Ba Reum was feeling nervous. After weeks of rehabilitation and adjusting medications and even some operations, his mother would be finally released from the hospital.
Tomorrow was the day. Ba Reum had already cleaned their house 3 times before he admitted that it was as clean as he could possible get.
He had been hoping that this day would arrive, and now that it's here, he knew that he had to share some things with his mother. She deserved to know who he was, and to make her decision regarding him based on what he had found out about his heritage.
Perhaps the kitchen counter could be cleaner.
Soo Jin heard the door to her hospital room open and she looked up from the crossword she was currently solving. She saw it was her son that entered and when he had closed the door and turned to face her fully it took all her control to not immediately frown.
She had known Ba Reum since he was a young age and she knew his quirks. She could see he was nervous for some reason. After he said hi to her, he went to sit, but before he sat, he moved the visitor chair just a bit, making it stand in an angle with the other chair. She was sure that if you put a mirror in between, you wouldn't notice any difference.
Then he sat down and he didn't talk.
5 seconds later, he straightened the pile of magazines on her side table.
Then he sat back. Her eyebrows really raised when he moved her water glass and carafe to stand in 45° angle of each other. They had really worked on him getting over this behaviour, but his OCD always got worse when he got nervous about something.
"Ba Reum, are you okay?" she asked eventually.
She hoped that he was just nervous that she was going home. He had been very worried about her and her recovery. She had lost her spleen and part of her lung had been damaged so badly that they had to remove it. She had also lost her pancreas and would have to be on insulin for the rest of her live. Her womb of course, was also removed.
But she was alive and if this was the worst of it, she knew she had gotten off lightly. Ba Reum knew about the damage as well though, and they had been dealing with it for several weeks already. She didn't understand his sudden nervousness.
"I'm fine." He said, and leaned back in his chair, his crossed leg making nervous up and down motions. She didn't pry, knowing it was better to let him come to her with his problems.
"I just wanted to tell you something."
"I'm listening." She said, making sure her full attention was on him. He swallowed nervously and put his both feet on the ground, leaning forward nervously with his elbows on his knees.
"I found out about who my real parents are." He said. Soo Jin was shocked. She felt her heart sink. Was this his way to say that he wanted to return to them. The sudden announcement took her breath away.
She swallowed, and decided that she would do whatever was the best for him, even if it would hurt her if he indeed wanted to go back to them.
"Do, do you want to go back to them?" she asked, trying not to let her emotions colour her voice. She succeeded quite well in making a neutral tone.
Ba Reum sat up, looking alarmed.
"NO." he exclaimed, making Soo Jin pull back a bit from his loud voice. "No." he repeated a bit more in a normal tone of voice. The tightness around her heart loosened and she could breathe a bit better.
"I don't want to go back. Just hear me out first." Ba Reum said warily. Soo Jin realised that Ba Reum had difficulty with telling her this, as if he didn't really want her to know, but felt that she must.
"If you want to. But only if you want to tell. You can have your secrets if you think it's better." She said. Ba Reum looked torn for a second, as if he was contemplating on not telling her whatever was on his mind, but his face got a determined look soon enough.
"I have to. I don't want any lies between us." He said gravely. And she listened to his story.
"The family I lived with, they thought that I was a monster. I remember now that I ran away from them because they hurt me." Ba Reum said, and Soo Jin leaned forward to grasp his hand in hers.
"but they weren't my biological parents. You saw what OZ is on the TV?" he asked her and she nodded.
"They used to follow me around as well, because I have the psychopath gene." He said, letting his first bombshell drop.
"I know you Ba Reum, you aren't a psychopath." She said, "was this the thing you wanted to tell me?" she asked, but he shook his head.
"No. Like I said, I discovered that the people that I lived with weren't my biological parents. It turned out that my mother and the mother of another child did the psychopath test on us and learned that we both had the gene. They feared that we would become monsters and traded us when we were babies. They made a pact to kill the child if he showed any signs of psychopathy." Ba Reum said and stopped talking when Soo Jin gasped.
"Ba Reum, what awful people." Soo Jin got out of bed and hugged Ba Reum close. Ba Reum leaned in the embrace.
"I think the woman who pretended to be my mother knew who my parents were, because she treated me as if I was a monster." He said, a tear escaping from his eye, readying to tell the part he feared telling the most.
"Mom, my father is the Head Hunter." He said, his voice raspy from the tears he was holding back.
To say those word out loud made him feel queasy. He dared not to look up at his mother, afraid to see fear in her eyes or disgust. She was still holding him, but he felt that she had stiffened when he told her that.
"Ba Reum, look up please." She said softly. Ba Reum looked up, tears in his eyes.
Of course at that moment the door opened and a nurse came in to check in on Soo Jin. Ba Reum couldn't take the tension and fled.
Soo Jin sighed. She had to admit, it had startled her to hear that confession from her son. She had not expected that at all. Everything he said piled up against him. It was no wonder that he was a bit broken when she had found him.
She thought deeply how she felt about it all, knowing that she best come to terms with everything that she could be honest to Ba Reum. She knew that a lot of people would drop him, or at least look at him differently once they knew who his father was.
But she had raised him, not from when he was a baby, but she had gotten him long enough to know him. She had seen him grow and flower in his own special way.
The nurse left and told Ba Reum that he could get inside again. She was glad to know that he hadn't fled entirely. He shuffled back in, his hands in his pockets, his eyes firmly aimed to the ground.
"Ba Reum, please look at me." She said, and he lifted his eyes. She could see how tense he was, his shoulders rigid.
"I don't care about who sired or birthed you, or even who took care of you when you were a child. You are my son and for me you are perfect." She said, "And that they didn't take care of you as they should have is shame on them. I don't care whose genes you share, you are not your parents. You are you, unique and special. How could you be guilty of anything, how could a small child ever be responsible for something his parents did?" She said, her voice determined.
"Mom, you mean that?" Ba Reum said, his voice full of wonder, his eyes shimmering.
"That you even have to ask." She said. He flew into her arms, hugging her as hard as he dared. Soo Jin felt his tears wetting her shoulder and hugged back, not caring about the way her scars twinged in pain. Her son needed the comfort, and he will get it.
"Just promise me one thing?" she said.
"Anything mom." He said.
"If you ever feel the urge to hurt anyone beyond the normal 'I'm dealing with idiots', talk to me first." He snorted through his tears, a smile appearing on his face.
"Of course I will."
Yo Han had been in turmoil for several days. He had been ignoring the many phone calls of his mother and when she finally picked up the courage to come over, he didn't open the door. He had mixed feelings about her, but for now the feelings of betrayal won out, because they stung the worst.
"Yo Han, I think you should speak to her." Hong Ju said, when his phone was ringing again.
"Why?" he said shortly. She knew how betrayed he felt because off of his mother. Hong Ju sat besides him and took his hand in her.
"You love her. For all she did wrong she loves you and you love her back." Hong Ju said.
"But how can I forgive her?" he asked.
"Let her confess her crimes? Do charity work? Go to a shrink?" Hong Ju offered, "but I think you should start with talking to her. Forgiving can come later."
"Do you think that will help?" Yo Han asked. Hong Ju thought back on the past few weeks and the confrontation that had happened with her own father and the guilt that had eaten her up. It was not the same crime his mother had done, but still she felt like she could understand the woman a little.
"I think it will help. Besides, I don't want you to cut all ties now and regret it later." Hong Ju bit her lips a bit and then plunged in with the next information, "besides, perhaps you want your child to meets it's grandmother?" she said.
He looked up at her in surprise.
"You're pregnant?" he asked. She smiled at him and nodded.
Ji Eun was so glad when her son decided to talk to her again. It was a difficult conversation and he had demanded to know all details about his switch. She felt the hostility when talking to him, but she felt as if the bridge hadn't been completely destroyed.
It had been hard to talk about that period in her live, when she was a broken woman. When he asked about Ba Reum, she flinched, and confessed to him that she would never be able to accept the baby that had been born from her womb.
She had sworn to him that she would be honest from now on.
When she left, he didn't know that she was going to turn herself in today at the police for switching her child. She would walk her path to forgiveness.
The normal evening quickly turned sour when Kim Hee Jung went to open the door and saw the police standing in front of it with a warrant. They wanted to question her about willingly switching her baby with another baby.
She had never expected to hear about that ever again and was shocked. When her husband came to see what was going on he was shocked as well, but for different reasons then her.
"My wife would never do something like that." He said.
Hee Jung looked down.
"Miss, can you answer my question. Did you willingly and knowingly switch your son for another baby?" she nodded her head, not able to answer the question out loud. Her husband could only stare at her.
"And did you make a pact to kill him should he ever show signs of psychopath behaviour?" the detective asked and she gasped and looked up, her eyes wide in fear. How could have known? There was only one other person who knew this.
"How did you know?" she asks in shock, and her husband turns away from her. He had never been nice to the child, but to go as far as murder? No, never.
"Are you going to arrest me now?"
"I can't. I just wanted everyone to know." The detective said.
"You can't?" she said hesitantly.
"Nope, statute of limitations and all. It has been too long ago. I just wanted everyone to know what kind of person you were." The gruff detective limped away, but she ran out after him, grabbing his arm.
"Did you find my son?" she asked him, looking up at him. He looked back at her.
"No, we haven't been able to find Jae Hoon. He's probably dead."
"No, not that one. My real son." She answered. He had looked at her in disgust, and just went away.
When Min Jae heard from his father what his mother had done, he had been ashamed and angry. True, some of his memories of his older brother had not been happy ones, but to make a pact to kill him?
After he got over the shock, he mustered up the courage and went to the police station. He had asked for the detective with the bad leg and was promptly shown a sloppy desk with a gruff man sitting behind him.
"My Name is Jung Min Jae. You have visited my mother a few days ago." Min Jae started and the detective nodded.
"yes I did." he said, clearly holding back.
"I know that I don't deserve it, but if you found Jae Hoon, I would like to meet him again." Min Jae said, "and if you found my biological brother, I wouldn't mind meeting him either. If they want to meet with me at least." Min Jae said, and he could see the gaze of the man in front of him soften.
"Jae Hoon probably has died when he ran away from home. But you already met your biological brother, or so I've been told." Min Jae looked at the man, surprised.
"Who?" he started to ask.
"Dr Sung Yo Han."
To say that Min Jae was surprised when he discovered it had been the doctor he had met
on halmoni's case was an understatement.
His head reeled with this information, but that evening he called the man, hoping that he wouldn't be pushed away.
After an only slightly awkward conversation, they were going to visit their sister next week, who was living on her own in an assisted flat.
She would love to meet her brother.
Moo Chi leaned back at his desk when he saw Min Jae leave. He had discussed it with Yo Han and Ba Reum before.
Yo Han had wanted to meet his family, but didn't know how to reach out, so Moo Chi had helped him a bit. Ba Reum had decided that it had been best that no one knew that Jae Hoon had survived, not wanting to lose his quit live.
Moo Chi had never told Ba Reum or Yo Han that he had confronted Kim Hee Jung with her crimes. He had been disgusted by the way she hadn't want to know about Ba Reum, already written him of as a monster. He was glad that they had decided to let Jae Hoon die. It was best no one knew he was still alive. It would only ruin his live.
Moo Chi grabbed his coat and went home. His brother had cooked his favourite. Japchae, without the carrots.
Life was good.