The Mafia's Son|Park Sunghoon|

27

{Content Warning!: Child Abuse}

"UNO!"

Angelica screamed before Jake could as she threw her card on the pile. Jake rolled his eyes as Angelica happily danced in her stool.

"You haven't won yet." Jake said  as he placed his card on the pile.

"Well, I just did." She said with a smile as she placed her last card on the pile, standing up from her stool and throwing her hands in the air.

"Give it up for the queen of UNO, who just won her fifth game against Jake Sim! It's either he sucks or... he just sucks." She teases in an announcer voice as she bows and waves to the fake audience.

"You're so funny." He sarcastically said as he picked up the cards that were a mess on the counter.

Angelica nodded in agreement to his sarcastic statement and sat back down on her stool, helping him pick up the cards.

They had been playing UNO in the convenience store for the past forty minutes as it was a very slow day. Jake had come to purchase the UNO cards for God knows what reason and they ended up getting another stool from the break room and playing.

"So how was the sleepover?" Jake asked, taking a sip from his drink and laying his chin on his hand.

"It was fun. Trying to get up for school the next day though, definitely wasn't." Angelica said as she let out a giggle.

"What did you guys do all night?"

"Nothing much we just did facials and quote unquote 'relaxation' which wasn't very relaxing. And we mainly just talked." She said as she shrugged.

"What did you talk about? Me?" He said as he smirked and raised his eyebrows in a teasing manner.

"No. Not everything is about you Oz. We were talking about Park Sunghoon." She said as she stared at him, cautiously testing the waters, and immediately seeing a reaction.

Jake's gaze simmered down and his smirk dropped a little.

"Really?" He asked almost nervously as he took another sip from his drink.

"Yeah. They finally told me everything." Angelica answered, placing emphasis on the last word.

"What did they tell you about?"

"Just stuff. Like how he beat up Trenton, and that he was friends with you."

Jake slowly nodded and looked down at the counter, messing with the edge of a card.

"He was cool. When we were friends." He surprisingly said as he continued to mess with the card, lifting the edge and letting it fall back on the counter.

"You don't have to talk to me about it if you don't want to." Angelica reassured as she played with her hands.

"No. It's fine. I was planning to tell you anyways." He let out a small smile as he looked up at her for a split second.

"We were really great friends. We hung out every day. He would come over to my house and we would play video games and just talk. One day, I went to his house instead. Sunghoon said that his dad was probably not home at the time, and that would be better. I found that weird, but I didn't think too much about it."

Angelica nodded to show that she was listening, noticing Jake fidgeting.

"Then when we went to his kitchen, his dad was sitting there. Sunghoon was so scared that he even grabbed onto my wrist, really tight. You could see it in his face how terrified he was, and that's when I knew that his father being home was the worst thing that could happen at the moment." Jake continued as he stared at the counter, his eyebrows were slightly furrowed.

"The first thing his father did was ask who I was. Sunghoon answered that I was a friend from school. Next thing I knew, his father punched Sunghoon. After the first punch, his father just didn't stop."

Angelica's eyes went wide, and she felt her eyes stinging.

"I didn't know what to do, so I just ran. He never talked to me again after that. And I never did either. So it just stayed like that." Jake said as he was now tightly holding the card in his hand and Angelica was trying hard not to let her tears fall, thinking of both of them in that situation.

"I feel like I could've done something and I did try telling my parents, but it never went anywhere. Sometimes I blame myself for not trying harder."

Angelica's tears finally fell. Imagining Sunghoon going through something like that, and Jake having to witness it, not being able to do anything about it. It made her angry. Who in their right mind would hurt their child so badly for bringing a friend home from school?

She tried to hold in her sniffles until she finally let one out and Jake looked up at her, almost in shock at her tears, but at the same time he understood why this hurt her so bad.

"You were a child. There's no way a child would know what to do in a situation like that. It definitely isn't your fault. It's his shitbag of a father." She angrily said as she wiped away her tears.

She was starting to understand some parts of why he didn't want to be around her. But at the same time, it still didn't complete the story.

But why would he say he's dangerous?

He would not beat me up. He's too fluffy and nice to do that. Plus, if he did, I would probably stab him or something. The danger couldn't be from him, but from something around him.

His father has to be involved in this.

Or maybe he just doesn't like you? Oh shut up, there's no way that he would just ditch me after holding my hand. I'd expect he'd want something more extreme than that to ditch me later. Like in teen flicks and Taylor Swift songs. That's definitely out of the question.

His father definitely has an involvement in this.

"Did you ever tell the others?" Angelica asked him and he shook his head.

"No. I'm only telling you because I know you talk to him."

Angelica's eyes went wide and Jake just gave her a small smirk, almost teasing her.

"You're so obvious. I knew even before I saw you talk to him in the hallway. I won't tell anyone, I promise. Sunghoon was my friend too, after all." He said with a reassuring smile.

"You seriously are the best." Angelica said with a sigh of relief and Jake just chuckled, shrugging his shoulders in a cute way.

"I know."

They stayed silent for a few minutes as Angelica was taking it all in.

"What side of Trenton's story did they tell you?"

"The one where he approached him to be friends."

Jake let out a fake laugh.

"They still don't know what actually happened. As you would've probably expected, Sunghoon did not start the fight. I was sitting near there and I heard everything. After Sunghoon ignored him, he started calling him names and saying shit about him, comparing him to his father. That's probably why Sunghoon got angry."

Angelica wasn't surprised.  Trenton seriously was a jerk from the beginning.

"But why do you sit with him?"

"My friend is Yu Ahn. Not Trenton. Have you ever seen me have a full conversation with him?"

Now that she thought about it, Jake and Trenton never really interacted with each other besides sitting on the same table. They barely talked and if they did, it was because of Yu Ahn.

Angelica hummed as a response and they were quiet for a few minutes. Until Angelica straightened her posture making Jake look at him.

"Do you want to go somewhere after my shift?"