REDAMANCY

Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen
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Saudade
(n.) the feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia for an absent something or someone that one loves
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[Thursday night]

Mrs. Min approached him cautiously as he sat on his bedroom floor, rummaging through the boxes of his old childhood things.

"Yoongi..." She said softly. He jumped, his heart nearly leaping five feet.

"Y-yeah." He nodded awkwardly at her as she sat down across from him.

"I can't believe it," She said slowly. "You've come home."

"I'm just here to get my yearbooks." He replied stiffly.

"Yoongi." She laid a hand on his arm, causing him to jump again.

He couldn't remember the last time his mom had made any physical contact with him, other than the slap he'd received the day he left.

"Yes?" He said, drawing his hand away from the box and facing his mother.

"I know what happened all these years was hell." She said to him, moving her hand so she held his. "I wish like crazy... I could've reversed it. So you wouldn't carry this pain."

Yoongi briefly looked away. "I'm not burdened."

She shook her head. "Yes you are. You just try to suppress it."

Yoongi didn't respond.

"We may have been detached, but you're my son. I know you."

"You do?!" He shot back, suddenly angry. He felt betrayed. "All these years, and suddenly you 'know me'? Do you know what I eat for breakfast everyday? Where I live now? Do you remember my friends? What do I do for a living, hm? 'Surely it can't be that shitty music he always wrote till the AM as a kid!'"

"Yoongi..." She trailed off. He yanked his hand away and went back to rummaging through boxes.

"I can't believe it." He laughed bitterly. "All these years of my own mother standing by while my own father yelled at me. Told me how much of a disappointment and a shame I was to this family. Getting hit didn't even hurt as much as his words did. Soon I began to believe him. I still do."

"I'm sorry!" His mother burst out. "I wanted desperately to change what happened. All those times..." She broke off briefly. "All those times I wanted to cry and scream at him to stop..."

"Then why didn't you?" Yoongi stopped searching through the box and threw an arm across his face, hiding angry tears. "Why would you let your own son hate himself?! Was this family's pride more important than me?"

"I—"

"Please don't answer." Yoongi blinked quickly as he pulled his four yearbooks from the box. He stood up to go but his mother grabbed his wrist.

"Please," She looked at him with desperate eyes as she searched for something to say. "At least come back for dinner or something again..."

He stared down at her. The face of a woman who'd seemed to age ten years since he last saw her. He knew he'd broken both of them when he'd left.