41;

 

 

"Mom, are you happy?"

 

"Of course I'm happy honey, why do you suddenly ask?" his mother petted his hair and made little Myungsoo squirm into her more. It's another lazy Sunday morning, mornings in which Myungsoo and his mother spend doing nothing. It's one of the mornings he loved the most.

 

"Nothing, I'm just afraid."

 

"Afraid of what?"

 

"That you'll leave me because you want Dad, not me."

 

His mother chuckled and leaned over to kiss his hair. His mother always smelled like apples and citrus, she always smelled like home. A home that Myungsoo had always loved to come back to.

 

"I'll never leave Myungsoo," she said with those gentle eyes. "Dad may not be here, but at least there is you," she pinches her son's nose affectionately and Myungsoo scrunches his face in response. "I have you, and that is enough for me."

 

"Really? Even if I am a bad kid?"

 

His mother nods.

 

"Eventhough I don't eat all my vegies?"

 

"Yes, but you still need to eat them young man," she gently reprimanded him.

 

"Eventhough I trip and fall and stay up late and do those things that make you upset? You promise me you won't leave me?" he asks with much innocence that a nine year old has a privilege to have and his mother finds herself aching for her son.

 

She pulls him up and cups his face with her small hands, aligning his eyes with hers. "I would never leave you Myungsoo, I am your mother and you are my son. Until that fact changes, I would never leave your side."

 

Myungsoo visibly beams at this. He threw his hands around her mother and hugged her tight, "I love you mom, I promise I won't be like those neighborhood hyungs who shout at their mothers or say things behind their backs. I promise I would grow up as a nice man like Dad so that I'll find a nice woman like you."

 

His mother tries to bite back the sob that threatens to spill from her eyes. She wants to know what good she had done in her past life to have such a good son like Myungsoo. But she decided to just thank the gods above, let them be and hugged her son.

 

Myungsoo finds himself sleeping with a peaceful smile on his face that night, knowing that tomorrow, when he wakes up, his mother would still be there offering him that beautiful smile and hugs that smell faintly like apples and citrus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eight years later, Kim Myungsoo opens his eyes to an unfamiliar place. His neck choked with a pair of legs and his arm caught in a weak arm bar. He scuffles for a bit before he remembers where he is.

 

Villa. Camp. Korea.

 

Myungsoo closes his eyes once again, brushes his palms over his face. He remembers that Sunday morning as though it just happened yesterday. But no, it didn't happen yesterday. The truth is, it happened years ago, back when things are peaceful and back when the world is a place full of rainbows and unicorns. Suddenly, those times feel like a billion years away.

 

He takes a deep breath and forces himself to go back to sleep.

 

Nothing in the air smells like apples and citrus. Home is nowhere to be seen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Hey, you alright?" Suzy asked Myungsoo over breakfast. It snapped the boy from his daze and he looked at Suzy's direction. Her eyes filled with confusion and the way her bows are scrunched together tells Myungsoo that he's been spacing out for too long.

 

Myungsoo smiled and shook his head, "Yeah, I'm fine. Just had a bad dream."

 

"Bad dream?" Suzy asked.

 

"Yeah, a bad dream." he chuckled, that smug look on his face is back again and it made Suzy widen her eyes. "Why? Perfect men can have bad dreams to you know," he said and Suzy scoffed as if on cue. Myungsoo laughed, it was as though he already memorized how the girl would react to his stupid antics. Like he can already see how Suzy would scoff or scowl with every remark he says.

 

The girl began eating, throwing Myungsoo's bigger than life ego into the sink. Moments later, Suzy started to be immersed with the usual loud banter in front of the dining table.

 

Myungsoo's face drops again, but this time, Suzy is not looking his way to notice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After breakfast Hyomin and Woohyun gathered them all in the living room, probably to announce the list of things to do for today. Sometimes, Suzy thinks this is not much of a team building camp than a group of friends trying to lay off school. It's just that they managed to get an official permission from the school administration thus making all these class skipping legal.

 

"So now, we'll be assigning the hoobae group to do the grocery duties," Woohyun announced rather enthusiastically, complete with all the arm flailing and loud cheers. His friends looked at him judgingly, Woohyun just shrugged. "What? I'm just happy the chore does not involve me for once,"

 

"Anyways," Hyomin cast a pointed look at Woohyun and faced Suzy and Myungsoo who are both sitting on the couch. "Since you two are the hoobaes here, I assign you to buy things for our next two and a half days here. You see, we've been up all the meat in the fridge like a vacuum cleaner and I suggest you just buy an entire pig or cow just in case,"

 

"Not to mention someone had been sneaking out at night to smother all the snacks in the fridge," Woohyun remarks (Suzy just snickers loudlywhen she notices Sungyeol slowly slipping down from his seat. 'Guilty' plastered all over his face).

 

"Here is the list of the things you need to buy," Hyomin hands them a piece of paper which Suzy receives with both hands.

 

"Waah, this is a lot!" she exclaimed while eyeing the list and its never ending contents. Suzy looks at Myungsoo as though waiting for the whining that always ensues whenever Myungsoo and work appea in the same sentence, but instead she is greeted by a blank faced Myungsoo. She doubts if the boy is even paying attention to half of the conversation they just had.

 

Suzy looks at him intently, when Myungsoo notices her, he threw her an empty smile. Suzy thinks there must be something bothering Myungsoo for him to act this way. He's been uncharacteristically quiet since this morning and the eerie change in his aura drives Suzy off the cliff. Which is why while they are walking their way towards the city where the grocery is (Sungyeol forgot to refill the car's gas tank), she matched her pace with his and asked him cautiously.

 

"Myungsoo, is something wrong?"

 

"Hmm?" he lazily cocked his head towards her, meeting her gaze. Suzy feels uneasy with this Myungsoo. All empty smiles and empty stares. It was as though he was looking at her but not really, his mind is off to somewhere only he knows. "What do you mean?"

 

"You've been spacing out too much," she said and she notices how Myungsoo turns his gaze away at this. She sees something beyond his mask and Myungsoo feels uncomfortable being exposed like this. And so he looks away in an attempt to hide the truth that his eyes show. "Are you okay?"

 

Myungsoo tears his eyes away. There, he's doing it again. He's being warped away by his own thoughts and it leaves Suzy hanging, and so she does the only thing she could in moments like this. She waits for Myungsoo to come back.

 

Eventually, he did. He looked at Suzy, his pace becoming slow, his smiles fading away and Suzy's heart aches at the sight. "Tomorrow, is my mom's birthday," he says while putting his hands inside his pockets. People around them are all tending to their own businesses, neighborhood dogs barking, children playing. Everything seems normal, okay even, but in reality it isn't. Because the look in Myungsoo's eyes tell Suzy that it isn't.

 

"Then shouldn't you be going home? You know, celebrate it with your mother,"

 

Myungsoo shook his head and let out a deep sigh, his eyes drawing out the eccentric shapes that the clouds form up above, it's such a good day. "I don't really celebrate her birthday with her anymore," Suzy was about to ask some more but Myungsoo continues, "haven't even seen her for eight years now."

 

Suzy doesn't know what else to say and so she decides to keep quiet. "So I guess, I'm just sad that I can't see her anymore."

 

Once a year, Kim Myungsoo, the boy who never seems to stop smiling and is always around to bring happiness to those around him, gives in to sadness. Once a year, he lets himself be soaked into the pits of loneliness and let himself be angry at fate. Once a year, he questions everything that had happened to his life, accepts that life really is unfair and throws away all the positivity he managed to pile up in his seventeen years of existence.

 

Once a year, Kim Myungsoo allows himself to break.

 

Suzy realizes that that day is today. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The two did their grocery task in silence after that. Suzy asking Myungsoo if there is anything they forgot to buy and if he wants something for himself as well, and Myungsoo just shrugging her off with a shake of his head and a smile. Suzy decides to let him be, there isn't much that she can offer for comfort anyways and so she just smiles back, gives him assuring pats every now and then, just small gestures that lets him know that she is here for him.

 

Myungsoo appreciates the gestures. He appreciates that Suzy doesn't pry for answers that he knows he wouldn't be able to render anyway. But a person has got to let himself go once in a while doesn't he?

 

Suzy is paying for all the groceries and Myungsoo is at the other side, waiting for her. He has his back against the wall and his other foot balancing his entire weight. There really is an awful lot of people in the city, people with different stories. People with different problems they need to face and yet what tingles Myungsoo's curiousity is how people manage to stand and rise up every morning with that much burden placed across their shoulders.

 

Humans are really amazing creatures, Myungsoo thinks.

 

It was then, in between the bustling people tending to their own businesses, in that moment when Myungsoo decides to turn his gaze upwards into the thickness of the souls rushing to get through their days; it was then that Myungsoo saw that figure too familiar for Myungsoo that he wakes up in the middle of the night aching to see it once again.

 

Myungsoo feels his heart beat fast as he tried to peer amongst the couple of heads straining his gaze away from that very familiar mop of dark hair. A particular group of school girls pass by and then the woman was gone.

 

He craned his head from left to right, trying to catch a glimpse of the woman. Without much thought, Myungsoo finds his feet moving on their own, finding its path back to where the woman might be. He hears Suzy call his name from behind but he paid no heed. He needs to see her again. He's positive he's right this time.

 

She's here, Myungsoo thinks. His mother is here.

 

Myungsoo trudged along the populated street walks, his gaze fixated to that one woman, her small frame standing out amongst the sea of people just because he's got her image burned at the back of his eyelids for too long. He had yearned to see her again for the past eight years that seeing someone so achingly similar to her makes his chest burn in anticipation. He doesn't care of this is just one of those false hopes that he's used to be getting. Anything that can lead him to his mother is always worth the try.

 

Too many people. Why are there too many people?! Myungsoo squeezed and fits himself through the crowd, whispers words of apologies with every shoulder that he bumps and every body that he shoves off; much to his dismay, he tears his gaze away for one moment, when he looks up, the woman was no longer in sight.

 

He lost her.

 

Myungsoo rested his hands to his knees, back arching in a slump, sweat rolling down his forehead. He pants and catches his breath as people start to line up for the bus stop. Myungsoo can't believe he lost her again.

 

"What am I doing?" he asks himself, still propping his entire weight on his knees. He feels people passing by him, moving on with their lives and yet here he is, trapped with his past. He remembers Suzy, he left her alone at the grocery. She must be really worried about him now, Myungsoo feels bad about himself.

 

When he stood up and fixed himself, someone suddenly bumps into him making him fall back his steps a little.

 

"Ah, I'm sorry," the figure says, clearly not paying attention, before going on her way.

 

Myungsoo's mouth fell open, he finds himself unable to move from his feet. His heartbeat rose as his breathing paced up. He felt hot tears stinging his eyes, with much thought, he took a deep breath.

 

Apples and citrus.

 

"Eo-Eomma," his voice shakes. His vision blurred from unshed tears, he takes another whiff. Myungsoo smells home.

 

"Eo-EOMMA!!" he shouts, his voice ringing among the crowd. He turns around in desperation. Myungsoo sees the woman stopping midway; he silently begs for her to turn around.

 

Myungsoo's breathing is ragged, his heart exploding in anticipation because after eight years, he's finally found hope. "Eomma," he calls out once again, now hot tears spilling from his eyes. His throat constricted and his breath hitching when the woman slowly turned around.

 

Myungsoo found himself back in that shabby house he had when he was nine. He sees himself coming back from school into the warm embrace that holds promises of comfort and rest. He finds himself back as the little child that believed in his mother's promises of forever.

 

Myungsoo sees himself face to face with his mother. He finally caught sight of home.

 

Her eyes overflowing with the same hot tears that are flowing from his e