I wake up to the smell of cooking and detergent washing around the air of my bedroom and the entire house. I stand out of my bed and trickle downstairs like there’s a village of ants in my feet; my whole body glimmering in excitement at the scent of food which I can already feel laced around my tongue. The walk downstairs felt less than lucid and transparent. I can feel the swift air coming from the kitchen’s window all the way to the stairs.

I sniff around like a little monkey searching for bananas and I find myself standing in the kitchen island, watching my mom with half sealed eyes as she flies from one position to another, clearly working on cooking something I can only smell. I sit in a stool and crawl against myself and the wooden slate, placing my chin over my palm and trying not to blink into sleep once again.

“Hey,” I greet Mom, my voice hazy and laced with deep exhaustion. “Your time making breakfast?”

“Yup!” Mom speaks loudly, wiggling her hips to a beat of a song she can only hear. She turns around to give me a wide smile of a greeting. “Woken up really early for this. I’m making your favorite pancake pies. There’s fresh juice in the refrigerator, too. Mangos.” 

I stand with difficulty to grab myself the self proclaimed mango juice and practically crawl all my way back to my stool. I find a plate of a mountain of pancakes with strawberries syrup riddled with it and my mouth waters. 

“Dig in, sweetheart.” Mom encourages, and I immediately take the spork that’s sitting right next to the plate to dig in, as I’m told. As I’m eating, I shoot my gaze around at my Mom and the table that’s separating us. I notice that she isn’t eating like me, and instead, she’s just standing across the island and leaning against her arms, watching me as I eat with a sort of glow to her that she has been missing for the last few years. Her eyes have a sparkle in them that I haven’t seen in a while and I don’t miss the way she’s looking at me as if I’m someone else. 

“You look different today,” I tell her in between munches, blinking at her when I notice her breaking out of her zoom. She tilts her head in confusion and I explain myself. “More radiant.”

Mom seems as if she has been waiting for someone to notice how full of life she is, and she beams at me, stretched into a humongous smile. “Oh, Yuji baby. I’m so...” she throws her hands around as if trying to squeeze the right word. “I feel so different these days. Jae’s just, he’s amazing, and I somehow hate how he makes me feel. But a part of me is overwhelmed, in a good way, with how he and I come to be.”

“So do you hate it or like it?” I ask in confusion, unsure of what exactly she’s meaning when she speaks so radically. 

“I don’t know,” Mom huffs, and I know that she’s annoyed with herself because she doesn’t know what she’s feeling inside. “I’ve taken so many years after that man without dating and I have no idea how I’m supposed to feel with Jae anymore. It’s a bit scary. I think it’s because of my lack of experience.”

I don’t understand why Mom’s thinking too much about it, but a part of me does consider her words. She had been with my father for so long that she no longer has any remaining trust for the male species. No matter how kind, lovely and gentle Jae is, a part of her will always stay in lack of trust, lack of association, lack of.. love. I think the scariest feeling in the world is when you have so much love ready to be poured into a solid ground, only to realize that that ground is not as willing to accept your affection as you anticipated; and it drowns you in self despair for the rest of your life instead. So when a newer ground, a richer intake of breath comes to get you after so many time of abuse and neglect, you realize you’ve forgotten what it was like to be so willing. My Mom must be going through the same conflict.

I sigh out loud, rearranging my scattered emotions and my own unworthy thoughts about the entire situation. I poke through my food using my utensils, putting my thoughts in good order so I don’t end up startling my Mom. “Mom, it’s not that difficult. You don’t need to think that much about it. If he makes you feel.. free and loose of any restraints that used to bind you, then that’s exactly how dating should feel like. But if he doesn’t, and you feel insecure, scared, tension-filled and anxious around him because he reminds you of that man, then I don’t think it’s a healthy relationship and you should dump him.”

“No, no, it’s not like that,” Mom says hesitantly, her eyes shot open in panic and fear that I might, for a second, consider her Jae as someone as malicious as I’d like to believe him as. “I do feel free with him and he makes me feel all of these wonderful things that that man hasn’t made me feel in forever. It’s exhilarating and I guess that’s why I’m scared,”

“You’re afraid of attachment.” I realize with a startle, watching her with wide eyes as she fumbles around with her words. At my statement, she deflates like a house knocked down by large wrecking balls, her usually brilliant eyes showing a stormy sensation in them that I’m afraid whatever it is that I have to add will only fuel the heaps of tornadoes that are swirling around the silk of her pupils.

“Yes, exactly,” her stormy eyes deflowers and softens into a blueish shade of perpetual sadness. I want to reach out and wipe the excessive torment but I know that I can’t. It has to disappear from within her and by her. “What if he ends up being like your father eventually?”

I flinch at the mention of my father even though I’ve recently just mentioned him, but I try to make myself seem careless for my Mom’s sake, for if she just as glints the simplest of  moroseness in my eyes, she’d combust and never share things of personal inquiries anymore. “Mom, there’s a small percent of men who’d actually end up being like that man. I don’t want to be the girl that actually says this, but I want to believe in Jae. From what you told me about him for the last few days, I can tell that he’s a good person. Why are you in shivers right now? That’s not you, mom.”

“I know, sweetheart,” she murmurs, and I force myself to listen to her mellow feelings instead of crumbling down at the sheer transparency of both of our emotions. “Don’t worry about me, baby, I’m just being my usual nervous self.” She stops talking all of a sudden to point her steadily sullen eyes with mine, a sheen twinkling light bouncing in between the fractured walls. “Tell me about you, honey, did anything happen with that boy you’re working with? What was his name again?”

I tense like a brick wall at the mention of the boy that’s been swirling immensely through my head and quite simply messing with my entire core of center. I avoid her now clear eyes and try to be as inauspicious as I can be when I say his name. “Chanyeol.” 

Mom’s lips curl into a mischievous smile, and she wiggles her eyebrows at me. “Yeah, him, you guys friends?”

“I guess.” I shrug non-too-committedly, and her  smile vanishes into an expression of blame and guilt at my disability to sound the slightest bit inclined to be over-sharer. 

“You don’t want to talk about it?” Mom mumbles unsurely, her eyes flickering towards each one of my eyes, searching for something in them that would tell her my true feelings. 

“No,” I clear my throat. I don’t want Mom to think that I don’t trust her with my thoughts and feelings, even through my reluctance to talk about it. It’s just she has too much on her plate right now, and my measly crush on Park Chanyeol and the terror that washes me in regards of that shouldn’t rest on her shoulders, at least not yet. “It’s just.. there’s nothing to talk about. I mean I don’t know if I know what friendship really is.”

Mom’s eyes swindles in sadness, sadness so great and vivid I can reach over with my fingers and touch it. I swallow, scared that my words had a different effect than the needed one despite trying to articulate my thought process in a way that didn’t show my actual distress. I shoot my Mom a studied smile, a forced one; and I’m happy to see that it reduced a little bit of the disarray in her comportment.

“I mean,” I try again, lacing some fragile joy into my tone to appease her. “He definitely treats me as if I’m his friend, and I was introduced to his group of friends so you can say that I definitely have friends now.”

Mom finally smiles and I hide my wince. Nice saving.

-

I sit through my big bed in contrast to the tiny compartment of my bedroom and listen to music to try and ignite the burning silence within the outer walls of my residence. Normally at Seven PM I’d be doing my homework or creating new revision cards to memorize whenever I’m bored out of my wits to focus on. But I’ve already finished with those two and I’m not particularly as crazy and studious as people make me seem to work my whole time on school stuff, so I sit still on my bed to listen to some ballad songs to create more of a somber mood than I already have just because I’m attracted to darkness like that.

I swipe my fingers through a number of songs that I don’t particularly find to be as appealing as when I first downloaded them and my screen lights up with an incoming call from no one other than Park Chanyeol, whom I had previously changed his name into LOEY with capital letters when I discovered the dashingly beautiful inky tattoo on his large finger. I raise my eyebrows in wonder and instantly pick up the call, a small, very small part of me flaring with unshed feelings like an uproarious explosions of massive heartbeats inside of my body at seeing his name flashing in my phone.

“Chanyeol?” My voice is calm and low, resembling the radiating tenderness of the sphere of my diligent room. “Hello?”

“Babygiiiiirl....” His voice drawls out loud, his tone dragging and lazy. My already raised eyebrows fly all the way to the highest point in my forehead and I instantly recognize the tinge of lack of energy in his voice.

I pause for a fraction of a minute in astonishment at the discovery that’s lighting alarm notes all over my head, before letting out: “Are you—are you drunk?”

He groans lowly at the clear accusation in my tone, and shivers pluck all over my arms at how sensually divine his low noises can be. “Don’t sound so disappointed, babygirl, I hardly drank a bottle.”

“Obviously you drank enough to be tilting in your speech!” I exclaim, and I’m surprised with myself at how scolding my voice has became over the last few seconds. I understand that I’m severely disappointed in him because even though I knew he was extremely loose when it comes to his moral compass, I didn’t expect him to be into illegal drinking. 

“Can you not scold me for a sec?” Comes his low baritone. “I’ve had enough patronizing reprimanding today to last me a lifetime.”

“Where are you?” I ignore his pitiful wailing and immediately rush to say. “What are you doing? Are you outside or home? Where are you? Please tell me you at least decided to drink in a safe and closed place, aka your house.”

“Why would I drink in my house when I have an amazing apartment alllllllll to myself.” Chanyeol’s low pitched voice raises in pitch as he releases a drunken giggle, and I can trace all of his high tones to hold back my growing irritation. 

“Chanyeol!” I exclaim, angry and flustered at the prospect of his giggle. I have never heard him giggle before, being all boyish and ridiculously withdrawn in showing any signs of dorky behavior. But I tell myself that there’s nothing to be so taken aback with his giggling. He’s merely drunk! And that’s not a good thing to focus on. 

“What!” He exclaims back, anger very clearly coating his tone, although for totally different reasons than mine. I can clearly say that he doesn’t condone well with scolds. I breathe very slowly through my nostrils, calming the palpitations of my heart.

“Tell me where you are, Chanyeol, please.” I beg, and rosy pink flush my cheeks at the notion of begging. It’s so unlike me, but I feel my panic for Chanyeol’s wellbeing smolder me like a burning fire, and even though I loathe to admit of it, but I’m concerned for his sake rather than the ludicrous status of my bad decisions. 

Chanyeol huffs, and I can feel the prickling feeling of his warm breath cascading down my ears as if he’s just beside me. “I told you already, I’m at my apartment.”

“Would you please take the time out of your oh so glorious day and send me your location.” I sarcastically reply back, my hand squeezing against my phone. 

His voice drops into a low pitched sound once again, sounding sultry and littered with his usual smoothness whenever he’s in his flirtatious mode. “Oh, babygirl, you wanna come to my home at night all by yourself?”

“I don’t know, Chanyeol, do you want me to come? Is that why you called me?”

He doesn’t answer for a few minutes, probably stunned by my honest words without their usual bearings of secrecy and how honestly sincere they are. I hear the perspiration sounds of his breathing echo from the fragile shield of the phone, and I wait with flickering pupils around my room for Chanyeol to gather his bearings. When he doesn’t answer or say anything remotely humorous like his normal personality, I urge him to.

“Chanyeol? Are you there?”

His thin slate of voice echos over the confined placement of the tiny phone in my ear, and my body shivers in both anticipation, and delight. “Come over, sweetheart.”

-

I tell my Mom that I’ll be going to visit a friend, and that according to their state of mind, might take a while for me to come back. Of course she agrees, almost too fast, considering that I never really ask her to go over to any friend’s house. I humored the fact I might have to stay over to my Mom considering Chanyeol’s really unexpected and I don’t know what exactly to expect from him, and she didn’t even mind. She even rushed me out of the door with a little grin and sparkling eyes, as if she couldn’t believe I’m being like a usual teenager who finally asks for a sleepover.

Thankfully, her radiance o