Dad decided to get married a month after summer vacation started.

It was so to say too uncalled for because we knew he had plans about it a year later after his divorce with mom. We had no idea how it came to be and that he even sent mom an invitation to have her watch his momentous life with a new woman in his life at the altar—after just ten months. Not this soon.

Of course, mom had gone nuts and was crying the whole time while repeating over and over at how terrible dad was for even asking her to wish them well. She had been as surprised as I was that the moment the invitation got delivered to our doorstep by the postman, she started wailing as soon as she saw dad and his woman’s name engraved in gold script on the invitation. And she kept saying how it must be a shotgun wedding; that dad had gotten the pregnant that was why they had to get married as soon as possible. It was a possibility, but I was just guessing. I didn’t want to point fingers like my hysteric mother was because I knew dad has his own reasons. And it was not like mom or me even had the right to tell dad when to get married.

Yes, maybe dad should have thought of mom’s feelings regarding this wedding he will have with the new woman, but mom should understand this would have happened anyway sooner or later. They were no longer together and dad was again in love with this new woman. He was moving on. Mom was the only one who kept hanging on to a thin thread of hope that one day dad would hit his head hard and he would realize how much he still loved her. That was never going to happen, however.

I thought this hard and through, but I guess my daddy was no longer in love with mom. And I was the only thing tying them together.

And you know what, I also had this feeling that maybe mom thought that I was also the only key to bringing our family back together that was why she was still keeping me. Or was it just me feeling that way? She didn’t want to give me to dad because she still loved him and dad loved me, so she might be thinking I could be the key to their broken love story.

That I decided, though mom strongly and vehemently refused to come to dad’s wedding, I was going—to find out the answer. I didn’t want to be clueless anymore. I wanted some answers. Some confirmations. I wanted to have clarity of the mind. Because in the past years I’d been living, I had always been put in the shadows. I was always told what was right to do but never what was true. And right now I wanted to end the myths about my life and instead stick to what will I believe.

Because mom said, not to hate dad. But do I really need to listen to that? Just because I love dad, did that mean it require me never to get mad at him? Was I not allowed to at least feel a little bit of hatred for the man that had fathered me and had stood as my protector for fourteen years because he had left us in the end? I had been always mad at mom and I wanted to know if it was even right for me to. Or should it have been dad I had to blame for most of it?

“Are you sure about this?” Sehun had asked as I was packing my things in a small luggage.

He had been asking the question for gazillion times now that I had gotten tired of it and just nodded nonchalantly in response.

“I need to do this for my father. He took effort in sending the invitation and, of course, I know he would be happier if I would be there.”

He sighed, sitting down on the side of my bed silently. A pout was on his lips as he watched me finish my task. I was looking at him from time to time, trying to decipher what he was thinking, but then he did not say anything. An entire half an hour passed and he just passively watched me pack. I was so bothered by his quiet that I stopped what I was doing and slumped next to him.

“Do you need anything more from me?” I asked, looking at him.

He was staring at nothing at the distance, his face a blank canvas. But then, all of a sudden, he leaned his head on my shoulder and made himself comfortable beside me.

“Come back, okay?”

I was truthfully surprised. Sehun was not typically the kind of person to say something he wanted, especially if it involved feelings. He was just as bad as me as expressing them. But here he was voicing out his thoughts. And was he really asking me to come back?!

I nudged his arm, smiling. “Are you going to miss me?”

He retaliated with a nudge, as well, and strongly denied, “what?! You wish. I was just thinking that if you won’t come back then I will not have anyone to annoy.”

I harshly pushed his head away and he came guffawing beside me. “If I don’t come back that’s definitely because of you meannie!!!”

“Ya! I’m not always mean.”

“You used to get me in trouble.”

“That was in the past,” he reiterated. “I’m nice to you now,” he said, bolting up, moving closer and looking at me square on the face. I leaned away, feeling a bit uncomfortable with our faces that close.

He breathed out a loud sigh when he saw I was not going to respond and laid back on the mattress. “Or don’t just go,” he uttered out of the blue.

I wish I could. But I knew not going would mean I was turning my back on my father. Not going would also mean running away from my problems.

“I wish I could,”

Maybe if I went I would find more reasons to move away from the place I thought was home to me and perhaps I’d have more reasons to love this strange place that was slowly already owning me.

I spent my last two days with the gang. They already found out from Sehun I was going back to Seoul for the last part of summer before I could even tell them. I was angry at him in the beginning for not letting me do it, but nothing would change anyway. With these friends there was nothing you could keep a secret. They were indeed such nosy kids you would find yourself getting used to them knowing almost everything about you, even the name of the cologne you wear or the food you ate for breakfast.

“Go and quickly come back,” Jongin said beside m