3 Ways

Dangerous Days

>_____<;;

Victoria opened the door to their grandma's bedroom and peered over at the bookshelves in the room. Closing the door after her she started in and ran her eyes over everything possible in the room. The white sheets on the bed still felt warm to the touch even when no one had been there and the little picked up the little angel standing on the bedside table. She set it back down with a small smile and continued the rest of the way to the books.

After walking through the second aisle she heard a noise as if a book was being pulled out and turned to see that a thick red book was sticking halfway out from where it should've been tucked in neatly. Stepping back she crouched down to pick it up and glanced the heavy book before flipping it open to discover pictures, many of them inside. She looked up and around her wondering if it had been pulled out for her to look at on purpose.

Repressing her paranoia as best as she could she backtracked out from the bookshelves and sat on the ground. Crossing her legs she set the heavy picture book over it and started flipping through it. She saw pictures of her mom in her school uniform and in normal clothes. There was one of her standing happily in front of Lotte World, others of her with her boyfriends, some she recognized as her father, Chorong's father, and Namjoo's father; the three who never stayed for long. Suddenly, Victoria wondered if mom had ever felt abandoned and if that had driven her into depression.

If she remembered correctly, after Namjoo's father left her mother never met with a single man ever again. Why they had left her - them - she couldn't understand. If she asked her father, who she rarely kept in touch with now, would he be able to answer her?

Then she flipped the page over to see that it was a portrait of them 2 years before mom's death. Namjoo was standing shy in mom's arm with Chorong and Victoria standing behind her. They had been so close back then; it was what a real family had felt like. Victoria had tossed all that away the moment she became an adult at 12 years old.

She ran her hand down the page to see a picture of the three of them holding each other's tiny hands tightly. Victoria couldn't remember taking the picture or where they'd taken it at. There was an open lake behind them, green trees casted a dim shadow over them but the sunlight won through, and she could see half a sign that had been caught at the side of the picture. Victoria pulled the picture out and flipped it over.

"Songdo Resort with my lovely girls." Had been written at the bottom of the photograph. One of the last memories as a family before it all fell apart.

Victoria closed her eyes disappointed in herself. The family mom had tried to keep glued before her death had fallen apart because Victoria hadn't found it important enough to keep them together. Chorong had no real support after watching Woohyun die at 17 and when she suddenly became quiet for one month. Namjoo had no real support either when she became 10 years old, the youngest who'd suffered the most. Yet, Victoria was the oldest sister and hadn't tried understanding or helping her two sisters. She'd cruelly changed on her own and left home when she found the right chance. And now they were suddenly back under one roof.

She cried pitifully quietly apologizing to her mother and her sisters again and again.

>_____<;;

"Maybe you think that, but I can't do it. You're really cruel, Namjoo." He slowly let go of her. "A lot of times, I wonder where the 'you' I knew went."

Namjoo stared up at the ceiling a little sad, on a part worried and crushed. Chanyeol had totally given himself to her the second he'd confessed. The nerdy boy she'd been friends with had suddenly transformed into a handsome man before her. Those long dreary nights in which she would have cried herself to sleep disappeared because he'd been there in place of the sisters who never came to her rescue.