Chapter 20

My eyes flutter open to the soft sound of my phone alarm. I always put it quite low, since I'm a light sleeper anyway, but the feeling of strong arms wrapped around me makes me turn off the alarm quickly. The boy doesn't even stir. Must be a heavy sleeper. I'm now left trapped in his hold. I don't have morning class today, so there's no rush, but once I'm awake, there's no going back to sleep. So I just stay as still as possible as warm breaths hit the back of my head, slow and rhythmic. I put a hand out in front of my mouth and blow out, trying to smell my breath. I've been told I don't have morning breath, but I always keep mints in the drawer of my nightstand just in case. I do my best to reach out and open the drawer without moving too much. I freeze when a light groan sounds from behind me. His body moves against me slightly, and he holds onto me even tighter now. Now my goal is even more difficult, but after multiple attempts, I'm able to grab my tin of mints. I open it one-handedly and pop it in my mouth. More than one may be overkill and too obvious. A groggy voice fills my ears, "Noona." "Yeah?" I say a bit hesitantly. "Can I have one?" Shoot, he was awake. I turn around in his arms to face him. Sure enough, his eyes may be closed sleepily but his mouth is turned up with a smile. "Please? I want to kiss you good morning." Oh my god, I should feel embarrassed but the kid manages to get my heart fluttering so early in the morning. Not knowing how to respond, I hand him a mint. He crunches on it, which makes me wince because I'm an avid believer in not chewing mints. He cutely taps his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he tastes the mint. Then with a cheeky smile, he opens his eyes and aims for my lips. Unlike the last few times he's kissed me, he doesn't move much. It's almost like he's fallen asleep again with his lips on mine, but he pulls away and looks at my eyes with a heavy gaze. The proximity of our faces makes it so that we feel the push and pull of each other's breaths. Then without a word he closes his eyes and places his mouth over mine again, but this time with his hand leaving my waist to move to my cheek. His moist lips move slowly over mine, slow so that soft smacking noises resonate in our ears. He seemingly inhales me with his last intake of my lips. When he parts again, his eyes follow the hand that strokes the skin of my cheek. All I can do is watch him, staring at his dark bruises and wishing I could erase them like a bad drawing. "Noona what's that?" His eyes are fixated on the silk bonnet covering my hair. Heat fills my face as I remember the physical state I'm in. "It protects my curls," I simply explain. He nods with a small smile on his face. "I have a lot to teach you boy." He giggles in response. I let my self consciousness go to hell for the moment. If he's crushing on me, he's gonna need to learn to love me even when bare-faced and in cartoon bear pyjamas. "Jaewook, you should go to school," I say softly. He closes his eyes with a heavy sigh. "But I don't have my stuff with me. I don't want to go back there, not yet." Pitying the boy beside me, I run my fingers along his cheek. "I'll go get your bag for you." His eyes widen in shock. "What? No, you can't go there." "I'm sure it's just your mother that's home now." "Yeah, but still. She doesn't like you." I scoff at him. "Yeah, I figured that out." I lightly stroke his face he looks back at me. "But you need to go to school. Jaewook, school is your only escape from home." His eyes move between both of mine as he thinks this through. He sighs as he realizes that I'm right. "I'll go. You wash up in the bathroom," I say. I slide out of bed and put on my house slippers. He tries to tell me to stop, but soon enough I'm out of the house and knocking next door. Not to my surprise, his mother opens the door with an open mouth. Her eyes are red and her hands a bit shaky—probably because her son didn't come home. "What are you doing here? He isn't here." "I know," I say blatantly, "I'm here to get his bag for school." Her eyebrows cross in confusion. "What?" "I hate to intrude but I really need to get going." I move past her and head straight to Jaewook's room. I try to ignore my surroundings, but I do catch a broken lamp in the living room. Meanwhile, his mother follows me like a shadow, asking me questions. I find his backpack on the floor by his unmade bed and grab it. "What are you doing?! You're stealing!" "I'm not stealing, I'm giving it to Jaewook." I head back to the front door. "What makes you think that you can take over my job as a mother?" "You know, I really didn't want to make assumptions, I did my very best to not. I gave you the benefit of the doubt—maybe he's just being dramatic, an angsty teen, but the fact that he came to me with a face looking like that proves me wrong. He came to me, not you, and that says a lot. It says that he had no one else to help him, to protect him and take care of him. I tried, I did, but I can't bow to a mother that doesn't put her boy's safety before anything else." "You're the problem, you're like poison. He used to be a good, quiet boy until you started coming around. I should have never hired a foreign girl to tutor him. You took him didn't you?" She spews her words like venom as her eyes pierce through me. "I didn't tell him to do anything, he came to me out of his own will. Maybe he knew that I would care for him more than you seem to." Before leaving I turn back once more. "And I was born here, lady. I'm just as Korean as you and your son are. Don't you dare project your prejudices and racism onto me." With that, I close the door and return to my house. I probably just put myself in dire circumstances, but the passion that brewed within me in that moment was hard to ignore. She never really liked me much, but now there's no doubt that she hates me. I stole her precious trophy of a son away from her, and I didn't even do it intentionally. I can't ignore the heavy beating of my heart when I close my door. I feel like I did something incredibly dangerous, even though his mother is not the one that had hurt him. "Noona?" Jaewook's voice rings from the hallway. I put on a smile and hand him his backpack.