Oh, I remember.I rememberall too well.
“Mom—” I warn, shaking my head.
“I used to love hearing you two,” she sighs wistfully, completely ignoring the abject panic rolling through me.“You were always in sync, even when you pretended you weren’t.I bet if you tried, you’d still sound just as good together.”
Yeah.Becausethat’sthe problem.
Mom sighs again.Thedramain this sigh.The full-weightK-drama protagonist has been betrayedsigh.
“You know,” she says, voice soft,dangerouslysoft, “when you were ten, you and Joel wrote a whole song for Appa’s birthday.Do you remember that?”
I freeze.
I forgot about that.Well, actually, pretty sure I suppressed it, but whatever.
But now that she’s said it, the memory crashes over me in full detail—Joel, sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor, plucking clumsily at the guitar while I insisted that he had to learn the right chord progression.
“Dude, this is a masterpiece,” he’d said dramatically, flipping his hair.“We’re gonna be famous one day.”
And then the actual lyrics come back, and?—
Oh.
Oh God.
“Appa, you’re the best, better than the rest, even when you make us clean, you’re still the dream?—”
It was dumb.but we spent days perfecting it, sneaking around the house trying to practice without him hearing.
And the way my father smiled when we played it?
I slap a hand over my face.
We were so stupid.
And Appa loved it anyway.
My throat tightens.
Mom, clearly sensing weakness, presses forward.
“He kept that little recording on his phone foryears, you know.He’d play it every once in a while and tell me,‘They’re going to do something big someday.’” She laughs softly.“He loved hearing you two together.”
“Appa?My Appa?”I gape.“Are you sure we’re talking about the same man?”
“Of course, it was the same man,” she says like I’m the absurd one.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
Not fair.Not fucking fair.
This event isn’t even for him.It’s for Mina, for crying out loud.
I try to think of a way out.Any way out.“Mom, I don’t?—”
“Anna.”
One word.That’s all it takes.