Remnants of the Heart | Kim Taehyung

16: décide

ACT 2 — SCENE 7.
SHE DECIDES.

       AN EPIPHANY is what pays Seojung visit the dawn of a really unanticipated Wednesday. Her eyes would've never fluttered upon at this ungodly hour if it wasn't for the dream she was having, nothing equivalent to a worst nightmare but strong enough to pull her out of her slumber. Seojung doesn't usually remember her dreams after she has them, but this one, this one just played with her feelings. It rendered her confused, curious, and most importantly, melancholic.

Seojung saw her mother. Her birth mother. Except she couldn't quite make out the woman's exact facial features, just glimpses of a pair of almond shaped eyes and a set of full lips so alike to her own. It could be that the woman was just a fragment of her imagination sneaking her way into Seojung's dream, something that her mind constructed as a replacement for the blood-related mother figure she never had. It was just a dream that felt like nothing more than a blink of an eye, yet in those minuscule seconds, everything was so vivid.

Seojung remembers grass, clear blue sky, and small chubby hands resembling a toddler's. She was sitting in the backyard of a small home with a woman—her mother, she assumes—threading a brush through her unkempt hair. She was seeing everything through the eyes of her younger self, as far as she knows. Everything was hazy. Details were so hard to grasp and the last thing she remembers is holding a hand as she walked back into the house.

It could've been any random house, any random woman and another random dream that could easily mean nothing, but there's this inkling that tells her otherwise. It's one of those things that she can't really describe but knows that deep inside her guts it's exactly what she thinks it is.

Dreams are so complicated and irrational, but when are they ever rational, to begin with?

And really, that's how she decides. One simple dream that motivates her to start searching for the woman that gave her up again, something about feeling bad that she didn't try hard enough the first time. Her brother had argued once that she doesn't know if she should be trying at all. She knows that Jimin just doesn't want her to be disappointed if things don't turn out as she wants them to be. It's considerate of him, but she's a big girl now and the curiosity is eating her alive.

Seojung sits on her bed as she contemplates on the verdict she just made and how completely illogical her reasons are, how completely absurd for a daughter to form an attachment to the mother she has never met before. But the sad truth is she had never gotten over the fact that she was adopted, and growing up trying to seem okay with it was the worst thing a girl could ever go through during her adolescence.

It's the minuscule details like looking at her parents and pointing out everything that doesn't resemble her own features or daydreaming and thinking about the way things could've been. She has never not wanted to find her birth mother, and she only stopped the first time because she was getting nowhere. Her birth father too, but it was hard trying to think about him as much when she didn't have his name.

Even if the woman has no interest in having ties with her daughter, Seojung thinks that she deserves to meet her just once. It only seems fair.

Picking up her phone from the bedside table, Seojung unlocks the screen and texts her brother, not really expecting a response since it's not even six and knowing Jimin, he'll probably wake up half an hour before he has to leave for college.

SEOJUNG:
i want to look for my birth mother again

To her surprise, her brother texts back almost immediately.