balconies • seventeen

muffins & memories

I can't promise that you'll like the music but i'll recommend it to you so i hope you give it a listen :^)

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It all started when his mother added salt into the batter when his father left, and being the loving child he was, he ate all the cookies so that his mother didn't need to taste the pain.

Seokmin got his passion for baking from his mother.

During those old days they would always do everything together; little Seokmin running home from school, throwing his backpack to the side and immediately wash his hands to help his mother bake. It was a routine of theirs since his mother got a divorce. Baking was their only escape.

It was a way where they could fully ignore their black and blues of life somehow, where they would forget all the sad things that's been happening towards them. It was their best way to be happy. It was Seokmin's and his mother's special recipe towards happiness.

A few ounces of sugar to replace the salt with sweet. A drop of vanilla essence to put serenity into their hearts; calm and collected. Sometimes a little lemon juice or cream cheese; adding flavour into their life. Most of the time lots and lots of chocolate, where they would melt away from the world in each bite. Sift away the flour, only let the good parts be mixed into the batter. Mix away, all those stirred feelings and emotions with a wooden spoon, or a spatula, or a mixer.

Once it comes out of the oven, all the mixed feelings turn into only one thing; happiness.

And that was what Seokmin liked about baking.

Of course, their life wasn't always about happiness all the time.

When his mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, Seokmin's world came breaking down. She forgot everything. She forgot him, their memories together, the proper way she taught him how to make his favourite chocolate fudge muffins, nor did she remember all the amazing and original recipes she stored inside her head. Seokmin's mother was a walking recipe book. Now, she had lost that too.

But one thing that his mother seemed to remember was that he loved baking.

And even if her passion for baking had died, she still savours all the treats Seokmin made for her. It wasn't the same, but that part of his mother made Seokmin believe that his mother was still there.

When she was finally able to leave the hospital, somehow, her condition worsened. Seokmin's mother went missing for days. Everything that Seokmin went through only lead to one thing; his mother's death.

Nobody could blame a woman in her seventies who was walking on the streets alone, clueless, even worse when she's diagnosed with Alzheimer's. The woman was hit by a truck and died right after.

Seokmin blamed everything all on himself.

Then there was a time when his mother went missing, under all that pressure he had to prepare for his finals. Chasing after his dream like his mother used to teach him, he was finally able to enroll into a cooking academy and majored in pastries. Everything went well until he was blamed for an incident that happened during their finals.

A crime he didn't commit, as what Seokmin would say. And it was true; he didn't.

On the day of the finals all the students were bustling around grabbing their cooking materials, thinking about what they should cook, whether their dish was sweet or salty enough for the judges to the extent where they didn't notice a shadow lurking around despite all the commotion.

During the hour where the judges were supposed to take a look at their dishes, a student started breaking down into tears saying that someone had sabotaged her dish a while ago. Her dish was completely ruined. Her croissants were replaced with rotten, store bought ones, and much more disgusting things on her plate.