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Hyung Seok’s mother was a woman of compassion with soft but rather worn out features and skin akin to leather and a touch that could only make an angel jealous. It wasn’t that she ended up with a more less decent job because she was dim witted, in fact, she noticed things way beyond a simple minded person’s naked eyes.
She knew her son.
She knew her son beyond the softness of his body and the round glasses that framed his face and hid eyes that only she knew shed various tears after grueling and torturous days of school. She knew her son beyond the venom in his words that lashed out at her at his most shallow moments and cut into her feeble soul like knives because the rejection came from him. She knew her son like her own very being because had always nurtured him in his hours of despair and moments of enlightenment.
And because of this she swore she could see the same ambience waft around the taller version of Hyung Seok like a curse.
It was strange, the amount of effort the taller boy put into to command his lanky body into a deep respectful bow to her even though she was positive she looked not unlike a beggar on the street that most would argue didn’t deserve a particle of this handsome boy’s attention. Each time he talked to her she was floored by the affectionate glint that illuminated the taller boy’s eyes, the subtle quirks of his lips and eyebrows that perfectly mirrored her son in every shape of the movement.
She. She did not know what to make of it.
She knew her son, and she knew that her son mannerisms were almost a carbon copy of the taller boy’s, despite their stark differences that even a blind man could see.
Snagged by a wandering thought long past the hectics hours of her word day, during the silence of the night as she sat lonesomely in the little shack she had dubbed her own home, she briefly wondered if they could be in fact the same person.
Instead of berating them with questions, she instead shrugged it off like water pouring down her back because she knew that despite the varying forms that her son decided to take that she would look at him with half-closed lids, at him, at his beauty and see very clearly the path he has to choose and take and go. Her love for her son would always be eternal, bigger than her own feeble bones and tougher than her own bruising skin. Her love for her son would surpass multiple timelines and vessels he may take, because beyond the nervous tremors and shakiness of breath there was starlight inside of him.
She would never tell of the melancholy that poured out of her soul though, when an epiphany hit her during the golden moments of morning and she understood that the remains of the fiery, short tempered man that used to lash out at her were no longer, only to be replaced by a true man.
As stated prior, Park Hyung Seok’s mother was not stupid. She noticed the most insignificant things down the hushed ruffling of leaves as the mute wind blew against it tenderly. So of course, she noticed how the older blonde haired man behaved around her son.
To her, the blonde haired man was a conundrum that held a rather mystique and timeless aura to him. The actions and feelings he portrayed with his stiff gestures and hesitant emotions rather stumped her. What confused her about this peculiar boy was the attachment the boy had to her Park Hyung Seok. To the blonde haired boy, Hyung Seok was his muse. He is everything, was everything, and will be everything and it’s hard for her pounding heart to ignore when it’s glaring her in the face.
She had always imagined Park Hyung Seok settling with a petite and soft-spoken woman with a gentle hand. Never did she imagine a tall fellow with broad shoulders and a heavy hand that could break even the toughest of bones. It felt odd.
She knew she could not tear them apart, their love was blazing in gold and quenching in hues that were forever bursting into a myriad of others. She was just so so so scared that if she put her son into the hands of another man, tougher and stronger than Hyung Seok would ever be that it would break him apart but the man would still call it love. She knew the blonde man moral’s were delicate, easily swayed and tipped by the softest change. She knew that the blonde man could be vile, she had seen him fight with such bloodlust just for her son and only for her son. Whenever the blonde man touched anything it leaves a burning fingerprint behind that sinks into the surface and stays there because his family is powerful and the imprints he makes on people are powerful. His fingerprints linger across the city and stick out to her like neon because he is wealthier than she can ever dream of and he gets everything he has ever wanted. And now he wants her son.
Sometimes she wishes she could hate Hong Jae Yeol, it would be so much easier, but how can she hate something that is so engrained in her son’s life that they’ve practically become a unit, always traveling and mingling together and orbiting each other like lost planets strewn across the solar system.
Eventually though, she learns to cope. The boy is still, well, a boy. Despite the laughter that drips from his lips, low dark and bitter, she can see the sparkles of something that could never be express, the youth that was tore out of his boney wrists. She can still see the outline of something soft, only expressed around Park Hyung Seok when he nuzzles into his neck and murmurs about how he tastes like peaches when he thinks she’s not looking and her son’s laugh twinkles behind his words as he retorts that the other man tastes like smoke and petals.
So, once again she looks upon the reality she lives in with half-lidded eyes, through years and decades and even during the wedding day when the sun is beating against her cracking skin and all she can her is the soft melody of bells and joyous screams as her vision turns into blurs of white and petals.
And when she sees the two boys on the alter together, finally (finally, finally) she smiles.