Frozen smile || Minsung

39.

⚠️ Tw (mention of Wonshit)
[cause I like the new name you gave him]

••••

"It goes way back when my parents were still together... we lived in a big family house. It was nothing out of the ordinary, just a basic family house, with a little garden at the back. My father worked a lot at that time, he always got home late, while my mom did everything in the house. I helped her out when I could when I was not at dance practice. She did the cooking and the laundry, she took care of the garden outside, the porch in front of the house. She bought me clothes, food and paid for the dance practices for me. It was like- I only had her as my family. When father was home, he was never in the mood to play or talk other than work, or accept calls from clients. Whenever he got home, there was some kind of tension.

Everything went downhill when Dad caught my mom texting with another man. I guess she'd had enough.. father never asked how we were or what we did. I never saw them hug or do something romantic... they were just living side by side. I knew mom was getting fed up with him when he started picking on me.. he would always criticise me no matter what I did, or correct me, trying to tell me how wrong I do everything. He never hit me or cursed at me, but Mom would always disagree with him and defend me. I didn't really understand it at that time.." - He could feel the tears welling up again, and the familiar ache fill his chest again.

"So.. after my dad saw the texts, he became furious. It was already late after they got into a fight. I could hear them in my room. Their fights were never so loud and so-- so full of hatred... I sneaked out so that I could see what was happening. I shouldn't have...
I saw my father slap my mother with full force, calling her a slut.. My mother stormed out of their room. She brushed past me, not even sparing me a glance.. and since then.. I haven't seen my mom" - he broke down, hiding his face in his hands. Jisung pulled him closer, swaying their bodies slowly, to calm down the older, while caressing his back to comfort the older.

"You are doing great, honey.. you are so strong" - he whispered in his ear.

"I waited for her, she sent me a text on the next day that she would pick me up. Well guess what, she never came for me.." - he let out a sad chuckle, before continuing -

"As you can guess I wasn't at my best, and my seatmate at that time, Chan was the first to notice. He was there for me from the start.. After a week, he told me that they would fly back to Australia for his grandparent's birthday. He told me that he would be away for a few weeks. I didn't have many friends, I was on good terms with everyone but you know.. that's not the same as real friends.

So after Chan left, I was pretty lonely, until Wonshik came over to my desk one day. He asked where Chan was, and if he could sit with me until he was away. I agreed, because why not, he was nice and funny. During that two weeks, we became close, we played almost every day, we went to the park and everywhere together. We also shared our secrets, including that my mother left. I told him everything, and he did too.

Chan had become my other best friend, but he didn't always have the time to hang out, so you know, we could only talk in school. That's why I was closer to Wonshik, we had secret sleepovers, where he or I would sneak out. His house is still near, so we didn't have a problem with that. Yeah, so- as I said, for a year everything was okay, and then one night, when he came over, I told him that.. that I think I might be gay. He was surprised at first, but then he reassured me that nothing would change and we would keep being best friends. He promised that he didn't care about that.. and it was like that for a week. He started acting strange, and a bit distant. I asked multiple times what was wrong, or if he has something against me being gay, but he said it was not that.

It hurt a lot at that time, because he was the only one I really trusted, and it felt like it was my fault that I was like that..

My dad was out of the question, and it was that time things started to worsen between us. For the first few weeks, he worked even longer hours, but then there was some kind of mass redundancy, and he was fired. He started looking for other jobs, but he was fired multiple times due to going to work under the influence of alcohol.. yeah.. you can guess what started after that..