The Fox's Cradle Chapter 4
Omg I'm so sorry I abandoned this for so damn long ): Finally I have a few hours of free time to myself after a crazy month! I know some of you messaged me and I haven't replied to a single comment and seriously it guilts me every single day ): Don't worry you guys are always at the back of my mind somewhere and I'm always just waiting to clear all my work so I could get back to this. I need to clone myself ):
It took less than a week for A-hyun and I to go from a simple disagreement to a full-blown war. Ever since that night, every trace of liking towards me were erased from her heart, and she would show her disdain towards me for trying to monopolize her father. Any time, anywhere, she would oppose me.
"Get up, quickly."
I always spoke to her in a very gentle and amicable tone. If I didn't bother to even show her this little bit of affection, I might be blamed for not trying to communicate with the child on my part. But if A-hyun is truly as mature as they say, then she probably understood what I truly meant. And even if she didn't understand now, some day she would. You can't disregard me just because you dislike me, because Yunho loves me more than he loves you.
"Don't you want your breakfast?"
It's just that the child doesn't understand the extent of our love. There's no way a 5-year-old would've understood anyway. The length of time we've been together was about thrice her age, and we've always loved each other deeply. There were times when we hated and scorned each other, but we overcame all of that and created a solid, stable love that belongs only to us. How could this small little being, born from one tiny cell of Yunho, ever come between us? Thinking of it makes me want to laugh.
"Are you ignoring me?"
I know you hate me. But the more you hate me, the more I'll use your father's love for me as my shield. Little brats should know their place, especially you, A-hyun, the child who grew from everybody's tears. Being jealous of something like this is too extravagant for someone like you.
Today, he still stood by the pitiful me. It was way past breakfast time and the child was still asleep. Even Yunho got mad at such undisciplined behavior. Recently she's been disobeying me like this, only listening when her father scolds her. As long as I wasn't involved, she would listen to her father like a little angel. I hate her to the core.
The war-like morning passed and Yunho, who had been working from home since the child was born, went into his study to catch up on his work. A-hyun took an early afternoon nap, sleeping on the sofa instead of her own room. She probably fell asleep while watching television. I put the laundry into the washing machine and then stared blankly at her. Even though it was summer, the house still felt somewhat chilly. I was already unhappy with her but seeing Yunho cover her with a blanket made me even madder. He'd taken her blanket from her room and laid it over her tiny body, curled-up on the sofa.
A-hyun rolled over and continued dozing. I sat on the ground in front of the sofa, resting my chin on my knees.
It's refreshing. Like milk. As usual, she looks like an angel when she sleeps...
"..."
I heaved a sigh.
If Yunho was stolen by this child, then what would I have left? Because I know the answer to that, i was always wary of A-hyun, my one and only rival. Even now... in order to protect myself, and my Yunho.
"A-hyun ah, your father likes men."
Your father turned gay because of me.
"The one you call mother, me, also likes men."
It's just the the person I love happens to be a man...
"You... Don't have a mother..."
Your mother...
"Your father and I... We love each other very much..."
...I killed her.
"So A-hyun ah, I... I always feel sad when I look at you."
Sometimes when I look at your face, I can't help remembering how your mother looked as she lay dying in a pool of her own blood. To think that she could make me, such a shameless person, feel guilty; this was already enough to torture me. Now even you are doing the same to me. You can't do this.
"Don't say such senseless things. The child will hear them."
A gruff voice disrupted my thoughts and I looked over my shoulders. He was staring at me with a dark expression on his face. As I took in the sight of the scary look in his eyes, tears trickled down my cheeks. Such tears, like lies, made the both of us very flustered. It's like stabbing a wound that had just began to heal, and then prying it open with your hands. Naturally, I cried.
Maybe I'm not as weak as I made myself out to be, and I'm only using weakness as an excuse to live off Yunho like a parasite. He knows this, and yet he dotes on me all the more, and I'm just moved by how he sacrifices himself for me.
A-hyun was still a picky eater. After we realized that she only eats if she sits on her father's lap, Yunho stopped letting her have her way. Even though she was a cunning kid, Yunho wasn't a pushover either - victory's mine.
It's been a long time since I last cooked. After I finished whipping up enough dishes to fill the entire table, Yunho couldn't stop praising me. He'd pretended to be indifferent when I came home with all the groceries and busied myself in the kitchen, but when he tried the food...
"Tell the maid that she doesn't need to cook anymore. It's going to be tough on you, but I want you to cook from now on..."
I was overjoyed at his words. He had been completely tamed by me, and I couldn't help relaxing my shoulders as I felt waves of bliss wash over me. I wondered if I was actually eating food or consuming his love? I watched him eat with a faint smile, lifting my chin with my hand. When my fingers touched my skin, I felt a chill run down my spine.
Since when was my skin so loose...
I set down my chopsticks and cupped my face with my hands. It felt so rough. I almost broke into tears there and then; always thinking that I hadn't aged at all but discovering one day that I was already old. I started blaming myself for it. Since when was I so old? To think that I didn't even know when did I grow so old, do I still have the cheek to stick to him like a parasite?
My appetite was gone and I grew restless. Even though both of them felt that I was acting strangely, they didn't think too much about it since it was normal for me to stop eating suddenly. Their indifferent reactions made me feel even more depressed.
A long time has passed since we finished eating but he still hasn't appeared in our room. I avoided the mirror on purpose and sat at a corner of the bed. I couldn't stop trembling due to the sudden fear - ageing seemed scarier to me compared to excreting blood. Watching myself wither away seemed more frightening than watching myself when I was ill.
Did he return to his study because he couldn't finish his work? I wanted to see him so I quickly walked out of the room. Just then, I heard laughter coming out from the first-floor bath room. Usually the maid was in charge of bathing the kid but that little fox somehow managed to seduce her father into bathing her instead. My Yunho was playing with A-hyun in the bath, naked and covered with soap bubbles. I was so furious that I could only laugh dryly.
"Oh~ Jaejoong ah, want to join us?"
He carried A-hyun in his arms as he asked me. I ignored his question and went back to the room, laid on the bed and flipped the blanket over myself. I felt like screaming. But I wasn't angry because I saw both of them bathing together. There was nothing I could do, so I could only bury my face in the pillow. After a long while, he came to my side smelling like kids' shampoo.
"Umma is angry because we abandoned umma to bathe..."
"Mm... Appa, my head feels cold..."
He immediately wrapped her in his towel and, hearing her little chirps of laughter, I raised my head in annoyance. There's no reason for this to carry on any further. I shouted at the child.
"Why aren't you going to bed yet!?"
"... Jaejoong ah..."
"Get back to your own room. I hate to see you like this..."
A-hyun looked at Yunho in fear. Not me, but her father. She was trying to ask her dad for help by appearing pitiful, but he couldn't do anything about my abrupt tantrum, so he sent her off to her room to sleep. I laid on the bed, stiff as a corpse. A room without him is like a small, run-down alley smelling of old things, even if the whole house was filled with extravagant decoratives. He came back, and immediately the room felt like a palace. Because of his hand, my body came to life again.
I rested my head on his thigh and stared at him warily.
My Yunho didn't age a single day, looking as beautiful as he always did. Even though he had indeed aged in places where our eyes can't see, all those things weren't a problem to me. But my beauty... where has that poise and elegance gone to?
"No one would be interested in me now..."
"Why...? Because you're now an old woman?"
Thinking that my unhappiness was caused by him bathing with A-hyun, he submerged himself in the tub again for me. I laughed weakly at his joke.
"No... Really.... I won't even encounter those dangerous things that happened to me in the past..."
I smiled blankly as I whispered my words, and he kissed me behind my ear.
I was almost raped twice, one when I was in high school and once when I was in college. The first time, the man who assaulted me was still young and was just following orders so it wasn't really scary. However, the second time was different, and I almost became a victim of gang rape. Yunho turned up unexpectedly, like a miracle, just as my assaulter's XX was about to enter me. I heard Yunho call my name right before I passed out.
Though both times I managed to escape unscathed, how I felt then and how I feel now was completely different. Those were the days when I was most beautiful, before time could infect my wounds and give it a rotting stench. I was starting to miss those days when I hadn't had my heart broken.
"Should I... Go for surgery?"
He stopped rinsing my hair with water. The bathroom walls were covered with full-length mirrors to accommodate our wild sex life. Watching me touch my face gingerly, he finally realized the reason behind my foul mood. A moment of silence, and then he planted a kiss on my back as he reflected upon his miscalculation.
"So what... you're still so pretty now"
"Didn't you fall in love with me because I was pretty?"
"Yes, I did at first. But now I love Kim Jaejoong even more. You know this, and yet why...?"
"Yunho ah..."
He replied me with a hug instead of words. I closed my eyes as I leaned into his embrace. But I... I wouldn't be happy even if I hear such words.
Luckily my weight hasn't increased at all. And that's probably natural since my depression burned almost all the calories I ate, so there was no way I could've grown fat. What a relief. I walked out of the door.
The child was in the middle of a lesson in the guestroom. When I walked pass, I could hear her pronouncing English fluentlt. APPLE, she said. APPLE. She tried to copy the sound, repeating the word again. And then, it became my turn to try pronouncing the word. The tutor and child turned to me when they heard the sound, and I laughed in embarrassment. Truth be told, I knew next to nothing about English, and every single subject for that matter. I had no 'best subject', nothing except for Yunho's dashing face and beautiful body. I heaved a long sigh.
They stopped the lesson at my appearance, and A-hyun took the chance to ask for permission to visit the washroom. She closed he books as the maid carried over 2 cups of iced tea and some cookies. They look delicious, but I can't eat them.
That's the price of beauty. My sagging skin was already causing me a lot of grief, if my weight started ballooning I wouldn't be able to take it. I understood that much about myself.
The tutor helped herself first before offering some to me. I waved my hand at it, a little embarrassed, and she said, 'Not eating again..?' It seems that until now, I haven't eaten anything that she offered to me. As a man I couldn't say that it's because I didn't want to grow fat, so I could only smile awkwardly.
"Jaejoong-sshi is really unique"
"How so?"
"For a start, you're way too beautiful for a man..."
Both of us laughed at the same time. I lowered my head in embarrassment as she put down her cup and continued praising me, even making an exaggerated expression.
She doesn't know my past, like a pure little lily, like a passionate rose, like how I was before.
"Your aura is really special. You're about the same age as me, but the vibe you give off is completely different from me. It's as if you're doing things that people usually don't do. What are you working as?"
"I've not been doing much recently..."
"Oh~? So you lead a good life as well"
Her audacity made me smile. And then I pondered her words in silence.
Things that people usually don't do... I've actually done 3 things normal people would never have experienced before. Stabbing another human with a weapon, and there was even once when my hands were the murder weapon, causing an innocent child to never be able to feel the warmth of her mother's love. And then, I used mental incapacity as a perfectly legal reason to erase my crime on the surface. I was once so lucky! But now, I'm paying the price for what I did.
Recently I've developed insomnia because of various reasons, so a small conversation like this was enough to wear me out. Actually, I was simply tired of having to talk to people. Because I wasn't feeling well, I didn't see her off, partly due to her shooing me back to the house when she saw my face turn pale.
A daring woman. And also very meticulous. Maybe she's only like this when she's caring for A-hyun, but to me she has passed the test. I was very satisfied with her, and I hoped that she would be able to give A-hyun the sort of love that I would never be able to give.
Just looking at the child made me tired. If A-hyun grew up and reached that youth age of 17, I could see myself living in sheer agony. Though I don't know if something like that would happen.
I laid on the bed, closed my eyes and tried to steady my breath like a withered plant. When will Yunho be back? He'd only been gone for a while and I miss him already...
Some one was calling my in my hellish dream. Its body warmth is a little weak compared to Yunho's. I cracked an eye open and gazed blearily at the world.
All I could see was A-hyun, holding her books and pencils, shaking my shoulders softly. Looking at how unnaturally she sat on the bed, I guess that she'd been here for a while.
She couldn't wake me up so she waited for me to wake up by myself. But then she grew impatient so she shook me till I woke up. At the thought of her staring at me for so long, I felt my mood sour and I frowned as I sat up.
"What?"
She looked a little hesitant, probably because of my irritable expression. I couldn't fake a smile for her, so I prayed that she would just stop torturing the poor little me.
Holding her stationary in one hand, she held out a pencil to me with the other and opened her mouth to call me for the first time.
"Umma..."
These words, laced with contempt, was enough to give me goosebumps.
"Who the hell is your 'umma'!?"
My temper rose like a flame uncontrolled. I glared at the child, who jumped off the bed in fright, leaving all her stationary on my bed. Her chest was heaving fast like her quickened heartbeat. If I didn't explode then, I might have suffocated from holding it in any longer.
"Get out... Get out now! Don't ever step in here again!!"
A-hyun fled the room in sheer terror at being hollered at, and then she turned and looked at me. At the same time, I felt her words stab me like little pricks. Umma, umma, umma.... Why did she call me that? I'm not your umma!
I screamed and threw the pillow and blanket all over the room as I lost control of my temper.
In the end, I even threw out her stationary, and the edge of her book nicked the side of her face, scratching a small line before falling to the floor.
A-hyun hend a hand to her face, unable to cry or blame me. She ran off to avoid my madness.
"Sob..."
My legs felt weak. I lowered my head and sat on the bed. When is Yunho coming back? I had to tidy the room before he gets back and sees everything. I forced myself to my feet.
Even something as simple as picking up the pillow and placing it on the bed felt extremely difficult to me. My limbs were practically useless, and my body still couldn't accept food. I picked up the blanket, feeling as if my body was made from paper, when something fell to my feet. It was a small note.
"I left an assignment for A-hyun, to be read through by an adult. So I'm leaving a note. I could sense that the child hates Jaejoong-sshi, but a child is still a child after all. She needs to be cared for, so don't be too cold towards her."
My fists clenched on the note as I sat down and broke into sobs.
It's been so long. Why are you still torturing me.... Are you waiting for me to collapse from all this? Haven't you tormented me enough? Damn it...
"Sob... Sob..."
Tears are a form of delayed repentance. I'll be punished for hitting Lee Suh-hee's daughter, so I pray that my tears could wash this little sin away.
I know I need to understand her and protect her, but I'm far too weak...
It took less than a week for A-hyun and I to go from a simple disagreement to a full-blown war. Ever since that night, every trace of liking towards me were erased from her heart, and she would show her disdain towards me for trying to monopolize her father. Any time, anywhere, she would oppose me.
"Get up, quickly."
I always spoke to her in a very gentle and amicable tone. If I didn't bother to even show her this little bit of affection, I might be blamed for not trying to communicate with the child on my part. But if A-hyun is truly as mature as they say, then she probably understood what I truly meant. And even if she didn't understand now, some day she would. You can't disregard me just because you dislike me, because Yunho loves me more than he loves you.
"Don't you want your breakfast?"
It's just that the child doesn't understand the extent of our love. There's no way a 5-year-old would've understood anyway. The length of time we've been together was about thrice her age, and we've always loved each other deeply. There were times when we hated and scorned each other, but we overcame all of that and created a solid, stable love that belongs only to us. How could this small little being, born from one tiny cell of Yunho, ever come between us? Thinking of it makes me want to laugh.
"Are you ignoring me?"
I know you hate me. But the more you hate me, the more I'll use your father's love for me as my shield. Little brats should know their place, especially you, A-hyun, the child who grew from everybody's tears. Being jealous of something like this is too extravagant for someone like you.
Today, he still stood by the pitiful me. It was way past breakfast time and the child was still asleep. Even Yunho got mad at such undisciplined behavior. Recently she's been disobeying me like this, only listening when her father scolds her. As long as I wasn't involved, she would listen to her father like a little angel. I hate her to the core.
The war-like morning passed and Yunho, who had been working from home since the child was born, went into his study to catch up on his work. A-hyun took an early afternoon nap, sleeping on the sofa instead of her own room. She probably fell asleep while watching television. I put the laundry into the washing machine and then stared blankly at her. Even though it was summer, the house still felt somewhat chilly. I was already unhappy with her but seeing Yunho cover her with a blanket made me even madder. He'd taken her blanket from her room and laid it over her tiny body, curled-up on the sofa.
A-hyun rolled over and continued dozing. I sat on the ground in front of the sofa, resting my chin on my knees.
It's refreshing. Like milk. As usual, she looks like an angel when she sleeps...
"..."
I heaved a sigh.
If Yunho was stolen by this child, then what would I have left? Because I know the answer to that, i was always wary of A-hyun, my one and only rival. Even now... in order to protect myself, and my Yunho.
"A-hyun ah, your father likes men."
Your father turned gay because of me.
"The one you call mother, me, also likes men."
It's just the the person I love happens to be a man...
"You... Don't have a mother..."
Your mother...
"Your father and I... We love each other very much..."
...I killed her.
"So A-hyun ah, I... I always feel sad when I look at you."
Sometimes when I look at your face, I can't help remembering how your mother looked as she lay dying in a pool of her own blood. To think that she could make me, such a shameless person, feel guilty; this was already enough to torture me. Now even you are doing the same to me. You can't do this.
"Don't say such senseless things. The child will hear them."
A gruff voice disrupted my thoughts and I looked over my shoulders. He was staring at me with a dark expression on his face. As I took in the sight of the scary look in his eyes, tears trickled down my cheeks. Such tears, like lies, made the both of us very flustered. It's like stabbing a wound that had just began to heal, and then prying it open with your hands. Naturally, I cried.
Maybe I'm not as weak as I made myself out to be, and I'm only using weakness as an excuse to live off Yunho like a parasite. He knows this, and yet he dotes on me all the more, and I'm just moved by how he sacrifices himself for me.
A-hyun was still a picky eater. After we realized that she only eats if she sits on her father's lap, Yunho stopped letting her have her way. Even though she was a cunning kid, Yunho wasn't a pushover either - victory's mine.
It's been a long time since I last cooked. After I finished whipping up enough dishes to fill the entire table, Yunho couldn't stop praising me. He'd pretended to be indifferent when I came home with all the groceries and busied myself in the kitchen, but when he tried the food...
"Tell the maid that she doesn't need to cook anymore. It's going to be tough on you, but I want you to cook from now on..."
I was overjoyed at his words. He had been completely tamed by me, and I couldn't help relaxing my shoulders as I felt waves of bliss wash over me. I wondered if I was actually eating food or consuming his love? I watched him eat with a faint smile, lifting my chin with my hand. When my fingers touched my skin, I felt a chill run down my spine.
Since when was my skin so loose...
I set down my chopsticks and cupped my face with my hands. It felt so rough. I almost broke into tears there and then; always thinking that I hadn't aged at all but discovering one day that I was already old. I started blaming myself for it. Since when was I so old? To think that I didn't even know when did I grow so old, do I still have the cheek to stick to him like a parasite?
My appetite was gone and I grew restless. Even though both of them felt that I was acting strangely, they didn't think too much about it since it was normal for me to stop eating suddenly. Their indifferent reactions made me feel even more depressed.
A long time has passed since we finished eating but he still hasn't appeared in our room. I avoided the mirror on purpose and sat at a corner of the bed. I couldn't stop trembling due to the sudden fear - ageing seemed scarier to me compared to excreting blood. Watching myself wither away seemed more frightening than watching myself when I was ill.
Did he return to his study because he couldn't finish his work? I wanted to see him so I quickly walked out of the room. Just then, I heard laughter coming out from the first-floor bath room. Usually the maid was in charge of bathing the kid but that little fox somehow managed to seduce her father into bathing her instead. My Yunho was playing with A-hyun in the bath, naked and covered with soap bubbles. I was so furious that I could only laugh dryly.
"Oh~ Jaejoong ah, want to join us?"
He carried A-hyun in his arms as he asked me. I ignored his question and went back to the room, laid on the bed and flipped the blanket over myself. I felt like screaming. But I wasn't angry because I saw both of them bathing together. There was nothing I could do, so I could only bury my face in the pillow. After a long while, he came to my side smelling like kids' shampoo.
"Umma is angry because we abandoned umma to bathe..."
"Mm... Appa, my head feels cold..."
He immediately wrapped her in his towel and, hearing her little chirps of laughter, I raised my head in annoyance. There's no reason for this to carry on any further. I shouted at the child.
"Why aren't you going to bed yet!?"
"... Jaejoong ah..."
"Get back to your own room. I hate to see you like this..."
A-hyun looked at Yunho in fear. Not me, but her father. She was trying to ask her dad for help by appearing pitiful, but he couldn't do anything about my abrupt tantrum, so he sent her off to her room to sleep. I laid on the bed, stiff as a corpse. A room without him is like a small, run-down alley smelling of old things, even if the whole house was filled with extravagant decoratives. He came back, and immediately the room felt like a palace. Because of his hand, my body came to life again.
I rested my head on his thigh and stared at him warily.
My Yunho didn't age a single day, looking as beautiful as he always did. Even though he had indeed aged in places where our eyes can't see, all those things weren't a problem to me. But my beauty... where has that poise and elegance gone to?
"No one would be interested in me now..."
"Why...? Because you're now an old woman?"
Thinking that my unhappiness was caused by him bathing with A-hyun, he submerged himself in the tub again for me. I laughed weakly at his joke.
"No... Really.... I won't even encounter those dangerous things that happened to me in the past..."
I smiled blankly as I whispered my words, and he kissed me behind my ear.
I was almost raped twice, one when I was in high school and once when I was in college. The first time, the man who assaulted me was still young and was just following orders so it wasn't really scary. However, the second time was different, and I almost became a victim of gang rape. Yunho turned up unexpectedly, like a miracle, just as my assaulter's XX was about to enter me. I heard Yunho call my name right before I passed out.
Though both times I managed to escape unscathed, how I felt then and how I feel now was completely different. Those were the days when I was most beautiful, before time could infect my wounds and give it a rotting stench. I was starting to miss those days when I hadn't had my heart broken.
"Should I... Go for surgery?"
He stopped rinsing my hair with water. The bathroom walls were covered with full-length mirrors to accommodate our wild sex life. Watching me touch my face gingerly, he finally realized the reason behind my foul mood. A moment of silence, and then he planted a kiss on my back as he reflected upon his miscalculation.
"So what... you're still so pretty now"
"Didn't you fall in love with me because I was pretty?"
"Yes, I did at first. But now I love Kim Jaejoong even more. You know this, and yet why...?"
"Yunho ah..."
He replied me with a hug instead of words. I closed my eyes as I leaned into his embrace. But I... I wouldn't be happy even if I hear such words.
Luckily my weight hasn't increased at all. And that's probably natural since my depression burned almost all the calories I ate, so there was no way I could've grown fat. What a relief. I walked out of the door.
The child was in the middle of a lesson in the guestroom. When I walked pass, I could hear her pronouncing English fluentlt. APPLE, she said. APPLE. She tried to copy the sound, repeating the word again. And then, it became my turn to try pronouncing the word. The tutor and child turned to me when they heard the sound, and I laughed in embarrassment. Truth be told, I knew next to nothing about English, and every single subject for that matter. I had no 'best subject', nothing except for Yunho's dashing face and beautiful body. I heaved a long sigh.
They stopped the lesson at my appearance, and A-hyun took the chance to ask for permission to visit the washroom. She closed he books as the maid carried over 2 cups of iced tea and some cookies. They look delicious, but I can't eat them.
That's the price of beauty. My sagging skin was already causing me a lot of grief, if my weight started ballooning I wouldn't be able to take it. I understood that much about myself.
The tutor helped herself first before offering some to me. I waved my hand at it, a little embarrassed, and she said, 'Not eating again..?' It seems that until now, I haven't eaten anything that she offered to me. As a man I couldn't say that it's because I didn't want to grow fat, so I could only smile awkwardly.
"Jaejoong-sshi is really unique"
"How so?"
"For a start, you're way too beautiful for a man..."
Both of us laughed at the same time. I lowered my head in embarrassment as she put down her cup and continued praising me, even making an exaggerated expression.
She doesn't know my past, like a pure little lily, like a passionate rose, like how I was before.
"Your aura is really special. You're about the same age as me, but the vibe you give off is completely different from me. It's as if you're doing things that people usually don't do. What are you working as?"
"I've not been doing much recently..."
"Oh~? So you lead a good life as well"
Her audacity made me smile. And then I pondered her words in silence.
Things that people usually don't do... I've actually done 3 things normal people would never have experienced before. Stabbing another human with a weapon, and there was even once when my hands were the murder weapon, causing an innocent child to never be able to feel the warmth of her mother's love. And then, I used mental incapacity as a perfectly legal reason to erase my crime on the surface. I was once so lucky! But now, I'm paying the price for what I did.
Recently I've developed insomnia because of various reasons, so a small conversation like this was enough to wear me out. Actually, I was simply tired of having to talk to people. Because I wasn't feeling well, I didn't see her off, partly due to her shooing me back to the house when she saw my face turn pale.
A daring woman. And also very meticulous. Maybe she's only like this when she's caring for A-hyun, but to me she has passed the test. I was very satisfied with her, and I hoped that she would be able to give A-hyun the sort of love that I would never be able to give.
Just looking at the child made me tired. If A-hyun grew up and reached that youth age of 17, I could see myself living in sheer agony. Though I don't know if something like that would happen.
I laid on the bed, closed my eyes and tried to steady my breath like a withered plant. When will Yunho be back? He'd only been gone for a while and I miss him already...
Some one was calling my in my hellish dream. Its body warmth is a little weak compared to Yunho's. I cracked an eye open and gazed blearily at the world.
All I could see was A-hyun, holding her books and pencils, shaking my shoulders softly. Looking at how unnaturally she sat on the bed, I guess that she'd been here for a while.
She couldn't wake me up so she waited for me to wake up by myself. But then she grew impatient so she shook me till I woke up. At the thought of her staring at me for so long, I felt my mood sour and I frowned as I sat up.
"What?"
She looked a little hesitant, probably because of my irritable expression. I couldn't fake a smile for her, so I prayed that she would just stop torturing the poor little me.
Holding her stationary in one hand, she held out a pencil to me with the other and opened her mouth to call me for the first time.
"Umma..."
These words, laced with contempt, was enough to give me goosebumps.
"Who the hell is your 'umma'!?"
My temper rose like a flame uncontrolled. I glared at the child, who jumped off the bed in fright, leaving all her stationary on my bed. Her chest was heaving fast like her quickened heartbeat. If I didn't explode then, I might have suffocated from holding it in any longer.
"Get out... Get out now! Don't ever step in here again!!"
A-hyun fled the room in sheer terror at being hollered at, and then she turned and looked at me. At the same time, I felt her words stab me like little pricks. Umma, umma, umma.... Why did she call me that? I'm not your umma!
I screamed and threw the pillow and blanket all over the room as I lost control of my temper.
In the end, I even threw out her stationary, and the edge of her book nicked the side of her face, scratching a small line before falling to the floor.
A-hyun hend a hand to her face, unable to cry or blame me. She ran off to avoid my madness.
"Sob..."
My legs felt weak. I lowered my head and sat on the bed. When is Yunho coming back? I had to tidy the room before he gets back and sees everything. I forced myself to my feet.
Even something as simple as picking up the pillow and placing it on the bed felt extremely difficult to me. My limbs were practically useless, and my body still couldn't accept food. I picked up the blanket, feeling as if my body was made from paper, when something fell to my feet. It was a small note.
"I left an assignment for A-hyun, to be read through by an adult. So I'm leaving a note. I could sense that the child hates Jaejoong-sshi, but a child is still a child after all. She needs to be cared for, so don't be too cold towards her."
My fists clenched on the note as I sat down and broke into sobs.
It's been so long. Why are you still torturing me.... Are you waiting for me to collapse from all this? Haven't you tormented me enough? Damn it...
"Sob... Sob..."
Tears are a form of delayed repentance. I'll be punished for hitting Lee Suh-hee's daughter, so I pray that my tears could wash this little sin away.
I know I need to understand her and protect her, but I'm far too weak...