[A/N: I'm not really familiar with Los Angeles because I don't originally live there, so the places I cite here don't even exist in real life.]

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I’m finally back in my hometown I had left behind five years ago. I’m finally breathing the air I haven’t breathed for five years. Although I have been during our breaks between comebacks and promotions where sometimes, I stayed in LA for a few weeks. But thinking about staying again in LA for a year or possibly more, I feel like a child who has been away from home from a summer vacation in an old and quiet countryside and is feeling giddy and hopeful to be back to the city he’d grown up in.

I step out the doors of LAX and stand by the roadside to wait for Mom to fetch me up.

I’m already 20 years old but I still don't have a driver’s license. Not yet, but I've been planning to get one as soon as I got home. I had a feeling it would help in changing my mindset about myself. A car is like a life you have to handle extra carefully to avoid accidents but my lack of experience in handling one might have caused my Car of Life to bump against a post, or fall by the cliff.  I need to teach myself how to drive a car, how to drive my life. So why not start now? It would be my first step to change.

A grayish car with a plate number I recognize comes into view among the other cars running from here and there along the street. I tighten my grip on the handle of my travelling bag and pull it closer to my side as the Sonata drifts closer and slows down to a stop in front of me.

Mom rolls down the car window by the passenger seat. She shifts closer to the open window and ducks her head to see me.

“Mom!”

My hands wave frantically but I regain control by the next seconds. My voice when I exclaimed, “Mom!”, was a little bit higher than the normal pitch and I was embarrassed for a moment for not trying to hide my excitement upon seeing her. I know it only shows how much I miss her. I really do.

She smiles, “Put your things at the back.”

I walk to the back of the car, pulling along my travelling bag to put it inside the rear compartment. After closing the hood, I walk to the door of the passenger’s seat and get inside.

“You must be having a jetlag from the flight. Get some sleep while I drive you home,” my mother urges as she starts up the car engine. A rumble goes off before it settles into a low hum as my mom steers the wheel.

“Don’t worry, I’m fine. Besides, I want to see how much LA have changed, so I should better take a look behind the windows.”

“Not much have changed,” she shrugs as she maneuvres the Sonata to a turn. “Besides you have come here during your breaks, it’s not like you won’t notice some.”

“Honestly, I don’t want to sleep.” I lean my head against the window and stare at the various cars before us, mentally reading their plate numbers uninterestingly.

Different car models before me. Different lifestyles. Different lives to drive. Meanwhile, I don’t even have a life for me to drive along these various roads stretch before me. Narrow. Straight. Potholed. Smooth. Cemented. Dusty. All of which I don’t have any idea how to traverse.

“We have something to talk about later.”

Because I am too empty to respond to Mom, all I do is respire in an arduous manner. I inhale almost all the mint-scented air inside the car, deeply and immensely, before exhaling them heavily as if I am giving back to the car the air that was once wafting around it, freeing them from being locked up in my system to occupy my empty self for a moment.

My hands are lolling in helplessness between my thighs while I pretend to study the same infrastractures I had passed by during my short stays.

It’s high noon and the sun is at its peak of the day, hovering above us and its rays scattering around and strewing the whole of Los Angeles, reaching every corner of it. Specular windows of buildings gleam as the sun rays hit them on the surface. Trees catch the sunlight by their leaves, absorbing it and giving off the brilliance of green of their greeneries, while some rays pass through their foliages, creating shadows of fluttering leaves on cemented pavements, on people’s skins, in car windows and over my eyes.

I try to sleep along the way the home but don’t get any luck. I start to tremble when Mom pulls over by the pathway leading to our garage. When Mom turns off the engine, the hammering in my chest becomes more audible to my ears and if anything, only intensifies. I almost forget to pick my luggage because I am too frenetic to get inside the house and rush to my room before Mom is going to remind me about talking to her. About why I thought of taking hiatus from my stardom career. To know why. And I have no guts to tell her why because out of all the people I haven’t told anything about my kept reasons and mysterious things unsaid, she’s the last person I’m going to tell about them. She’s the most crucial prospect for my revelation. 

Though I tried to make my movements as quick as possible, I even made use of my travelling bag’s tiny wheels instead of hefting it up from the ground as I carry it, the tiny wheels weren’t able to do their trick. Mom is able to catch up on me before I can even set my foot on the first step of the staircase.

I hear the door close with a click.

“Why did you decide to take a hiatus?” Mom sounds flat and serious.

I am frozen in front of the stairs which looks like, just now, a rope and the only thing I can use to get out of the deep pit I had fallen into.             

I turn on my heels and slowly, inch by inch, face Mom who is looking at me expectantly, and the seriousness of the voice I heard when she asked is given a visual representation with the stiffness of her face molded in solemnity.

“M-mom…” The words escaping my mouth are shaking, wobbling, resisting to fall. “I…”

Every letter resists to fall from the fear of being unused again. I need to speak now, not later, or I can never speak again. 

Mom’s face softens. Her eyes melt into concern. She presses her lips anxiously. “What is it, Josh? Tell me.”

Her voice sounds like one of those times when she thinks I’m about to cry.

“Mom…” The letters are becoming slightly steady, fixing themselves quite uneasily in their places to form the words I am about to say. “I’m..I’m in love with someone and…”

I catch my breath because I was speaking too fast.

“And?” Mom’s eyebrows jerk up and she’s looking more expectant, hanging on my mouth for the words that would escape from it.

“And he’s a boy.”

Mom doesn’t break. Mom doesn’t fall apart like how I did when I knew it myself. I think she didn’t hear me so I say it again. Steadier this time.

“Mom, I’m in love with a boy.”

Her eyes look plastic. seems to be taped. Her head is a robot shaking its head mechanically. The last time I saw her this stunned was when I told her I was casted into a Korean entertainment agency, but looking at her right now, I doubt if it was really the moment I had seen her shocked as she’ll ever be.

I wonder how minutes had passed by before Mom finds to speak again, as if she’d lost it and the silence all over the place was spent to finding her lips and now, put it back in place.

“Are. You.” Mom is breathing hard. “Serious?”

Mom is straining her eyes to fixate it on me, holding up her head than hang it low, although I can see she badly wants to look away out of disbelief and stupefaction. And it makes me look down to the floor out of shame.

I nod meekly.

A restrained sigh escapes Mom’s mouth. It only makes me put my hands together between my thighs and rub my fingers against each other. It only makes me feel worse.

Another restrained sigh. “Go to your room.”

I abruptly hold on to the handle of my travelling bag and turn my back to her. Awkward silence hung in the whole house, and it’s unexplainable but my footsteps and incidental thuds only make me more uneasy. I can feel my knees shaking. My trembling hands also show symptoms of its queasiness, evident in the wheels' little accidents against the steps of the staircase though I am not dragging the bag behind me, just hefting it up as I carry it. My back feels as it is turned towards my Mom who, I only assume, might still be standing few inches from the door like she was when we were grieviously talking because I haven’t heard any clicking heels against the tile. The whole journey from the stairs to my room is drenched in sticky silence and an anxious ambience.

I didn’t know I was bottling air inside me until I pour it out through a grand exhalation as soon as I step inside my room and drop the travelling bag beside the door I just close behind me.

I haven’t known the feeling of breathing easier not until I have the pleasure of it at this moment after days and days of holding everything in, storing air every time I keep my voice out from escaping my throat.

I walk to my bed and flop on it. A few seconds later, I find myself lying on it with arms stretched to the sides and legs apart while staring blankly at the white ceiling. Ceilings I see lately are plain white and utterly cold and unforgiving, much like the asperity I feared would weigh me down as I tell everyone the truth.

And I have to deal with my Mom first.

Close your eyes. Breathe in gently. And slowly, breathe out. I do the same routine for minutes, hoping to find the disguised comfort that could have been brought from telling Mom the truth as if it is a thorn buried deep in my throat I have to pull out to modify my breathing pattern back to normal.

But alll I can do is process my answers to the questions I expect Mom to ask as we see each other again in three hours for dinner.

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[A/N: That's all for Chapter 2! ^^ I think it's too short and boring....? Like it's only about Joshua coming home from Korea and few scenes with his mother. Nothing's so special, but I'll do my best on the next chapters. Anyways, I still hope it's worth your appreciation. If you have comments, suggestions, or anything that you want to say about this, just feel free to comment. I would entertain anything even if it doesn't have something to do to the improvement of my work. I would love to hear any feedback from you, so I would really love it if you comment below. I badly want to know what you think about it no matter what. Thank you for reading this if you are~ It already means so much to me.]