IQ148 // namjoon ✔️

__APRIL__

"Well, she..." JungMi pauses to stare down at her can cradled in her lap, "She's plenty healthy and plenty proud."

"Still tense with her?"

"Is it obvious?"

"You still speak formally with her instead of how a daughter should be speaking with a mother." Ms. Min observes as she opens the box of chicken and pokes at a piece with her fork.

JungMi picks up her own fork and piles some chicken onto her plate as she confides in Ms.Min, "Sometimes it does feel like my relationship with her is a business arrangement..."

JungMi is directly related to and was raised by her mother, but she admits that she feels more comfortable with Ms.Min. Although they have a working relationship, JungMi feels more familial with Ms.Min than her own blood relative. Perhaps it's because Ms.Min showed interest in JungMi's work when her own mother never did. Although years of neglect cannot be erased, they may come to let their guard down in the following years.

"...But our relationship now is the best it's ever been. So I can't really complain," JungMi remembers back when she heard the unexpected voicemail from her mother the day after losing her job, "She just wanted what was best for me... I know she cares for me, but I never actually felt it until now so it feels a bit foreign."

JungMi takes a healthy bite of the fried chicken but chews slowly as her mind wanders off to thoughts about her family; some food for thought as she would put it.

After she tried to jump off of Mapo Bridge, it seems as though her second chance at life started by giving her brother and parents a second chance at mending their relationship with her.

She remembers fondly how her brother, JungWoo, kept true to his promise and had a serious talk with her when he got back from home. It was refreshing to have a proper conversation with her older brother where she could tell him something and not receive a deadpan insult. It was the most they've ever bonded as siblings: she told him about being fired from her job, he told her about his job at the hospital, she told him about her book and getting published, and he told her that he was proud to have her as a sister.
They shared many laughs and shed a few tears, shared their feelings and reminisced on their childhood:

"I think it was around your second year?" JungWoo pondered out loud as he poured another shot of soju for JungMi, "Second year of high school... That was when you wanted to become an author..."

JungMi was star struck that JungWoo had even remembered that.

"You remember that?" JungMi asked as she took the bottle away from JungWoo and poured soju into his glass in return.

"How could I forget—" JungWoo downed his shot glass of soju, "—when your cries could be heard throughout the apartment?"

JungMi swallowed the buildup of saliva before following suit and darting her drink to the back of her throat. She wasn't sure why her brother brought back such a sour memory: she cried in her room all night after being scolded by her parents for wanting to pursue a creative career.

"It was a cheap apartment, so the walls were really thin, and my room was right next to yours," JungWoo recalled as if he could still hear her cries crystal clear still ringing in his ears. JungMi refilled his glass for him and he gripped the glass, but all he could do was stare at the surface of the transparent alcohol, "I couldn't bring myself to comfort you. I wasn't sure how to comfort you or how to act as an older brother."

When the words he wanted to say got stuck in his throat, JungWoo would down another shot of soju to drunkenly loosen up his usually still tongue. He wasn't used to sharing such confidential feelings with his sister, which was one of the reasons they never got along; she was open like a book and he was locked up like a chest.