"When do you find out about the scholarship?" Tae asked, rolling over to look at Jin, who (for once) wasn't on his phone but had rather been staring blankly at the ceiling.

"The...oh, Dad told you." Jin sighed. "I don't know. It's stressing me out."

"We can tell," Jungkook mumbled, and Tae would have elbowed him had he not been across the room.

"Well, I'm bored," Tae announced after the silence had settled. "What do you guys want to do?" When nobody made any suggestions, Tae tilted his head, thinking out loud. "We could...hmm, we could go back through Yoongi's journal-"

"No," Jin and Jungkook both said immediately.

Tae threw his hands up. "It was just a suggestion!"

A knock on their door silenced their discussion.

"Hi, boys," their mom said, smiling tensely. "Would you guys like to play a board game or something?"

Tae looked over at Jin, who had resumed staring at the ceiling, before looking over to Jungkook.

"No thanks," Jungkook said without hesitation.

"Oh...well...maybe we could all-"

"I don't think so," Jungkook said, and their mom hesitated before nodding, biting her bottom lip.

"Please take care of Toaster then," she said quietly. "She's under Hobi's bed."

She shut the door.

Jungkook sighed heavily while Tae frowned.

"You didn't have to be that mean," Tae said, and Jungkook gave Tae a look.

"If I'm not mean, she'll start thinking that I like her, and I don't want that to happen. It doesn't make what she did to us okay, even if Jimin is all buddy-buddy with her now."

Tae frowned but decided to put aside the issue. "Let's just find Toaster. I didn't even know she was in here." Tae got down on his hands and knees and peered under the bed. "I don't see anything- oh wait, there's Yoongi's journal, maybe it's a sign that-"

"No," Jungkook immediately denied.

"Fine, fine...oh, wait a sec, I think I see..." Tae's voice trailed off as he crawled underneath the bed and slowly came back out with something in his hands. "Shh," Tae said to the kitten, who was silent anyway, just a small trembling ball of fur with two ears and a tail poking out. Tae held her close to his chest and bounced her up and down gently.

"It's not a baby, it's a kitten," Jungkook said, rolling his eyes, and Tae gave him a look.

"Fine, you hold her," he said, holding Toaster out to Jungkook.

"Wait wait I don't-"

"Too bad," Tae said, setting Toaster down on Jungkook's lap.

Jungkook froze, eyes wide, staring at the kitten. Ever so slowly, Toaster peeked out her head to look at Jungkook before padding around in a circle on his legs and curling up next to his stomach. "Tae, she's like vibrating or something, what the hell does that mean?" Jungkook asked, still on edge because he'd never dealt with any sort of cat before.

Tae laughed. "She's purring, you idiot. It means she's happy."

"Oh...why...?"

"I don't know," Tae said before getting back on the ground. "I bet she's got a food and water bowl under here somewhere...oh, there-"

There was a bump as Tae's head hit the bottom of the bed, followed by a groan and the sound of an object hitting the ground.

"What was that?" Jungkook asked, trying to peer under the bed, but he didn't want to move and startle Toaster.

"Um, I may have accidentally knocked Yoongi's diary onto the ground..."

"Put it back!" Jungkook whisper-shouted as though he were afraid that Yoongi could hear them somehow.

"Well, it sort of fell open to an entry..." Tae mumbled.

"Just- just, I don't know, close it and shove it back where it was," Jungkook said, paranoid.

"Okay, okay, just give me a sec..." Tae mumbled, picking up the diary and preparing to close it, but then one word caught his eye, and he slowly crawled out from under the bed, diary in hand.

"What happened to putting it back?!"

"Change of plans," Tae said, distracted as he began reading the long passage silently.

Mom. It's a foreign word to me. It's in my vocabulary, but only because of other people. I never needed to use the word. It had no purpose. Why did I need a name for a thing that didn't exist?

But now I'm no longer sure if the word is a waste of space in my brain.

It's hard to remain unbiased in all of this. I know I have a habit of letting my emotions get out of control, so let me try to capture this from an outside perspective.

A woman and a man fall in love. They have six children. Sometime after, the woman - a "mom" - feels worn down from constantly being a mother. She feels unloved, and she seeks love elsewhere. She ends up having relations with a businessman from her workplace. Shortly after, she leaves the first man and the six kids to start a new family with the second man. They get married, and she tries to have a child (because the first six weren't enough apparently). Something goes wrong with the medication she was taking and it affected her pregnancy. She lost the child.

She begins to feel more lonely and unloved than ever because the man she's now married to doesn't love her and is instead using her for his own image. She calls her ex-husband - we still don't know exactly why - and when her son picks up instead, she listens to him, and she's reminded of the times when she was loved, even if she didn't see it then. And when she hears her son tell her how they're all struggling, she want to help them. Maybe she feels like she owes it to them for abandoning them.

And so she does everything she can to become a "mom" again. She gets three sons - three chances to show them that she means it, that she loves them, that she wants to help them.

I'm one of those three chances. And from the start, I was dead set on ruining that chance for her. I hated her, and I made sure she knew it. I was mean to her. I wanted her to hurt the way we had been hurt. I thought it would make it right somehow. I thought that it would fix things. I thought it was important for her to know that I would never accept her or forgive her.

That was the price she paid for leaving us and Dad, right? You don't get to pull that sort of shit and get off scot-free.

That's what I've always thought, but...

I've screwed up shit, too. Not as bad as that, but I've hurt people. People I've cared about. People I didn't want to hurt. And they gave me second chances. They didn't even ask me if I wanted one. I didn't have to beg for their forgiveness. I already had it. They didn't expect an apology, though I tried to give one.

They never need any of those things. They love me enough to give me as many second chances as I end up needing.

All she wants is one.

One second chance.

And she has begged for our forgiveness. She's come to us, crying, trying to explain herself, trying to explain why she did what she did and why she's doing what she's doing now. She knows that talking about it doesn't make it okay. She knows that just because we stopped avoiding her doesn't make what she did to us okay. She knows that just because we started calling her "Mom" doesn't mean that she's earned the title or that us calling her Mom now erases the ten years that we didn't.

I still don't know how to feel about everything. I want to hate her. Hate is easy. It's an absolute rejection of everything.

Love is harder. Acceptance is harder. Forgiveness is harder.

I've always been sort of tired in my soul and not much of one to exert the extra effort, but I'm starting to think that maybe this time, it's worth it.

That doesn't mean that I don't think that she didn't make a mistake. She did. One that hurt seven people, one that left scars that don't just fade away over time. They pulse and they throb every day. When we see a full family with a mom and a dad all getting along happily. A fairy tail we could never have.

Even when Lisa came into our lives. It was like having a mom again. Maybe that's why I can't help but be mean to Lisa, because I'm afraid of having a mom, because the one example I have of a mom is one who failed us, because....because...because...

I always thought that if I gave in and started treating Mom like...well...a mom...that I would have lost. That if I accepted her, she would win and I would lose. But it's not like that. She tries, every single day, to earn the title of Mom. She really tries.

So I think it's less about love, less about acceptance, less about forgiveness -

Maybe, maybe it's more about grace.

Grace is a Biblical term I stumbled across when doing research for a class, and the idea stuck with me.

Grace, receiving something that we don't deserve.

Maybe that's what it's like with Mom.

She doesn't deserve all of those things, but I have the power to give them anyway.

That's a lot of power. It scares me to think about it.

I still don't know how to treat her, really. I feel like if I'm too nice, I'll make her think that the past is behind us, that it's all okay, but the past won't ever be behind us because every day of the present is an effect of her leaving us, really. It makes it hard to forget.

That and her husband, that son of a bitch.

But there's an urge inside of me, one I can't explain, that wants to accept her despite all of that.

Maybe there's a part of me inside that has just always wanted a mom.

[Yoongi's Diary, Entry #?]

"Jungkook," Tae said slowly. "Maybe you should read this."

"Nuh uh," Jungkook said, closing his eyes and shaking his head. "If Yoongi ever finds out that we've been snooping in his journal-"

"Just read it," Tae insisted, shoving the book into his hands. "It's about Mom."

Jungkook slowly opened his eyes and frowned down at the diary before reading the passage. After he'd finished it, he was quiet.

"Well?" Tae asked. He'd always felt somewhat ambivalent about their mother. He knew that everyone had handled her absence differently; Jin had been hurt and had tried to step up and take on greater responsibility; Yoongi had been extremely angry and had banished her from his mind; Hobi had been sad but had sort of let it go as time went on; Jimin - well, he'd ended up with the Songs, which had resulted in a lot of other issues; and Jungkook had felt personally betrayed, most likely also shouldering some percentage of guilt.

Guilt, because none of them really understood what had made her leave. Words couldn't replace emotions. They would never know exactly what it had felt like to be her at that time. At some time or another, each of them had wondered the haunting question: was it because of me? Was it because of something I did?

As for Tae, he'd remained undecided on the whole matter. He wasn't one to make rash decisions; instead, he reflected over matters for long periods of time. Since he'd been together with Jungkook for the past few years, he'd just gone along with his opinions, but he was starting to think that maybe it wasn't for the best.

Maybe their mom really was trying to do what was best for them, even if her way of doing it really sucked.

He also thought that Jungkook's way of rejecting her attempts wasn't healthy. If Jungkook kept it up, he'd be fostering a hatred that would never heal and would only continue to cut him deeper and deeper as time went on.

"Maybe..." Tae began as he crawled back under the bed to replace the diary. "Maybe Yoongi has a point," he said, coming back out and sitting down next to Jungkook, keeping a few feet between them to give Jungkook the space Tae knew he needed. "We all give each other extra chances. Why can't we just give her one?"

"Because you didn't abandon our family," Jungkook spat out, and Toaster shifted uneasily in his lap as though sensing his cold tone.

"But if I did, you'd take me back," Tae said without hesitation, and Jungkook clenched his jaw.

"That's different," he said. "She betrayed us. On purpose. She betrayed Dad."

"And that's between her and Dad to figure out and come to terms with," Tae said calmly. "Besides, she's got her husband, Dad's got Lisa, they're both better off."

"Well, I don't care," Jungkook said, and it surprised Tae as always how much older Jungkook seemed when he got serious. For the past few years, he'd been living the average life of a high school boy, fairly carefree and enjoying the most of it. He'd seemed younger lately, more his age. They all had to grow up so young, and it had finally seemed like the clock was relenting and rolling back a bit.

But whenever Jungkook got serious about something, it was like he aged several years, all the time they'd lost, time they'd been forced to give up when their mom left and when Jimin had been abducted.

"Yoongi can give her as many chances as he wants. Same with Hobi, same with Jimin, same with you and Jin. But she isn't getting any more from me. She had the one, and she wasted it."

There was a moment of silence before the door opened. "Dinner's ready," their mom announced, her voice soft, and Tae frowned, wondering if she'd heard Jungkook.

Jungkook looked guilty.

But then Tae realized why.

"How am I supposed to get up without moving Toaster?" Jungkook whispered, panicked, and just like that, he was back to being a fourteen-year-old.

"Here," Tae said with a slight chuckle, picking up Toaster as gently as he could and creating a little nest out of Hobi's blanket, setting Toaster down in the middle. "Now let's go eat."

Jungkook nodded, and the two got up.

Jin waited for them to leave.

He'd been staring at the ceiling blanking out, but he'd zoned back in when he'd heard them arguing about their mom.

Truth be told, he still wasn't sure how to deal with her either. He felt like accepting her would be betraying Namjoon.

He sighed as he stood up.

It's all so messy.

***

"So, your dad and I have been talking," she began slowly after everyone had filled their plates. "And we've worked it out so Yoongi, Hobi, and Jimin can go back to living with all of you at your dad's house."

Jungkook dropped his fork. "Wait, really?"

Tae watched their mom. Why would she do that?

She nodded, her eyes on her plate before she looked up, giving them a tight smile. "It's the right thing to do. Splitting you all apart was a mistake on my part." Her words were slow and thoughtful, as though she'd spent a lot of time picking each word. Tae could tell that she wanted to say more, but she was holding herself back. "I don't want to give you kids excuses. It's my fault, and I'm sorry about all the years that I've kept your family apart."

Jungkook smiled down at his plate, taking a bite of his salad. "Tae, do you hear that? Jimin is going to be living with us again! And Hobi-hyung! And Yoongi-hyung!"

Jin looked over at their mom. "So...are you leaving us again? Is that what's happening?"

They all stopped eating to look at Jin.

"No," she said softly. "I'm looking into visitation rights. You may not accept me as your mom, but I'll always see you as my sons."

"Always except for the time when you didn't," Jungkook muttered, returning to his dinner.

Their mom stayed silent and finished her meal, taking the plate and resting it in the sink. "I'll clean up when you're all finished so don't worry about it." And with that, she disappeared into her bedroom.

"I think you're being too hard," Tae said without looking over at Jungkook, spearing an olive with his fork and staring at it without popping it into his mouth.

"Too hard?" Jungkook asked, frowning. "As in abandoning Dad to raise six kids on his own?" Jungkook snorted. "Besides, aren't you happy? We'll all be together again. If you're so attached, then whatever, you can still see her. But meanwhile, we'll all be living under the same roof again, Tae. Do you know how long we've waited for this?"

Tae was quiet before looking over at Jin. Jin, the big brother that he couldn't really rely on, and he was looking to Jin now to say something.

"We all blame her for what she did," Jin said slowly. "And for splitting custody. But isn't she trying to fix that right now?"

"She's got an ulterior motive," Jungkook said, frowning at Jin. "Can't you see that?"

"What's her motive?" Jin asked.

"Easy. She thinks that by letting us all live together, we'll all be so grateful that we start to love her back or something."

"And that's the worst thing you can think of? That her motive is to be loved?"

"It is when she only loves us when it's convenient for her," Jungkook replying, looking at his empty plate before looking over at the olive still dangling from Tae's fork. "If you're not going to eat that..."

Tae shrugged and set the fork down, leaning back in his seat, and Jungkook snatched the olive up with his fork.

After swallowing, Jungkook set his fork down as well, and his voice lost its sharpness. "I know you guys think I'm being too harsh and mean, but I'm not ready to accept what she did and just allow her back into our lives. If you guys want to..." Jungkook sighed, seeming young once more. "Go ahead. But, me...I'm not- I can't- Look, as the youngest, it's been really hard for me to grow up watching all of my hyungs struggle because of what she did to us," he said in a quiet voice. "That's what hurts me the most. Not her leaving. Just- how it affected all of you. Maybe I could forgive her for leaving. According to Yoongi, she had her reasons. But hurting you guys- I just can't let that go."

The table fell silent before Jungkook stood up, pushing his chair back, and the legs scraped against the kitchen floor. Without asking, he took Tae's and Jin's empty plates along with his own and set them down in the sink.

"I'll wash them," Jin said, getting up, but Jungkook shook his head.

"I've got it, you guys can go play with Toaster."

Tae hesitated, but Jin nodded at him to go ahead before following.

Jungkook stayed behind and washed the dishes, doing a slow and thorough job.

It was his way of saying thanks to his mother. Thanks for giving him his brothers back.

He couldn't forgive her, but he was still grateful for that much.

Unbeknownst to Jungkook, their mother had returned to the kitchen, ready to wash the dishes herself, but when she saw Jungkook doing them for her, she leaned against the wall and just watched him for a moment, remaining silent before leaving so he wouldn't see her.

She knew how Jungkook felt about her, and she knew that Jungkook would hate more than anything to be stuck alone with her in a room.

***

👽

jimin, i have Toaster and I'm never letting her go

J🐨