Sunday morning

"The dark side of the spotlight"

"Barely three weeks after the highly acclaimed London Fashion Week, a news story shakes the fashion world. Top model Byun Seohyun (42) and screenwriter and director Byun Baekbeom (44) are getting a divorce!"  "Three weeks earlier. Nobody would have thought that Byun Seohyun was in a marital crisis when she floated gracefully and beautifully over the catwalks of London Fashion Week. For a long time the two were considered THE dream couple of Korea - but now the dream is over. The couple announced their separation last night."

When I read the first lines of the article, I was afraid that I would puke right in front of the friendly saleswoman in the kiosk any moment. I felt so incredibly sick because a stale, disgusting taste had settled on my tongue and I simply couldn't understand and didn't want to understand what I had just experienced. On top of that, this information was literally thrown in my face, at least that's how it felt to me. Because this gossip article was nothing else than an unemotional chattering away of seemingly trivial things, which were only meant to serve as a short term entertainment. 

And a small, naive part of me clung doggedly to the hopeless straw of hope and wished that there was talk of strangers with purely coincidentally the same name. After all, these things usually only happen to other people, right? But - who was I trying to fool? Byun Seohyun and Baekbeom. The model and the filmmaker. The chance that this was not the one I knew was probably less than that of being struck by lightning while making a lottery ticket - zero. Unbelievable. Incredulous and completely stunned I shook my head. 

I mean mom and dad actually... got divorced?! And on top of that, they dared to come out in public?  What the...? The very word divorce echoed in my head. Okay, on the one hand it was bound to happen sooner or later. At least when I first heard Dad talk about divorce in Los Angeles, I should have known. But somehow I had never considered this possibility. I had been absolutely convinced that Mum would lull my father as usual and show him the ropes, just to make sure he didn't cause a scandal.

But now it was here in black and white, in this gossip magazine that I held between my trembling hands, and I simply did not know what to make of it. It couldn't possibly be true, could it? But if it was, why now? Why not even then? What had happened? I blinked several times in a row to dispel my dizziness, which had gone along with the nausea. But I did not succeed. No matter how hard I tried - the individual words and letters danced around like wildly before my eyes, played a nasty trick on me and seemed to downright mock me. The only thing I could see clearly was a photo printed at the top right of the double page.

In addition to my dizziness and nausea, there was now also dazedness. As if someone had hit me on the head with a glass bottle, it suddenly pounded so hard in my head. Because in the photo you could see me. And Sehun, who had taken me by the hand. We both ran, the sunglasses were not yet in place and Sehun gave me an amused side glance. I recognized immediately when this snapshot was taken. Namely from yesterday, when Sehun and I had rushed past the reporter horde. 

Damn it, without a doubt this moment had been the first spark to ignite the rumour mill. And most likely my mother had got wind of it and thus found a good opportunity to distract from herself and to pass the buck to someone else - in this case Sehun and me. Or even my father, if you could trust the gossip of the girls in the café. No way: The wicked, wicked adopted daughter smashes up half the apartment, then runs off with the wicked, wicked boy and leaves the poor, poor woman alone and frightened. And the wicked, wicked husband has nothing better to do than divorce the poor, poor woman. Sob, sob, everybody's sooo mean but her.

Yes, even if it sounded a bit exaggerated - but when I thought about it, it all made sense. Why else would such a photo of us be published? And why else would a smiling Mebuki adorn the cover of the magazine? Certainly not because there was anything bad about her in it, right? I was suddenly so caught up in my conspiracy theories that for a brief moment I even forgot my dizziness and light-headedness and was able to filter out fragments of words like "the husband's adopted child" and "fisticuffs" from the written word. And even if it was still only conjecture, those very words confirmed my faith immensely. I was right, my intuition told me so.

But the most shocking thing about this whole thing was that I did not know what the worst thing was. Was it that I was dragged in the mud - more or less - by my own mother? Or was it that I thought my mother was so malevolent in advance? Whichever way you look at it, this newspaper article was a disgrace to Sehun, Dad and me. And somehow I was glad that I had not (yet) read it. On the other hand, I suddenly felt such anger towards this woman whom I had called "mother" all my life, that I could feel a fiery mixture of anger, contempt and disappointment building up inside me. 

Under my skin my blood was flowing like boiling hot lava, heated me up to the tips of my toes and made me think without thinking about it that I peppered this stupid gossip booklet back into the holder and thundered out of the shop with massive steps. And then I started walking. Determinedly in one direction.

Although I would never have described myself as 'athletic', the rage and adrenaline in my body drove me to absolute top performance. With every step I took, I could hear the soles of my shoes bouncing against the asphalt, and also my jerk-white breaths that made my lungs burn. 

Side stings and leaden limbs demanded a break, but I was not allowed to think about that at all now. No, I admonished myself, after all I had to get home as soon as possible. And if I was lucky, Mum was still there. I didn't know what I would do if that should be the case, but one thing was clear: For fear of the truth I wouldn't keep my mouth shut any longer, I wouldn't hide any more and hope that everything would work out again. Because this time was now finally over.

I needed clarity about who I was. Or where I came from. And why I was still here and not somewhere else. Even after the case that this knowledge demanded everything from me, possibly destroyed me - there was no way around it. Mum finally had to put the facts on the table. That's why I kept on running, racing like a madwoman through the city and let my hateful, insecure feelings spur me on again and again. Of course, I could have taken the train and would have arrived home several minutes earlier and less out of breath. 

But then I would have had to squeeze myself into a compartment with complete strangers and most probably also have been pawed, and on top of that I would not have been able to give my rage any room to vent it.

After what felt like half an eternity I reached the crossroads in front of my residential area, no less angry but all the more prepared for what was to come. Totally out of breath, sweating through and with a pounding heart, I tried to internalize the few arguments I had come up with while running and forced myself to reduce my anger a little bit.

But - dear God - if I only