CHAPTER 23- Pub. August 1, 2019
“I’d like to see Aecha soon, anyways,” I said, peeking from behind Namjoon’s shoulder.
“Okay, Sujin, we can do that. I think it’d be good for all of us, ” Sejin agreed.
I sniffed and rubbed my eyes, sitting up straighter. “Are you sure he’s not, like, waiting outside the front door? Sejin, I saw him walking our way. I think he recognized me. After all, the last time he saw either of us was when you were taking me to my mom. He might think you kept me all these years.”
“Let me go take a sweep around the house, since you’re so worried, Sujin,” Yoongi volunteered, standing up.
“I don’t want to see him ever again.”
“But he’s your father,” Jimin said.
“Oh, yeah, sure, someone who kicks me until I pass out and tells me shut up if I even breath is supposed to be a called father, huh?” I asked, tears resurfacing.
“Sujinie,” Taehyung said soothingly as he came and sat on the couch next to me. He grabbed my small hands and held them inside of his as he looked me in the eyes. “Why didn’t you tell us about this earlier? I thought we established that you can tell us anything.”
“Because, Tae, as I told you earlier, I don’t remember much of anything before I was brought to the orphanage. I only remembered everything once Sejin brought the subject back up, especially since we were sitting in the same cafe.”
Taehyung nodded, “But you said you had been getting memories earlier as well. Why didn’t you say about those either?”
I gulped, “I told Jimin.”
Everyone’s eyes averted to Jimin, who pressed his lips into a thin line. Taehyung looked back at me.
“Ah, I’m hurt!” He slapped his palm onto his chest dramatically. I tried to smile at his attempt to lighten the mood.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t really know what was happening. I was sure I was going crazy or something. But I’m sure it was my father I kept remembering, and my mom, but of course there’s no proof it was actually her that I remembered…”
“Actually, there is,” Sejin said, pulling out his phone before handing it to me. On the screen, there was a beautiful picture of my mother in a field of roses. I smiled, seeing her beautiful face full of joy. The only things I could remember, were of her sad, sullen, and weighed down by her relationship with my dad. Seeing her smile gave me hope that maybe she could have enjoyed life at moments.
“What was her name?” I asked Sejin, passing the phone back to him.
“Chojin,” Sejin said. “It means beautiful. It fit her just right.”
“And my dad?”
“Seunghee.”
I nodded. We fell silent, and no one seemed to know what to say.
“Oppa,” I said, looking up at Namjoon. “I don’t want to go anywhere unless we know where he is. What if-if he takes me back,” I asked, tears coming back.
“We won’t let that happen,” Namjoon assured, hugging me. As if to answer my question, Yoongi entered the room.
“I mean, it’s been an hour since you saw him, so as expected, I didn’t see anything, except an interesting cap.” Yoongi held up the black baseball cap with the red logo while pinching his nose. “Smells like alcohol.”
“Where was it left?” I asked, avoiding looking at the hat.
“On the doorstep, why?”
“That’s not good, that’s really not good,” I mumbled, lifting my gaze towards the door.
“And why is that not good Sujin?” Namjoon questioned seeing as he was the only one who had heard me.
“Because, that’s a sign. A sign that you guys have something that my father wants. Me.”
“What?! How is a hat a ‘sign’, and how do you know that?” Jin yelled, snatching the hat from Yoongi’s hands.
I was about to respond, but suddenly, the memory played through my head so I could see it clearly myself.
Appa seemed nervous. He kept going to work, which was already unusual, but he went early and stayed late.
“Appa, when are you going to be home?” I asked, tugging on my sleeve to make it cover my cold hands.
“Whenever I get there brat. Where’s your Eomma?” he said angered by my call.
“She said that there was an important appointment she had to get to at her doctor’s. Eomma left and said to call you if you weren’t here in 20 minutes.”
“Ugh, fine brat, I should be home in around 5 minutes. Go wait outside if you really want to see me that badly.”
“Okay! Bye Appa, see you in a few minutes!” I said, heading out the front door after placing the phone down. Outside there was a baseball cap on the door mat. I had picked it up, waiting for Appa to come. Sure enough, after a few minutes he pulled into the driveway.
“Appa!” I squealed while running over to him, hugging his legs.
“Get off me you brat- oh, what do you have there?” he questioned, pointing to the hat.
“I found this hat on the door mat, you’re really silly Appa, leaving your hat outside.” I smiled handing him the hat. Appa’s eyes went wide, he frantically looked around the street and found we were alone.
“No, no, no.” Appa muttered, moving to go inside the house. “Why do they want the money so soon? I should still have three months… Then they go and leave the sign saying ‘You have something we want, you’ve got a month before we come and take it forcefully!’ Stupid Mafia!” he mocked, sitting on the couch with a sigh.
“What do you mean Appa?”
“I mean that I might not be able to pay my debts! Get out of my sight, you’re no use to me,” he sneered. I obeyed, heading up to my room to finally sleep.
I was slowly getting used to the flashbacks, so I decided not to mention that I just had one, just tell the members what I remembered. When I was done explaining, the members stared at me in shock.
“I told you, he wants me back. He followed us home.”
“Can’t we file a police report about that?” Jimin asked. “It’s a type of threat, I think.”
“No,” Sejin shook his head. “They won’t believe it just because we found a hat on our door. There’s not enough evidence to convict someone of a crime. And either way, if we told them it was a sign of a Mafia member they wouldn’t believe it either. Considering we aren’t even in the Mafia, technically we shouldn’t even know anything about it.”
“What?” I cried.
“It’s alright. We will figure this out together. We won’t let anything happen-”
“But he wants her back!” Hoseok shouted, clearly scared as well. “This guy, is like a maniac. Sejin, tell us what we should do.”
“I’m not so sure myself. I could talk to the company-”
“No,” I interrupted. “You shouldn’t be going through all this for me. You only adopted me.”
“But you’re my niece,” Sejin said. “For crying out loud, I’m involved now, so I’m not going to let anything happen either.”
Namjoon put his hands up, “Can we just stop? I don’t like arguing and I have a feeling Sejin is right, we probably can’t do anything. If we just stay home, or in groups when we leave we’ll be fine.”
“I can go talk to the company. I think that’s the best thing to do now,” Sejin said, standing up. “Sujin,” he started, and I ran to him to give him a hug. I had always been comfortable around him, but now that we had more of our history sorted out, I felt like I knew him better than anyone.
“Thank you, Sejin.”
“Of course. I’ll call you all later and text you for updates. Be careful, and stay safe. I’ll figure things out, you stay put for now.”
“Thanks, manager,” Namjoon said, coming up to give Sejin a handshake before Sejin exited the house.
“I don’t feel safe knowing.. he is around,” I said.
“Just stay home. We’ll make sure our security is maxed for the next while and we’ll let the company figure things out. I bet they could talk to some higher-ups if it got to that,” Jimin assured. “For now, I’m assuming you won’t be going back to school, sooo, let’s just enjoy the time we have together!”
“How’s playing some games sound, Sujin?” Taehyung asked, mimicking running to the other room.
I laughed walking towards Taehyung, “Sounds fantastic.”
Then, I remembered something. Something that had been missing through our whole conversation.
“First, let me go, uhm, message Aecha,” I said, heading up the stairs to my room. Before I entered my bedroom door, I stopped, and peeked around to see if anyone else was in the hall. Then, I crept down, across the hall and to Jungkook’s door. I turned the knob to find that it was locked, so I decided to knock.
“Hyung?” a voice asked from inside.
“No, it’s me, Sujin. Can I come in?”
There was silence, and then some shuffling. The door opened, and out peeked Jungkook’s face. He glared as he spoke, “What do you want, Sujin?”
“Just… to talk?”
“I don’t know what you’d want to talk about.”
I looked down at the floor.
“I’m sorry?” I said, even though I didn’t completely mean it. I wasn’t sure why I was apologizing when Jungkook started the battle of hurtful words when he was talking with Jimin, but I decided it might be my ticket into his room so we could talk further.
“What are you sorry for?” he sneered. He seemed like he knew he should be the one apologizing, but he didn’t want to admit it with his tone.
“Well you don’t sound like you want to apologize so I thought I’d actually be nice to you.”
He rolled his eyes, “Come in.” He opened the door for me and I entered. He went and sat on his bed, leaving me standing in front of him.
Jungkook wandered the room with his eyes, avoiding my gaze, and for a few moments, nothing was said, as neither of us knew what to say.
“So… do you want a sincere apology?” I asked. Jungkook looked at me.
“No.”
“Okay…” I sighed. “You just missed a lot.”
“Hmp,” he shrugged.
“I mean, if you really wanted to know what happened today, you would have been there when Sejin and I came to talk with the members.”
“So what really did happen, Sujin?” he asked, as if he were daring me to tell him.
“I don’t think you deserve to know. I don’t think you really care.”
He stared at me, his glare as hard as earlier.
“Do you know what I’ve lived with for the last thirteen years-”
“Oh, don’t play that game!” he yelled.
“Why not? You should try to learn your facts before you make assumptions!”
“What assumptions?”
“And I quote, ‘Do you think I was all about the idea of getting a new sister? Another person to take care of, another person to worry us? Another person to deal with.’ I mean come on, Jungkook, I might have made a few problems but I’m taking the blame for them! Do you know who I am? Do you know my history?”
“Yes, I know your history well enough. You’re a sad little girl whose parents didn’t want her so they threw her in an orphanage. Now you’re here trying to leech off of us because we have the family you’ve always wanted but weren’t good enough to have,” Jungkook seethed, glaring at me. I scoffed, he got nothing right.
“You don’t deserve to hear it from me, when you're ready to care I can tell you. When you care, then you can come and ask me. Or you can take the easy way out and ask someone else because you hate me and you know it. I tried to apologise but you make it hard because you don’t want to forgive me.”
“You really want to make a problem for yourself, don’t you, Sujin?”
I shrugged, “It’s not me.”
“You should respect someone five years older than you.”
“I’m only giving back the respect I’m being given.”
Jungkook looked at me, and I stared back.
“Look,” he said. “Arguing isn’t going to help either of us. We don’t get along well, but that’s okay. You’ve caused enough for us already, we don’t need another thing for the others to be worrying about.
“Yeah, I agree, that’s why I came here. I thought we could sort things out.”
“But it’s not working, here, is it?”
“No…”
“Listen, I think we just need some space for a bit.”
“Yeah, I can tell. You obviously don’t want me around.”
“Just as I told Jimin, it’s not you, I mean, not completely.”
“Oh, well, thanks for the compliment,” I said sarcastically.
He rolled his eyes, “I just don’t think we needed another person to take care of.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Oh, yeah, right!”
I bit my tongue, shifting my weight to the other foot and crossing my arms.
“So, can we just pretend we don’t hate each other for a bit, so it’s not another thing for the members to worry about?”
Jungkook nodded. “Yeah, we better.”
I nodded sadly, knowing I wasn’t going to be on the best ends with Jungkook quite yet.
“Jungkook, you don’t have to love me, or want me, but at least try your best to make sure I can have a normal life,” I said, before exiting his room and running back downstairs, trying to keep a straight face as I approached Taehyung to see what type of game he wanted to play.
Hey all! I hope you enjoyed this chapter!
It wasn’t quite a filler, but it didn’t have too much action, so I apologise! But next week’s chapter should be very exciting as well :)
Also, a heads up, I’m going to camp next week, so I won’t be able to update- BUT! My Co-Author, Kai, is going to do it for me. So no worries, you’ll get the update on Thursday as usual!
See you all in two weeks!
Love you!
Love Yourself, take care of yourself, and love BTS :)