Kyungsoo spent the rest of the weekend at Jongdae’s house after calling his mother to let her know where he was.  He felt absolutely wrecked, and Jongdae, for all his comforting words, could not bring Kyungsoo out of the hole he was in.

When Kyungsoo returned home Sunday night, his mother could immediately tell that something was different with her son.  Once so bright and happy, he was now walking with shuffling feet, his shoulders hunched and his head down.

She didn’t ask him anything right away, however, knowing that it was important to give him space since he wasn’t exactly the most open of boys.  But when, the next morning he informed her he wasn’t going to school, she knew it was time to broach the topic.

“Soo honey, what’s wrong?” She asked, sitting down on the edge of his bed and pushing his bangs out of his face.

“I don’t really want to talk about it mom,” he responded, rolling over and facing away from her.

Not willing to drop it, she pressed on.  “Kyungsoo, sweetie, you need to talk to me.”

“You’re going to be late for work,” he mumbled into his comforter.

“You’re more important right now than work is, I can be late for once in my life.  So please honey, just tell me what’s going on.”

She was met with silence.  Sighing quietly, she set her bag down on the floor before laying down on the bed with her son.  Wrapping her arms around him and burrowing her nose in between his neck and his shoulder, she asked, “Is this about Kai?”

Kyungsoo’s subsequent sobs were more than enough of an answer for her.  Drawing him in closer to her own body, she squeezed him tightly, breathing warm breaths into his skin.  “Oh, my baby boy, what happened?”

Rolling over to face her, Kyungsoo responded by clutching his mother as close to himself as he possibly could, tears soaking her blouse and fingers grasping her arms tightly enough to leave marks, not that she was particularly concerned at the moment.

Ten minutes later, Kyungsoo had shed enough tears that he felt he was probably able to speak.  “M-mom?” he choked out, hiccupping slightly.

“Yes my dearest boy?” she prompted, the back of his head and running her fingers through his silky hair.

“Why do boys so much?” He sniffled into her shoulder and reached up to push his bangs off of his now sweaty forehead.

His mother laughed gently as she pulled away slightly to stare her precious son in the face.  “There is no real answer to that.  For as long as humans have been alive it has been a fact of life that boys are dumb.  They also have cooties, but I guess because you’re a boy as well, you’re probably immune to them.”

Kyungsoo released a strangled laugh and snotted a little.  His mother helped him to sit up as she reached over for a tissue to give to him.

“Now that you’ve calmed down,” she began, taking his used tissue and replacing it with a new one, “Do you want to tell me what happened?  I assume something happened while you were at the party, since you’ve been at Jongdae’s ever since?”

Kyungsoo took a deep, shuddering breath before he began.  “I l-like Kai,” he stopped there to gauge his mother’s reaction.  As this was something she had already figured out for herself, sooner, in fact, than Kyungsoo himself had realized, she merely held her son’s gaze and allowed him to keep talking.

“I like Kai,” he began again, this time with more confidence, “But he used to bully me really badly.”  Kyungsoo looked down at his hands, watching himself pull apart the tissue clutched between the two of them.

Head remaining downward as he found it was easier to speak when he wasn’t looking at his mother, he continued the story.  “He would call me a ‘’ every time he would see me, but it never actually progressed into anything physical, so I typically just ignored it.

“Then we got stuck together working on this English project, and things started to get better.  At first it was just that he stopped being outwardly rude for the sake of the project, but then he started to open up to me.

“He would tell me things he said he had never told anybody else, and then, despite Jongdae’s warning, I realized that I liked him.

“But I decided that I needed to get over him, Jongdae told me to as well, and so I was going to make Saturday be the last time I allowed myself to be around him.

“Well, while we were there, this really good-looking guy was flirting with me, and then he asked me out on a date.  I agreed because I thought it would be a good idea for me to date someone else, thought it would help me move past it.

“And then Kai asked me if he could talk to me in private, so I followed him to the kitchen.  He told me that I shouldn’t date Kris, that we wouldn’t be a good match.  When I asked him why, he, he k-kissed me.  And I thought that that was it; he liked me back and we would skip out through a field of daisies and live happily ever after.  But right after I began to kiss him back, he pushed me away and yelled at me, calling me a ‘,’ and mom, this hurt me so much more than it did any of the other times when he used to bully me daily.”

When he finished his story, Kyungsoo began to sob once again, the retelling of it making the pain fresh once more.  His mom leaned forward on the bed, hugging her son yet again, this time drawing him up onto her lap like she used to do back when he was a little boy and had fallen off his bike and scraped a knee.

“Mom, why does it hurt so much?”

“It hurts because this time, this time you like him and it always hurts us most to hear mean things come from those people that are the most important to us.”

“Mom, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.  I can’t face him.  I can’t face anybody after that.  I feel so, so low.”

“Honey bunch, let me tell you a thing, okay?” Kyungsoo nodded to show that he was listening.  “If you go through life without getting hurt and without making mistakes, it means you’re doing something wrong.

“To live is to put yourself out there, and sometimes this means we get hurt in response, but you can’t let that stop you from living anyway.  And when obstacles like this are thrown in our way, the best thing we can do is look it head on and say, ‘yes, this ing , but I’m stronger than this, and I’m going to prove it.’”

Kyungsoo chuckled between sobs, “Mom, did you just swear?”

“Yes I did, but that’s not important right now.  What is important is that you don’t let this keep you from living your life.  Take today to cry it all out and pull yourself together, and then tomorrow, you’re going to go to school and do your best to live your life as normally as you can.

“If you show up, you’ll be taking back the power and proving to Kai that you’re the one in charge of your life, and no stupid boy is ever going to ruin that for you.

“It’s going to be a really hard thing for you to do, but you’re so, so strong, and I know that you, with the continuous support of your amazing friends, will be able to make it through this, and you’ll be a much better person for it.

“The key is not to dwell on your misfortunes and wallow in self-pity.  If you do that, you’re never going to make it anywhere in any aspect of your life.  Happiness is a choice that only you can make.  You are the only thing that can make you happy, and though it is a choice that has to be made when you wake up every single day, ultimately, it is still your decision to make.  It’s going to be hard right now because of what happened, but you need to be actively trying, or you’re never going to be able to get over this hurdle.”

Kyungsoo wiped his eyes with the back of his hand before responding.  “Mom, you’re really smart, you know that?”

“Thanks sweetie, but all credit for what I just said goes to your grandmother.  This is just what she used to tell me to help me get over every one of my heartbreaks.”

“Well then, tell grandma thanks for me,” Kyungsoo smiled weakly.

“I’ll make sure to do that.  Are you going to be okay if I leave now?”

Kyungsoo nodded his head in reassurance, and then gave his mother one last tight squeeze.  “I love you.”

“I love you too, my baby Soo.  You mean the world to me, and it just about breaks my heart to see you so upset.  But you’re stronger than me, and you’ll make it through this better than I was ever able to.”

“Thanks mom,” he finally released her from his hug.

Kissing his forehead and getting up off of the bed, Kyungsoo’s mother picked her purse up once more.  Heading out the door she said, “Cry all you want today, and then tomorrow, show the world that it’ll take a whole lot more than that to break you.”  And with that parting remark, she left for work.

Kyungsoo did just what his mother told him to.  He spent the whole day between crying as hard as he could, and sleeping fitfully in his bed.  He left his room throughout the course of the day, leaving only to use the bathroom and heat up some soup.  His parents respected his space, his mom only stopping in once to check on him when she got home from work.

By the time he went to bed later that night, Kyungsoo felt as if he had cried out all of his tears and was ready to at least try to go to school the next day.  With his mother’s reminder of happiness being a choice one had to make ringing through his head, Kyungsoo finally drifted off into sleep, prepared to make that choice the next day.