Still A_Stray: Living With Stray Kids (ot8 fanfic)

Chapter 14

Sunday~

I never cry because I know that it'll never change

The members were all expected at JYP that afternoon, so the five of us—3Racha, Hyunjin, and me—piled into the car and returned to our dorm to get ready. Once they left, I took the time to shower and dress myself in clean clothes that didn't belong to my brother. The dorm was quiet compared to the noise I'd experienced in the past couple of days; it had been a while since I'd had any time alone.

I took a walk into the city, breathing in the cool air and buying myself some bungeoppang from a street vendor. You couldn't really find them in America, and I'd missed the taste of the fish-shaped waffles and the sweet red bean paste they were filled with. Everything in Seoul was exactly how I remembered it.

Minus my family, of course. In my childhood, Seoul had always been a place of travel, visiting for a week or so when an important relative came to town, or to see some famous show. But those trips had always been accompanied by my parents, and now I remembered my mother's clipped, usually disappointed voice along with the flashing lights.

I forced my thoughts away from that. My mother ... my mother was a piece of my life I tried very, very hard to ignore. Somehow, she always found a way to slip into my thoughts, but I'd gotten better at blocking her out. It had been especially hard in the first couple weeks I'd been in America. Every decision I made, her voice was in my head, questioning it. And whenever my homework weighed down on me like a physical stone, or I looked back at my writing pieces and found nothing worthy of showing to the rest of the world, she was there, telling me it was foolish to run from everything I knew and pursue some fruitless dream half a world away.

It was her voice that made me want to give up, but at the same time, it was her voice that kept me from actually doing so. However terrible I was doing in America, I was away from her. And however much her voice persisted in my head, it would be much worse than that if I ever went back. I would have to hear her, look her in the eye and tell her I'd failed, and that was enough drive to keep me going.

After a while, I found other reasons to keep myself motivated, keep myself working towards the finish line, and her voice faded over time. But I know it will never fade away completely. It's just one of those things that follows you, wherever you go. I accepted that a long time ago.

There were other things that made me want to give up, though. Learning new culture, new customs, was hard in itself; trying to survive college on top of it all was practically a suicide mission. But I'd always been good at studying. I threw myself into my work; I met with teachers, wrote hundreds of emails, chose to study in the library or my dorm instead of going out for the night. I probably would've wasted away my whole life like that if not for Claire.

She showed me college was about having fun, too. I could prioritize my work, but I couldn't prioritize it over my life. I'd come to the U.S. because I wanted a better education than the one that had been set up for me—an education on things I actually wanted to learn, where I didn't have to visit home every night—but also because I wanted to live. See the world, however cliche that sounds, where I wanted and how I wanted. Freedom in its truest form. And sitting at a desk going over mathematical formulas wasn't freedom—it was just a different kind of cage.

But I managed to get out of it, and it took hell to do so.

-

The thing is, my parents weren't exactly on board with the whole 'college in America' plan. As in, I told them about it a week before my departure.

I hadn't wanted to cut it so close, but it had never been the right time, and I had always been afraid. But in the end, my fear was unnecessary. My mother had just looked me in the eye after I'd told her, told me that if I wanted to spend my life piss-poor at whatever college in America that would have me, struggling and alone, I should. It will be a good lesson for you, to learn better respect. And when you come crawling back home, not even 1000₩‎ in your pocket, we will welcome you with open arms. Then maybe you will see the importance of family, since you clearly have not learned.