| Whiskers || Yoonmin |

Ch18 ~ Steering wheel...

The ride back home seemed to take longer than Yoongi remembered from his childhood memories. The buildings from 10 years ago had long fallen and in their places, stood new, modernised skyscrapers that towered over the city's inhabitants as though they were ants in a forest full of metallic flora and fauna. Gone were the high-street stores that lined a once perishing market for cheap food and late-night pharmacies as well as that of street vendors who made a living on those just passing by for a quick snack on their way to and from work. Instead, the streets on which the car would pass were lined with the latest shopping destinations, malls in places and a nursery somewhere in the midst of those busy city streets.

But it was hard to take notice of all the new buildings and renovations in town when the past was still seeping into the present, long after contracts had been signed.

"It was my fault, Yoongi..." Principal Min confessed. He was referring to the divorce that had taken place in the dilapidated relationship that Mr. and Mrs. Min had once called their haven. Once it was a valley of peace and security, but in the last few years of their marriage Yoongi had noticed the annihilation of his parents' paradise and ultimately, the nullification of matrimonial vows that had once held so much meaning. Yoongi's parents were now just strangers with pain-struck memories.

"You can't say that," Yoongi protested, eyes averted from his father's side profile. Anxiety started to bubble in his stomach as he busied his fingers in Jimin's thick, black fur. "it takes two people for a relationship to fall apart. It wasn't just your fault," Yoongi insisted. "mom must have done something to end it too."

"But I'm the one who walked out first..." he didn't want to hear this. "...we vowed to be together til death do we part but once everything got difficult... I just–I couldn't..." Mr. Min sobbed. Yoongi already knew that he'd come from a broken home, a broken family with two people who once compared the other to a summer's day – only to think about what could have been and who was to blame for all the what ifs that could have been reality if only they had just held on.

"Dad," Yoongi put gently, adjusting Jimin on his lap as he continued to sparkle his dilated pupils at the scenery outside. "I know you never wanted to hurt mom the way you did, but the worst thing you could have both done to me and Yoonah, was stay together when neither of you were happy."

"But I'm hardly ever around anymore Yoongi..." His father's voice was laced with guilt and regret, like he had still harboured feelings for his ex-wife knowing how much he had sacrificed just to kill his relationship with her in the first place. "I wasn't there for your first piano recital... so many birthdays I've missed."

"Dad stop the car..." he pleaded as he noticed his father's emotional state heighten with every word of worry he released unwillingly through his thin pink lips. As the car came to a halt in a legal parking venue in front of a doughnut shop that had closed for the day, Yoongi shifted uncomfortably in the passenger seat, trying to fathom the words on his tongue. "...it isn't just your fault, you can't always blame yourself for a mistake you didn't make on your own..."

"Your mother loved me with everything she had up until the very last divorce papers were signed with black ink..." Mr. Min crouched against the driving wheel, his glasses fogging up with what could have only been hot tears escaping his small, wrinkled eyes. "...did she ever tell you what I did to her?" the query was like a shot to the heart from his father. The crime of passion Mr. Min had committed against his ex-wife was hurtful even to vocalise 10 years after the divorce had been finalised.

Still, what could he have done if he was unhappy with the marriage? They were brawling for what seemed like centuries in Yoongi's childish mind as he sat stooped against the wall of his childhood bedroom. Jimin was always curled up beside him, desperately trying to block out the great abyss of noise and venomous words that sprung back and forth from his parents' mouths. They were words he had never even dreamed they would use against each other. The profanities they had claimed were more than just profanities were used with every bit of poison they could muster on a night so dark and untamed – such as their crippling marriage.

"She has..." Yoongi replied with a small voice. He didn't like their reasons for getting a divorce, but it was as good a reason as any if their arguments would become a thing of the past. He would endure the shared custody for the rest of his childhood, just release him of the constant clashing he would suffer through nightly, daily, during breakfast, lunch and dinner, after school and even before he would cry himself to sleep...

He prayed his father wouldn't verbalize it, as he caressed the back of Jimin's head with a shaky hand. Prayed he wouldn't have to hear the kind of suffering they had put each other through even as he grew up with divorced parents, people talking behind his back because of their shattered marital bond. He prayed to every God in existence in those long seconds before his father's reply was ready in his throat.

Please don't say it he begged internally. I didn't think you were capable of such a thing please don't make it so it's real to me now...

"Did she tell you..." please... but it was too late, the words were already coming out, formed and ready to make his entire being crumble with but a click of his father's tongue. Yoongi had to sit on his hands so he could avoid the risk of putting an agitated hand on Jimin. If the cat had yelled out in agony because of his actions, he wouldn't be able to forgive himself. "...I cheated on her with a woman?" And there it was. The adulterous secret in which Mr. Min had pledged never to speak of since the great divorce of 2009, in which he had harboured in the four walls of his office, and his three-bedroom apartment. Yoongi had supposed his father had bottled it up, thinking he had deserved to live with the pain of knowing he had left a perfectly good woman in the dust as he paraded with a younger, well-endowed child that looked almost half his age. Yoongi imagined that's what she looked like, a youthful, spry woman who had clouded his father's judgement with her fake chest and fake eye bags.

It was easier to think badly of the woman he had been unfaithful with, it was easier to forgive his father for the divorce. He would never have to meet her anyway, never have to meet his father's mistress so he thought of her as he pleased and imagined her to be some blond bimbo from a random bar that his father had attended when he and his mother had clashed once again.

"That is what she said." He uttered with a meek voice.

"Oh Yoongi..." Mr. Min sighed as more tears flooded against the steering wheel. He looked so ashamed, looked as though he had committed a crime Satan would praise him for, like the entire world had seen all the crimes man had committed but this one still held the most atrocity. "...she was wrong..."

"What?" Yoongi darted his gaze toward the driver's seat, perplexed by the juxtaposition of his father's guilty smile and tear stained cheeks. "What do you mean she was wrong?" Yoongi queried cautiously, blinking back his own tears as he anticipated an answer. Silence loomed over them like the calm before the storm. His mouth jutted open and closed as he tried to think about what to say in a situation like this. What could Principal Min have possibly done that was so scandalous? That was worse than what his mother had told him? Before either of them had realised, a full 20 seconds had passed before he uttered the next word on his lips, "Dad...?"

"She didn't ask me..." Mr. Min said in a shaky voice, after what seemed like a lifetime before he uttered even a hair's breadth of the reason for his divorce. "...she didn't ask me who I'd cheated on her with..." his jaw wouldn't sit still against the crevice of his elbow. "...she just assumed it was a woman..." assumed? Well what could she have thought he cheated on her with? Who could he have committed adultery with if... hold on...

"What do you mean, assumed it was a woman...?" Yoongi felt as though his insides would explode with impatience. He and his father had always been close, he had gone to him when he was struggling with homework, or for a second opinion on the new series of whichever anime had come out recently. He didn't think they had any secrets between them – not secrets like these. "...you don't mean..."

"Son..." the middle-aged man smiled up sadly at his full-grown boy. "...I cheated on her with my best friend..."