[2] Red | Mingi ✓

four | the one with the yellow mug

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

PEOPLE LIKE COUSIN HWA, THEY don't find it in them to cheat twice, but it didn't deter the fear of having a recourse to those unfaithful habits. Hwa wouldn't dare consider the plausibility of falling back on his infidelity of old. So he knocks her up, sits right and anticipates his weighty decisions play out the way he expects. Last time Mint saw Sonny Choi, there was no baby bump. Tonight, it was all to be seen.

   The engaged couple were deeply established in forgiveness, it was nauseating to watch. Mint looked away...

   Because she was jealous.

   Sonny and Mint have had their own countable share of encounters, which fell right off their shoulders the moment they were over.

   At the moment, that godforsaken ring on Sonny's finger looked like it was right where it should be. Very easy to tell it was different from the last one, too. Mint bet Hwa was overtly conscious of how idiotic it would be giving her the same stone in the same size. This one was large enough to blind her eyes and cover his tracks, have everybody forgetting that massive slipup. So that when his beloved hung her hand toward the sun, no need to be crestfallen, and Sonny was left with more room to fantasize about fortuitous futures, to dwell on the virtuous man that was now, that had always been. Sonny was rubbing it in their faces. The same hand with the bejeweled finger found her stomach to caress tenderly through her form-fitting number. Another forget-my-sins gift from The Great Offender, Mint guessed, right there next to her.

   From here, it wasn't easy to tell how far along Sonny was. Mint, on her own end, didn't see the essence in walking up just to pop the question because they don't talk ... much—they don't talk at all. Mint was ashamed to think she hasn't been the most hospitable relative, riding out on the pretense of getting introduced as the family, where she squished in between one auntie and another auntie. Sonny had met more aunties than uncles in her new family because the Park women were always invested in getting up in the new bride's business, so that there's something new to discuss over Chinese tea. It used to be cousin Hayeon (although just Hayeon in Mint's book, they hadn't established any lasting closeness), Hwa's older sister. Everybody wanted to believe there was a problem when the woman waited two years to have a child. Sihyeon was born, became the favorite for the time being, her mother the favoured niece of the extended family.

   Sonny Choi might be good for two years, maybe less.

   Mint dreaded one-on-one encounters. It was why she lived on the other side of town. She was certain that Sonny's recollections of her circled around the times she moseyed past them from one room to another and Hwa divulged next to her face in a low conspiratorial tone: "That's my favorite cousin, Mint. Relationship issues. Guess who? Mingi. Can you believe it?"

   No one could believe it, it was a fricking wonderment. Humph.

   Mint imagined Sonny taking up an odd interest in her pathetic form traipsing the length and breadth of her and Seonghwa's modest townhouse, sometimes, angled against a wall to spectate, other times, taking longs trips to the bathroom when more extended family spotted Mint and she felt ganged up on. Mint's only reason for sparing a smile in such a case was stemmed from the apparent respect she had for Sonny. Doing something she would never do. No, not even for money.

   Therefore Mint thought, her heart must be glazed with gold, her common sense drizzled with stupidity.

   Sonny blushed at something Hwa said. Being the sly fox that he was, Cousin pretended to speak closely to her ear because the visitors were just so damn loud it was impossibly hard to get a message across. But skirted by the mellow buzz of said visitors, Mint saw them from her spot by the archway and she knew what he was up to in a heartbeat. Hwa had his teeth sunk teasingly in the shell of Sonny's ear in the lewd way people like them did and enjoyed. Then Mint decided she was not ready to know her soon-to-be in-law. Maybe once all was said and done, the wedding bells come and gone and Mint's strange irritation towards anything pointing to a happy couple diminished. She had no joy, heartless for rejecting the idea of happiness prevailing in her midst of gloom. After the honeymoon, after passing out child number one, since Mint's hunch conveyed to her that the first fruit was bound to take to Hwa and go ahead to remind every Doubting Thomas that the child was indeed a Park, and her auntie—Hwa's mother—was present to ascertain the fact: "Just look at it, like Seonghwa when he was its age."—case closed!