chapter thirty: xxx. canada

“Um, it’s nice to meet you! I’m Kim Jooeun. Please take care of me!” I bowed a 90 degrees, a bit flustered to meet yet another one of the parents-especially one kind enough to even take time to do something like this.

“Oh, please stop bowing,” she said. Her voice was very kind, as well as quiet. I could tell where Minseok got his quietness from, although he wasn’t exactly quiet around me now. “I’ll do anything for my son, and I can see why he’s taken such a liking to you.”

I stopped bowing, to see a shy and amused smile on her lips. She was quite pretty-with monolids, just like her son-and very attractive eyebrows. It seemed that Minseok taken most of his physical qualities from her. Maybe other qualities as well.

We were at the airport-I had arrived the day earlier, and was struggling against jet lag. I smiled at her comment, unsure of what to say to her. “Um, I’ll take some of your luggage,” I suggested, putting a hand out to receive one of her suitcases.

She smiled at me. “You’re just as sweet as Minseok told me you were!”

From there on, we walked in silence until we reached Yoongi’s car. He got out of the car and bowed as well. “I’m Jooeun oppa’s best friend and-uh-boyfriend. Please take care of Jooeun and her family!”

She blinked in confusion. “You’re Jooeun’s boyfriend?”

Yoongi shook his head furiously, “No no no no, I’m Namjoon’s best friend, and uh, boyfriend.” He looked nervous: he knew what most Korean people thought about homoual people.

“Ahh, I see.” She smiled at him. “You must be such a kind and patient person, to help their family throughout all this.”

He immediately relaxed, seeing her be so kind to him. “Thank you so much.” I could tell that this ‘thank you’ wasn’t so much as for her compliment but rather, for accepting his uality like most people couldn’t.

He opened the trunk and took her luggage from us and put it in, before opening the front door for her and motioning for her to sit in it. She thanked him quietly, before sitting and putting her seat belt on. I took the passenger seat and sat down, also putting my seat belt on. Then, Yoongi got in and we drove towards her sister’s house.

I could hear my mother crying in the room beside me. She was in the middle of a session with Minseok’s mother-and I was waiting for my turn. Namjoon said he couldn’t stand hearing my mother crying so much, and had left with Yoongi at his side for an hour.

So, here I was… alone. Waiting for my turn as I listened to my mother’s sobs echo through the thin walls of our house.

A few minutes later, the sobs died down, and my mother came out, hiding her face so that I wouldn’t be able to see her tear-streaked face or her puffy eyes.

Minseok’s mother stood at the doorway, smiling at me. Her expression hid any sign of exhaustion very well. Perhaps, to hear about other people’s feelings and analyze them, you had to close off your own.

I hesitantly walked into the room and took a seat on the couch, hoping that my mother would be okay on her own. As if recognizing my uncertainty, Minseok’s mother spoke to me. “Your mother will be fine. She’s a bit shaken up, but I think it’s the first time that she has properly processed her emotions and let them hit her full on. It seemed that she had been resorting to household duties and things of the like in order to ignore her own feelings.”

I nodded, before swallowing. My heart felt like it was going to pound out of my chest.

“Now, Jooeun… it seems like you’re very nervous about this. But I want you to relax. Take a deep breath.”

I breathed in deeply, before letting a shaky one out. After I found my rapid heartbeat somewhat slowing down, I looked up at her, giving a small smile.

She gave a soothing smile back at me, before speaking. “Would you like to talk about anything in particular?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know where to start.”

“Why don’t you just start from the beginning?” She didn’t specify where exactly the ‘beginning’ that she was talking about was, and I figured that it was intentional.

Taking a deep breath, I decided to take a trip down the memory lane that I’d so obviously avoided for so long.

“My… my appa was a really strange man. I mean, I know that all people are strange to an extent, but he was really strange. Maybe it was more obvious to us, his family, because we were constantly around him, but he was really strange. While oppa and I grew up, we… how do I phrase this? We grew up with a different set of rules and standards than normal children would, I guess you should say.” I paused, trying to think back. “I guess I’ll get into that later… Oppa and I were naturally noisy-from which side, I’m not quite sure… actually, I think that it’s supposed to be from both sides. If you see umma today, you would never be able to tell, but… before appa uhh… died, she was really lively and loud.

“Our household was typically filled with laughter. Umma could tell the best stories-she was a natural story teller. She would always tell us what happened to her in a way that made it a lot more interesting than it actually was. Appa, on the other hand, seemed a bit more reserved. Halmoni and harabogi told us that he was really clumsy and loud as a kid-and frighteningly smart, too. Oppa was alike him in those aspects, I think. But after appa went to the Vietnam War, he came back… jaded. Sure, there were times when we could see echoes of whom he used to be, but those moments were rare and we came to treasure them.

“Umma was appa’s soulmate, I think. She met him after the War, and she has this tendency of being a… fixer, I guess you could say? Not that appa was flawed in any way, of course, but it’s just that he was… broken? She wanted to put his pieces back together, and she was successful, in a way. She was holding those pieces together for him. She fell in love with him during this process, I think, and he fell in love with her because she gave him the happiness that he had felt he had lost. They got married, and then they had Namjoon and I. Namjoon… Namjoon was so similar to appa, so you’ve got to understand, seeing him was at times very hard for appa. He was basically seeing his own reflection in him. Namjoon was everything that he used to be, and it reminded him of the past. It hurt him to see what oppa was and what he used to be, and what he could never return to.

“Because of this, there were many times that he was harder on oppa-probably because he didn’t want oppa to become someone like him. Which was stupid, because realistically, oppa would never go through the same experiences that appa had gone through to jade him like that. This is not to say that he didn’t love him, of course. He drilled oppa with knowledge, trying to stuff him with everything. He wanted oppa to be the better reflection of himself, in other words. Oppa learned English, Korean, Mandarin, Japanese and French; he learned the most complex formulas in math and science; he learned to play the piano and guitar; he tried to learn how to cook, before appa realized that that was a disaster zone not meant to go near or be touched at all.” I paused, laughing gently before continuing.

“So oppa had this huge burden, I guess you could say. Appa hadn’t originally meant to give it to him, but he did have it. So I guess… appa’s death affected oppa a lot, in this way. Somehow, oppa had come to depend on appa to keep on pushing him to do things, and now that he was gone, there was no one left to do so other than himself. That’s part of the reason why he went to college instead of university, too. Or at least, that’s how I came to look at it, after a lot of thinking and reflecting. Umma… well, she was holding appa’s pieces together, but he was supposed to glue himself together. He couldn’t find any glue, and taped himself sloppily instead. She didn’t have to hold him together anymore. And when she let go, I suppose he fell apart. Or maybe, it wasn’t that. I’m not quite sure myself, I’m still organizing my thoughts as I tell you this… maybe he was falling apart ever since the War, but had deluded himself with the illusion that he would get better, before realizing that he wasn’t going to get better.

“Oppa and I realized something, when we were in Korea. We haven’t told umma yet, because we don’t want the shock to hurt her any more than she already was… but… we think we’ve found the reason for appa’s suicide. The War, right? PTSD. No one even thought about that when he killed himself, but it dawned upon us when I was quoting The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien…”

I was extremely proud that I had gotten through all of this without shedding any tears-but then again, maybe I had already cried enough as it was.

Minseok’s mother, after listening to all of this, finally spoke. “I noticed that you spoke about your appa, umma, and oppa, but you’ve failed to speak about yourself.”

I froze-I hadn’t even noticed that I had done so. “I… maybe it’s a defensive mechanism. But… I’ll try.” I took a deep breath. “As a child, appa doted on me. I was really cheerful and bright, albeit a little quiet at first. But when oppa’s loudness started influencing me, I was soon laughing and jumping around, shouting at the top of my lungs alongside him. I was more like umma, in this way. Appa didn’t pressure me to learn as many things as oppa, and maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was not their first born child, nor a boy. So I mostly just played, and I think if things had turned out badly, oppa could have come to resent me for this. But instead, he really just cared for me and was really protective. We grew up like friends, rather than siblings. Most siblings fight a lot, but we didn’t fight that much-although we did banter.

“Anyway, appa chose very selected things to teach me. Rather than things like math, he would tell me stories. He taught me my life values, I guess you could say. While oppa was learning calculus, appa would tell me that music was the solace to one’s heart. Then, he would sit me by the piano and play me whatever songs I requested. His love of music was one of the only things that kept him sane-I think-other than umma, oppa and I. Oppa and I were influenced by him in that way, too. For our birthdays, when we didn’t have that much money, he would write us songs. And to be honest, I preferred these presents to materialistic ones. Rather than most parents, who would discourage our band, he encouraged it and was one of our most loyal fans. He would even give his opinions at our practices, and everyone in the band loved him.

“I think that music was the only thing that oppa wanted to really learn from the things that he had learned, I think.”

“I think you’re shifting back to other people rather than yourself again,” she said gently.

I nodded, closing my eyes and taking another deep breath. “When I said that appa was strange… well, all of the things I’ve told you about him so far were pretty normal, right? I guess the circumstances between oppa and I and how different we were brought up while being brought up together wasn’t really normal, but I’m getting off topic… well… PTSD. We all knew he had it, right? Like, he would flinch at loud noises. Sometimes, he would fall to the floor-onto his stomach, and sometimes he would reach for the gun that wasn’t there. Once, when oppa and I were younger, we sneaked up on him and yelled surprise, and he whirled around with a murderous glint in his eyes-it really shocked us. Umma then gave us a talk about never doing anything like that again.

“It was a really strange balance, living like that one day and living almost normally the next. Some days he’d be completely fine, and other days he wouldn’t. And when the gil’s of his friends who had died out in the battlefield drew near, he would close everyone out and sometimes sit somewhere just staring straight in front of him, and even if we walked in front of him, he wouldn’t flinch. It was like he wasn’t in this world anymore, I guess you could say. He was off in his own world. I don’t mean to say this as if he was a lunatic or something-he wasn’t. He was a genius-both musically and logically, and probably smarter than my brother and I combined-but no, he wasn’t a lunatic.

“It was just… a part of him. Maybe I only think this way because I’m his daughter, and because I’m so used to it… but really, I never thought of him as crazy. He was just a bit strange; a result of his PTSD.”

My gaze went to my hands which were gathered in my lap.

“Can you tell me what happened when you found out that he had committed suicide?”

I took a deep breath. This was something that I really never had wanted to remember again. “Well, actually… oppa and I were both performing in our band. We didn’t know it at the time, but it would become our last performance as a band. After we finished our third song-we had just started our concert, really-my cousin ran onto the stage with this terrified expression on her face. She whispered to the two of us that something terrible had happened, and that we had to stop our concert immediately. We were both shocked, of course. We didn’t know what this terrible thing was since for some reason, she wasn’t telling us, but this was also an important gig for us and we didn’t want to let the others down.

“But she told us that it was really important, so we apologized to the audience, and went offstage with her. The rest of the band could manage without us, kind of. Then, she told us that appa had died. Oppa almost fainted right there, but I grabbed his arm and held him up. I demanded for her to tell me how, and… she told me that he had killed himself. I actually did faint there. When I woke up, I was in the hospital and I could only hear sobbing. Umma was sobbing so hard by my side, and oppa was just staring blankly, just like appa had done before. That’s when I realized that it hadn’t been a dream, and that everything that had happened was real. I didn’t cry, though. We held two funerals, one in Canada, and one in Korea. Frankly, we didn’t have the money to do that, but appa’s parents-halmoni and haraboji-decided to pay for the one in Korea, and for our plane tickets.

“The one in Korea wasn’t very memorable, just a lot of people telling me that they were so sorry-people whom I barely remembered the faces of or I didn’t recognize at all. In Canada, however, I recognized most of the faces, and it was more painful. Because I associated Canada as home for both appa and us; because I actually knew the people who had created bonds with appa. But… I just felt so numb with all of these different emotions that I couldn’t cry. I just couldn’t. I tried to, believe me, but I just couldn’t. Even when my best friend hugged me with tears in his eyes, I couldn’t. Even with oppa and umma crying so hard, I couldn’t. Well, oppa is kind of soft and always would cry a lot easier than me… I… I usually clam up and let my emotions pile; then I cry all at once. The first time I cried because of my dad was a year later, on his gil. I was at his gravestone, and all of us a sudden I just started crying. I couldn’t stop for a long time after that.

“I think, in a way… Minseok oppa and the others have helped me with that. After meeting them… well… for some reason, I’ve just started crying more. Maybe it’s just the fact that they cared about me so much more than I could’ve imagined, and that touched me so much. I hate crying in front of people I don’t know that well-because it’s like exposing a part of me that I don’t like exposing. I don’t want to appear weak, I guess you could say. But I’d only known them for like a month and then I was crying in front of them. I’m not sure what it was about them that allowed me to cry so freely in front of them, but it’s still there today. I… see? I’m not crying while I’m telling you some of the most traumatic things that have happened, but if they had been here, I think I would’ve cried.

“I don’t really understand my emotions that well myself, but that’s the best way that I can explain it. There’s just something about them… maybe we were all best friends in the past life or something, but I just feel so comfortable with them. But at the same time, I’m also romantically attr-” I stopped myself, realizing that I was speaking to one of their parents. I ducked my head, blushing in embarrassment.

She laughed gently. “I’m so proud of you-it seems that you’ve made an enormous improvement and are a lot more mentally stable than you were at first. And amidst all this, you held so much of a burden; taking care of your oppa and umma when they couldn’t take care of themselves. It must’ve been so hard for you, and I can tell that your father would be so proud of you. You’ve done well, but I think it’s time for you to help me let your oppa and umma heal; and for you to give back some of the burden back to them.”

I nodded, biting my bottom lip as it began to tremble. I swallowed, before taking a deep breath. When I raised my eyes to look at her, they were watery-but when I blinked, no tears fell. “Thank you… you being here, listening to me… and telling me those things… it really means a lot to me. I’m just so grateful. And doing it for my oppa and umma… it just… I can’t put how thankful I am to you and Mini-I mean, Minseok oppa in words.”

She smiled kindly at me. “Would you like to tell me about your mother’s diagnose?”

I nodded. “Yes, please.”

“Well, she was under extreme emotional stress; it seems like it has lessened slightly in comparison to when your appa first passed away, but it’s still there. For her, she needs to get closure, and I think a step to help her would to explain to her why he passed away. I know you and your oppa were unsure of whether to tell her or not, because you thought it would cause her more pain, but I think knowing would help her drastically. The reason she put so much blame of it on herself was because she thought he killed himself because she was incompetent as a wife and a mother, so knowing that it was because of his PTSD would help. I think you should tell her today, after I have a session with your oppa, and we’ll see how she reacts and I’ll help you from that step on.”

I felt my eyes filling with tears again. “Thank you so much. Thank you so much.”

When I turned my phone on, I realized that I had seventy five messages on KakaoTalk-from my twelve idiots and Jungkook. Who was also my idiot, but needed to be labelled separately.

Just then, I received a video call, from Junmyeon. Checking to make sure my face was decent, I accepted it. As soon as I did, however, I heard loud voices screaming, “JOOOOOOOOOOEUUUUUUUUUUN!!!”

Then, Junmyeon’s voice, telling everyone to shut up as he gave an apologetic face to me and assumedly attempted to walk away from them. I rolled my eyes. “Hi, Jun oppa.”

“WE’RE HERE TOO YOU KNOW!” I winced at the volume, quickly lowering it so that I wouldn’t disturb my mother; she was now sleeping.

“Guys I swear to god that if you don’t shut up I will punch every single one of you so hard,” I heard Kyungsoo warning, and the silence was almost immediate.

I laughed; the power of Kyungsoo.

“So, how was your day so far?” asked Junmyeon, smiling at me through the screen.

I smiled back. “It might be morning there but it’s night here. I’m probably going to go to sleep soon.” As if on cue, I yawned, before laughing sheepishly.

“Well then, how was your day?”

I was silent for a second, before smiling-albeit with a bit of sadness mixed in. “Well… it sure was eventful.” As soon as I started speaking, everyone quieted down so that they could hear me. “Umma was the first to go; she cried a lot. I think speaking with Minseok oppa’s umoni helped her a lot. I went next… and… it was nice. I just told her everything that had happened, and it helped me to just organize my thoughts and say everything. I always tried to avoid it, I guess… but facing it head on helped me. And oppa… well Yoongi oppa was with him when he did it, but I think it helped him a lot too. Appa’s death was a great toll on oppa, since appa had such a big influence on who oppa had become and everything, but I think speaking helped oppa come to terms with everything too.

“And… we told umma about our theory on why appa committed suicide, and although she was in shock and cried at first, she seems a lot more peaceful now. I’m really happy for her. Of course, none of this would have been possible without Mini oppa. Mini oppa?” As soon as I spoke, his face popped in front of Junmyeon’s, and then it looked like he took the phone from Junmyeon so that he could see my face.

He smiled at me. “I’m glad umma could help you and your family.”

“I’m so thankful, oppa…” I whispered, my voice cracking.

“Oh baby, don’t cry…” he murmured, his face expression softening.

“KIM MINSEOK, DID YOU MAKE HER CRY?!” Tao barked.

He didn’t even comment on Tao’s use of informal language. “Hey, Jjoo? Look up, will you? Look at me.”

His tender voice made me look up, before looking away once more at the expression that was on his face.

“Here, Minseok hyung, pass it to me?” I heard Baekhyun’s voice.

I looked up to see the camera whirling wildly before landing on Baekhyun’s face. “Kim Jooeun, if you cry while I’m not there to hold you, you will be in serious trouble when I see you.”

“Yah, don’t say something like that!” Chanyeol scolded.

My body started shaking, before I turned the camera away from myself so that they wouldn’t be able to see me crying.

“Joo Joo, turn the camera so we can see your beautiful face, yeah? Come on, Joo Joo,” Luhan soothed.

“J.E, we need to see your face. Turn the camera, turn the camera,” spoke Kris.

“Jjoo!” whined Jongdae.

“Joo Joo I swear I will fly to Canada just to see you if you don’t turn the camera to you,” Junmyeon cautioned.

“Jooeun baobei, please don’t cry. Mei mei, let’s see your beautiful face,” Lay said.

“Jjoo we’re warning you…” I could practically see Kai’s face.

“Don’t waste your money on a plane ticket,” I managed to get out.

“It’s okay, he’s loaded.” That was Sehun’s voice. “He could buy one for all of us. Hey hyung, let’s all go to Canada. Sightseeing, yeah?”

“Don’t you dare!” I warned, voice cracking as I hastened to wipe my tears.

“Then show us your lovely face, okay Jooeun?” Kyungsoo’s spoke.

Reluctantly, I turned the camera towards my face again, but only showing half of it. “Is this okay?”

“If you only show us half of your face, we only see half of your beauty.” I couldn’t help but laugh at Tao’s cheesy comment.

I hastily wiped away the rest of my tears before plastering on a smile, turning the camera so that they could see me. “See? I’m fine.” I took a deep breath, before continuing. “It’s just… I don’t really know how to explain this feeling. It’s just… ugh, I don’t know how to speak Korean properly. I just have a lot of emotions right now and I don’t know if I can pinpoint or describe all of them.”

“That’s Life,” mented Kyungsoo, causing me to smile.

“You’re right,” I said, laughing. “That’s Life.”

A/N: This is really out of the blue, I know, but this story's going to end really soon. There's going to be one more chapter and then an epilogue. I originally planned for it to be longer, but when I wrote the last chapter it just kind of fit perfectly and I decided not to continue it and just end it there. I may write a sequel, or maybe just a spinoff. (or more than one spinoff. We'll see)