My Other Half | Minsung

The letter

Jisung walked down the path swinging his school bag along. He was finally out of school and heading home to his relief. Home was not the best but anything beats school sat next to Kim in English. It was only an hour lesson but Kim made it miserable for him. He stole his pen, wrote on his book and wouldn't stop talking and when they got caught blamed him for it, getting Jisung another telling off by a teacher.

The day had been the worst. All he wanted now was to help his mum and then have a nice long shower and go straight to bed.
"God at least the day couldn't get any worse" Jisung reached the end of his house.

He went to open the door but it was locked. He took out his keys and unlocked the door then went inside. Confused he looked around the house.
"Mum. MUM you in?" Jisung yelled around the house but got no answer. That was weird. His mum was always home before him. He looked at the coat hook to see her coat wasn't there, all her shoes were gone and her keys were not in the bowl.
He walked into the kitchen to see two pieces of paper on the table. One face down with writing on and another folder piece of paper on the top.
He picked it up and open it to a large chunk of writing in his mothers handwriting.

Jisung,
            Your probably wondering why I'm not home today and I don't know if you have noticed yet but most of my belongings are gone. You see I've made a mistake, a deadly one and I know that I cannot stay any longer. I'm sorry I couldn't take you with me but if I did they would never stop coming after me. From now on you will be on your own and I won't have any contact with you from this point forward. All assets have been transferred to you and what is about to happen is all my fault. I wish you good luck on what about to happen and again I'm sorry. I hope one day you will forgive me.
                                    Mum

Jisung held the paper up. He read it again and again and again. The words just didn't go into his brain. He opened his mouth but no words came out. Placing the letter back onto the table some of the words began to smudge as tears ran down his cheeks and onto the paper.
"Mum....Why....what...what did you do....how could....how could you" Jisung was unable to form a sentence as the information hit him like a truck.

He didn't understand. He knew his family was in debt and still had the mortgage to pay off but they had always been able to manage it before. He didn't get why his mum suddenly needed to run away and leave him here.
After being able to calm himself down Jisung picked up the other piece of paper. He turned it around to the writing and instantly saw what his mum had left to him.
On the paper had all the bills which were needed to pay and what money had been spend already. He could see it was his mums bank account statement with all her transactions. He now knew why the debt kept getting worse and worse.
His mum had been gambling. Twice no three times a week at least wasting so much money. Jisung added up that if his mum hadn't gambled they would have enough for the mortgage with some even left over but it looked like this had been going on for months. Yet his mum only ran away now.

He skimmed to the bottom of the statement and his face dropped even worse than it already was. He now saw saw why his mum had gone on the run. She had gambled such a large amount of money Jisung wouldn't be able to pay it back for a year at least even if he had a full paying job.
He tried to see which casino she had gambled in like the others but it didn't say a company. It was odd all Jisung saw was a bunch of random letters and marks.
"Str—*ay-**ki—*-ds" Jisung read it out letter by letter but could not understand it for the life of him.

From the looks of it his mum had borrowed money around 2 weeks ago and had paid none of it back. Jisung knew most places gave you a month to pay it back so he would have to try and earn money and ask for an extended time to pay it off. He will have to wait until the company messages about it and ask. He saw at the bottom of the paper his mum had signed all messages to be sent to him.

He put down that piece of paper and left everything where it was. He left his school stuff at the bottom of the stairs and went to go have a shower.
He stepped inside and had it on the hottest level it could go to try and forget what just happened but no matter what he did he couldn't. He laid his arm on the wall and put his head under the shower head allowing the water to drown out all sounds.

After a while he turned off the shower but didn't step out. He just stood there frozen like a statue until he couldn't bear it anymore. He burst into tears and laid his back into the wall. He cried for so long that soon his legs could not keep him held up. He fell to the floor of the shower and curled his legs up into his body and held himself there. He continued to cry there until his eyes stung and had gone red.

Eventually he got out of the shower almost completely dry from being in there so long on put on his pyjamas. He collapsed into the bed and pulled up the covers.
He blacked out almost instantly drifting away from reality.