“Oh. Okay,” Mr. Cho speaks first like this is the most normal thing to talk about at three in the morning, all their neighbors are asleep and every light in the neighborhood is off but theirs.

Kyuhyun wants to laugh at his father’s reaction but he can’t bring himself to because he knows the gravity of what he just told them and he knows even if they told him that they will always support him, this is different and he understands if his parents’ stand will immediately change because of this.

He meets his mother’s eyes but he can’t tell her expression, he can’t tell her thoughts until his mother smiles genuinely at him and at this second, Kyuhyun wants to cry. “Is he here with you? Did he come with you tonight?” his mother asks, standing up from the seat across her son and coming to him to give him a hug, knowing full well how much it took him to tell them what he just told them.

It’s not that she is not surprised and probably, both she and her husband have ten thousand questions running on their minds right now after what Kyuhyun told them. He is in love with a guy? How is he in love with a guy? Who is this guy? Where did they meet? When? How did it happen? And so many more they can’t keep up with but more than those questions, they know it’s not easier for Kyuhyun than it is for them and they just have to trust their son at that moment. The questions can be answered later but right now, Kyuhyun needs to know that they are still there with him no matter what.

“No, Mom,” Kyuhyun chuckles in an all too grief-stricken way. “I – Uh. I lost him.”

Mrs. Cho looks at her husband before turning to Kyuhyun again. “Honey…”

“He loved me, too, Mom,” Kyuhyun tells his mother with wistful and blissful eyes, like he is remembering serene memories of the past and telling it as a story, only  a story now, to his parents. “He loved me, too,” he repeats, like his parents can’t catch it the first time, like he wants to tell it over and over again to his parents. “He loved me, too.”

His father, who is still as confused and shocked as his wife suddenly forgets all the questions doing a triathlon on his mind and looks at Kyuhyun, concern and worry visible on his wrinkled and now more than fully awake face. He forgets the sleep he tells himself he needs to get and the questions as to why he is discussing the benefits of each tea variant they have to his son and the vegetable his wife used to cook vegetable curry for their son that he’s supposed to have sautéed tomorrow and the fact that Kyuhyun told them he is in love with a guy named Jongwoon because all he can think about is the way Kyuhyun said “He loved me, too.” and how it’s the saddest, almost mournful, thing he heard for the past twenty years from his son.

He loved me, too.

It’s like there is a lump stuck in Mrs. Cho’s throat and she can’t bring herself to say something because she doesn’t know what to say. She wraps her arms around Kyuhyun and pulls him into a hug.

Kyuhyun lets himself be embraced by his mother’s warmth, closing his eyes and telling himself that he won’t cry in front of his parents. He’s too old. He’s already made them do and go through too much tonight and he’s not going to give them more heartache by crying in front of them.

It’s more than enough that they’re still there beside him. It’s more than enough that they’re listening to him.

“I told him I can’t,” Kyuhyun tells them further after he and his mother pull away. He looks at his father and kind of gives a satirical laugh, directed to himself and no one else. “I can’t even remember what is I can’t, Dad! I can’t be with him? I can’t be his boyfriend? I can’t return the same feelings? I can’t love him? Or I can’t take the judgmental and disgusted looks from people around us if I decide to hold his hand or kiss him? I can’t because I’m too scared to admit to the whole world that I love him? I don’t know! I can’t remember… I just told him I can’t.”

“And I hurt him,” he continues quietly, looking at the pinkish liquid on the teacup in front of him, how peaceful it is and how he hopes they can be like that again. “I know I can’t justify it with anything but I hurt him.”

“And now I lost him, Mom,” Kyuhyun turns to his mother, smiling at her weakly, like a defeated soldier with wounded arms and broken legs on the verge of dying and ultimately searching for nothing but the comfort of his mother’s lap to lie his head onto, to the soft touch of hands on his forehead and the most soothing voice he heard in his life singing a song with no words. “And now I lost him.”

His mother feels so helpless because she can’t do anything but embrace her son. She feels so helpless like she is feeling the pain pricking her son’s heart doubled, tripled on hers, like she is feeling the miserable and regretful wound of a love that was once there but is now lost, like she is in her son’s foot but the pain is multiplied a million times because if she can only take all the pain Kyuhyun is going through right now and make it hers, she’ll do it. But that’s not just possible as much as she begs heaven to let it be.

So she hugs Kyuhyun and whispers, “I’m here, sweetheart. We’re here. Me and Dad. We’ll always be here.”

Kyuhyun has to bit his lips until he fears it will bleed to keep himself from crying in his mother’s shoulder, feeling a huge weight like an anchor be lifted from his chest and even though he still hates himself from everything he did to Jongwoon, he still hates himself because he is a coward and an who hurt the person he loves, and he still hates himself because until now, he can’t do anything about it.

“Finish your tea. It’ll help,” Mr. Cho says when Kyuhyun said he’s going to bed.

“Thanks, Dad,” Kyuhyun says and finishes the already cold rose tea. He doesn’t really know if it makes any difference to both how ty he feels because of what happened between him and Jongwoon even until the end and how thankful he feels because of his parents and what just happened now.

“What time should I wake you up tomorrow?” Mrs. Cho asks as Kyuhyun puts down the empty tea cup.

“About eight, Mom,” Kyuhyun answers.

“That early? I thought your game is not on until in the afternoon?”

“I need to do something in the morning.”

Mrs. Cho nods and wakes Kyuhyun up at exactly eight in the morning the next day, wearing the same clothes she wore when their backdoor creaked at two and the same prayers that her son be alright despite all that he is going through.

Kyuhyun wakes up upon hearing his mother’s voice, an alarm clock he hated when he was in high school but realizes he misses now that he doesn’t get to hear it often. He also hated his father’s old records that Mr. Cho likes playing early in the morning, “to set the mood for the day”, his father told him but he realizes he misses that as well and even sings along to the old songs he heard as soon as he gets out of his room.

“You'll come to our game later, right?” Kyuhyun asks his parents when he is tying his shoelaces at the doorstep. “It's Finals.”

Mr. Cho, who’s on the living room but isn’t watching the show on the television but his son tying his shoelaces stands up cheerfully and walks towards Kyuhyun. “Of course!” he exclaims with a big smile on his face. “We'll be there! We’ll support you and your team!”

Mrs. Cho, who’s cleaning on the kitchen but will probably repeat every dish she cleaned because she is not focused on the dishes but on her son, comes out, wiping her wet hands on her floral apron. Her smile is as big as her husband’s and she tells Kyuhyun, “We’ll cheer for you the loudest!”

Kyuhyun wants to give them a witty response but he can only grin. “Okay!” he says cheerfully, a complete turnaround from his self several hours ago. It’s not something believable enough, though. But his parents can only keep their smiles plastered on their face because if Kyuhyun is trying that much to be okay, then they should, too.

“See you later, Mom, Dad!” Kyuhyun waves at his parents before closing the front door after him.

“Take care, Kyuhyun!” Mrs. Cho shouts lastly.

It’s all quiet after the door closes and Kyuhyun is gone.

Mr. Cho looks at the closed door and stares at it, like it will somehow bring back a prototype of his son and explain some things he still can’t understand up to now. It’s weird because even if he still doesn’t understand why or how or what happened, even if his mind is still asking questions he can’t voice out, his heart reaches to his son the moment Kyuhyun broke down in front of them and he saw how Kyuhyun is suffering. That he can agree with something he can’t understand because of one thing he can. That he loves his son.

Mrs. Cho, albeit on the same footing as her husband, turns to go back to the kitchen, to repeat the dishes she just washed.

“Is it really alright?” her husband suddenly asks, just when she is about to take a step. He looks at her with eyes not with judgment, not with disgust and not with forsakenness but just with wonder. Like he is really just asking if it is really alright.

His wife slightly tilts her head and gives him a small smile. “Come,” she says.

She leads him to the living room and they both sit on the couch where her husband and her son watched late night gags and laughed together at the same corny jokes last night. She takes something from the cabinet below the television and sits beside her husband.

It’s an old photobook, a precious book of memories from Kyuhyun’s childhood.

“He’s so cute when he was young, right?” Mrs. Cho says, touching the pictures in the photobook where Kyuhyun was just a baby, like touching it will bring her back to the precious moment. “He’s about one week old here, right? We don’t want to take pictures of him so young because it might weaken his eyesight but after one week, we’re like, ‘We’re going to take pictures whether you like it or you like it!’”

Mr. Cho laughs and moves closer to look over at the pictures better. “This one’s when he first smiled on the camera!” he points at one particular picture on the album.

“Yes,” his wife chuckles. “He’s such a model when he was a baby. He’s always smiling whenever a camera was on his face.”

“Right, right,” Mr. Cho agrees. “Even when he’s crying! But once a camera was on his face, he’ll stop crying and start smiling for the camera!”

Mrs. Cho laughs and flips the pages of the album, glimpsing on the priceless memories they had with Kyuhyun when he was still a baby. She smiles at the pictures of Kyuhyun randomly flipping on the bed, of Kyuhyun’s first studio photoshoot, of Kyuhyun staring widely at the camera like he was judging its existence, of Kyuhyun hugging Mr. Cho, of Kyuhyun kissing Mrs. Cho.

“Remember when I was carrying Kyuhyun in my womb?” Mrs. Cho suddenly asks, looking at one particular picture in the album of her ultrasound with Kyuhyun with a smile and touching it.

Mr. Cho nods and looks at the picture, too.

“Everyone was excited when we found out I was pregnant - both my family and your family - because it's been a long time since both families had a baby,” his wife continues, like she is remembering a memory that just happened yesterday. “Everyone kept asking if our baby is going to be a boy or a girl but even we couldn't tell at that moment because I was only three weeks pregnant. We told them it doesn't matter if our baby will be a boy or a girl because we'll love him or her no matter what, right?”

She then turns to look at her husband and their eyes meet.

“If it didn't matter then, why should it matter now?”

His eyes glisten because of what he doesn’t know and he suddenly coughs to wipe something on his eyes before looking at his son’s baby pictures again and to his wife he was never as thankful that she was the one he fell in love with and married as that moment. She is not just his wife. She is his teacher, his accomplice, his friend and like always, she brings the best in him.

She smiles as her husband pulls her into a tight hug and says, “I only want Kyuhyun’s happiness.”

His wife nods and answers, “Me, too. Me, too.”

A/