JUNG

The weather's a bit nicer today. I thought to myself, looking out into the roads from the balcony of the small-town house I now lived with my parents in. I noticed that this place was a little cooler temperature-wise than back home. I haven't really explored Edinburgh. I haven't really been anywhere besides the airport, a restaurant, and this house since we arrived in Scotland—

"Jung, are you listening?"

I squinted, narrowing my eyes before looking over to my side. The live-in maid, an older noona in her fifties, was staring down at me. She looked worried. Weird. She'd only known me for two weeks, but the way she looked at me and frequently jolted me back into reality made me know she cared about me in her own little way. Or maybe she didn't, and my parents had filled her in on the fact that I was depressed with their decision to move here and made her keep an eye on me.

Fair, I didn't hate her for that if that was the case. I did have a habit of slipping away. I did it a few times—no, more than that. It was my coping mechanism. Things got so overwhelming that my first instinct was to pick up a bag, grab a credit card and disappear for a few days.

So, it wasn't odd that I was being kept captive in this house since we got here.

"Jung, are you listening to me?" my noona asked me again, this time pulling out a seat so that she could sit down too. She was frowning now—Witt a raised brow and pursed lips.

"S-sorry," I got out. The English felt heavy on my tongue. I only spoke enough to pass back in high school, and I read English more than I spoke it back at my college in Seoul. "I was thinking about something else. What were you saying?" I asked, remembering that she had been telling me something before I had spaced out the first time.

"Your mother wants you to look into the colleges and universities here." My noona paused, reaching out to touch my hand. "You've been here for a while, and she thinks it's best if you get enrolled as soon as possible. She said that transferring credits can be hard, or some have a time limit, and you should work on that as soon as possible."

"Oh, okay," the words left my lips before I could finish processing what she was telling me. "Something about enrolling in a new school?"

I frowned a little before my eyes flew wide open and I let out a little gasp. I was supposed to continue my theatre and costuming degree somehow, but I hadn't been given the specifics, and I hadn't even had a chance to talk to my previous performance arts college about dropping out and transferring grades. I bit my bottom lip, squinting my eyes as I thought about what a chore it would be to start applying to schools here. Why couldn't my parents do it? They brought me here. I didn't ask. I begged to stay back home. I actually enjoyed school—which was a first because I had almost flunked out of high school and needed to go to cram school three days of the week to keep up with schoolwork, but there was just something about costuming that had spoken to me, and I had managed to have good grades in college. I made friends—not many of them, but they existed. I liked studying, and I had been looking forward to graduating and moving away from my parents as far as possible.

And then they did... this.

They ripped me out of my happy place in my third year and hurled me over with them to Europe like an afterthought in their packing. I had known my father had been given a new position and needed to move, but I hadn't known my mum would be tagging along or that she had expected me to follow especially after everything—after all that had come out and was still coming out...

I blinked, clenching my jaw as I forced myself not to think about it. I licked inside my mouth when my back teeth started to hurt from the force. I blinked a few more times, hoping my noona hadn't caught on to my lack of focus and odd behavior.

"Are you okay?" she asked after a while of me being quiet.

I nodded my head. "I'm fine." I was proud of myself that my voice wasn't shaky. I looked over at her, wondering if she had caught on that I didn't get along well with my parents. I always avoided my father. It didn't matter if I was in the middle of eating when I heard his footsteps. I would drop whatever I was doing and hurry away, and I barely spoke to my mother. We exchanged words here and there when she needed me to do this or that but there was always a tension as if someone was going to break down into a rage and let everything all out.

It's been like this for years now. Since I was ten years old.

That tension.

But it's never been broken. My mother doesn't want to talk about it, acknowledge it—if she didn't discuss it. It wasn't real. It didn't exist, and I wasn't proud to say that I've picked up some of her coping mechanisms. They hurt me more than preserved me. They almost killed me. It was slow, like drowning, and I hate that once I had reached out to the surface for air my mum pushed me down back, forcing me not to speak, threatening me with all sorts of inane things to stop me from talking. To prevent me from breaking the tension. I internalized that. I never broke the tension. Not with my mother, not with anybody.

All the thoughts about my childhood were starting to make me a little dizzy, or maybe it was the afternoon sun that was now peering out that was cooking my brain and blurring my vision. Or maybe I just wanted an excuse for the sniffling and tear blurred vision.

More probable.

I got up from the patio chair. "Thank you for telling me what my mother said. I'll follow up on it," I muttered, still feeling a bit mechanical with my English. I played video games here and there and went on voice chat sometimes, but I knew there was still chaff in how I spoke—something was always off with my tone, with my timing with the way I rolled out certain consonant combinations, and I got self-conscious about it especially when I listen back to any oral exam recording. A lot of people at my former university could speak near-perfect English. Well, I guess that's just something else I'm not good at.

I gave my noona one last smile before disappearing into the main house. It wasn't a big place—I noticed quickly that even upper-middle-class neighborhoods here had a clustered minimalist feel to them. I was still making up my mind about if I liked or hated it. On one hand, everything was much closer, and on the other hand, the small distance between rooms increased the chance of me bumping into my parents.

As I held that thought, I stopped by the stairs, gosling on to the start of the railings as I listened in for sounds and movements. I heard my mother laughing, which piqued my curiosity. I stood at the top of the staircase, watching her come into view. She couldn't see me. I know that because she would never smile like that around me. The dark hair and porcelain skin I shared with her refracted the multicolored lights of the chandelier above.

I still couldn't catch what she was saying, but my curiosity to know ended when I heard my father's voice. My blood ran cold as he came into view and pulled my mother to himself by holding on to her waist. They hugged, exchanging words before laughing again. They seemed to be talking about something amusing—maybe slightly flirty. That was strange. I wondered if they were getting along again. Maybe the distance from home and being in a new country—away from the scandals was helping mend their relationship. I let myself observe my parents a little more, taking note of my father's laugh lines, and angled face, watching as the slender arms that resembled mine held on to my mother's waist and moved her from side to side as they talked. It was strange. They almost looked normal, like a poster husband and wife duo in an ad.

They were far from it. I would know.

My parents let go of each other, and my mother wandered off to the fridge in the kitchen as my father looked through the overhead cupboards for wine glasses. I noticed how his jaw flexed as he concentrated, and that made me feel sick to my stomach. I hated that I had my father's face. I hated that I sounded like him. I hated that the human being I despised the most in the world could be my reflection. I grimaced, looking away from them before hurrying to my bedroom, not wanting to lock eyes with any of them. I could eat later.

There would be more scandals. I knew that. It would only take a few weeks of my father working in a new place. Their smiles won't be permanent, and my mum was still the gullible woman that hung on to her husband year after year despite every red flag that told her to let him go.

She wasn't going to let him go. I wouldn't care if it affected her alone, but I've always been the collateral damage in this story, and it was painful to watch the first chapter—her hope of him changing, the two of them getting close—play out again.

A/N

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