Divorced // bang yongguk (#26)

십구

Yiyeong

I had the boy strapped to the chairs as I blocked his pathway with a circle of chairs so that he had no way of escaping, he will never escape under my watch. I'm so glad that I caught him just before he could do some stupid stuff that will pretty much ruin his entire life, kids his age would always do things that make them regret life but yet they still chose to do it in the heat of the moment.

"Yiyeong Noona, can you let me go now? I have to go to school though." He pleaded.

But I won't listen to him, he is the one who is in the wrong. "Tell me, what the heck are you trying with that car?" I crossed my arms. "Do you know that you could go to jail if you are caught doing this? I'm so glad that I stopped you in time or I would have to bail you out at the nearby police station and your father is going to fire me for neglecting you."

"I am too young to get arrested and the worst punishment that I can get us to get suspended or being expelled by the school, and besides I wasn't doing anything illegal in the first place."

"Then what the heck are you even doing? And you even skipped school for me and you lied to me that you had a stomachache and there you are, sneaking up to someone's car and doing some weird things to it."

"I wasn't doing anything wrong!" He corrected. "I was just..." And he stopped talking.

"You were just--what? Can't you just tell me what you were trying to do? I can't help you if you don't tell me anything."

He suddenly looks out of the window and I followed his eye level and it landed on a lady walking over to that very car that SeJeong was hovering over at, I looked back at him and his facial expression immediately changed, he was looking very sad and that is something that I have never seen before in him, he usually has this nonchalant stoic face all the time and sometimes he would look very tired but never will he look sad.

I couldn't really see her face clearly but I know that lady is not just some random rich woman that has a foreign imported car and wears branded clothing from head to toe, she definitely means a lot to him that he is reacting to this. "SeJeong?" I called for his attention but he didn't respond immediately. "Bang SeJeong?"

He finally turned back to face me but that sad face is still there and he quickly masked it away with his usually calm face. "Who is that woman? You were hovering over her car right?" He didn't want to talk about it but he slowly nodded. "Who is she to you?

He swallowed his saliva as if it is trying to make him prepared to tell me this small part of his life that the rest of his family members don't know about. "She is... She is my mother, it has been a year since I have seen her." He spoke with such pain that it is written on his face. "I missed her a lot but my father never allow us to meet her privately, he also hasn't brought us to see her since the divorce."

So he was doing all of that so that he can see his mother... "Why so?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know all the details but I know that my father didn't like my mother that much, they fight all the time and I hate that they scream at each other at the top of their lungs."

"Do you hate your father for doing that?" He shrugged again and I struggled to find a better way to explain the divorce so that he wouldn't be so hurt. "Do you blame your father for making your maternity leave?"

He shook his head. "My mother was the one who left the family on her own, my father tried to make her stay but she still left because she didn't love my father anymore, she loved someone else."

It just dawned on me that these 3 children had to accept such a harsh truth at such a young age, they have all lost their mother to someone else without themselves even asking for it. Somehow they remind me of myself and I can relate to it a lot because I am also being raised by a single parent since I was 10, I thought that my father really loved my mother so much but it turns out that it wasn't the case, apparently he had an affair with his boss way before he married my mother and he didn't love her at all, the only reason why he married her is because he accidentally got my mother pregnant, it was a mistake and he was ashamed so he married my mother in a rush.

But I'm glad that my mother had decided to end the marriage to avoid herself spending her life with a man who will never love her, she got over him and she really did a great job of raising me and now she is leading the life that she wanted, she too met a guy at her workplace and instantly fell in love with him at first sight but she didn't believe that she could still get married at this age. She did get married after 7 years of being single and I attended her second wedding at the age of 17, I became her flower girl and gave her her wedding ring filled with my love and my wish for her to be happy with the man that she had decided to marry for love.

As for my father, he started his own business with his mistress after divorcing my mother but soon, he got into debt when his business failed and everything in his life went downhill after that, he sold off his apartment that he bought with my mother to have some money to pay off the debt but it is still not enough, he sold off every single asset that he had in possession and he did manage to pay off the debt when his mistress paid it off for him and then gave him the biggest present of his life.

She left his life just 3 years after their marriage to hunt for another target and my father was left alone again with serious drinking problems and gambling addictions in the hope that he will get his business back. That was the last time that I have ever heard of him from my grandmother but I'm glad that he left my mother, I am happy that such a man had left our side for the rest of our lives.

So, I relate to SeJeong and his siblings a lot because we both lost someone who is dear to us but we don't regret it, because they didn't want us in the first place. What is the point of wanting someone back when they have let go of you in the first place?

"SeJeong, you know what? It doesn't matter to you at all if your mother left you, she did the wrong choice of leaving you and your family and she will regret it very soon. The only way for this is to forget this whole part of your life and move on with life, your father will be the only parent who is there for you for the rest of your life."

His facial expressions, in particular, surprised me a lot. "Noona, why are you saying this? Don't you feel pain when your father left you and your mother to love someone else?"

I shook my head. "I do for a while because he betrayed my trust and love for him but I got over it, I knew that he is going to regret it leaving the two of us." I put on his shoulder. "If your mother wants to see you, she would've come to see you even if your father refuses to allow her to see you and your siblings. She got over it and move on with her own life so you should as well, it is better to love the one who made sure that he gets the right to take all of you under his care."

He slowly nodded as he takes in whatever I have said. "So shall we go to school now? You can still sneak into the class since it is break time now." I told him as we left the café. I'm glad that I helped him realise that his father's decision is right, they don't need their mother next to them to be happy.