Lessons From Romance

The End of it

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"You're here!" Aunt Jin threw her arms around Namjoo excitedly when the door opened.

"Come in," her father called from the next room. "Your mother's been waiting for you."

Stepping inside Namjoo found herself examining the household. Everything was still the same - those walls, that family portrait free from dust, and those well kept carpets overlaying the floor as well as the glass bulbs overhead, but it felt different this time around. The air, the nostalgia, and the age in the house, they were off; unfamiliar. Something unexplainable about it had changed since the time she hadn't been home. Maybe it had to do with the way she had started perceiving the world; the way she was seeing herself with not just the people she knew, but those she'd grown up with. Perhaps it had to do with maturing and that, she was learning to accept and let go.

Home that had hurt her and where some of her most precious memories lay; this was where she'd first started. Namjoo had never truly appreciated what home was. This place had first taught her bitterness. Its cold exteriors still surrounded her even upon her return, never unchanging, but this place was home for her family. She would have to accept that this place was where her dreams of a long happy life with love were destroyed, yet where her family would dwell.

When she learned to take baby steps into the world again, everything would be better. She had for so long believed she was always her own support, but it was Kai who had always watered her roots; holding her back so she wouldn't fall. This time, she had fallen and would need to water her own roots; without Kai, without anyone.

"You're finally home," Gil Jin started down the stairs. "Mom and dad have been worried over rats about you."

Namjoo pulled on a smiled, "Hi Gil Jin."

After Gil Jin Hee Jin started bounding down the stairs almost colliding into her.

"Namjoo! Is Chae Yoon coming tonight too? I want to ask her for some tips about what to wear for a party." Hee Jin grabbed her arm.

Her younger sisters had Kai's soft eyes. They were her very reminder of him.

"You should call her," Namjoo suggested, "I don't really talk to her anymore."

"What?"

Pulling out of her hands Namjoo stepped forward to approach her dad. "Where's mom? I'd like to meet her before dinner."

"She's in the kitchen. Since you said you were coming she wanted to cook your favorite food herself," placing a hand at her back he led her down the hall.

When Namjoo envisioned those fried noodles loved so much her stomach twisted up.

In the brightly lit kitchen where her mother was currently busy at the stove along with the other maids, Namjoo watched silently. Would she one day look like her mother, standing in the kitchen preparing her child's favorite food? Namjoo expected to feel a warmth from the effort her mother was putting into making her dish. It was understandable that her mother wanted to please her heart and win back her favor; show her some love and sincerity.

While watching Namjoo actually felt nothing. Her emotions had gone so stiff that she couldn't even summon an ounce of thankfulness.

She lied. She wasn't ready to take this baby step.

The loud clatter of tongs surprised her and watched her mother turn to see her.

"Namjoo-ah!" She called out, her eyes crying in joy as she hurried toward the daughter who'd left with no intentions of return.

When those arms wrapped around Namjoo's torso she just stood there like a mannequin, her feet glued in spot. Inside her heart, it still burned. The lie that had kept her from her father who she could have at least seen before his death...it burned very much. Namjoo couldn't let go of it.