Baekhyun

You know that expression, never judge a book by its cover?  Well, sometimes, it’s true.  Sometimes you see a guy walking around and you just think to yourself, he looks like a grade-a douche, and you’re right. He is.  Or sometimes you see some girl at school and just think to yourself, damn I’ve bet she’s slept with more guys in a year than were drafted into the military and you know what, she has. 

They tell you in school not to stereotype people, not to judge a person too quickly without getting to know them, sometimes doing just that can be to your advantage.  It definitely would’ve been to mine.

My love story starts, the way a lot of love stories start: by seeing a girl across a room and becoming completely infatuated by her beauty.  Boy A walks across the room, feeling as though his feet have a mind of their own as he searches his brain for something clever to say once he makes it over to her.  Girl B sees Boy A approaching, thinks to herself, well he’s pretty cute, but tries to ignore his advances, she has to play hard to get.  Boy A approaches Girl B, Boy A says something stupid, Girl B laughs, Boy A thinks his chance is gone, but just as he is about to walk away, Girl B takes his hand, and writes her number on it.  Normally, in a signature color of hers, for the sake of this story, lets go with purple.

Girl A goes, my name is “so and so”, call me.  And she walks away.  Boy B becomes so thrilled by his luck, he becomes dizzy with love and his judgment begins to falter.  One, he doesn’t notice how people seem to snicker at him as she walks away.  Two, he doesn’t notice that in the entire room, she was the only one sitting alone, maybe for a certain reason.  Three, when he goes home that day and his friends ask him why he’s acting like a “pink- pansy”, he says he got a date with the most beautiful girl in school.  His friends ask him, “Who? What’s her name? She can’t be that hot, no one that hot would fall for him.”  And when he says her name, he doesn’t register his friends’ reactions.  He doesn’t notice how they glance to each other nervously, and mutter under their breath that it can’t be her, it shouldn’t be her, that girl is bad news.  But Boy A, still infatuated with the idea of love, tells them, “You don’t even know her! You can’t judge her by what you hear! You’re all just jealous that I got a date with a girl who doesn’t look like a cucumber.”  He ignores his friends protests, refusing to believe that the beautiful girl that final said yes to him could be anything but perfect.  He is in love, and he believes that nothing about love could ever be bad.

Now, Boy A remains in this honeymoon phase for quite longer than he probably should.  Even when Girl B starts to show her true colors, starts to be as nasty to him as she is to the rest of the world, Boy A stupidly makes excuses for her.  “She’s just having a bad day”, “She was cranky this morning its ok, she’s not doing any real harm”, “I guess my shirt really does look like a ugly sack of cat puke, I should be glad she told me instead of someone else”.

            The people around us all saw the signs, all saw how destructive our relationship was, but I was still in love with the girl I first met.  I refused to accept that I had been wrong from the start and that she really was bad news.  And I learned the hard way how blindly ignoring someone’s faults can get you into trouble.

            She was angry at me the day she told me, not that I could really tell, I was too busy making excuses for her to be angry at me to realize the she was being even more cruel than she usually was.  When she dropped the bomb, told me that I had really ed up and was going to pay for this, I think that’s when I finally started to see her true colors.  Why? Because the news actually made me happy.  I was thrilled at the idea of being a father, I was excited to start a family.  But she, wasn’t.  She acted like it was the end of the world, she cursed my name and told me I better be there for her the entire time or else she would dump the child on me to raise alone.  Of course, I agreed to help and do whatever she wanted me to do, but for the first time I started to see who she really was.  And I didn’t like her one bit.

            The entire pregnancy was a nightmare. She bossed me around, was cranky as hell, made me spend every last penny I had on things for the kid while never lifting a finger.  Slowly, I became more and more angry.   I thought, “Shouldn’t something like this bring us closer together? Why do I feel like I’m suffocating?” In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the best idea to dump her right before it was born, but I knew I could not raise the child with her.  She was pissed, of course, but by now I had realized that was just who she was and I stopped making excuses for her.

            We settled on dual custody.  It seemed like the best scenario at the time, plus I would only have to see her when we switched off, which we settled would be every other month.  It wasn’t that long after our beautiful daughter was born that she started shrinking on her duties.  She was late to pick her up, she was rough with her and yelled at her for the tiniest things.  Soon, I began to wish she never came to take her at all and, she did.  Our daughter became more and more my daughter, and I liked it better that way.  The less time she spent with her of a mother, the better.  I could raise her the way I wanted to, she had a heart of gold and I wasn’t going to let her be corrupted.  I would make sure no one would judge her the way people judged her parents.  And I would make sure she would never lose her judgment like me.

Chanyeol

            Never go out early on a Sunday morning. It’s not because of the foot traffic, families going to church and mothers going to the grocery store.  It’s not because of the bus schedule, which is more sporadic and makes it easier to miss the right number.  No, never go out early on a Sunday morning, because you could think you are just going out to pick up some milk to make some innocent cereal, and you could come back to your apartment, to find a baby by your front door.

            Or maybe this kind of thing only happens to me.

            The day he arrived (as if he had walked there by himself), he was fast asleep.  He was wrapped in a blanket and laying peacefully in a carrier.  At first, I thought it was some sort of gag.  Was I being filmed?  Was this some kind of prank show my friends set me up on? I saw a note on top of the baby and carefully opened it, wondering when the TV crew would jump out at me.  This is what it said:

            “Park Chanyeol.

            You probably don’t remember me, but I think it is better that way.  I’m sorry you have to find out this way, but I just can’t care for him anymore.  I wanted to be able to disappear and not bother you, but I guess that can’t be the situation.  I left with him all of his paperwork and changed them over to say you are now his guardian.  He is almost one.  He is your son.

            Take good care of him, please.  He reminds me so much of you.”

            There was no name at the bottom of the note.  I brought him into the apartment, but couldn’t bring myself to look at him.  I racked my brain to try to remember who on earth his mother could be, but came up with nothing.

            What was I supposed to do with a kid now?  I was just out of university, starting my first job, working like a dog, and barely scraping minimum wage.  I looked over all of his papers countless times but they were spotless. No sign of a mother, but all signs pointing that I was most definitely, now a dad.  There could’ve at least been balloons.

            When I finally looked into the carrier to see him again, he was awake.  He didn’t look anything like me at first, until I took off his little hat and saw his ears.  They were huge, just like mine.

            Immediately, I called up my friend Baekhyun to see if he had any help for me.  I knew his girlfriend was expecting soon, maybe he knew something that could help?

            He of course, did not.  But he did rush over to my apartment to see if I was fooling around and lying about it all, but when he saw the kid really there, his jaw dropped.

            “He’s really yours?” He said.

            “Look at his ears, man, his ears.  He’s definitely mine.  Plus, all the forms have my information.  It’s creepy.” I replied.

            “Well, I’d say your life is just about ed.” My best friend lovingly added.

            “Shut the hell up. It’s not completely over, is it?”

            “Listen here dude. From expecting-father to, oblivious-rock-head-who-didn’t-keep-track-of-the-girls-he-knocked-up, father.”

            “Yea, I get it.”

            “This kid, is now your life.  Mines not even born yet and I’m running around like a dog.  Buying this stroller or that crib.  Reading this parenting book or taking that class.  Believe me man, if you’re seriously considering keeping and raising this kid, you life is officially gone.”

            He said something there that caught me off guard.  If you keep him.  If.  It never even occurred to me before that I could just give him up.  For some reason, that idea did not sit well with me.  If the kid was mine, he was mine.  I couldn’t just let him be abandoned, again.

            “What are you talking about, man.” I punched his arm. “Of course I’m keeping him. He’s not some old newspaper I found on my doorstep, he has a friggin’ heart beat.”

            “Okay, your choice.  Hey, at least I’m not doing this dad thing alone now.  I got you to share my misery with!”

            “Oh joy.”

            “Are you going to try and find his mother?” Baekhyun asked, suddenly becoming serious.  I contemplated the thought, but decided against it.  Whoever she was, wherever she was, I guess in the end it was my fault this happened in the first place.  The least I could do for her now was respect her wish to be left alone.

            “No.  I don’t need her now.  I can do this, right? I had fish once, remember?”

            “You mean the fish that ended up eating each other?”

            “I’m not going to get another baby and have them eat each other, Baekhyun!!”

            “I’m just saying, fish and people are like, not even the same species.”

            “I’ll be fine.  I’ll learn how.  Plus you’ll help me, right?”  I stared at him and pleaded, pouting with puppy dog eyes.

            “Of course man, I got you back.” Baekhyun said, giving me a bright grin.

            “What’s his name, anyway?” Baekhyun asked.  I realized I didn’t even know.

            “It’s on his birth certificate.” I said, reaching for the paper. 

            “Park Chan Yong.” Baekhyun said, reading out each syllable carefully.  He reached into the carrier, and pulled out my son.

            “Park Chanyong, meet Park Chanyeol.” He said, placing the baby haphazardously in my arms. “He may not be that smart, he’s forgetful, he’s stubborn, he’s a horrible driver, he never remembers important dates, he can’t cook for , oops sorry kid, I mean, he’s a god awful cook, and he’s always running late.” He stopped talking and I glared at him.  “But,” he continued,  “he will make a great dad for you. That I am completely, and utterly, certain of.”

Minseok

I didn’t become a single father the way most guys do.  I didn’t sleep around, knock up some girl when we were really young, or lose a significant other.  No, I’ve lived my life as safe and careful as I possibly could, but I still ended up in the same situation as all the other guys who had made mistakes.  But I did it to keep a promise, one I could never break.

            I was a quiet child.  Growing up, it took a lot to bring me out of my shell and get myself to make friends.  I only really had one friend when I was little and she was my big sister. I looked up to her in every way imaginable.  To me, she was my super hero.  She was strong, confident, smart, caring.  Nothing seemed too big of a task for her to handle. Not even having to take care of her kid brother all the time while our parents were at work, or having to become the sole bread-winner in our family when they both wasted their paychecks away on alcohol or extravagances. Not only could she do anything she set her mind to, she convinced me I could, too.

She encouraged me to be brave, try new things, but mostly to be a person who honored their commitments.  When I was little and she would drop me off at school, I would always cry and not want her to go.  I was scared of being left alone with only the other kids.  We developed a system that enabled her to be able to leave without me following her away.  She would hold out her pinky finger, wrap it securely around mine and say, “I’ll be back. I promise.”

Those simple words were enough to get me to let go of her hand and let her leave.  In my mind, we became attached by an invisible string that tied our fingers together, even when she was away.  And she never broke her promise.

As we got older, our promises to each other gained stronger meaning and value. When our father would come home drunk, I would promise her I would never smell even the faintest whiff of alcohol. When our mother spent the last of our savings on a car we could not afford, I promised her I would treasure every penny we earned.  And after the accident that took away both of our parents lives, we promised to always be by each other’s sides.

But she couldn’t keep all of her promises.

About a year after our parents’ death, she started seeing a guy.  She really liked him, so naturally, I despised his very existence.  Every moment he shared with her was one he was taking away from me.  I didn’t like having to share my invincible sister with anyone else who saw how amazing she really was.  But, as they got even closer, I began to warm up to him. God knows he tried so hard to get me to like him. Eventually, I came around.

Not long after they moved in together and I was in university, she became pregnant with his child.  At first I was worried, the three of us were barely scraping by financially (all with hefty student loans) but she assured me everything was going to be fine.  I think she was a bit blinded by her problems with the happiness of finally becoming a mother. When little Jin was born, I felt truly happy for the first time in a long while. When I held him for the first time, my sister made me promise to always watch over him. This was the biggest promise I had ever made to her, and it was the one that I knew I would keep for the rest of my life. I took a lot of the responsibility in watching over him as he was growing up, but I didn’t mind. The four of us were the closest family I had ever had, and I wouldn’t have traded it for anything in the world.

On the night of their 4th anniversary, I had agreed to watch Jin so they could go out on a date.  I had work early the next morning, so my sister promised me they wouldn’t be out too long.  For good measure, and as a little joke, she took my pinkie like she had back when we were young and said the same words I remembered from my childhood: “I’ll be back. I promise.”

If I had known that would be the last time she ever said those words to me, I would not have let go.

It had gotten late that night, and I was getting a little pissed.  Where was she? She told me she would be back hours ago, but it was nearly 2 in the morning and I hadn’t heard from her at all.  Angrily, I called her cell.  I will never forget that conversation.

Noona, where the hell are you? You promised you would be back hours ago what is taking so long?

I didn’t hear any response for a while, the sound was muffled coming through the speaker and I could hear the faint sound of sirens.

Hey, why aren’t you answering? Where are you? Say something!!

After another couple moments, a man’s rough voice spoke back to me.

Hello, um sir. I don’t really know how to tell you this, but your sister, well, she has been in an accident. Um..

My heart dropped.

What? Where are you? Who are you?? Where is she let me talk to her!!

I screamed. 

She’s not at the scene anymore. Her and the man driving the car have been taking to the hospital. She-

Where is it? Where do I go?? Oh my god tell me where the my sister is!!!

I was in hysterics. I could barely think straight when the man told me the name of the hospital.  I didn’t even let him finish speaking before I hung up my phone and ran out of the house.  When I got there, it was already too late.

I arrived, in tears, screaming about asking where she was.  The nurses had to calm me down before giving me any information.  After what felt like hours, I doctor came to speak with me. 

She was gone.  He was gone, too.  A drunk driver, he said.  A head on collision.  They were gone before they reached the hospital.  I felt as though my heart had collapsed.  My breath was lost.  I heard a pounding in my head and I started shaking.  I nearly fainted on the spot. 

The doctor spoke to me a little while longer but I couldn’t listen.  I was emotionless on the outside but inside, I was dying.  It wasn’t until the doctor left me alone did I start crying, and I didn’t stop. 

It wasn’t until I remembered Jin, did I regain some of my senses.  He was still at the house.  Asleep. Alone.  I ran out of the hospital to be with him.

The next couple of days passed by in a blur. Jin was almost 3, but still too young to understand fully what had happened.  I tried to explain it to him, but I could never find the right words.  The day of their funeral, I finally found a way to let him know his mother was gone.

He looked down at the two caskets, and then back up at me, and asked, “Why are mommy and daddy not getting up?”

I held his hand and knelt down to look him at him directly.  His big brown eyes stared back at me, and all I could see was my sister’s face.

“Umma and Appa can’t get up anymore, Jin. They are in heaven.”

“Are they ever going to come back and visit me? Can I go see them?”

“No. We can’t go visit them anymore, but they will always be with us.”

“How?”
“Because we will keep them in our hearts. And whenever you feel sad, just remember that they are with you, even if you cannot see them.”

“Are you going to heaven too, Hyung?”

His words took me by surprise.  But I knew what to say.

“Of course not!  You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I made a promise.  I promised your mommy that I would take care of you.  And I never break my promises.”

Jin looked back at me for a moment before responding, thoughtfully.

“I promise to take care of you too.”

I let out a small chuckle. He was definitely my sister’s son.

I held out my pinkie and wrapped mine around his.

“Promise?” I asked.

“Promise.”