The air was thick, dense with emotions and word that had been so far left unsaid. As Irene stepped into the living room she saw her parents sat on the couch, the one she and Wendy had been sat on mere hours beforehand.

It felt so long ago after all that had happened since.

Her mom was sat on the edge of the couch, head in her hands, her figure haunched over her body. Irene thinks she looks exhausted, a small part of her brain wonders if she’s the reason for that, if the stress of having her back home was really more than she was letting on. A pang of guilt strikes through her at the thought. She never considered that her visit would affect her own mother like this.

Her father was seated next to her, rubbing circles in her back as she breathes heavily into her hands, a futile attempt to calm herself down it seems because when she goes to speak, Irene is met with the same vicious tone as before, just at a slightly lower volume than before,

“We welcomed you into our home, your home, with open arms,” she says, voice level but the tone still as accusing as ever, “we let you and your… girlfriend stay with no issue, and this is how you repay us? This is the gratitude you give your family after all they did for you?”

Irene tries to ignore the venom in her mother’s voice when talking about Wendy, knowing this isn’t about her, her mother doesn’t blame Wendy, she blames Irene, her words are trying to hurt her and no one else.

“We told you, we told you,” her mother’s voice grows softer, weaker with every word, she sounds almost defeated to Irene, “we were fine with whatever life you wanted to live, that you were your own person now and that we wouldn’t stop you.”

Irene knows, that’s the grounds she’s always lived on with her parents since she left for college, no matter how much they didn’t approve of her choices,  they let her make them. She used to think it was their twisted way of being able to say “I told you so” when it all came crashing down, but it never did, Irene never wanted to give them the satisfaction, it’s why she worked so hard for what she had now.

“So why…” her mother continues on, “why would you drag poor Yerim down with you? She doesn’t deserve that.”

Irene wants to laugh, she genuinely wants to laugh that they think she did this to Yerim, that she somehow manipulated the teenager into being who she is but the pleading look in her mother’s eyes tells her she’s serious, that she thinks Irene is doing this out of spite.

And Irene won’t let that reflect badly on Yerim, she won’t let her parents invalidate how she feels like they did back in high school when the rumours started.

“This is not my doing, this is who she is, she’s still your daughter, she’s still the same teenager who you left behind this morning when you went to work! She’s still the same meddlesome kid who went sledding on your baking tray because it snowed that one time and you told her she couldn’t have a sled,” her mom’s head snapped up in confusion at that statement, “...oh right, you didn’t know that…” Irene quickly diverts back to the matter at hand, “what I mean is, she’s still the same old Yerim you’ve always known, she’s still yours, just because she loves someone you didn’t expect her to doesn’t take away from that, but if you act like it does then it will.”

She looks at her mom with her own desperate eyes, silently begging them to not let what happened to them happen to Yerim.

“She’s just a kid, mom,” Irene pleads, she didn’t mean to, she wanted to be strong for her sister but this was more important, so here she was, begging her mom with her dignity on the floor, with nothing left to lose, “she still needs you…”

Her mother stayed quiet for a while, the silence between Irene and her parents was suffocating. Irene’s mother remained quiet, but the conflict playing across her features was obvious to everyone in the room.

Surprisingly the next voice to cut through the still air was the deep voice of her father. Irene knew he didn’t like to get himself involved in most arguments so she wasn’t entirely sure what was about to happen with the old man,

“Joohyun…,” he seemed to be struggling with where to start but Irene let him talk while he rubbed circles into his wife’s back, “I think your mother is concerned that you were some sort of… influence on Yerim’s actions, she is rather young and impressionable…”

Irene felt her chest deflate, she really thought her father speaking up meant he was going to be reasonable.

Irene didn’t get it. She really didn’t. It was like she was talking to a brick wall. A few days ago she and her parents were fine, they even seemed to be warming to Wendy but all that was forgotten in the moment that her mom went upstairs and found Yerim kissing another girl. All that progress after all those years of hurt, they didn’t mean it, not really, and suddenly Irene felt a crushing weight on her chest.

“You were never really okay with Wendy and I