` the wife's regality
"Keep smiling, you look lovely." Su Min wasn't one who understood what smiling had to do with anything. But her mother wanted her lips to be dipped on the whitest canvases, had her stardust be the most pleasing to the eyes, and of course, she wanted no one to notice that Su Min had a smile that terrified others. Really, it wasn't upright for Su Min to had a twitch with her eyes, or how her smile really looked like a devil's, or why it never reached her eyes. Of course not. No one needed to know why Su Min, little old Su Min, wanted to giggle at people's gossip. Or why Su Min had an odd liking towards the grotesque characters in literature, or why she pick pocketed guests. Except more than often, she stared at people without a smile. Her responses to people's dialogue were always slow, boring, and unusual, to say at least. "Do you like flowers?" they would ask at a garden party. The little girl would swirl her tea cup, watching the brown liquid become a tornado and stare back up at her guest. Not an expression of interest in her eyes, only the dead look of boredom. "I prefer Baby's Breath," she would reply. Looking at her porcelain tea cup again, she'd try to drink the burning liquid. Swallow it and notice that she burnt her tongue, or the roof of her mouth. "But this array is quite colorful," she'd finish. Her add-ons were always the ones acceptable by society. The first halves were always meaning something else. They would tell her mother that she raised a beautiful yet eccentric child. And she would laugh that hurt Su Min's ears. Because why would anyone wring the neck of a pitiful soul just for it to sing a hoarse tune? Her mother liked that more than grand parties in the West. "Look presentable, my dear, you're not some maid tonight." So Su Min changed her ratty flats for white heels, her French maid outfit disappeared for a gown of grey, and her look went from dull to a unamused. Haughty, they would say when they saw her with a champagne glass. There was nothing about Su Min that screamed a billionaire, and yet she chatted among the many with a brilliant smile as her mother would say. She laughed at all the right jokes and then they would ask her questions. The oddity would come out and leave her audience stunned. "And who would you might be?" "His," she'd answer, drinking the cider from the glass. And she wouldn't point to anyone in particular, but they would guess, and come to no answer. "Ah, this game isn't as satisfactory as I thought it would. I will return another time," she hummed before gliding towards another group. Her mother seemed proud when she saw her like that. But on days when there was nothing else to impress, Su Min would disappear into her own room, pull cigarettes from her cabinet, open the windows and listen to her mother's sobs. In life, (she assumed), there was nothing more sorrowful than knowing that the one you loved yet hated was in pain. And her sons were often the last thing she heard before she stubbed her cigarette. Because unlike parties, she was allowed to be touch with reality. Her mother's cries were poems that never properly ended. A symphony that ended abruptly. There was no beauty in what happened there. No glamour to hide behind. Her mother cried a story Su Min could never properly recall. And some days, she'd leave her bedroom, open the door a crack, only to see slivers of death taking her away, inch by inch. No matter how beautiful her mother looked when she smiled, Su Min always thought her sadness was the prettiest. It was the only emotion she felt with every quake.
