“Come inside dear.”

I didn’t move from my spot. I didn’t want to go back inside. It was much better out here. Out here where she couldn’t see me. Out here, among the flowers in the garden with the caterpillars and butterflies in between. It was better here. Better here where I could watch the lives of such small things as they interacted with each other.

“Come on deary, your mother wants to see you.”

Better than being with her. My mother. Yet, not my mother at all.

I ended up doing as Ms. Lee asked me to. I stood up, leaving behind the tulips that had garnered my attention. She held out her hand and I took it. She led me inside as though I would hurt myself or perhaps even hurt others if she didn’t.

Ms. Lee. She is a caretaker at our house, the house I live in with my mother and father. She is not a nanny. She looks after neither my father nor me. No, she attends to my mother. That is why she came to get me from the garden. The one place I can go to without having to see anyone else. Without having to interact with others. I’m not antisocial. I have simply learned that to say nothing is better than to say something foolish. This is how my mother prefers I be. My father disagrees. He wants me to speak up but with how often he is around, due to the nature of his work, I have simply gotten into the habit of avoiding conversation as per my mother’s orders.

Not a request, but an order.

An order not unlike the one given to Ms. Lee to bring me back inside.

Thus, she did as she was told and guided me all the way inside and up the stairs and finally we stopped at two grandiose double doors. Much too grandiose for my father but my mother always loved décor that made her appear to be the one in power, to be the one whose status was higher than anyone’s who so happened to end up standing outside of this door. And in reality, it was.

In sick reality, it was.

To clarify, my mother is not an awful person. On the contrary, to those who are important, she makes sure to present herself as the highest of all high order women whose fealty to her husband, my father, knows no bounds.

To clarify again, she is not my stepmother.

Ms. Lee knocked once and only once. There was silence from inside before a hushed and gentle voice spoke from inside.

“Come in.”

When I was smaller, I had thought this voice was just what its surface appeared to be: kind, endearing, motherly, affectionate. But I learned in the same way I learned to keep my voice down that this voice, the voice of my mother, was in no way to be taken at face value.

Ms. Lee opened the door and bowed once before taking her leave. She knew by now not to attend to my mother when she called for me. What Ms. Lee lacked in adeptness and ability to adapt accordingly to the sticky situations she ended up in, mostly by my mother’s hand, she made up for in her inability to tell lies regarding my mother to my father.

I took a step into the room and as soon as my rear foot crossed the threshold of the room, the door closed behind me. It was extravagant to a fault. This was a reason my father had his own separate room. This extravagance is a reason I have developed tastes quite like my father for simplicity over the complex. Considering I had seen neither him nor the maids nor the butlers attending the estate, my mother had once more planned her own demise. She had made sure no one was around so that she could promptly go insane without the eyes of the public watching.

Why would she go insane?

“Myungsoo,” she called softly, her voice coated in false affection coupled with a motherly smile that seemed to twitch and falter more and more with each passing second, “come here honey.”

My name is Kim Myungsoo. I was seven years old.

“Come here.” He tone turned vile, twisting into what was akin to a witch’s voice in any nightmarish dream.

I took steady steps forward. I was used to this. There was no point in drawing it out.

“Much better.” She whispered as she reached outward, touching my cheek with her chilled hand, “Look at you. All dressed up in black like a dashing knight, just like your father. Look at you. You have your father’s nose. And his lips. And his jawline. My handsome young son, do you know what is the one thing about you that I can’t seem to find any beauty in?”

I didn’t respond. I waited. I waited in silence.

She let her thumb drift over my cheek and with a pained smile, she whispered lowly, “Your eyes. How ugly. Those eyes. I just can’t seem to love them. It’s as though I’m staring right at her. Right at that vile creature. Those eyes. As though commanding and ripping from me everything I own, that creature looks at me with those eyes. You will let me paint them, won’t you honey?”

My mother does not go insane as you would expect. No, I was never physically abused. Even if I were, it would heal quickly and the pain would only last a moment. Instead, every time before she went manic, she would ask me if she could paint my eyes. If she could paint the thing she hated with a passion that distorted her into the very vile creature she wished to paint.

She was an artist afterall.

I remained still and to her, the action was as good as an affirmative. And so, she began to paint. I stood still as paint slew over the floor, as glass went falling over and breaking on the floor as she pushed over her vanity in urgency for any tools with which to draw what she hated most. My eyes.

My eyes which were the one thing that did not resemble my father. The one thing I inherited from someone else.

So, why would my mother go insane?

Because as I stated before, she isn’t my mother at all.

I’m not her son.

And my eyes, they belong to the woman whom my father had considered leaving her for.

My real mother.

A vile creature.

A mutt.

Yet, despite knowing this information, I was approached by someone only a few years older than me. He wanted me to follow him. Wanted me to join his pack. Despite what I was, despite what he was, he wanted me to join him. I accepted in a heartbeat. The offer was too good to be true and to this day I don’t regret leaving my father and my “mother.”

I wanted to experience life instead of being a third person to it.

I maintained my love for simplicity. This being all that I retained from my life. I told no one else who I really was. What I really was. And I lived with them for ten years. I laughed. I smiled. I engaged with them as though they were my real brothers and soon they became just that. I experienced emotions on the opposite side of the spectrum. I experienced life.

Or I thought I had.

Despite all I had been through, even through my childhood, there was one thing I never did. One thing I thought I had been incapable of doing.

I cried.

I cried over the sight of a human woman unconscious in front of me due to my own careless actions. And I felt something. A new emotion I didn’t know the name of. And I acted on this new emotion I felt.

And since then, it seems as though everything is more complex. It was aggravating. It was annoying. Yet, I actually don’t mind it. I wanted to be annoyed. I wanted to continue to feel this new, unknown, complex emotion that I can’t quite put my finger on.

Because due to this complex emotion, I truly feel as though I am experiencing life. 

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A/N:

This is a special chapter to celebrate Sunggyu's new solo album. Now, the chapter isn't about Sunggyu because well, everyone knows about Sunggyu's story. Myungsoo however is in the music video for "60 sec" so I decided to make this chapter about him and his mysterious past. Hope you enjoyed it.

Sunggyu spam because I can.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!