fault I am sorry I caused this." Wonwoo flicks his forehead with an eye roll stopping him from talking further.

  "It was not your fault. You seem to forget that we are one family, we all share the burdens of this. We all decided eventually to avoid the subject. It was not like you banned us from talking about him or enforced it on us. I admit I never liked the way everyone was acting but for Mother's sake I accepted what we had to do even if it meant pretending like Father never even existed in our lives." Jihoon sighs nodding his head.

  "We all pretended but in the process of trying to heal our mother, we all got hurt further. And Mother just never got back to us eventually so we just lost both in a way at the same time." Wonwoo pulls on the tiger from the other's arm staring at it slowly and listening.

  "It is never too late you know? We talked about this before, our family is not perfect but we are getting better at this. We agreed to take this step by step right? That we will slowly try to work things out together, everything has its time. I will go with you to the attic anytime you want, I will not let you do it alone Ji." Jihoon smiles taking a deep breath.