“Wait, I can’t find my keys!” Chaerin whispered.

“What?” Yongguk whispered back as they stood at her doorstep. “Did you remember taking them?” He asked.

“Shush! Don’t rush me!” She said as she touched her pockets. “Ah, damn!”

Yongguk chuckled. When Chaerin was about to smack him, the front door opened and the lights were switched on when an unhappy Mrs. Lee stood by the door. The both of them froze. She looked at the both of them sternly, obviously not pleased with them coming home at such late hour, not to mention Yongguk’s cracked lip, Chaerin’s scraped knee and their palms.

“Chae, is that you?” They heard Mr. Lee called from the inside of the house.

Before they could respond, Mrs. Lee pinched their ears and dragging the both of them into the house.

“Ah! Umma!” Chaerin cried when she felt her mother’s nails poking on her ear. “Umma, that hurts!”

“Goodness, what happened to the both of you?” Mr. Lee asked, pushing his glasses up his nose to get a clearer look.

The both of them stood awkwardly in front of her parents as the older couple examined them, scanning them from top to bottom. They were a mess. Torn jeans, bandaged knee, cracked lip, dirty clothes, plastered wrists. Chaerin bit her lip, trying to think of an excuse as fast as she could while Yongguk turned to look at her nervously.

“What’s going on?” Mrs. Lee asked.

“Uh …” Chaerin looked back at Yongguk.

“Well?” Her mother was getting impatient as she crossed her arms in front of her chest.

“I fell,” Chaerin said. Her parents looked at her in silence, waiting for her full explanation. “I was running and I knocked into Yongguk-oppa, really hard,” she said in a slow tone, cautious of every single word that she spoke.

“Why were you running in the first place?” Her mother then started firing her questions. “You knocked poor Yongguk-ssi so hard that his lip cracked?”

That sounds so wrong. “I guess?” but there was no turning or taking back with her words.

Her mother looked at her suspiciously. She squinted her eyes in disbelief. She then sighed. “Alright, get upstairs to shower,” she shooed her daughter.

Chaerin was confused. She looked to Yongguk but her mother only nudged her towards the stairs and her father put his arm around her shoulders to lead her upstairs. Yongguk cleared his throat when Mrs. Lee looked at him in silence. She did not have that stern look anymore, but she still seemed serious. He nodded when he spotted Chaerin looking at him as she approached the stairs with her father. She slowly walked up the stairs with her father’s help.

“Yongguk-ssi,” Mrs. Lee then called when Chaerin left the living room. She sat on the sofa and motioning him to join her as well. Yongguk took his seat when she poured him a glass of water that was on the coffee table. Mrs. Lee passed him the glass of water and he received it with both hands when she sighed and watched him took a sip from the glass. “Did something happen?” She finally said causing Yongguk to gulp. It was not his story to tell. He was placed in a difficult position, not knowing if Chaerin would get upset if her mother knew. She seemed to try to hide it from her mother since the evening. “Did Zico hurt her?” She grabbed onto Yongguk’s knee, looking worried.

Yongguk sighed with his head lowered, still wondering if he should tell her about it. He looked up to her, feeling troubled, he saw the tears forming in her eyes. “She---she’s fine,” he said softly.

“So he did?!” Her mother asked fiercely.

Yongguk who was taken aback by her reaction, lowered his head again, “I’m sorry,” he whispered. He meant it. He was sorry that he could not tell her about it and he was sorry that he did not protect her well either.

Mrs. Lee then realized Yongguk mentally bashing himself, she hurriedly placed her hand on his shoulder. “Thank you, Yongguk,” she said with a gentle smile. She let out a sigh, “This actually turned out better than I thought,” she said. “To be honest, I wasn’t expecting her to return at all tonight,” she confessed, “I knew Jiho wasn’t stable for her,” she said putting her hand onto her forehead. “I should’ve not agreed to her dating him in the first place!”

Yongguk could only watch the woman silently as she took the blame of Chaerin’s heartbreak on herself.

“But thank you, so much, Yongguk,” she said with her hand over . “I was so relieved when I heard the both of you at the door,” she smiled with glassy eyes. “Her emotions seemed fine as well which made me----“ she couldn’t hold it in anymore, she cried.

Yongguk was left speechless. He could only sit by her side as she cried.  

Mrs. Lee then took in a deep breath, trying to calm herself down. “You don’t know what this girl has been through,” she sighed, wiping her tears with the sleeves of her pajamas. “Her first boyfriend was another jerk and she even got bullied in college because of him,” her mother then revealed.

Yongguk froze. What?

“This Jaybum guy,” her mother said with a soft curse that Yongguk missed. “He showed much interest in her and she fell for him,” she continued, “I have to admit he was charming and very suave, almost too perfect that he turned out to be a player,” she said with a sigh. “He was just trying her out because he heard that she was some one of a kind female that was hard to catch,” Yongguk’s eyebrows wrinkled as he listened to her mother telling her story. “When he got her, he started to make fun of her, saying that she was just one of the typical girls that would fall for him.”

Yongguk was speechless.

“My poor girl,” her mother sighed again. “I never knew about this until her younger sister revealed it to me when we were at the hospital because she tried to kill herself with sleeping pills,” she said. “She was humiliated in front of her bunch of classmates and was made the biggest joke in college,” Mrs. Lee then buried her face in her wrinkled hands. “What are kids doing nowadays?” She whispered in her tears. She sniffed, pushing her hair back. “This was why we send her to the states and this was why I was so concerned when she introduced Jiho to us as her boyfriend,” she explained. She could not stop pouring out her worries. “He looked so young, not even knowing what he wants in life yet,” she explained her point of view. “It’s not that I despise him, I just----I just---“

“You were concerned for her,” Yongguk said, finishing her sentence when she could not.

Mrs. Lee smiled at him. She felt comforted knowing that someone understood her feelings.