BABY BLUE |BTS| KIM SEOKJIN| 1

5- Helping Hand

During the car ride back home from the doctors, no one spoke. Not even my dad, who usually starts the conversation going.

I rested my head on the window, clutching onto the arm handle as I thought of the earlier events.

"And how much does the operation cost?"

"It ranges around $7,500 to $11,000 depending. But your insurance usually covers the cost for the corneal transplant."

The doctor says, and there was silence that hung over my parents, and even I.

"We'll find the money somehow," My dad sighed after a long silence, and chuckled a little. "Anything for my little girl, eh?"

I smiled, but that disappeared when my mom began to speak up.

"And where will we get the money?" My mom asked sternly. "That doctor says that large amount of money like it was only $500 won to him."

My dad just sighed. "Now now honey, we'll figure it out somehow-"

"Figure it out somehow?" She scoffed. "Says the man who just got fired from his job."

"I didn't get fired alright? They just simply laid me off that's all." He argued back. "It's not like I did anything bad. It was only because they wanted to get rid of an old man like me and get younger employees."

"Same thing that's happening to me at the retail store," She sighed. "I might as well quit and make a better living a the fishing market with the older women instead."

"Yah, honey don't say that." My dad says and sighed.

"Appa?" I called my dad.

"Hmm? Did I hear my princess call me?" My dad says and I smiled.

"Appa, I can work too." I say, and my mom scoffed.

"And where are you going to work at?" She says, a bit harshly.

I took in a deep breath. "I can work part time as a piano teacher. It doesn't require sight to teach that. I can just feel the keys and-"

"And how can you read the music sheets?" My mother asked me.

"I could listen to the song track before and memorize the notes. After all, memorizing things is what I'm good at now. And plus, I wasn't born blind. I know how to play piano." I say, and my mom sighed deeply.

"You could do that," My dad agreed. "But who will you be teaching?"

"Anyone who wants to learn piano." I say, thinking. "I can put up some papers around town to advertize." 

"Sumin," My mother called me, and I stopped talking. "I'm asking you the real question here. Who would take piano lessons from someone that is blind? Think about it."

"Yah, honey don't be so harsh on her-"

"But I'm telling you, she can't take that job." My mom said to my dad, who tried to argue back, defending me, but I blocked it all out by trying to zone out to think of something else.

Things were so much better when Naeun was still here.

She was a good student, who enrolled into a good college for the government to pay for her scholarship to get a degree in the medical field to become a doctor.

She was the perfect daughter too...while I wasn't.

My mother loved her more, while my father loved me.