Flowers and Broken Hearts

Pieces

Kim Chin An, 23, Present day

Kim Chin An, was in pieces.

The cab zoomed through the highway, passing colorful parks and surroundings as it goes, and yet Chin could not manage to admire them. They were already familiar; this was where she grew up, and she'd seen them thousand times since birth - but the familiarity was not helping.

What she needed was distraction - something that would take away her distress, something that would make the pain leave.

The hairbrush dangled from her numb fingers, unused. Chin couldn't bring herself to fix her hair up; it reminded her of Jungkook. It reminded her of Jinhee, of Jimin, of everything.

She needed a distraction.

"Is this it?" The cab driver asked her, snapping to get her attention. It was only then when Chin realized that the cab had stopped right in front of her parents' lawn, waiting.

She jolted back to reality, hurriedly rummaging through her school bag for her wallet. "Yes, yes. We're here." Chin handed the cash, then stepped out the car. "Thank you!"

The driver winked at her through the window. "Cheers, love." He winked again before zooming away.

She stared at the back of the slowly disappearing car, hoping, wishing, that her problems went away with it.

"Aiyoooh, look who's here!"

Startled, Chin turned around, only to find her dad sitting on a gym mat with his heels together and had his arms extended over his head, bending. She knew that stance - it was called the butterfly stretching. Chin's dad was a retired taekwondo trainer, and she learned a lot with his constant teaching and her watching. It was the reason why Chin became so bendable even though she wasn't a gymnast or a ballerina.

"Hi, Dad," she greeted solemnly. Actually, she hadn't made any plans to visit her parents; Chin was thinking of camping out at her own apartment near the campus, but since the lie already slipped off her tongue, she decided to make it reality instead. It was just that whenever she got home, everything goes ballistic because of her mom.

"The little businesswoman decided to finally show up," her dad was saying, voice muffled by the mat from his focused stretching. "Took you long enough, saving your sperm-giver from your egg-bearer."

"Sperm-Dad, please." Chin pinched the bridge of her nose in distress. Just two seconds of her stepping into her parents' lawn and Chin already wanted to bolt out. She wasn't even in the house yet. It made her think of what 'wonders' waited for her inside.

"What? Just stating a fact." Mr. Kim sat up straight, now moving to split his legs. "Sit down, your egg-er, I meant Mother went to the supermarket to buy sticky rice."

Chin obeyed, resting upon her buttocks by the edge of the mat. "Oh no. What foreign 'delicacy' is she up to now? I forgot what county she came back from."

Her mother was a crazed traveler, the polar opposite of her dad. Chin even suspected that she had used up all her retirement money on her travels - whether it be Egypt, Jerusalem, China, Japan, Europe or India - Chin couldn't keep up with her journeys. Her mom went everywhere. Nothing was wrong with that, of course, it was actually quite fun and enjoying to Chin, except when brought home souvenirs. And when Chin said souvenirs, she meant recipes.

Weird and not-good-at-all recipes from whatever country she traveled back from.

Eyes glazing over, Chin remembered when her mom came back from China. She refused to come anywhere near the Kim household for a month - that was usually how long Mrs. Kim's recipes last before she went back to travelling. The house was full of different kinds of mushroom, tofu, and animals. Very weird stuff. Chin once got a call from her dad, asking her to save him from eating what was called 'rat's ear mushroom'.

"She came back from Vietnam," her father answered, stretching to reach his toes. "But thankfully, your mother decided leave the Vietnamese its reputation and to stick with Filipino dishes, ."

"By Filipino dishes, you mean 'choco-poo'." Rolling her eyes, Chin grinned. Aside from the inedibles her mother liked to make, Mrs. Kim had adopted this Filipino delicacy called 'champorado', something that was similar to hot chocolate, except much thicker in consistency and had sticky rice in in. It was good, especially with powdered milk, but rather mouthful so she called it 'choco-poo' instead.

"Uh huh," Mr. Kim confirmed. "We have about three pots of it in the fridge, and she's making more this afternoon. God help us."

Chin laughed, only to stop when he added, "Where's Jungkook?"

Her father liked Jungkook. Aside from the fact that he was talented, damn attractive, and physically fit, he was once a taekwondo player. Mr. Kim loved Jungkook more than Chin herself the moment the words 'I play taekwondo' escaped Jungkook's lips. Although Jungkook stopped playing when he started second-year college, him and her dad discussed it with frequency.

"He-he had to to do something." Lying was the best thing to do right now. She couldn't bring up the the fact that they fought, because that would bring up Jinhee, and then well, everything would be spilled before she knew it.

"Hmm," he sounded unconvinced. "Jinhee?"

God, her father was just unstoppable as always.

"Living her life." Then standing up before he started asking about Jimin and god-knows-who-else, she picked up her bag to make an escape. "I'm gonna go on and stuff my ass with Mom's choco-poo."

"M'kay," her father mumbled. "Careful though, she brought home stinky tofu."