kittygotpaws

[kittygotpaws]

Can't Catch Me Now(2)

2.YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN KID

24th July,2024

There's writing all over the wall

Park Sunghoon was an enigmatic man. I never quite knew him; although people long considered me the person closest to him. Our house had turned into Mr Park's mansion: cold, dissociate and carrying an eerie silence. It had turned comfortable over the years, though when I had first entered his place, I vowed to never allow myself to feel at home here. The quiteness followed us everywhere,hidden in every corner. Our dinners were quite, conversations restricted to work and us sleeping in separate rooms. People might have considered strangers confined to a place, but this what we truly preferred. Us placidly drowning in our thoughts.

Splatters of blood residing on the muzzle and barrel on his Parker Hale, "thrown out" post-it notes tucked away in his room, hidden writings on the walls of his father's room. All for the eyes of someone competent. 

If things were going well, the place would be locked away for investigation and in a few hours, I'd be declared dead or missing.

Not to Sunghoon.

Park Sunghoon

We were the perfect family.My mother:the devoted wife, and philanthropist. She played her role perfectly in high society; gentle, supportive of her husband and always in the shadows of my father. That's what people expected of her. My father was the calculative business tycoon. Occasionally involved in charities and often giving guest lectures and motivation to wide-eyed,bright students. He was considered an inspiration to many people, expanding the family business at exponential rates. My brother, the heir apparent. Always top of his class, capable of having diplomatic conversations with adults,disciplined and expected to succeed my father; rather be better than him.

All was in place, except for me. The other child. The backup plan for my father, incase something-unfortunate-were to happen to my brother. The child my mother found burdensome. The one left to nannies and truly, I felt as though I was on my own. I was hidden away from society for most of my life; my presence known only to a few close family acquitances.

I wasn't the son of Park Dan Tae. I was simply Sunghoon.

Away from the crowd, a creature of ordinary existence. The Sunghoon who fell into a routine, of little and yet plenty choice. I'd go to school, then at home,I'd study with the tutors my mother hired and then attend figure skating classes, come home,get homework done,dinner served in my room and then fall asleep. It was maddeningly boring routine, but one that's comfortable. I lived with my mother;us staying in the penthouse close to the lighthouse.

My parents had separated on my seventh birthday. One faulty comment from the guests, spiralled into an explosive argument between my parents. All for them saying,'is she aware of Mr Park's affair?'

 My mother was aware of my father's numerous infedilities; she feigned ignorance. All because she was a shadow of the person she previously was:she had nowhere to go. She wished for him to not show it in front of people. In the shadows,the affairs would simply be baseless rumours, but if exposed to the public,it'd become known for what it really is: a blatant disrepect towards one's spouse. There was one thing I knew for sure about my mother,it was that she was obsessed with what people thought of her. She didn't want to be the beloved wife, rather she'd be respected,even feared. The title of the beloved wife reduced her to a mere background figure; and as much as she refused to accept it, she had become the "beloved wife". Later pitied, and further mocked by people. 'She couldn't satisfy her husband', they said.

Me and my mother lived by the lighthouse; it was one owned by my father. A compromise requested by my grandfather. 

My mother didn't choose me. She'd rather have my brother; he was her beloved. The one who made her feel loved, the promising star and the apple of her eye. The one she wanted. In the heat of the argument, on yelling to live separately, my father grabbed my brother, refusing to let him go. I recognized the scornful look on his face, one that screamed he didn't wish to have to do anything with me.My mother, with no choice apparently, was left to take me with her. It wasn't a divorce. Just a separation. 

Following that, my mother drowned herself in alcohol. A coping mechanism,I'd recognized,for what her life had become. Left me in the care of nannies. They'd drive me around,get me the things I wanted and hosted birthdays on my mother's behalf. For years, I hadn't been visited by my father or my brother. There was an invisible wall I couldn't bring myself to cross; to ask my mother to visit them. They weren't much, but they were family.A connection I wished to keep. 

I had seen my mother drinking a whole of alcoholic beverages. Never sober. I despised that smell. She'd blissfully smile, a state of ecstasy brought by it, having no care for anything around her. I greatly disliked how she'd behave drunk; all sense of reality evaporating from her, leaving a mess of person for others to deal with. She'd hit, enough to hurt but not quite to leave a mark. I didn't scream or cry, just watch her wickedly flaunt around the house, demanding for my brother.

'Jihoon', she'd drunkenly hug me on some nights. I couldn't bring myself to hug her back. She mistook me for my brother. Once sober, she wouldn't hug with as though all her life depended on it. It was a sickening feeling I relished while it lasted:to be loved by my mother. Soberity granted her a reminder of the son she really wanted. My brother and I resembled each other greatly, I heard. Gatherings always concluded in people being taken aback by our appearances, ending with how perfect Jihoon was and how much of a troublemaker I seemed. That was when we were younger. Growing up,their opinions of me shifted to how aloof and indifferent I was to them. My brother, all smiles,greeted them as old friends. Respectfully ofcourse.

I was the constant reminder to my mother of her perfect son. 

On some days, she visit me, hug me tightly, cook for me and cuddle me to sleep. It put me in a daze; a spark of hope bubbling inside me. She loves me, I'd think to myself. All for the blissful bubble bursting and her blurting out my brother's name. She missed him so fucking much,it hurt to see. I wasn't the one she wanted. 

She was slowly losing all sense of reality. Her delusions and the truth morphing into whatever she wished for.She'd have episodes of breaking down everything around her, screaming for everyone to leave her alone and threatening to kill the servants if they took Jihoon from her. They didn't do anything, just fulfilled her obligations to being alone. I caught their pitying glances towards me. I was a mere ghost, blending into the surroundings. Someone who simply did not exist in my mother's world.

'Mama,I got a perfect score'. A curt nod.

'I placed first in the competition today'. An obligatory smile.

'The teachers praised me'. No reaction.

I'd beat myself to understand why she didn't love me. I wished for her to care for me, even if it's a tiny bit. I longed to understand her mind. Why was the unlovable, neglected creature who existed outside her hobbit? Her world seemed to orbit around my brother. I could only wish for me to her star, even just for a second.

It was summer to my ninth grade, I was reading Emma in room, when my father's assistant showed me. His face gloomy, and he forced himself to talk to us. Words stuck and forcing themselves down his throat.

My brother was dead. He killed himself.

My mother let out a blood curdling scream. She grabbed Mr Seo's collars, threatening to "kill" him,if he was joking. She was in a trance like state of denial. It just couldn't happen. He was still alive and well, in her mind. Following the funeral, she had a physical altercation with my father. She hit his chest multiple times,screaming ,"You fucking killed him!" My father refused to fight back, allowing her to hurt him over and over again. She was hysteric. In the brief moments my father looked at me, for the first time in years, I could see the string of thoughts running through his head. He was a puzzle to me, only one that refused to accept my existence. His gaze wasn't of pity,grief or coldness, just an odd look of recognition. An acknowlegement of sorts.

The next few days were hell. My mother was possessed by grief and anger. Took her to never be sober; she'd quitely slip into my room and hover over me, calling out for Jihoon. It was scary, there was no one I tell. My father had long refused to accept me as his son, and my grandfather wouldn't do anything. The workers feared their employers and just treated with pitied glances and useless words of comfort. They knew the situation at hand and there was nothing they could do. One night, she'd snuck into my room, and choked me. Jolt of terror raised through me, and I screamed for help. 'Why couldn't it have been you?' She yelled in my face, tightening her grip over my throat. Tears welled up in my eyes, I cried out. An eerie silence followed her loss of grip, and she just stared at me. Analysing my face, before getting off me and leaving the room. My heart pounded greatly and I cried myself to sleep. 

I was truly unwanted. There was no reason for me to live.

Following nights were a nightmare. She'd stay in my room, observing all my movements. Just her and her thoughts,looking out of the world.

Her star had burned down, collapsing onto itself and pulling her towards it. She couldn't escape it.

Then followed the eerie stillness within the house, she didn't leave her room. She was absent in my days, refusing all forms of human contact.

She'd hung herself. 

She wore her wedding dress, and red heels. Completely intoxicated. No note left. Like an entity disappearing, as though it never existed. It was the only time she'd ever looked at peace in my presence.A look I'd never forget.

My father's assistant picked me up and I was officially in the custody of my father. I did not want to leave my room. I had turned into a safe haven for me, one place where I was allowed to exist. I hadn't cried yet. A test to myself, although I couldn't bring myself to cry over her, truth to be told. She was an evil woman, who wished for me to disappear. The child she never wanted. She was vile,cruel,inhuma-

"Follow me", a voice whispered beside me. I woke up and the room was consumed with darkness. No one inside. I locked myself in the dimly lit room, not wishing for human contact. I didn't want to see anyone. My eyes turned red and hollow, and a spirit of darkness hovered over me. A wave of shock and anger passed through me every time someone knocked on the door. "Go away", I'd yell. As days passed,the spirit began taking the form of a silhouette of a woman. No features but she was omnipresent. One I'd grown comfortable around. She'd talk to me.

"My marriage was disasterous", her tone dismissive and crude. One my mother would disapprove."I couldn't wait to get out of that hellhole"

"You know, you should visit me. I could use your company", she whispered in my ear. She was the only person near me, although I couldn't actually make out her features, she was slowly coming to life. She'd call out my name, whisper words of affirmations and hug me, not letting me out of her sight even once. She'd tell me stories of her childhood and marriage.

"Why did you choose to die?" I asked one evening, her cuddling next to me. She never let out an answer. 

I could vaguely see what she looked like: her ombre hair, high nose bridge, full lips that carried a smirk and her always wearing a wedding dress and red heels,the pointed kind. There was no colour to her, but she was there. The more I talked to her, the more I could see her.

"Come here", I heard her voice from outside the door. She was calling me out of the room.It had been days since I left it, all my food left outside the door. My father still refusing to meet me. "Let's play a game".

I followed her voice to the outside, the mansion empty. I could hear her footsteps,but no one in sight. She led me to my father's wine cell; it was usually off limits for me, and yet I was taken over this validation from this woman, I felt no fear. Just a pit of strangeness and cloud of tranquility over me. There in the middle of the room, stood the woman: doe eyed, with blaze of mischief dancing in her eyes, the familiar smirk and someone I recognized. My all too same mother, just younger and alive. I was taken aback by her presence, and stepped back as she came towards me. "Sunghoon, I loooved this placed", she slurred. She cupped my face, and looked over with love. She was here and real. Her hand warm and comforting, all just for me.

"Let's play a game,hmm?" she smiled, looking right at me. "Catch me if you can." She talked me as though she were talking to a child, her voice gentle,playful and full of love. It was tempting, I briefly questioned if she was real, but that disappeared once she held my hands. "Are you ready?"

I found myself nodding, no words coming out. And just like that, she sprinted out of the room. 

"Wait,mom!" I chased after her. I could hear her giggles echoing through the walls, and I smiled at this. I was happy and she was real.

She sat on the guard of the balcony, her back turned towards me. She slowly turned towards me, a soft smile growing on her lips before mouthing the words,'I love you'. Abruptly, she jumped down and I leapt forward to catch. She was gone again, disappearing into thin air. No, she was still here. I jumped over the balcony, in hopes to catch her when a hand reached out and pulled me back. Both out of the trance and into the mansion. I looked around, images of my surroundings blurring around me. She was still out there. I glanced to my sides,hoping to catch a glimpse of her. All that momentarily stopped, when I was hugged. It was tight, a broken sound coming from the person before I was engulfed by darkness.

I woke up, not in my room but in my father's. His nightstand was rather empty, except for the metal pyramid residing on it. To my right, my father sat, his head resting between his hands. This was the closest I'd been to him,physically, in years. Sensing me waking up, my father called out,"Sunghoon". This was real. I didn't know. He held my hands tightly, and held up my gaze. "Where is she?", I asked for my mother.

"She", his voice wavered,"she's not real".

I didn't believe him. She was there, and maybe he locked her away. All thoughts that suggested him harming her rushed to my mind. My nails dug into his hands. "No, you're lying. Where is she?" I yelled.

With each passing second, I was growing hysterical. He was lying, and she's hidden away. I needed to get to her. My body thrashed around, not wanting to wait any longer to meet her. My mind slowly turning restless. Any coherent thought in my head blurred out, and I could focus only the disappearing figure of my mother. She slipped away and I couldn't handle it anymore. I needed to get her, I need her. 

My father pushed me down on to the bed, calling for someone. Mr Seo came in front of me, quickly injecting me through my arms. I was losing energy, and my mind went numb. A silence of thoughts through my head, and stillness everywhere. My eyelids heavy. He had sedated me. I looked into my father's worried face, before falling unconscious.

Over the next few days,I was forced into the confinement of an empty room. I could only ever look at a few people. Most of my time spent looking out of the window. A psychiatrist visited everyday, asking me a few questions. None I could answer. My mind settled into a state of blankness. No thoughts formed, just images of things I saw. I was filled with nostalgia of something that never existed: moments of me with my parents, all happy and in a utopic place. All was well there. She wasn't real. The woman who loved me never existed in reality.

My father sat with me in silence for long hour everyday. He didn't ask anything much, just if I wanted to go out.

I accepted his invitation one cloudy afternoon. We walked through the garden, him never leaving my hand. It was quite for the most part.

"How do you feel?",he asked casually,as though, it was  something normal.

"I don't know", a vague answer. Couldn't bring myself to say more.

He sighed, thinking to himself. "Do you play chess?"

I paused for a bit, before answering,"yes"

"Would you like to play a game with me?"

And that's how most of our days for the rest of the summer went by. We played in silence, and unfortunately, I could never win against him. We played every morning,afternoon and night. Him constantly challenging me to defeat him. It wasn't much, but it brought a sense of normalcy. He'd  play more than chess. Forced me into reading 5 times more books than I'd usually read. Often times, challenged into tennis matches. All while calling out to me to make him lose. It made him humane.

He introduced me to the pyramid: everyone had a place on the pyramid. I stood in the middle and he was at the top. I needed to get to the top.

For that, Somin came into picture: carrying a soft resemblance to my mother, and already having earned my father's respect. She too was on top of the pyramid, and she was the challenge that would ultimately defeat my father. My salvation.  This was a game I needed to win no matter what. To get to the peak.

[kittygotpaws]

Can't Catch Me Now(1)

1.NATURE VERSUS NURTURE

Park Sunghoon

There’s blood on the side of the mountain

My mother always believed that humans were born with natural goodness instilled in them. The world and their experiences can lead them to a path of evil. She emphazized that it was our life’s work to stay on the right side of that line.

I begged to differ. My father was born evil. Cruelty ran through his veins. Objectively, a person who was born into a wealthy family,had a good upbringing should end up being morally and ethically right. And yet, my father was left with a twisted moral compass. In his last days, I began understanding him. In his own twisted mind,he was doing the right thing. It wasn’t always the right thing to do at the moment, but to do what is necessary. As much as you’d like to deny it, the world is a giant rat race. A barbaric one at that. One that liked to define a person as their position on the food chain.

My father had given a lecture on the debate of Nature vs Nurture, putting forward his own argument. I had attended that one. It was an unfaithful night. He was holding a conference for the interns at his office. He claimed it was both nature and nurture that played a role into how a person turns out to be. He presented the Chowsky’s theory that all children are born with the instinctive mental capacity to absorb  and produce knowledge. Furthering with Bandura’s experiment of children behaving aggressively after observing others. Throughout the session, his gaze was on me. A hidden challenge.

There comes Choi Somin into the picture. She was my father’s product,albiet I didn’t know whether she understood this fact or not. We were of the same age,entering the same highschool. That was when my father started his little experiment on the nature vs nurture.

Somin and I had little in common at that time. Her a child of a single mother, father no where to be found. Growing up mildly poor. Her mother was an ex model, my father claimed. Beauty was certainly genetic. Then there was me, a child of a large conglomerate owner. My mother was a volunteer at orphanages. I had all one could ask of the world.

Now, all he wanted to see, once put in the same environment, who’d produce the best results.

It was a war.

Somin didn’t know it was. All she believed was that I was her academic rival of sorts. Throughout the two years in school, we barely exchanged a few words. It was fucking disastrous.

The seed of jealousy that had been planted in me began growing exponentially.Everyday, I wished for nothing but her downfall. She didn’t deserve to beat me. There was a part of me that respected her and another part that wanted to destroy her more than anything.It was becoming ugly, all the dirt piling up under the rug for years up  until graduation.

I believed my father had gifted me three things: the succession,the puramid and her. Somin turned into my salvation from my father. The idea of her perpetually resided in my mind. She wasn’t a good person: she was selfish, cunning and ruthlessly competitive but not evil. A product of everyone around her. All contained within her quite façade. We were inherently the same,as much as she’d refuse to accept it.

She wasn’t the picture perfect girl she presented herself as. There were tiny cracks in glass molding her. She was all that I required. What I felt for her wasn’t love,that I knew for sure. It was this soft understanding of her,the part no one else saw, that rested in my mind. A part of her that’d do anything to survive.

The pyramid was the one thing that’d always remind me of my father. Everyone had their place,starting from the very bottom moving up to the peak. People like us, stayed at the top. Snow always landed on top. The bottom would get the melt of it. It was sharp, stains of blood scattered on it. It was the physical representation of the society’s social hierarchy. It was something I treasured.

15th June,2024

Sirens blared around our penthouse,the disappearance of Somin reached the news. Journalists piled around the place, like rats around a piece of cheese. The scene was pure madness.

Choi Somin had disappeared. What does it even truly mean? Would we find her dead, or had she simply vanished in thin air. No, it was certain she wouldn’t die. She was smart enough to escape death till now. Dying would simply crumble the castle she’d built out of her ideologies. She’d voluntarily left the place. All I needed was to find her.

It had been a few hours, she could be literally anywhere. I searched through her room; it was the same at first glance. The you’d start noticing the seemingly insignificant things missing. The purple hairbrush she loved, a mirror she bought with her first payment, and through her closet, it was all the dresses she’d bought herself that vanished. She didn’t carry anything of me with her. All the while, leaving a pool of her blood in the garden.

She was framing me for her “murder”. Let’s see how long she’d last.

[kittygotpaws]

@yourislandgirl

Can't Catch Me Now

You are a respected man in society: heir to a conglomerate controlling a wide portion of economy,a faithful husband, a man dedicated to his work and perhaps a law-abiding citizen.

Your wife is missing. Few think you have something to do with it and even fewer believe you did it. But you know the game she's playing.

Maybe a flawed iteration of the cat and mouse game. Well,games had always fascinated you. No harm in playing along,right?

[kittygotpaws]

Can't Catch Me Now

You are a respected man in society: heir to a conglomerate controlling a wide portion of economy,a faithful husband, a man dedicated to his work and perhaps a law-abiding citizen.

Your wife is missing. Few think you have something to do with it and even fewer believe you did it. But you know the game she's playing.

Maybe a flawed iteration of the cat and mouse game. Well,games had always fascinated you. No harm in playing along,right?