"I'm home," I announce as quietly as I can, before trying to sneak up the stairs to my room. I really don't want to deal with my family right now. But I guess my luck for the day has run out, as my step-mother pops her head out of the kitchen to smile at me, ladle in hand.

         "Jung Min-ah, welcome home! How was your day? Did you have fun with your friends?" she asks with a smile as sweet as sugar.

         "Yes, Omonim. I already ate dinner, so I'll just be going to bed now. Good night." I reply with an attempt at a smile and scurry up the stairs as fast as my tired feet can take me.

         "Good night!" she calls after me. I can hear her sigh as she turns back into the kitchen. I guess dad isn't home yet. And I can hear Se Mi in the living room watching cartoons. Probably Crayon Shin-chan. I swear she's obsessed with that show.

         I close the door to my room behind me and finally relax since entering the house. I know it looks like my step-mom is the modern incarnation from Cinderella's story with the way I avoid her but she's actually really kind, and patient as a saint, too. I'm convinced, because there's no other way she could have put up with my dad for so long. And then there's me. I am the outsider in my family. The odd one out. The puzzle piece that just doesn't fit right. Not because it's from a different puzzle or it's bent out of shape, but because it seems to actively be pushing the other pieces away and just plain refusing to fit into the puzzle. I know it makes no sense, but I just don't feel like I'm a part of the family anymore. Or maybe I just don't want to be part of this family...

         I had the picture-perfect family before. My successful human rights lawyer dad, my home-maker mother and cute little me. It's the happiest time of my life. Until mother passed away of pancreatic cancer when I was 8. The doctors discovered it when it was too late to do anything about it and only told her to settle any pending affairs immediately. Thankfully, she didn't suffer from too many physiological symptoms until the very last few days, at which point the pain became almost unbearable. She suffered a lot more from the knowledge of her impending death.

         Aren't humans funny? We are fully aware of the fact that the only thing certain in life is death, yet the knowledge of impending death can torment us until we are mere shadows of the vibrant people we used to be. I guess that's what happened to my mother too. Of course, she put on a brave face for me, but children are much more perceptive than they're given credit for. She just wasn't the same person anymore.

         I missed my mom a lot after she passed away. My dad wasn't much better off than me. One of my most vivid memories is my mom crying in the bedroom with my dad consoling her. She babbled on as he held her. She didn’t want to be forgotten by the world, she said. She knew the world would just continue as before and nothing would change just because she wasn't there, and that scared her. I remember my dad breaking down too, as he told her he would never forget her. That he would never love anyone as he loved her. That he might just die from the loneliness and pain if she left before him. She only cried harder.

         I sneaked back to my own room then, completely forgetting about the nightmare that had driven to me to seek refuge in my parents' room in the first place. I cried myself to sleep that night. Not for the first time, and definitely not the last time. My mom died in her sleep about a month later, in my dad's arms. I had been asleep at the time, and it still bothers me that I wasn't able to be with her in her final moments. I would have liked to reassure her that I would never forget her. She would always be my one and only mother.

         My grandma finally forced my dad to stop moping around the house when I was 10. She had been living with us since mom had gone because my dad was obviously in no state to look after a child by himself, as he had taken to working all hours of the day as a way of dealing with the loss of his wife. She'd finally had enough and pretty much told him to get his together and left us there to deal with each other. "She needs you to be strong right now, more than anything else. You need to remember that she's lost her mother. You're not the only one suffering, Sae-Hyuk-ah." she told my dad. "He needs looking after too. Make sure you're there for him." she told me before she left. She did one last thing for both of us before she left. She registered us for beginner dance lessons at a local dance studio. To get us out of the house and establish a routine, she said.

         We went. At first, dad just went through the motions and barely made any effort. But when he saw how much I was enjoying myself he started making more of an effort and we bonded over the dance lessons. I vowed to be there for him always. We didn't have anyone but each other after all. After our passes expired, he let me continue at the studio as I obviously enjoyed the exercise and had some talent for it. He was getting busier at work though, and chose not to continue with the dances. When I was almost 12, he brought Soo In-sshi home with him one day. She was pretty, and smiled kindly at me. A co-worker, he said. I didn't understand why he had to go to all the effort of preparing an elaborate dinner just to introduce a co-worker to me.

         He dropped the bomb after dessert. They were engaged. He'd popped the question a week ago. She made him happy, he said. And they hoped we could all be happy together. In Seoul, where we would be moving to after the wedding. She would be a good mother to me, he said. That did it for me. In my childish mind, he wanted to replace my angel of a mother with another woman. And this after promising he would never replace her. Was this the same man who had sworn he would follow his wife when she died? How could he be sitting in front of me with a smile proposing this preposterous idea that made no sense at all? I hadn't even known he was dating again, and suddenly I'm getting a new mother? But what could I really do? He did seem happy, and I remembered my promise to grandma to take care of him. So I simply nodded. I couldn't bring myself to smile no matter how much Soo In Ahjumma tried to be good to me.

         Oh right, I was to call her Omma now. No way in hell was that happening. Even if my dad found it so easy to forget my mother, I would honor my unspoken promise to her. She would always be my one and only mother. She would be remembered, if only by me. Soo In Ahjumma moved in after the wedding a couple months later. I called her Soo In Ahjumma when I absolutely had to refer to her. Otherwise, I just tried to speak as little as possible and hope she understood I was referring to her when I needed something. To her credit though, she never once complained to me or my dad about my treatment of her.

         I heard her crying for the first time almost an year after the marriage. When I came home early from school to drop my stuff off before heading for the dance studio, I was surprised to hear voices since I'd expected both the adults to be at their office. She was in the kitchen, sitting at the dining table with her sister, talking about how her step-daughter didn't seem to have an ounce of affection for her. She was doing her best not to let it show, but she was really hurt at my indifference to her. "She won't let me get close to her", she complained while wiping her tears. "Tae Hyun-sshi doesn't seem to notice it much as he's not home all that much these days because of the project but it bothers me a lot. I want to be a good mother to her. She still calls me Ahjumma, if she calls me anything at all." she'd cried. Her sister didn’t seem to have an answer for her and just told her to give it time. Time is always the answer, she stressed.

         Though I wasn't affectionate with my step-mother, it was not that I hated her. She was only doing the best she could with what she was given. If anything, it was my dad I hated for a while. It felt like he'd betrayed both my mom and me when he decided to move on with life and marry someone else. That was the day I decided to call my step-mom 'Omonim'. I didn't want her to suffer unduly because of me. I made more of an effort to at least show that I didn't hate her. I just didn't want her to be a big presence in my life. It seemed too much like a betrayal to my mother's memory to let anyone even remotely close to the role of mother in my life.

         Her eyes lit up, lighting up her whole face, when I called her Omonim the next day at breakfast and asked for seconds because 'the egg-roll she made was yummy'. It didn't change the fact that I referred to her as step-mom in my mind. I just learnt to put up a flimsy pretense around her because I couldn't bear to think of someone as kind as her being sad because of something I could easily change. But at the same time, it put a lot of stress on me because I couldn't let go of my mother or the promise I had made to her. So I was stuck avoiding her and my dad as much as I could while being cordial when in their presence. A few months later, they found out she was pregnant with Se Mi. I remember freaking out at first, because it seemed like they were forming their own family, and I wasn’t sure of my place within the house anymore. They did sit me down and explain that it wouldn't change how much they both loved me and that we would both be treated equally by them. I just stared at them and nodded; what else was there for me to do? I'd been avoiding two people till now. I figured I could avoid three people just as well.

         But I hadn't taken into account the ball of cuteness that was Se Mi. She was the cutest thing I'd ever seen, and I volunteer at the animal shelter so that's saying something. At first, I stayed as far away from her as possible because she looked so wrinkly and fragile that I was scared I'd hurt her just by breathing on her. But my step-mom would have none of that and I was given the task of keeping an eye on Se Mi whenever step-mom needed to take care of other stuff. So Se Mi and I had no choice but to manage as best as we could with each other. It was only for the short time when I was home after dance practice and before I went to sleep, but Se Mi managed to steal my heart. Now I'm probably closer to her than I was with my dad before. She's the one I'm going to miss most in this house.

         Apart from unwillingly falling into Se Mi's trap, nothing changed much in the family dynamics. I still managed to avoid any and all interaction I could, making polite small talk when I had to stay in the same room as them, and getting away with doing the bare minimum. In the house, I only really felt free when I was alone with Se Mi. But unfortunately, she was still a toddler, with a doting mother to boot, so we didn't really spend much time together.

         I had been looking for ways to get away from the house since dad had first announced that he would be getting married. I had ruled out running away from home as I had enough brains even at that young age to realize that either the police would catch me in a few hours and bring me back home or something really terrible would happen to me if I went wandering on the streets. I considered boarding school for a while but there was no way my dad was going to consider paying for that for no good reason, and I wasn't good enough academically to score a scholarship. That was when I remembered one of the older kids at my old dance studio in Busan who had bragged that he was going to make it big in Seoul as an idol. Everyone had teased the kid that he wouldn't last two days in the dormitory, and would come back crying for his mother. That was the beginning of my plan. I could become an idol trainee and live in the dormitory while getting living expenses from the company. That way, my dad wouldn't have to fork over any money, and therefore had no solid reason to object.

         Luckily, I had convinced my dad to let me continue the dance classes in Seoul, and he had let me, knowing my love for dance. By this point, I had been going to the dance studio more and more often as an alternative to being home and had gotten in enough practice to be somewhat confident I would make it as an idol trainee. I started researching companies and audition dates and applications and kept everything a secret at home. That at least wasn’t so hard because they barely knew what I did outside the house anyway. Thanks to my effort of maintaining distance from them, they had become gradually more occupied in their own lives, especially when Se Mi was born and it only made it easier for me to avoid them even more. I wonder if sometimes they forget that I'm even a part of the family. Which brings me all the way to today, almost on the brink of freedom.

         Just one more round, I can do this! Fighting!! 

Author's Note:

Hey, there, people! I'm so touched I have a subscriber! It made my day, so I'm celebrating by posting this. :D  Next chapter will be up in a few days. Comments would be lovely. I'd really like to know whether you like the story so far, or totally hate it, and why.

Love,

Prathyu

P.S. - Thanks for subscribing, KangAlice!