Parents

Taeyoung parks the car. We sit in silence for a moment, looking at the humble house in front of us. We're nervous. I can feel the anxiousness radiate off his body, and I know he can feel it off of me too.

"Let's go," he says, finally getting out of the car. He grabs our bags and we walk up to the door. He rings the bell. Very soon after a woman opens the door. I recognize her eyes immediately.

"Taeyoung!" She says, her hands moving to hold onto his face. He leans down since her height shrinks in comparison to his. He has a small nervous smile on his lips. She looks like she's really missed him.

"And this must be Sohee." Her eyes move to fall onto me. She looks me over, calculating my physical features in mere milliseconds. It is as if she is matching me up with him, seeing if I can compare to his handsome features. Of course, I don't think I do.

I bow and say my greetings to her. She smiles at me warmly now and gestures for us to step inside. We take off our shoes. I look to Taeyoung for cues of where to go, my body attached to his by an invisible string. We end up in a seating room, and his mom focuses in on me again when he leaves to put our bags away somewhere. I watch him leave the room with a bit of dread.

"So Sohee, what are you in school for?"

It takes a while for me to understand her since her dialect is so unlike the standard dialect heard in Seoul.

"I'm in a Korean program for now," I reply with a polite smile. She seems to like this as she nods her head with an open smile.

"Are you Korean?" Her head tilts to the side a bit, something that Taeyoung does too when he asks a question. This causes me to grin.

"Half. I was born here but grew up in Canada."

Her eyes light up, "Ah! Canada!" She says in English.

My eyes widen in shock from the sudden change in language. I forgot what Taeyoung said long ago about her living in America for a bit.

"I was not sure if you spoke English," she explains. Her excitement levels are clearly increasing rapidly. I then hear noises carry into the room as Taeyoung and another man enter. They both have stoic faces on. Taeyoung comes to sit beside me, the other man sits across from us.

"Hello, I am Sohee," I greet him with a bow.

He doesn't smile back at me.

"여보 [honey], be kind to our guest," Taeyoung's mom whispers to him. She looks back at me with a smile and goes back into her excitement about English. "I lived in America when I went to university."

Her pronunciation is impressive. It falters at some difficult sounds, but for being an older woman now, she has held onto it well.

"Oh, is she already trying to practice English with you?" Taeyoung laughs a bit. I notice his father withdraw, clearly blocking out the foreign words and not making effort to join.

"You know I don't have anyone to polish my skills with anymore since you left." Her last words drag out solemnly. Clearly, she's still sad he left.

Taeyoung sighs as if he's heard this many times. "엄마 [mom], just call me if you're that desperate to practice."

"You can call me too if you want," I politely add-on. Her eyes light up at my words.

"Oh what a sweet girl you found Taeyoung!" She exclaims, her hands clasped together.

The way she is acting now makes it hard to believe that a while ago she was judging my appearance. But then again, I guess that's what any parent would do if their cherished child brought someone home.

Taeyoung smiles down at me, his arm coming around my waist. His mom watches us with sweet, somewhat hungry eyes. The stereotypical "finally, my son has brought a girl home" mom look.

His father grunts as he gets up from his seat. I watch as Taeyoung's eyes follow his figure cautiously. The look on his mother's face falls a bit.

"Honey, you two need to talk," she softly says to Taeyoung .

"I already tried that before, he refuses to listen to me."

"Try again. I don't like seeing you two so distant."

"She's right," I say.

He sighs, a hand moving up to lay against his forehead.

"It's Christmas, I don't want to start an argument."

His mother sighs. She gets up and puts on a smile for me. "Pretty girl, let's go to the kitchen." She grabs my hand and lightly pulls me up from my seat. I look back at Taeyoung with a nervous smile before following her. She is cute. Small but mighty, and she carries this certain confidence that makes her seem very intelligent. She is the kind of person I'm scared of because they seem to know so much.

"They both need to grow up at some point," she mutters to me in English.

I chuckle a bit. The heavenly smell that wafts its way into my nose causes me to sing out an "mmm."

"It smells so good in here Mrs."

"Don't be silly, you can call me 어머님 [mother]."

My feet halt. Momentarily I feel my subconscious fight against me. My body grows cold, my hands start to shake uncomfortably. My breathing becomes all too loud for my ears, the shaky noise seemingly shaking my whole mind. All of this happens within milliseconds. Just one word can cause all of this.

She doesn't notice my sudden stop and instead sets a table.

"Could you help me with this?" She asks me. My conscious fights to take hold again. My hands seize their shaking, my breathing normalizing again. A smile plasters itself onto my face.

"Of course."

***

We all sit down, staring at the delicious looking food that dominates the table space in front of us. We begin to eat, and the conversation mainly flows between Taeyoung's mom and me. The air is still awkward between him and his dad, but a bit less so. It seems they've decided to put their problems aside momentarily, for Christmas's sake.

"So how did you two meet?" His mother asks in Korean, probably so that her husband can follow along. However, I have a very difficult time understanding.

Taeyoung translates for me and his mother immediately apologizes.

"Oh I'm so sorry! You're not used to the Gyeongsang dialect. Taeyoung, you never speak like this in Seoul?"

"No not really," he replies.

I begin to wonder what he would sound like with this somewhat harsh accent. Taeyoung then explains how we met, and the whole language partner coincidence. She listens attentively, her eyes turning into half moons.

"How lucky for you two to have God on your side." When Taeyoung translates this to me he laughs a bit.

"A bit too dramatic mom." He turns to me with a smile. "She's become quite religious these days."

"What? A mother isn't allowed to be happy for her son?"

"No of course you are." He takes a mouthful of food into his mouth.

"Sohee, how about your mom? Is she in Canada?"

My hand which holds the utensil begins to softly fall. My smile falls down like Icarus from the sky; a smile so ignorant, so confident for nothing. And I can't get the corners to rise back up. My eyes have stopped seeing the world around me, instead all is a blur. Even my ears refuse to hear any more. It is like my whole body has decided to give up all of a sudden; as if someone pressed the off button.

Again, just words, but words always seem to be what hurt you the most.

I feel sick. I feel like I'm losing my mind as everything spins all around me, so fast that my mind leaves the constraints of my physical being; And once it's officially left me, there's nothing my body can do but fall limp.

. . .

A/N:

Please don't freak out on poor Sohee. She's been hiding a lot emotional turmoil not only from Taeyoung, but from us and herself.

xx Sooaura