~FIND ME A HAPPY PLACE?~
"Dawn"

I woke up around seven in the morning. Now that I am done with school, a graduate like me has the ability to choose if I wanted to sleep all day or not. Well, of course that would be impossible if I don't have to go to work that would start around nine. I'm done with my high school life a year ago. I decided not to advance my studies and didn't enroll myself in a state college here in our country. I don't have the financial support for me to find a college that would accept me. Even with the help of scholarship, the grades that I've got are pretty average for them to accept.

I remembered how my former teachers told me that I have the potential to outstand my classmates; I just needed the time to concentrate at my studies. How could I concentrate when I have to go to work after school just to have the money for my living? They expected me to study well after I come home from work, around eleven in the evening. It's hard. Everything is hard if every single hour in your life, you have to do everything so that you could still eat and live.

Plus, I have this person in my life that I want to get rid of but I don't know how. He's the person that was once one of my favorite people in the whole wide world. But he changed.

I changed.

The person they call Suho died with her mother, six years before. He died along with his dreams and happiness that was once there, and now? They're gone. The person I am now is a guy who just passed his 19th birthday and waits for the day that he'll die as well, along with the sadness in his tragic life.

I got rid of the thoughts that make me feel pitiful to myself. I showered and dressed as I left my bedroom. As I came downstairs, the air around me smelled like pure alcohol. It made me want to puke because of that smell, a mixture of vomit and strong alcohol. Just like any other day, I saw him sleeping in the living room as he lay on the ground with a bottle of wine in his hands.

I silently wished that he's not sleeping and just lying there, dead.

No matter how gross the smell, I quickly approached the man who was once my father. He's beard is getting white because of old age, he has traces of vomit on his lower lip, and his clothes irked with the smell that makes me want to puke. I knew that he hasn't bathe in days and he always vomits every morning in the bathroom.

I kicked him in the stomach but all the movements I got from his were a mumbled named of my Mom. I kicked him again. This time, the kick is stronger than the previous ones.

"Hey!" I say, "Wake up".

"Soon Shin" he mumbled.

My mother's dead! She's gone!

"I said wake up!" I screamed. 

His eyes opened and looked at me. I said to him that I'll be going off to work and told him not to leave the door open and lock it if he's gonna go drink outside again. It felt like talking to a kid. Even if the one I'm talking to is 49 years old.

"I will.", he promised.

Yeah right!

"Have you left some money? I could use some cash.", He asked.

I rolled my eyes and grabbed the keys in the drawer, beside the television. I never took the delight of looking back at that stranger. He's not my father. Not anymore. He's a drunken bastard that should die already in his sleep. I hate him. He only wants money so he could buy more beer again so he could run away again; Runaway to the fact that his wife, my mother is dead and she won't ever be coming back.

I closed the door as I head to the local grocery store. I'm gonna work all over again and come home with a useless drunk in the living room.

I really do hate him.

~Find me a Happy place?~

Around 12 in the afternoon, I got a text from a friend of mine. This friend of mine lives in front of our house. He said that our front door is open. So he closed it and found my father nowhere in sight.

I sighed as I texted him back. Only to say thank you and please don't worry about my father.

My father, Huh!

I hate it when I always got remembered as Kim Jae Yang's Son. Everybody knows him. They know him as a drunk, pitiful, and pathetic person by now. They always asked if how my father is doing, if he's already moved on by my mother. I told them how I don't care about my father anymore. He could stick a bottle of beer in his and still I won't care. I'm done with my father and someday....

I would leave him all alone in that house. I'll leave this life of being nothing and start a new one. It would be a fresh new start. I would never be overshadowed by the man who got eaten by sadness and his thirst to run away with the help of alcohol.

I promised to myself that I would never be like that. I would never be like my father. I will never be that guy who kept crying all night and feel pathetic and hopeless as I lull myself to sleep with a bottle of beer in my hands. I'm too smart for that kind of life. 

~FLASHBACK~
6 years ago

"Dad!" I called, "Wake up. They're carrying our mother's coffin.".

I'm crying back then. I'm 14 years old when my mother died. It felt horrible and there were moments when I don't feel all of these is real. It felt like tomorrow, my mother would be downstairs, cooking as my father read a newspaper in the morning.  I would greet them a good morning with a smile on my face as they smiled and greeted me.

But all of those are gone now. It's been a week since my mother come to pass. She died because of a stray bullet that hit her head as she walked outside in the streets. I was with her when that winter night happened. All I could think back then were about how I wanted to go home because I'm too tired and my legs hurt. All of a sudden, we heard two gunshots and I felt my mother's grip on my left hand, loosened. I saw her fell on the ground. I was too shocked to do anything. When I saw blood on her head, I started to cry and scream for someone to help. I cling to her body as I started to realize how she's dead. She's dead and all of it is because of that stray bullet.

My mother's coffin was buried after some time. I tried to be with my father, believing that he'd be there to ease the pain. But he didn't.

Instead, He started to drink every night and I witnessed how he brought woman in our house. He didn't even tried to help me in my studies anymore, just like what he did when mom was alive. He pushed me away and saying that he'll be all right. He drunk like there was no tomorrow. He never went to his job, just drunk his bottle of alcohol. There was a time when I needed money for me to start school again but he never did gave me money. Good thing one of my relative made me his scholar until I have the strength to work on jobs.

As time went by, I felt myself grow bitter and hate my father even more.

I no longer see him as the man who he was, but a man who got pathetic in life. I started to hate him in this early age. All my teenage years that was left of me, wasted because I had to become an adult just to survive without a parent to supervise me. I started to know how to wash my clothes, how to cook, how to clean my own bedroom and many other more. The kid inside me wanted to play outside and talk to my fellow teenagers but no. I had to work.

I had to face this cruel world as an adult with a body of a kid just to survive in it. The kid inside me died. He died because of everything that has happened to me. Even the current me wanted to die, along with the kid.

Until she came along...