GA IN

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“Mummy, you were right all along. You got most of the history right,” Ryul broaches the topic hesitantly when we’re safely on the highway, “You’re right that your birth mother is really young. She’s 38.”
“Mummy’s also right that our birth parents are no longer together. She doesn’t know the whereabouts of our birth father, and suggests that we shouldn’t even try to track him down.”

Ryul laughs, and it’s a bitter, resigned one, “Yeah. We’re children born out of wedlock, children that no one wants. So we get shipped off the orphanage. And the world wants to pretend that we don’t exist, so that they all can move on. We have half siblings, Mummy, ten years old and seven years old. Half siblings born in wedlock. Half siblings that don’t get shipped off the orphanage.”

“And she ran here to Jeonju to leave the past behind, to leave us behind.”

This opens the floodgates.

“You’re right, Mummy, he lied to her. Only to coldly dump her just before Byul was born. Parents refused to acknowledge two illegitimate children, so they sent her off somewhere else.”

“Never once did she look for us. She probably thought some elderly couple in America or something adopted us. Didn’t bother to check. Utterly shocked when we showed up at the door, speaking perfect Korean.”

Ryul’s trying to keep it together, but the hurt is very raw, “I know. Rationally, I know that actually no one wanted this. She had issues that made it impossible for her to keep us. I know. But it hurts, nevertheless. Fast forward ten years, and she’s treating our half siblings like fragile objects. Us? Thrown to the wolves.”

“We know, that she’s apologetic. That she wishes that she didn’t have to do this. But it doesn’t change anything, does it? She’s happy now. Or at least, I hope she is, with her husband who I hope does his job.”

“She doesn’t need us. We had to disappear from her house before her husband came back. Before she goes back to pretending like nothing happened. Like we never existed. What is it that makes us any less?”

“She said he loved us. He doesn’t. He left us behind. He doesn’t love us.”

“I’d rather the word not be sullied like that.” Ryul gasps, “She said she loves us. Maybe she does, w