Still A_Stray: Living With Stray Kids (ot8 fanfic)

Chapter 42

I'll do anything for you

I couldn't speak.

Four years, and the sound of her voice still cut through me like a knife, rendering my body useless. My joints had locked, my blood frozen in my veins. My heartbeat felt like drum beats. Four years and it still had this effect on me—like a deer in headlights. My knees ached to be pressed to the ground, my mouth already shaping into words of apology, shame, begging, even though I hadn't done anything wrong.

Somehow, on her lips even my name could sound like a rebuke.

I hated that just her voice could do this to me. I hated that the control she had over me hadn't wavered in the years since we'd spoken.

But what could I expect? After all, she was my mother.

"Yeji?" My mother repeated, her voice holding an air of impatience—like this was an ordinary call and she had something important to get back to. Like I hadn't just contacted her out of the blue for the first time in four years.

I forced my jaw to unlock, forced words to come out. "Mother. I ... I need your help."

I could hear her disapproval over the phone. "My day is going well, too, daughter, thank you for asking. Have you eaten?"

Like you care. I bit back the words. I was above this; I wouldn't let her words get a rise out of me, no matter how deep they cut.

Her voice again, this time floating to me from memories.

The time she'd grounded me and stopped cooking for me when I'd gotten a poor grade on a test.

The time she hadn't spoken to me for a week after I'd thrown a fit at a public park.

The time I'd told her I liked girls and she'd looked me dead in the eye and told me I was deluding myself and to never say those words again.

The time she'd hugged me when I'd gotten lost at the supermarket and demanded I never scare her like that again.

The time she'd been there at my piano recital when she said she wouldn't be able to make it, clapping in the audience.

The time she kissed my forehead after she'd come home late from work, in the darkness when she thought I was asleep. How I'd stayed up every night after that for hours, my eyes fixed on the door, holding my breath until I fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

I pushed them away. Put the thought of Stray Kids in my head like a beacon, clearing away the fog of old memories. Set the image of them when they heard the news—desolate and broken—like a goal. A focus point, to get me through this conversation.

"JYP is planning to disband Stray Kids," I said. "Changbin—your son—will lose his career, and his friends, his reputation. I've been living with them for the past month, and they're very close. It would kill him if they were separated."

Silence over the phone. "And what do you want me to do about it?"

"You have friends in JYP. You work there. Talk to JYP's team, JYP himself if you have to. Convince them not to make Stray Kids disband. I know you can do it." I know you can do it because power and standing is the only thing you've prided yourself in for decades. Power and standing are the two things you taught me to reach for above all else and take by whatever means. I know you have it—I just have to convince you it's worth it to use it up.

My mother hummed thoughtfully. "A very tedious task. I would be stepping out of my job's bounds, and you know I would hate to be seen as a disputer in the company. It might take months—"