Earnestly, I turn around to face my siblings and bob my head up and down, pride and humility shining bright in my eyes. "It was an honour serving with you, men."
I sniffle under my breath exaggeratedly and quickly wipe away the invisible tears beneath my eyes. Silence follows my statement, as they all blink up at me and I do not miss the bemusement that stains their faces from my words.
They are looking at me as if I have just told them that I'm pregnant. As if they have not watched enough war movies to know what I'm clearly insinuating. It has been an honour to live and grow up around them before we die at the hands of our mother. Wryly, I drop the act and stare back at them in an unimpressed way.
Chu Hua is the first to speak up, "What are you talking about?"
While rolling my eyes upward, I make the decision to explain myself unwillingly. At the same time, I am trying not to sound annoyed at them for even making me explain the bit I did. "We are about to die so… haven't you seen in the army? Like, when they're about to die, they say that."
"But I'm not a man," Chu Hua slowly says, squinting up at me as if to convey that she thinks I'm an idiot.
"Yes, I know. I meant it like—"
"I'm waiting," our mum sternly scolds, cutting me off.
"Thanks for ruining the moment, Chu Hua. All you had to do was curtly nod. Give me one of these." I replicate the action I'm talking about. "Is that so hard?"
She just shakes her head after giving me a weird look and is the first to bravely walk into the living room. After chancing a glance at a blanched out Yang Jin, I trudge after Chu Hua into the room. And nothing could have prepared me for the furious expression painted on my mum's face. I stumble back and shield myself behind my sister, just in case. Franklin is standing behind her and the disappointment that is directed at me almost knocks the air out of me.
"Yang Jin, I won't wait until the second coming of Jesus for you to get in here," Amma snaps in anger and the thundered look on her face, makes me shrink in fear. Oh, shit.
After a few seconds, Yang Jin shuffles into the room. This time Ji Ho is holding his hand, now wide awake and watching the whole thing with enlarged, guileless eyes, scared too. Like we all probably are.
Death isn't something I thought I would have to embrace so early in life. A loud silence sinks into the room, and I almost open my mouth to sing a song. A song about forgiveness and mercy. Amma looks at the twins and beckons them over. Hesitantly, they walk over to her and she looks them over as if they could have gotten injured while with my brother and me.
"Gwaenchanh-euseyo?" she softly asks the twins who nod apprehensively. After pursing her lips in satisfaction, her concerned tone drops and she adds, "Good. Go up to your room. I'll deal with you later."
Chu Hua gapes in surprise and Ji Ho buries his face into his chest fearfully. Quickly, they both run upstairs with their feet pitter-patter on the floorboard. My attention is directed back onto my mum when she folds her arms over her chest and looks at Yang Jin and me. More so Yang Jin than me.
"I'm only going to ask this once," she starts, her gaze darkening dangerously. "Where were you?"
Instinctively, my mouth opens and I immediately respond with, "McDonald's."
"I was arrested," Yang Jin surprises me when he murmurs beside me.
Our mother bobs her head up and down, and when I study her expression, she does not seem shocked at his revelation.
Painfully, I pinch my eyes shut.
She knew. Somehow she found out that my older brother was temporarily put in jail. She just wanted to see if we would lie to her and… I just did.
Fuck. Me.
"And you were at McDonald's?" she asks me lowly, watching me with an unconvinced expression.
With a stiff smile, I double-down on my lie and nod.
"Where were the twins?"
"Uh… with me. They were with me the whole time."
"At McDonald's?"
"Maccy D's," I murmur in agreement.
Amma stares at me earnestly.
Swallowing a gulp, I hold her stare with some difficulty.
"She knows you're lying," Yang Jin mutters under his breath, but with the silence that has consumed this house, his words reach our parents too.
"He knows that I know," Amma replies and her gaze hardens on me. "Yet, he's still choosing to look me dead in the eyes and lie."
Guiltily, I avert my gaze onto my shoes which are drilling holes into the floorboards.
"Why were you arrested, Yang Jin?"
He's quiet for a while and when I peek over at him through my lashes, I see him looking anywhere but at them. Eventually he tells them, "I got into a fight… at a bar."
"Why?"
"Some guy… was busy harassing Francine when she uh… went to go and get us some drinks at the bar. I told him to back off and then he made this comment… that she was asking for it by wearing a… skintight dress."
"And then you beat him up?" Amma muses, her voice raising an octave higher. My brother just nods. "Is that the way I raised you? To use your fists in an argument?"
"That guy asked for it. Franny can wear whatever she—Shit, Francine." He pulls his phone out of his back pocket and switches it on.
Amma looks at him in disbelief. "Give me that phone!"
Yang Jin looks up at her in confusion. "What?"
"Give me your phone," I don't miss the slight crack in Amma's voice when she demands that.
"But I want to make sure that Francine is safe."
"Is she the one who almost spent the night in a jail cell?" When her eyes start glistening with tears, my chest tightens and I almost want the ground to just swallow me whole and spit me out into a cavern of darkness, away from these feelings of guilt which are beginning to consume me.
"No, but—"
"Yang Jin, just do as she says," Franklin exasperatedly speaks up for the first time during this entire debacle. "Please, just give your mum your phone."
Reluctantly, heong switches his phone off and hands it over to Amma who does everything in her power to keep the tears from spilling over. She glances away when she blinks and two fat drops stain her cheeks. Her arm comes up to wipe the tears away and I start feeling really horrible. I feel like I made a terrible mistake not calling them when Chu Hua told me that he got arrested.
Shakily, Amma says, "Now go to your room. You're grounded."
Yang Jin looks perplexed for a second and he lets his eyes wander over to Franklin who just nods at him, silently telling him to just go up to his room; he's grounded. With one last guilty look appearing on his face when he glances over at our mum who is trying her hardest not to cry even more, he spins around on his heels and hurriedly rushes up the stairs.
Now, I want to cry. I feel extremely bad. Amma is not one to cry so when she does… we know we fucked up badly.
With one last sniffle, Amma wipes her face and heads to the kitchen.
Franklin then looks at me and the disappointment on his face makes me bury my face into my chest in shame. "Why didn't you call us when you found out, Seong Jin?"
"Because Chu Hua said… that I shouldn't. Which in retrospect… saying it out loud sounds dumber than it was a few hours ago."
"I am very disappointed in you."
"I know," I whisper audibly and my chest hurts when he says that to me. "I'm sorry."
"I know you all think your mum is strong, and she is, but when it concerns her children's safety, that's when she breaks. Because even if you are all her strength, you are also her greatest weakness."
"Okay, I confess. Me and the twins did not actually go to McDonald's. I lied."
"Yes, we all knew that, Seong Jin. You were exposed a long time ago," his voice is louder, conveying his frustration with me.
"How did you guys even find out? Did someone call you and tell you that we were at the police station?"
"You sent your mum a picture of yourself at the police station."
My eyes screw close as if in physical pain. So the selfie I was going to send to Taylor must have accidentally gotten sent it to Amma. What the hell is up with me constantly sending things to the wrong person? First Kai, now my mother.
"So if your siblings want to be pissed at anyone, it's you. You're the sellout."
"And accidental sellout," I justify.
Franklin shakes his head and then he tells me to wait here. He strides into the kitchen and after some murmuring of voices, he comes back and puts Yang Jin's phone in my hand. I grip it in my hand and stare after the retreating back of my father as he goes back into the kitchen to probably comfort his wife.
Softly I rap my knuckles on the door before pressing my ear on the door and asking him if he's decent. When he confirms that he is in fact decent, I push the door open and peek through cautiously.
I see him lying in his bed with his laptop resting atop his belly, the sound of the beginning of a movie coming from there. I bet he just sent Francine a message right now to ask her if she got home safely. When I walk into the room and shut the wooden traipse behind me, I rest against it tiredly and look over at my brother.
When his eyes move away from gazing at the screen and flicker over to me expectantly, I remove myself from the door I have glued my back onto and approach him.
Reaching the edge of his bed, I climb on top of it and start bouncing up and down, causing him to wobble up and down along with me. Laughingly, I prompt him to stand up and jump off the bed with me. But he just palms his laptop lest it falls onto the ground and shatters. A glower lands on me as he puts his movie on pause to look at me unimpressed.
"You're being childish," he mutters when I don't stop bouncing on his bed.
"So what? It's fun."
"Go and do that in your own bed, dipshit."
"Hey now, no need for that language," I reprimand him with a scowl of disappointment painting my face before I finally stop bouncing on his bed and instead drop down onto my arse, sitting cross-legged before him. "I got your phone back."
Hurriedly, he holds his hand out and I hold it out to him. As he's about to take it from my hand, I reel it back and then look at him earnestly.
"What?"
"You really ought to clear your browser history, heong."
"You—" he cuts himself off and grabs the phone out of my hand aggressively, accidentally scratching the skin of my backhand off. I pull my hand back and glare at him furiously as I massage it against my chest. "Why are you looking through my phone in the first place?"
"You don't have a password on it."
"And that automatically gives you access to my phone?"
"It… yeah, it does, because you did not even lock it. I thought you had nothing to hide so I just skimmed through it. By the way, loved the nudes that you get sent. Nice to see that you still have them when you have a girlfriend."
"Shut up. They're in the recycling bin."
"Oh, just in case Franny dumps you?"
He thins his gaze onto me with a small sneer. "Okay Seong Jin, you've delivered my phone; now… get the fuck out."
"Sheesh, not even a thank you." As I am walking over to the door, I throw a final comment over my shoulder, "By the way, thank you for throwing me under the bus. Now I know to never try and lie to get you out of trouble."
"You did not read the room correctly. Amma already knew that I had been arrested."
"How did you know?"
He shrugs. "I could just see it. The same look of fury and… disappointment," he glances up at me and our eyes meet, "that I have been getting ever since I stepped foot in this house."
"Heong," I mutter, shaking my head in exasperation as I lean into the door again, crossing my arms, "you know Amma loves you."
"I know," he replies adamantly, "I know that. Believe me, I do. She sat me down and we talked and… she loves me."
"So what's your deal now?"
"Even though she may love me, it doesn't negate the fact that… I'm a disappointment."
A deep sigh leaves my lips and I watch him in pity. It's sad. Really, it is. For the majority of his life, my brother has been angry. Angry at his own parent for inadvertently abandoning him. Angry at his new parent for trying to replace his late parent. I have never seen him being so openly vulnerable with… anyone.
To be quite honest, most of us bottle up our emotions or we just keep them to ourselves.
The last time I saw my sister crying was back when she came home from reception school. She had lost her tooth while playing in the jungle gym and also managed to split her forehead. After the school almost got sued by my mum for negligence and my sister got stitches, the twins were taken to another school. From that day onward, I have never seen her cry again. Honestly, sometimes I worry that she may be a sociopath.
"You're not a disappointment," I say to him reassuringly. "You're just like… really lazy."
"Wow, thank you for clearing that up for me."
"No, seriously. If you just got your arse off your bed once in a while and just tried your luck, you could maybe land yourself a job with that business degree you have and then once you move out, you can take your TV with you; have some furniture to start you up."
"You want me to move out that bad, huh?"
"It wouldn't make much of a difference to me. I'm moving out by late June, mid-July."
"Oh, yeah. You're going to university," he exclaims, suddenly remembering that I'm not as young as I used to be. Before I can ask him if he is going to miss me, he says to me, "I'm gonna enjoy the extra space."
"And," I drawl out and jokingly add, "that's why you're a disappointment."
"Fuck off," he responds with an amused, disbelieving chuckle and then thoughtfully he muses, "Come to think of it, how did Amma find out?"
My eyes widen and I quickly avert my gaze, circling through the thoughts in my mind to present my response to him. "Uh… must be that parental intuition thingy ma bob. Bumoui jiggam-eun ganghabnida."
"No that is bullshit, Seong Jin. If she didn't hear it from either one of us then how did she know?" His eyes shift into a glossy, wondering gaze until they land on me and he thins them suspiciously. "Seong Jin…"
I refrain from appearing nervous. "What?"
"You didn't… tell her, did you?"
I scoff, waving him off dismissively and I hope I don't look as guilty as I feel. "Why would I do that?"
"Yeah, it would be really stupid of you to tell Amma that I got arrested and then later on lie to her face."
"Exactly. And you know me, I'm smarter than that."
"You're really not," he mutters out, looking at me with an unimpressed expression on his face and the awkward grin on my face drops. "It would be just like you to do something stupid like this."
"Heong, look at me. Look at my face. I did not tell Amma that you were arrested." Well, not on purpose, at least.
We share a staring contest. One where he tries by all means to figure out whether I am telling the truth or if I am lying to him, and where I am trying by all means to maintain said eye contact with him. I realise that I did not stutter in my statement, the tell-tale of a lie whenever I speak.
"Haji anh-assda. Nan jinjihada," I exclaim desperately.
"And it seems you have become quite the liar too," he eventually states, a look of mocking disappointment painting his face and causing me to deflate in defeat. "Seong Jin, how could you?"
"It was an accident. I was taking a selfie at the police station to show Taylor how cool I am… and then I must have sent it to Amma by accident. It wasn't my fault. That mean clerk distracted me."
"Well, you know what they say where I'm from," he begins, folding his arms over his chest, "a snitch is a snitch no matter the sitch."
My face scrunches up in confusion. "Where you're from?"
"Prison. Fresh out, remember?"
I stare at him dryly.