far from you | oneus

eleven. 23-08-20

He stayed home for the next few days, declining all invitations for meals and study dates and trips to the theme park. His father was known to take half-days off work and drop by the house during the day without prior warning. For some unfathomable reason, the postman always seemed to stop at unpredictable times from day to day, and it was close to impossible to pinpoint the time the mail was delivered daily, consequently confining him to his home, watching the front gate to intercept the mail coming in as soon as possible.

He knew his father couldn't ever see the letter. It had been weeks since the last incident, and though the insistent, throbbing pain in his wrist had faded to a dull ache, he wasn't in any way ready to risk anything more.

On the fifth day of self-appointed house arrest, he caught the mailman at half past ten in the morning with the incriminating letter, taking it quickly from the letterbox at the gate and bringing it up to his room to scan quickly before slipping it under his stack of school books on the study desk.

Dear Son Dongju,

Congratulations on your scholarship to Seoul National! We welcome you to our institution...

Only with it safely concealed between two science textbooks did he let out the breath he didn't even know he'd been holding. Everything he'd been putting together for months now would be fitting together in the coming months. First his eighteenth birthday in four months, then talking to the bank about getting access to the trust fund his birth father had left for him and Dongmyeong. He would check out the upfront selling price of apartments near the city, scout for a new job that his mother could take, in an office that didn't have his father in it, read up on the laws on getting a restraining order arranged. The highest mountain to cross he could foresee was moving all their belongings from the house without his father picking up on it, but he supposed he could think of a solution over the next few weeks.

It's almost time for all this to end.

He got back to reading the university further math syllabus, anticipation brewing in his heart. For the first time in his memory he could see his way out, the light at the end of his tunnel, the end to the hell that'd been his life for as long as he could remember.

I'll do this for Dongmyeong, who couldn't be here.

For Mom, who couldn't bear to leave me behind.

For myself.