chapter 8 is here! things are gonna take a sharp turn soon, so stay tuned :')
a side note - the above gif is yoo seungho, nari's brother.
please vote or comment if you enjoyed this chapter! and as always, thank you for reading.
with all my love,
krissy
❦
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A GIANT GIFT bag sits on our kitchen counter.
When I come home from work on Friday, I find my mother seated on the island stool, dressed in a big knit cardigan with sleeves so wide they balloon around her arms when she pushes them up. Rich dark brown hair has been tossed up into a knot atop her head, wisps falling loose to frame her soft face.
She crunches noisily on a pack of almonds as she surveys our apartment in disgust. Her eyes are the color of black coffee, dark and scrutinizing, sharp as the tip of a knife.
Seungho leans against the counter on the other side. I come to an irritated stop in front of the kitchen, purse slipping to my wrist.
Her eyes dart to mine with surprise. "There you are."
I nod at the gift with exasperation. "What is it now?"
"Give it to Minseok." She waves a hand hopelessly at the trash filling our living room. "How do you live in a place like this? Did a typhoon hit your apartment? Really--the amount of self-discipline--"
"Seungho trashes it every night anyway," I defend.
"Ya," he protests."Where do all the beer cans come from, then?"
I make a face at him and join him in front of the gift bag. One glance at the shimmery rose-gold ribbon inside tells me it's packed with neatly-wrapped boxes of expensive Korean sweets.
"She doesn't buy me stuff like this," mutters Seungho.
My mother tosses him a look. "Because you don't eat it."
"I do eat it," he shoots back, peering incredulously in the bag. "Yugwa. Hangwa. Chapssaltteok. You're going to make him fat. He's a doctor, you know."
"A brain doctor, not a nutritionist. Aish..."
We wind up getting naengmyeon a block from the apartment for dinner. It's a hole-in-the-wall place with fluorescent lighting, rowdy kitchen talk, and rattling silver stools. Seungho sits beside me, and I fill our waters as my mother rubs her hands slowly from the cold.
