The Minor Complications of Love

Chapter Three: Family Tension

Mark Cho was always his mother's pride and joy, and there were a couple of reasons for that too. He was independent, responsible, and selfless. His mother always boasted about it to her friends, always claiming how lucky she was to have a son with such natural qualities. There was always a sense of accomplishment for Mark when it came to his mother's fondness for him, but there was also a little bit of sadness in his eyes since he wasn't naturally this way. He just had to become the father figure his family needed after their father left them to fend for themselves in the outskirts of Seoul. He could still remember it rather vividly.

He was five years old, still rather young, but old enough to understand and cope with what was going on nonetheless, unlike Bella who was four years old at the time and could barely remember any events that had occurred back then.

He could remember his mother crying by the doorway of their feeble home on the day he left, trying to convince herself that their father would come back like how he always did. Unfortunately though, it was clear that he was never coming back. This made his mother more distressed and left him to have to become independent. He learned how to clean, cook, do all the other chores, and take care of his younger sister, hoping each day that his mother would be fine. She; however, was far from fine and everyday, things would get worse. This continued on for a few months until she decided to kill herself by plunging a knife into her chest. Thankfully, Mark stopped her before she could even do it. Tears flowed down his eyes as he hugged his mom hard and begged her not to do it. This made his mother realize what she was doing all this time. She apologized to both her children, bursting into tears.

In an effort to start again, their mother decided to immigrate to California where Mark and Bella would eventually grow up.

Meanwhile, hoping to put behind everything that had happened back then, Mark tried to forget his Korean heritage. He immersed himself in studying English and hung out with American friends while fully ignoring those with fellow Asian decent. Things got easier for him in middle school when they moved to Ohio and to a school that didn't have much of an Asian population. This meant he could completely walk away from who he was. He didn't know though, that he was paving himself a path to go back to Korea.

His mother just wasn't fond of that one aspect of him, claiming and fearing that he was becoming "too American". Because of this, she had him enrolled in Yonsei University right after he graduated from high school, in hopes that he would get in touch with his roots again. Not wanting to disappoint his mother, Mark went along with it until he was surprisingly accepted and qualified for a scholarship thanks (or no thanks?) to his astounding academic performance at school. The next thing he knew, he was shipped back to his motherland, a place he didn't want anything to do with.

Now; however, Mark was back. To be frank, he was happy, but not as much, because the reason he had to come back was something he had eventually come to resent completely.

"OK. Mia's gone. Now you can spill the beans. Why are you here?" A frustrated Bella asked as she groaned, thinking how she had to basically kick Mia out of the house before she could see a sibling rivalry that was about to go down.

"Look, Bella, I'm really tired from my flight, OK? I really don't need you to ask me this right now."

"Well, I deserve to know, because first of all, Eomma isn't going to be happy and I'm completely worried about that."

Wrong. Bella wasn't worried about Mark getting kicked in the ass by their own mother -- she couldn't care less about it. As a matter of fact, she was looking forward to it.

The favorite child being chewed on by their mother. Now that was a sight to see for her and she just couldn't wait. She just hoped the reason for his sudden return would be a heavy one, because it wouldn't be that fun if it was something that their mother could just understand and shrug off.