Chapter 3

I'd spent about an hour on the computer when I heard my father call me. "Yes, A-abonim," I answered, quickly adding the last word. Technically, I knew that it wasn't very polite to respond to elders with a simple, "Yes," but sometimes, I did lapse into it with my mother. However, I could still hear the tongue lashing I'd received the last I'd made that mistake with my father so I sometimes even answered with a 'Yes, Abonim, Abonim,' just to be on the safe side.

I waited for a few seconds, hoping that he'd tell me the reason for his call but I already knew that he was waiting for me to run down and see him face to face before completing his sentence.

I grudgingly walked out of my room and when I got to the top of the stairs, I found him waiting for me at the bottom.

"Why aren't you down here? Didn't you hear your mother return? Shouldn't you come down and help her with dinner?"

I sighed and walked down the stairs. The entire thing was ridiculous. Before he decided to become our lord and director, the three of us had our little routine that was working just fine. I made dinner on Tuesdays and Thursdays, my brother made dinner of Mondays and Wednesdays and my mother cooked on the other days. But now that my father had returned for good and believed that our family was in danger of becoming dysfunctional because my mother didn't play her role as she should have, everything had changed. This 'role' bullsh.it was probably the reason why I was always forced to help out in the kitchen while my brother got to enjoy sitting in his room alone, watching porn or whatever disgusting things boys his age did when they were alone.

I walked past my father and into the kitchen to find my mother bent over the counter, chopping some onions. She looked up at me and pointed at a bag of kale near the sink. "Will you wash and chop them up for me?" Nowadays, when I looked at her, I really didn't know what to think. Standing there in her white shirt and black pants, her hair falling against her face in a slight bob, her slim right hand moving up and down with every stroke of the knife, I really wasn't sure she was the mother I'd always known. Because that woman who had managed to be both a mother and a father to us while working as a General Practitioner at her own clinic wouldn't succumb so easily to my father's whims. Our family wasn't dysfunctional and we didn't need to shape up! If our family had worked so well even during the vacations we'd spent with my dad, why did he suddenly feel that we had to act differently now that we were going to be together for much longer? How did that make sense? And why hadn't my mother put her foot down and told him to get lost?

I'd always looked up to her as a strong, independent woman who was so unlike other mothers who looked to their husbands for guidance. I'd always thought of her as someone who did what she believed and didn't let anyone else dictate how she was going to live her life. I'd always assumed she was a mini feminist because she'd always treated my brother and me similarly and had the same expectations of us. But somehow, in a matter of weeks, this woman who didn't believe in gender-based partiality was okay coming home from a hard day at work to cook dinner while my brother was jumping around in his bedroom playing his new Wii game. Why wasn't she fighting it?



***



Another thing that changed was that while we'd previously eaten individually i.e. whenever we were hungry, now it was imperative that we all sit at the table and break bread like the loving and wonderful family we were aiming to be. So once dinner was ready, my mother let the men of the house know that the grub was ready for them to pounce upon.

"Yuh-bo, how was work? How is Dr. Lee managing with his new workload?" my father asked right after he said grace. Dr. Lee was a junior partner at my mother's clinic and was going to be taking over most of her patients in her absence. Through all the madness and transition, the one thing that my mother had fought to keep was her clinic. My father had wanted her to sell her stake to her partners but she refused so even though she wasn't going to be able to work there for the next few years, she still maintained ownership and was going to keep working in a much more minor capacity electronically. She'd excitedly explained it all to us one night over dinner but it had gone over my head. How one could be an e-doctor was beyond me.

"Jae Won," my mother said, "seems a bit overwhelmed but I'm sure he can handle it. We are also considering hiring a part timer to take on a few patients."

"I still think that you should just let it go," my father said pointlessly. "It makes no sense to still keep ties from so many miles away."

"That's why telephones and the internet were invented, darling," my mother countered in a far two sweet voice.

My father didn't say anything in return and after a few minutes of only hearing the clangs of cutlery against plates, my mother suddenly turned to me. "Are you excited about starting your English lessons tomorrow?"

What did she think? We had to get to up early to take lessons the day after the school year had ended. Was that something to be excited about? I glanced at my father who was wiping something off the top of his half-empty glass of water and shrugged. "Not really."



***



I waved at Tom, our English tutor, as I walked through our kitchen and into our little backyard class. The previous night, my brother and I had pushed the picnic table into a shaded area and had set the chalkboard up in front of it. When I turned the corner, I almost froze at the sight of Min Ki sitting at the table like a good little school boy.

I pinched myself. Was I still asleep? As if he heard my thoughts, he quickly waved and grinned at me.

I raised my brow at my older brother who was sitting across from him but he just rolled his eyes and turned over a page of his exercise book.

"Oppa?" What was he doing here?

He patted the empty part of the bench he was sitting on and gestured for me to sit next to him. I looked back to see if my father had somehow gotten into the kitchen and when I saw that it was still empty, I ran over to him.

"Hey, what are you doing here?" I whispered, a little out of breath. My heart was racing with both fear and excitement. For one, I couldn't believe he was actually there and two, I couldn't believe that he was actually there with my father being somewhere in our vicinity.

"I'm here for English lessons," he announced proudly.

I looked over at Tom who in turn nodded back at me. "He called me a few days ago and said that he wanted to join us. I hope that's okay with you," he said to me and my brother.

Even before we knew anything about our relocation, my brother and I usually took English lessons during the holidays just because it made things easier when we had to visit my father or even when we had to attend whichever embassy's event in Seoul. It was weird but regardless of the country, the diplomats and other official types tended to speak English. Tom was an American who worked at one of the local schools but gave private lessons on the side and he'd been working with us for a few years now.

"I don't think Min Ki is as advanced as you guys," Tom started, "but--"

My attention was immediately stolen by the kick I felt on my leg. Ouch. I frowned and kicked Min Ki back.

He chuckled but then bent down and rubbed his leg. When he looked up to frown at me for hurting him, I started giggling, but the nature of my giggles quickly changed because he soon took his hand off his calf and started tickling me at the bend of my knees.

"Oppa," I yelped, slapping his hand off, "d-d-don't d-d-do th-th-that!"

"Should we leave you two alone?" Tom asked sternly. From the way he was looking at us, it was apparent that he'd finally understood the real reason Ha Min Ki had decided to take English lessons so soon after school had closed.

Suddenly brought to my senses by his humorless expression, I quickly sat up in my seat and with one look from me, Min Ki oppa did the same.



***





It turned out that Min Ki had the English reading and comprehension abilities of a fetus, so after listening to Dong Won and me laughing our intestines out at the gibberish he was hoping to pass off as English, Tom gave us some work to do while he gave some one-on-one attention to him.

I knocked my pen against my teeth as I watched my boyfriend listening attentively to his teacher. Since I knew that he had no real interest in learning any languages, I was touched by the fact that he was not only willing to sacrifice his summer, but also willing to pay to take these boring classes just so that he could spend some time with me.

I was still staring at him and trying to figure out if we could sneak some private time in when my father walked into the room. As if even the angels in heaven had acknowledged the sudden appearance of evil, everything, including the air seemed to stand still.

"Dr. Oh," Tom said, bowing to my father. I often felt that simply answering as Mr. would be sufficient because calling him by the title usually led to people asking after his specialization and hearing 'Economics' generally confused them.

"How are the classes going?" my father asked in English. "I hope I'm not interrupting."

"Not at all," Tom replied. "They are doing some exercises, and in a few minutes," he said, glancing at his watch, "we should be going over them."

My father nodded. "Good. Dong Won ah, I am sure you're happy to have your friend here with you," he said smiling at Min Ki.

I crossed my fingers and hoped my brother would play along and luckily, he simply smiled back at my father. The truth was that Min Ki had started off as one of my brother's friends. My brother was usually one of the first in the neighborhood to get whichever video game was hot at that moment and as a result, he had a lot of hangers-on from both school and our neighborhood.

But Min Ki was a little different because they'd been friends from Sunday School and wonders of wonders, he even hung around my brother when he didn't have any new toys to share. Since my brother was my only sibling, when I was younger, I was usually in his care so even though he tried his best to ignore me, particularly when I was younger and did embarrassing things like poop on the school bus, I did know quite a bit of his friends and one day, I woke up and discovered that one look from Min Ki turned my knees to jelly.

One day, about a year into trying my best to retain my balance whenever I saw him, Min Ki pulled me aside and asked me to be his girlfriend. After getting over the initial shock because I'd only just lamented to Tae Ran about how he'd only ever see me as a dongseng, I said yes and the rest, as they say, was history.

About twenty minutes after my father's grand entrance, just as I finished reading out my essay about how cats were my favorite animal, my father cleared his throat and asked if it was okay for him to sit in for the lessons. Apparently, his English was rustier than he'd believed and he wanted to brush up his language skills along with us.

Of course, Tom agreed and with that, all fantasies of holding hands with Min Ki as I taught him English tongue twisters evaporated into thin air.

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