Divorced // bang yongguk (#26)

십이

YiYeong

I knocked on the door of the apartment opposite mine, the one house that I will be coming in as frequent as possible for the next month. It will be my workplace for the next month until I have found a decent job with a good salary before then I'll have to report to work at the Bangs as their assigned babysitter.

I can't believe that I accepted the job offer just like that, I had only agreed solely because of Sehyun, he is lacking a mother figure in the family and the other children in the family are incapable of taking care of them the same way their mother has taken care of them. And then he had to ask me to take care of his two older children as well, my field of work is only towards toddlers, not teenagers.

I don't even know what teenagers think these days even though I don't have a big age gap between his eldest daughter who is only 7 years younger than me, I'm sure that she will hate me and have me kicked out of the house. Other than taking care of Sehyun, I have never taken care of any children before that and not even teenagers, I was an only child and my cousins are way older than me due to my parents having me when they are reaching their forties.

But it is the only way that I will get to learn how to take care of children with this job, it is tiring and frustrating that I would have to babysit three children of various stages of their childhood, having to understand well is definitely not an easy thing and I'm sure that their mother didn't have an easy time taking care of them as well.

A text message was sent and it was from Mr Bang, my employer giving me the password for the door and I literally facepalmed myself. Right, we used the same format to get into our houses, why did I expect that the door needs a key?

I punched the numbers on the number pad and the door opened for me, a very stuffy smell whiffing through my nose immediately and I scrunched my nose up in disgust. Do they even air out the house?

I would understand if it is a new apartment and they have only moved in recently but it has been a year since they moved in and there is no way that the house still smells like that, my own apartment is way better than this. I opened the window and looked for an air freshener but there is nothing of that sort, I looked through the doors and there is nothing much to diffuse the smell at all. The plates are not washed and they are piled high in the sink, the clothes have not dried the way it should be and everything is in a mess. Now I have to be the babysitter for this apartment as well?

I looked at the time on the big clock in the living room and I had enough time to spare before the time to pick up the youngest child in the family, I have to set some rules for this house and it is critical for me to do that. I'm not just the babysitter for the children but for this house as well, I'm never allowing myself to be in this miserable house if I were to work here for quite a while.

I went to the supermarket and bought everything that I would need for this house to get a little happier and lively, it is way too gloomy to be called a house. I sprayed as much air refresher as possible for the house to smell decent and not stuffy like the first time that I entered the place, cleaned everything in the house so that it is sparkling clean, dusted everything in the house so that no one would get allergies from the dust.

I also prepared lunch for Sehyun as well for myself, their father instructed me to also cook a little more for the other two children, SeNa who is the eldest will return home after her remedial which ends around 3.30pm, Sejeong who will return home in the evening. I need not prepare any lunch for Mr Bang since that he will be at the company all day and only will be back around evening and that is when my work shift ends, that is around 10 hours of work and I think that he had given me enough money for that, hence I was willing to work a little more to improve the quality of their living area.

I went out of the house 15 minutes before Sehyun gets dismissed at school, he has given me all the directions for every place that every family member has gone to and I was grateful for that but I was even relieved that the childcare centre is a 5-minute walking distance from our house. I thought that I will be going over to the next neighbourhood just to pick one of the children up from school and the others from different neighbourhoods, their father did a very good job at putting them in schools that are not that far away from each other.

I was crossing the traffic lights and I got bumped into someone, a high schooler with a height that is way over mine who is barely 160 cm and I nearly fell backwards. I barely managed to collect myself and I fell down on the butt, my jeans had a hole in it. She saw it and didn't even apologize to me, gave me a smug look and then walked off with another guy from the same high school as they were wearing the same uniform.

I went back to the traffic light that I was from and I pulled her back, I seriously hated people who don't apologize after they have done something wrong. "Can't you apologize? You bumped into me and my jeans are torn now."

"Sorry that I didn't see you there, I thought that I was knocking into a minion. It is your fault for not being taller than average."

How can she insult me about my height? "I am taller than average! Why can't you say sorry after you have knocked down someone?"

"But you can still walk, right? That is not a serious fall after all, and about the jeans, it is your fault for wearing such a tight one." She linked her arm with the guy. "Let's go, DaeHwan. I don't want to talk to some tiny minion who demands an apology."

I was dumbfounded at the two teenagers who treated me like nothing, is how teenagers are supposed to behave these days? I remembered that I needed to lower my head down when I was facing people who are older than me and these kids did the complete opposite.

I shrugged those feelings of frustration off as I continued to make my way to the childcare centre but with my cardigan covering my butt, I should invest in a lot of jeans that are durable and not like those jeans that tear with one fall. Sehyun came out running to me and jumped into my arms, happy that I was the one that he was waiting for, giving me kisses on the cheeks like I'm his mother.

"You are here! I can't believe that you are going to take care of me as my second mother." He gave another kiss which made my heart melt, why is this kid so affectionate? This is only our third meeting and he is already treating me like family, but I'm a complete stranger to him who thinks otherwise. I hope that his other two siblings are as kind as he is towards me and they are able to accept me as their babysitter like how Sehyun did, I will flip out if one of them turns out to be someone like the girl earlier.