Wishful Dreaming
The changing breeze distracts her from telling what was new in her life. Minseo had done this before, time and time again. She would think that she had gotten used to the silence it brought.
Repetitive, but she refused to let go of his absence.
-
"You know, your father loves you very much." Her grandmother's words enter her head, empty, as she watches her father and elder sister bond with other families as expected. "It's just, Hyeseo-" "Hyeseo is expected to take over in the future, I know, Grandma." Her posture remained still next to the elder woman, their hands interlocked as if she were the young child's lifeline. "I understand my position." The second. No more, that is all. She had always known her place in the public eye. The young Minseo, who had been cast out, was taught to know her place. Her only comfort in this house was her grandmother, who had always doted on her. "You know," she smacks her lips, "When I become a mom, I will never be like that to my kid." "Oh yeah? What would my dearest, Minseo, be like as a mother?" . . .
-
Before Jinwoo, Minseo was already sure of how different her father had raised her. To raise him with guidance but not with overbearing expectations, and how to ensure that he will be in her care, no matter what comes their way. To days where it never felt like it was going to end, coming home to carrying him in her arms was the only thing that brought her back to her senses.
Though it wasn't what she had expected from him, eventually, raising a child on her own brought greater fears, mostly ones she exaggerated in her head. When he was born, Minseo secured her fighting chance to have the family's business because a male successor had always been favored in her father's eyes, even in modern times. He grew up exceptional for a 6-year-old. Her fondest memories were bringing him to the office, unaware she was laying out a future that couldn't be.
-
"I keep doing this to you," a lunch box had been prepared in front of the grave's name. She diligently cleaned beforehand, her hands scuffed with dirt that had been there before. "Jinwoo, you would've been 12 this year. That's wild to think, huh? It would've been 12 years with me. Would you have kept making Mother's Day presents for me?"
From time to time, she had imagined herself elsewhere, perhaps refusing the life that paved the most painful way to prove herself. She had dreams of raising Jinwoo elsewhere, without constantly looking over her shoulder. They would live in a house with a dog, and maybe a man for him to call his father, and for her to call her husband.
But now she was forced to tell this only in whispers wherever she was. Wishing every birthday, to every shooting star that passed by, and to any Gods that listened.
That was Minseo. Hiding in a dream so deeply that she refused to wake up.
This was Jinwoo, a memory she held on to so sweetly.
