ACT 3 – SCENE 4
THEY DISCOVER
SEOJUNG IS unable to remove herself from the comfy queen size bed, her fingers clutching the warm duvet and pulling it further up to her chin. Wishes she could stay like this cocooned in a thick blanket all day with Taehyung who is currently sitting cross-legged beside her sleeping body. He's busy browsing through the room service menu despite Seojung having told him that room service food is pricey and that they brought instant ramen and snacks for a reason. The room itself is nothing much, like any other typical hotel room in Seoul enough to house a queen size bed, a tv, a dresser, and a small bathroom. The couple had settled for the cheapest deal they could get because let's face it, they were both college students on a tight budget. Taehyung had insisted on paying the room himself but Seojung only laughed as she gave him her share of pay.
The girl rolls over to the side and places her head on his lap, forcing him to put down the menu as she settled on his thigh. One of his hands combs through her hair while the other is safely tucked in her own. She finds his artist's hands pretty, could never bring herself to resist playing with his slender fingers and interlocking them with hers. Whenever she looks at them, a refreshing feeling of calm always manages to settle. Taehyung stares down at her with a fondness she knows she mirrors evident in the way his eyes bore into hers.
It only hit her now, what the both of them are doing. The absence of a thorough plan makes her nervous as if the fact that she might be meeting her birth mother wasn't already making her anxious. Seojung feels a last minute urge to bolt. To leave and go back home, avoid the meeting she has been looking forward to for months. Everything seemed fine then because she was too caught up in the search to worry about the negative side of things. But at least Taehyung's here to distract her.
"We should probably start looking for your mom," he suggests but makes no attempt at moving. His touch is soft and gentle like it always is, the ghost of his fingertips enough to lull her into a peaceful sleep.
"It's still noon. We have a lot of time."
"Wouldn't it be better to get everything over with?" Seojung leaves his question unanswered, but that alone is enough for Taehyung to take the hint. "You're stalling."
"I'm not."
"You are," Taehyung insists, "you wouldn't be so hesitant if you weren't."
"Can you really blame me, though?" Seojung sits up. "I'm going to meet the woman who gave birth to me but gave me up for the first time in my life. What if she hates me? What if she doesn't want to talk to me? Or have anything to do with me? We don't even know for sure if she's still here."
Realizes that everything they had gotten was solely based on luck. Seojung doesn't know how much longer that luck is going to last.
"Don't be nervous. She's your mom. She's going to love you. Who wouldn't love you?" She smiles at Taehyung's sweet words. Can't help but remember that it's almost exactly like what Jeongguk said to her a few days ago.
Taehyung has such a knack for saying the right things at the right time and Seojung needs to keep reminding herself that this boy is known to be smooth and sly, and that she can't help but fall for him as many times as he wills her too. But how can she not? Especially since he seems so sincere when he places his hands on either side of her face and pulls her in for a kiss. Caresses the skin of her cheeks with his thumb as his lips nibble softly on hers. She is acting without consent when she pulls him by the collar, bringing him closer as if he wasn't already close enough. He brings out the greedy side of her that she doesn't like. Nothing ever feels enough when it comes to Taehyung.
"Can I at least nap for another hour?"
He chuckles, pushing a strand of her behind her ears with his index finger. "One hour. Then we'll go, okay?"
Seojung falls back to the bed, pulling Taehyung with her this time and welcomes the warmth of his body as he climbs under the covers. Content fills the girl as his arm finds its way around the waist. She allows herself to forget her worries for a while, because Taehyung's here with her and everything feels like it's going to be alright.
–
Getting someone to tell her if a woman who goes by Choi Jiwon works here wasn't easy, and it was even harder to convince the receptionist that they're nothing but harmless college students hoping to find one person and get everything over with. She has Taehyung's persuasive charms to thank because if it weren't for him, they wouldn't be standing here now, in front of the Chinese restaurant at the resort where her mother is supposed to be working at.
"Are we really going to stand out here and wait until she comes out?" Seojung tugs on Taehyung's sleeves. They can see how packed the place is despite being outside. Seojung has been eyeing every waiter she could spot, analyzing every face as best as she can in hopes that something one in particular triggers her guts. She doesn't even know exactly what the woman looks like, regrets not asking Nurse Hyejeong for a picture.
"You're the one who didn't want to go in."
"And order what? Water?" It was clear from the fancy looking decor that the place was pricey, at least for them.
"We don't actually have to order anything. We're just going to ask."
"Wouldn't that be disrespectful?"
"You're stalling again."
Taehyung doesn't give her time to defend herself. He grabs her hand, pulls her towards the restaurant much to her dismay and ignores her weak protests. Ignores her when she admits that she's nervous and terrified by calling for a waiter and asking to be seated. Everything would be for nothing if she were to back out now. She'd feel terrible knowing that Taehyung went through the trouble of coming here with her, wasting his money (and his time) on a room for the night only to come back home empty-handed. Feels the sudden need to thank him not just for tagging along, but for being by her side and staying.
"Good afternoon," a woman with raven hair pulled back in a neat ponytail greets the couple with a warm smile. All thoughts of Taehyung has been put aside. "Table for two?"
It couldn't be, Seojung thinks. There's no way that things can fall into place this fast when she had struggled for more than a year trying to get anything that could lead her to her mother. As if that one stressful summer didn't matter, that this moment was destined to happen no matter what. All Seojung has noticed is how easy everything is recently and where this luck came from was beyond her.
Or maybe her mind is merely playing tricks. Fooling herself into thinking that this woman right her is her birth mother because that's how desperate she is for things to just be done. Seojung doesn't want to believe it. How reliable can her guts be anyway? Familiar eyes and nose that's so alike to her own mean nothing. She doesn't want to believe it, not even when a single glance at the name tag attached to the woman's breast pocket gives her all the confirmation she needs.
"Are you, by any chance, Choi Jiwon?" she asks hesitantly despite the letters engraved on her name tag, the woman's eyes perking up at the question.
"I was. It's Lee Jiwon now. Do I know you?"
"No, you don't. I think we need to have a long talk."
—
Choi Jiwon looks younger than Seojung expected—or should she say, Lee Jiwon.
After several minutes of sitting down at one of the tables that's more secluded from everyone else, Jiwon's hardened gaze had softened upon hearing not even half of Seojung's explanation. Tells her about the birth certificate, about finding her name and spending one summer trying to get somewhere with that. Underneath the table the girl played with her fingers, palms starting to sweat from her nerves and the possibility of Jiwon thinking that this is all troll even after everything she had told her.
"So you're really my..."
"Daughter," Seojung finishes for her. Frankly, she had always imagined their reunion to be intense, whether it be full of tears of happiness or tears of sadness and regret. This feels too... formal, like they're doing an interrogation.
Jiwon—her mother—sighs and buries her face in her hands. "I'm trying really hard to find a reason to not believe you but everything makes so much sense and..."
Seojung smiles awkwardly. It's really unfortunate that she's rendered speechless the time she actually meets her mother. She has so many things to say, so many stories to tell her, but she can't bring herself to open her mouth. Something about the atmosphere being not what she had hoped for.
"I'm sorry—"
"Don't," Seojung interrupts, "I'm not here for an apology. I'm here to see you."
"You look like you grew up well," her mother coos. There it is, the shred of emotion Seojung had been waiting for. Even if it's just a sliver of a smile, Seojung deems it enough.
"She did," Taehyung says. Jiwon looks at him as if she's seeing him for the first time.
"And I take it that you're her boyfriend?"
From the corner of her eye, Seojung can catch Taehyung shifting in his seat.
"Of sorts," he says, and the answer only disappoints her. Reminds herself that she needs to talk to him soon. But one thing at a time.
This woman is her mother but at the same time not. Seojung is conflicted between letting herself be happy that she's finally here or wallow in sadness over the fact that Jiwon didn't see her grow up. She swallows it all down, like she always does, because she can't seem to grasp a sense of appropriateness in the moment to weep and express just how much she went through.
"Sorry. It's been a long day and I really don't know what to say." That makes that two of them. "Can you... tell me how your life was like?"
Seojung obliges. She tries to paint what everything has been like so far with her words, but an unexpected struggle keeps her from going into full detail, from telling her mother the important parts. The parts that actually meant something. Like the time she won first place in a writing competition during first grade. Or the time she was elected president of her school's newspaper. Getting her first boyfriend, finally graduating high school, going on trips with her brother and her parents every now and then. The story she ends up telling is monotone and absent of the things she actually wants her mother to know.
Jiwon tells her story, too. She tells Seojung that things haven't always been easy. She went back to university a year after she had Seojung but dropped out after two semesters, had been lost and unsure of what she wanted to be or where to go, not enough passion to make her stick around any longer. Things had been rough, yes, but Jiwon had come to learn how to live it. spent most of her years working multiple small-paying jobs to get by until she met her current husband, an amateur screen-writer she stumbled upon during her shift at a cafe.
The history Jiwon had with relationships made her cautious, but Lee Hyunbin had been too charming to resist, so Jiwon caved. Seojung can tell that her mother really loves the man a lot just by seeing the way her face lights up as she talks about him.
If there's one thing that Seojung and her mother had in common is that they always seem to fall for the artistic ones.
"And what about... my dad? Do you keep in touch with him?" She finally asks the dreaded question of the night. Being too preoccupied with finding her mother didn't mean that she didn't think about her father once in a while.
"He's dead to me," Jiwon responds almost immediately. "I'm sorry, Seojung, I really don't know where he is, and I'd like to keep it that way forever. I don't want to tell you what to do but I think you should too. He's... he's nothing but a nuisance."
So that's that. Seojung keeps herself from asking for a name just to avoid the future curiosity that'll plague her mind if she finds out. She doesn't want to devote her time to tracking down one person anymore.
"Did you and Hyunbin have kids?"
For the first time that night, Seojung sees Jiwon smile. The woman pulls out her phone and taps on the screen a couple of times before shoving the device across the table for her and Taehyung to see. It's a picture of toddler sleeping soundly with a teddy bear clutched to her chest. She has a pale complexion that's alike to Jiwon's, little curls of jet black hair sitting on top of her head. Beside her, Taehyung musses about how cute she is. He's always had a soft spot for children.
"Her name's Seola. She's three." Jiwon shows them more pictures of her daughter. One of them is a family picture with Jiwon carrying Seola in her arms, and a man who Seojung assumes must be Hyunbin looking down at his daughter endearingly. "Maybe you could meet her someday."
"Why not soon?"
"Look, I don't know how else to put this," Jiwon starts with a tone Seojung knows all too well. It's the same one her mother––adoptive mother––uses on her whenever she needs to break some bad news. "You're an amazing girl, Seojung, and I'm so, so sad and sorry that I wasn't there for you as you grew up. I gave you up because I knew I wouldn't be able to provide for you, and looking at you know only proved that even more. It's just that... I just got my life back on track recently, and it might not seem like it but this is really throwing me off and I don't know if I–... I don't know if I'm ready to make you a part of my life yet."
Jiwon's words still leave a scar of disappointment despite not being all that surprised by where things are going. It just sucks that she came all the way out here only to move on from the things she had been looking forward to. Her excitement of being an older sister dies down, replaced by the need to accept the fact that her luck can only go a long way. A part of her understands where the woman is coming from. She did kind of show up unannounced, sprang up to Jiwon out of nowhere who must be feeling as overwhelmed as Seojung is.
"I need some time," the woman says it like an apology.
"Okay."
Seojung feels to drained to bother trying to mask her disappointment, and whether or not the woman notices, she chooses to not say anything. "When do you leave?"
"Tomorrow morning."
"I have to go back to work, but I'll have a shift at eleven here tomorrow. Drop by before you go, okay? We'll talk some more."
Jiwon is the first to stand up, excusing herself to tend to customers, leaving Seojung dumbfounded on her seat. She almost forgot Taehyung has been next to her this whole time until the boy intertwines his fingers with her own. Everything remains unspoken for Seojung is too upset to tell him that she is, in fact, really upset. A single squeeze of comfort tells her that he understands. He lets her sit there for a little while before he drags her away from the forsaken place, muttering about wanting to look around.
Seojung keeps reminding herself that things could've gone way worse. It makes her feel better.
—
guess what hunties im not dead woooooooooo so sorry this took ages but it's finally here! i've been so busy with school and writer's block kind of got the best of me you know how much i hate making you guys wait for updates im sorry i'll try to get back on track :( my apologies for this barely edited, all over the place chapter. yall will definitely like the next one tho ;)
[q] what are your thoughts on seojung's mother? (and please do tell me what you thought of the chapter too! i'd love to hear them)
happy hoseok day bubs !
love,
mara