My You | JJK

28| Forgiveness

A fifteen year-old Jimin skipped down the stairs as quietly as he could, keeping in mind the slumber of everyone else in the house.

Once at the bottom of the stairs, his feet had habitually turned to the direction of the kitchen, his destination to serve the purpose of satiating his midnight craving to eat something savoury---only for him to go still when sounds of quiet sniffles reached his ears.

When he had turned around, he was met with a dark figure lounging on the sofa, an unmistakable crystal glass in his hand filled with bronze liquid of the finest quality.

Silently, Jimin trodded over to him. "Dad?"

Hands drunkenly flew up to wipe away traces of tears on his face as Jimin took a seat next to him on the sofa. "Jimin, my son." A hazy smile, slur evident in his words. "What're you doing up? Couldn't sleep?"

"I could ask you the same." Jimin smiled back an identical smile. "What's wrong, dad? You drink often but not a lot."

The man, Park Jiseung, sighed as he ran a hand through his hair that had begun developing streaks of grey of tell-tale aging, the habit being something Jimin had adopted from him as he thought it looked cool.

"Have you ever been in love, son?" Jiseung swirled around the Brandy in his glass, spine hunched and elbows on his thighs. "Have you ever looked at a girl and thought---wow, she's the most gorgeous girl I've ever seen---and felt your heart hammer against your chest with such a speed that you're afraid it'd burst?"

Jimin chuckled at the description, shaking his head. "No, dad. Not yet, atleast."

"Well, I have." Jiseung smiled wryly, looking at the boy whose eyes shimmered despite the darkness of the night engulfing the living room. "And, I think it's time you know the truth. I think you're old enough to understand."

"What... truth? Understand what?"

"Yena... I love her." Jimin's eyebrows furrowed at the obvious statement concerning his mother, only for his eyes to widen at the next. "But, I've never been in love with her."

Jimin exerted a small gasp as he spelled out, "You... It was an arranged marriage?"

"That I agreed to for the benefit of my start-up business, much selfishly so." Jiseung gulped down the liquid in his glass before refilling it. "Also because I had lost belief that there really was someone out there who would be my person."

Jimin curiously peered at his father who spilled the alcohol into his mouth again, reaching for the bottle for more.

"And then, I saw her." Jiseung had leaned back into the sofa, cradling the bottle against his chest. "It was a business trip to London, a dinner at this extravagant resto-bar and---"

"She was a dancer." Jimin completed the sentence, omitting the prior word in a phrase that he had heard his mother chant like a mantra everytime she would remember the woman and torture his step-sister.

'You whore of a daughter of that slutty dancer of a mother of yours!' He had heard it too many times, regardless of the thick walls of the mansion.

He knew the story, but only from Yena's perspective. She was newly married when her husband had left for London, and when he had come back, she had been two months pregnant.

Fast-forward to ten years later, they were a happy family. Just Yena, Jiseung and their ten-year old boy, Jimin. They had been enjoying their supper together when a doorbell had interrupted them---the door had opened to reveal a blonde woman with tired, green eyes.

Next to the woman stood a girl of Jimin's age, her mother's eyes and father's lips.

The house had almost split into two that evening with Yena hollering and bawling at her husband's past infidelity---it didn't get any better when the woman had revealed that she had come to leave her daughter in Jiseung's care, with the excuse of being unable to take care of her and calling herself a bad mother, which she indeed was if she was so ready to leave her daughter behind for her own benefits.

Jimin never really understood why he hadn't sent Iseul and the woman back with a promise to compensate them with money. He never understood why he had so readily accepted Iseul. He hated the fact that he had hurt his mother immeasurably by doing so.

And that hate propelled him to give up dancing, which he had been passionately developing since he could walk. He did not want to learn an art that was responsible for causing a rift in his family.

It took a few years for the family to be normal again, except, it was all a façade. Things were never going to be normal again, not with Iseul around to constantly remind everyone of her mother with her disgusting green eyes.

"A wonderful dancer." Jiseung breathed a content sigh. "She had me completely enraptured. Her eyes and her grace, her smile and her gaze. Her---"

"I get the idea, dad." Jimin cut in, not having the strength in him to listen to his father fawn over a woman that was not his mother.

"Well, one thing lead to the other. We were in love and made love," Jimin seethed as his drunk father narrated, "it was a mistake on my part. But, I really thought I'd found the love of my life. I thought I'd come back and divorce Yena before it was too late."

The entire bottle was being emptied into Jiseung's mouth before he grabbed the next one, opening it.

"But, I turned out to be a fool in a one-sided love." Jimin was surprised of how he could still speak words in a legible way. "She had charmed me, slept with me because she thought I was rich, that I was drowning in money. But no, I only had a small start-up that I was seeking to expand. There was no promise of good income. And when she found out, she left me."

Jimin felt anger bubble in the depths of his stomach at his father's stupid idiocy. He was vibrating at a frequency that could shatter glass, unable to comprehend how on earth any of that had convinced his father to actually sleep with a woman when he had a loyal wife waiting for him back at home.

"When she came back with Iseul five years ago, with my baby girl that I had no idea of---she had come to leave her here because men didn't stick around when they found out she had such a big daughter." Jiseung was half sleepy at this point. "I just couldn't let my baby be with a woman the likes of her. I knew she'd be better off here, with you as a loving brother and Yena as an affectionate mother."

It didn't excuse his actions. What he did was utterly and completely unacceptable. Jimin couldn't bear looking at his father that he thought to be a sad excuse of a man.

Shaking with rage, Jimin stood up. "I'm going to bed, dad."

The man yawned, "We leave for Jeju early tomorrow. Get some rest, son."

Jimin cast his father a wrathful glance as he climbed up the stairs to his bedroom, festering the hate in his heart for Iseul, her mother and now, his father.

However, when Jiseung's words had come true---when Jimin had met a girl in Jeju island the following week and found her to be the most gorgeous girl he had ever seen and had felt his heart beat so rapidly that he thought it'd burst---he understood.

He understood the effect love had.

He finally understood his father's foolish actions.

He forgave his father.

And, he forgave Iseul.
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This was more of a filler chapter than anything, but, i hope this gives you an idea of what happened in the past.

What're your thoughts? Do tell me!

Until the next chapter,
Saph.