HERE COME THE REGRETS

T W E L V E

Zeren stood just outside the large oak doors as he looked at the horizon in front of him. Gripping the straps of his backpack tightly, he wondered where they were going after their activities in camp. It was a Saturday and they only have an Astronomy and Aeronautics Expo until 3PM, and he and his friends were planning to hang out on a nice ice cream parlor afterwards. However, his mom asked him if he could go home earlier because someone was arriving. He asked Zhenghao about it but he didn't say anything at all; in fact, the boy never had an idea of what was going to happen later in the day. Seeing the blue Ford Ecosport move forward from the garage, he took a step and walked towards the vehicle; finding only his dad and talking on his Bluetooth headset as the older pressed on the brakes.

"Where's mama?" Zeren waited for his father to drop his call earlier, and asked about his mom's whereabouts.

"She and your Auntie Jihoon will have some... uh... women time," Jun replied, emphasizing on the last two words with a strange look on his face. Well, whatever that meant, it seemed to be something he wouldn't want to tackle especially on a day like this.

On their way, Jun asked about his son's week. So far, he was glad to hear about so many things from him – the excitement he had since they were home was finally spending and it seemed like Zeren was in a happier disposition now that he adopted easily on the environment, the food, and perhaps he met a few decent kids during camp. Although he might seem happy, he doesn't fail to notice that Zeren was getting a little paler than usual. He met with his doctors, Vernon Choi who flew all the way from Shanghai and his long-time friend, Yoon Jeonghan (now Choi), who prescribed his son with various medications he knew so well. Having to encounter these on his patients weren't new; but seeing them being taken by his son was a different story.

A shunt – that was the first thing he had in mind the moment he and Jeonghan discussed things. The latter had to break things down for Minghao to understand, knowing that she has little to no knowledge especially on medical jargons that he and Jeonghan had been using lately. And now that they were done explaining things to his wife, it was now time for them to take another step for any waste of time means a delay of treatment and the consequences at stake are far more enormous than they could imagine.

They only had 10 more days left, and they had to move fast before things get worse.

Arriving at the entrance hall, they spotted Chengcheng and Justin waiting for the others. Teacher Zhou sat at a bench talking to her friend in Korean while the boys were happily chatting around. The hall started flooding students and the noise escalated as the hall filled in. He was never the type of dad who would just butt in into his son's conversation with his friends, but feeling like a guardian himself too, he decided to ask the boys about the camp. He listened very well to the boys' stories, especially Chengcheng who was particularly loquacious, and later on, the other boys arrived altogether and joined in.

While Quanzhe was talking about his expectations on the expo, something caught Jun's eyes while he was looking around. His mouth fell slightly at the figure some few meters away; squinting his eyes to focus if he was right in his thoughts. She had long hair with fringes hiding her forehead, pale skin, foxy eyes, perky nose, and a thin pair of lips as she talked to two teenage boys. Jun tried to return his attention to his lot as he heard Xinchun told his story but he failed – worse, he felt his eyes grow wide as he saw her smile widely and scrunched her nose while she laughed, patting the taller son by the arm.

"It can't be..." he muttered under his breath as his heart raced and eyes rolled in panic, hoping that he wouldn't shake in front of his son, knowing that he was just standing behind him all along.

Looking at the other son, who was a little shorter than the former, Jun could not hide his disbelief anymore. He felt his mouth run dry, unable to swallow that huge lump on his throat that appeared immediately after he saw her. He looked exactly like his mother but the moment he laughed, the boy just looked like...