Jonghyun pushes the door to his house open.

“Umma?” he calls out, placing his shoes neatly next to the door. He walks into the kitchen; bag still hoisted high on his back. He expects his mother to be unconscious, bottle in hand and smile on lips.

So when he sees her sitting under the table, knees drawn to her chest and body heaving with sobs, he freezes in the doorway. “Umma?” he says, unsure. He wants to turn around and run away. Run away back into Kibum’s grandmother’s arms and beg her to take him away. But no.

“Are you okay, umma?”

She looks up at him with red, red eyes. “Jonghyun-ah,” she says in a broken whisper. For the first time, she is not drunk or hung-over. “My beautiful baby boy.” She says, and opens her arms for him. “Come here; come to umma.”

Jonghyun takes a step back.

He’s never seen her cry. Sure, he hears her sobs through the thin walls in the dead of the night, but never like this, never so… weak.

“Don’t you want to hug your mother?” she asks, voice hardening.

Jonghyun tenses, ready to duck, avoid whatever she is going to fling at him. But instead, her eyes fill with fresh tears, “Am I so disgusting?”

Jonghyun stumbles forward, his throat closing up. “N-no!” he cries, kneeling in front of his mother. “Y-you’re not disgusting, umma.”

She pulls him into her arms, sobbing into his hair. Jonghyun feels her heartbeat in his cheek; he feels her fingers go up and down his back.