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Yesol doesn’t really like England. It was fun when it was football season and Dad took her to games nearly every weekend. The summer is rougher.
She’s lonely.
Her English is bad. Dad says she’s making great progress but it doesn’t feel like it. She can’t talk to other people. When she tries to say anything she can’t find the words. She’s angry a lot. Angry at these people for not speaking Korean, angry at herself for not being good at English.
Dad tries his best. He tells her they’ll go back as soon as his work is done. He takes her to a nice counselor named Dr. Song to talk about the big feelings, the ones she has problems naming. They talk about mom for a while, then home, then everything else that crosses Yesol’s mind.
She gets glasses that summer. Dad says they might help with her colorblindness, but she doesn’t have to wear them if she doesn’t want to. She wears them a lot. She also gets a punching bag and enrolled in Taekwondo class. That’s fun, but all the other kids are boys and she doesn’t like them.
She can still play Among Us with her friends back home, but only for an hour. Dad talks about time differences. It doesn’t make much sense to her. Time should be the same thing everywhere.
The summer doesn’t get hot, but dad takes her to the beaches a few times. Dad also takes her to a few business meetings. They’re really boring but dad lets her play on the ipad for as long as she wants when she’s sitting in his work office. Sometimes these people give each other kisses on the cheek as a greeting, sometimes they do it to dad. It’s weird.
She’s really excited for school in the fall. Her English gets better really fast once she starts talking to people. She sits next to a girl named Ameera and she has really pretty hair. Her English gets really good once they start playing house together along with a bunch of other girls. She always plays the daddy, sometimes Ameera is the mommy but sometimes it’s one of the other girls. She finds that less fun.
She also plays a lot of football with the boys. That’s probably why they make her be the daddy. She even gets to be on the school's football team, the only girl on it actually. She sits on the bench a lot but it’s still fun!
They go to church a lot less. Yesol likes this a lot. Back when she was still home mom told her she had to go to church no matter what even though it was really boring. Dad only asks her if she wants to go when it’s Christmas time. She doesn’t. She watches movies on Netflix instead. It’s the best Christmas.
Spring is more of the same. She goes up in belts a few times and dad buys her ice cream every time. Her football team gets pizza and she scores a winning goal. She has a birthday party with Ameera and her football team. Ameera calls it soccer. Apparently Ameera also isn’t from England despite the fact she speaks English. Gabe, her best friend on the football team but not her best friend, calls Ameera her girlfriend and a bunch of the parents get really mad. She doesn’t get it.
Summer comes again. It’s less boring now. She breaks her glasses in Taekwondo. Ameera’s parents are also divorced and she apparently spends the summer in the United States with her dad and the rest of the time in England with her mom.
Dad has some friends come over. Ms. Moon got married and is touring Europe with her husband. She knows Ms. Moon but she doesn't know Ms. Moon’s husband. Dad lets them stay over for a few days. Ms. Moon tells her she doesn’t have to call her that but she still does.
Yesol always thought Ms. Moon was someone who didn’t get many hugs, she didn’t hug like the other teachers. She thinks she doesn't have much practice so Yesol always made sure to give Ms. Moon a hug once a day when she was in class. Visiting in England Ms. Moon’s hugs are much better, Yesol decides she likes Ms. Moon’s husband from this. She still makes sure to hug her when she can.
She’s home with just Yeojeong and Ms. Moon sometimes. They teach her how to play chess online and she learns how to play with Ameera even when she’s so far away. It’ll be useful once she goes back home.
Dad says that they can go back before the school year starts again. It’s really exciting. She starts packing immediately. Then she has to unpack because she needs things from the boxes. Ameera is the only person she tells because she can email her.
She goes home but she doesn’t go home. Dad got a new house in a new place. It’s close to where they were before but it isn’t the same. She likes it more. They still can’t have pets but she still likes the new home.
Things are normal again. She hangs out with her old friends and emails Ameera at least twice a day. Yeojeong says it’s a good thing she already has glasses because she’s going to ruin her eyes with how often she spends online. Dad tells him not to be such a worry wart.
Dongeun and Yeojeong spend a lot of time with dad and dad spends a lot of time with them. Sometimes when dad has to be out of town briefly he lets her stay with them. They have a cat. She doesn’t get to see him often. He hides a lot.
Dongeun has a baby in November, a few days after dad’s birthday. Dad goes to the hospital where Dongeun and Yeojeong pick up their baby to help them get things ready. It’s a little boy and he’s really fussy. Seyoon is cute. Sometimes she gets to hold him, when all of the adults are watching her close.
Mom calls for Christmas. Dad says he doesn’t have to talk to her. She does. Mom just says a lot of things. She sits there and listens. It feels weird.
“I love you Yesol, I love you so much,” Mom sounds really sad. Yesol’s arm is tired from holding it to her ear.
“Okay, bye,” Yesol hangs up. Dad takes his phone back and asks if she would like to do anything else now. She gets to go to Dongeun’s that night for the night for the first time since the baby was born. She sits in the little tent and colors. The cat hangs out with her. It’s nice.
Yesol is thirteen now. Seyoon is six and Sohee is four. She’s now allowed to go from Dongeun’s house to home as she pleases. She got her own phone too, so that way everyone would know where she is.
She goes to Dongeun’s home after school because she doesn’t have football practice. Dad won’t be home soon so she goes where there will be people. She gets there before Dongeun does because she’s picking up the little ones from their school. She can let herself in.
Ms. Moon is now Professor Moon of architecture. She does some designs for dad but mostly just teaches at a college. Dad once said he was embarrassed that he was the only one of them without a doctorate. Dongeun said that he was pretty enough that he didn’t need to be smart.
“Hi Mom,” She doesn’t call her Professor Moon or Dongeun anymore, especially in Dongeun’s home. She calls her mom. It was a mistake the first time, when Dongeun was her teacher. It was a mistake a long time after that, but Dongeun didn’t mind it and she was allowed to do it as much as she wanted as long as it was at home or at Dongeun’s house. So it is mom the entire time she’s either of those places.
“Yesol!” Sohee rushes to her on little four year old legs and is inarguably sticky and wet when she gives her a hug. Seyoon isn’t far behind, equally sticky and wet. It was peanut butter and jelly day so that is to be expected.
She takes Sohee and Seyoon into the backyard to play football together. Being a big sister rocks honestly, even if they aren’t actually her siblings. She gets extra allowance whenever she has to watch them for more than fifteen minutes. She can also pick them up under each arm and move them somewhere else if they get really annoying.
Yeojeong comes home before she’s come back in, though Sohee and Seyoon have both run in. She’s running drills. Just because she doesn’t have practice doesn’t mean that she should stop. He kicks the ball around for a bit but he’s really bad at it. For the guy who taught her some cool knife tricks (and hadn’t dad been mad when he learned about that) he was really uncoordinated.
Dad comes over for dinner that night. The entire group seems to gather wherever everyone is for dinner whether at dad’s or Dongeun’s. Yeojeong cooks most of the time, then dad, then Dongeun. They have takeout more than Dongeun cooks.
She makes plans to stay the night because she doesn’t have school tomorrow. It happens frequently enough that she has enough spare clothing that dad doesn’t need to grab anything. The guest room is basically set up as her bedroom. She heads there after dinner to ‘do homework’. She really just plans to roam around online and text her friends.
An hour or two into that and she gets a call. It’s mom. The one in jail. Dad had explained it more when she got older. Mom had killed two people. Park Yeojin, her mother and popular weathercaster, had murdered two people. One when she was in high school. One when Yesol was still a kid.
She accepts the call.
Mom asks about so much of her life. She doesn’t get to call often so she doesn’t know a lot. She talks about her soccer team. It’s a good topic to tell mom about because she knows she doesn’t care. Then she steps onto a not safe topic.
“Mom forgot her umbrella that day so we all got totally soaked,” She was telling a story about a fall storm where Dongeun had taken her, Seyoon and Sohee to the park and they all got soaked.
“Who’s mom?” Yeojin sounds mad, really mad.
Yesol is suddenly in kindergarten again, telling mom a funny little story about her calling her teacher mom on accident. She couldn’t see her mom head on but her reflection on the mirror looked downright pissed though she didn’t have the word for it back then. She remembers her mom sharply tugging on her hair back then, pausing for far too long, then making normal soothing gestures.
“Dongeun. Miss Moon. She was your friend. She’s dad’s friend too. They aren’t married. Well Dongeun is. She married a nice doctor guy. His name is Yeojeong. Dad isn’t married,” Yesol is babbling, saying whatever. She feels like she stepped on a landmine.
“You shouldn’t call people who aren’t your mom mom Yesol. It makes me sad,”
“Why? You’re in jail. You will be, forever. I don’t have a mom besides Dongeun. She takes me to football games and helps me with my homework. She’s my mom,”
“I am your mother Yesol. You cannot change that,”
And then Yesol hangs up. And then she goes to the living room and sits next to her mom on the couch. She doesn’t say anything but she leans into the woman. Dongeun wears glasses when she’s reading. She looks like her like this, kinda.
“I want a haircut,” Yeonjin really liked Yesol’s hair. Most of the memories Yesol still has of her mom in person is sitting in front of a dresser and having her hair combed. She wants it cut.
“Sure, I’ll take you after I pick you up from Taekwondo classes,” Mom just nods along, still looking over drafts.
Life has become a lot simpler for Yesol. She no longer has to explain what is going on with her moms. She just has one. Just Moon Dongeun.
She walks in on her parents at sixteen. This is a night she spends at her dad’s. It was late and she should have been in bed but a video call to Ameera had run late so she slips out to the kitchen to grab some water and there the three of them are on the couch.
They were watching some movie, all squeezed together on the two seater couch. And then dad kisses mom, and mom kisses her husband, and dad and Yeojeong are touching each other in a way that is different than when they do it around her and a few more things make sense.
It wasn’t like she didn’t know. She knew something was different about the situation compared to how most people lived. One of her classmates also has divorced parents, except his mom isn’t in jail, but she is married to someone new. That was the most similar to what she lived but not quite.
“Ah,” Dad says and looks at the others. A silent conversation goes through the three of them.
“Do you know what polyamory is?” Yesol looks at her dad like he’s stupid enough for him to continue.
“Well…we are all together,” Dad pauses for another moment, “Even Yeojeong and I.”
“For how long?” Something in Yesol always knew, but she also feels like she’s been lied to by all three of them. All three of her parents. There is a simultaneous comfort and discomfort in it.
“Since when we lived overseas and they came to visit,” Yesol tries to see it from hazy memories, but she can’t. She can’t see it in that week they stayed with her & her dad. She only saw it once she turned nine, when she walked in on her parents having a late night discussion and saw how different they could be if it was just the three of them even if it was just sitting quietly at the dinner table.
“I know it might seem strange to you, but-” Yeojeong tries to start on something, but Yesol cuts him off. She also pairs her second father to the English papa, if she ever wants to call him like mom and dad.
“Are Seyoon and Sohee my siblings, like biologically? One of them?” She knows neither of them are color blind like she is, but she learned a bit about genetics in biology. There was no way for Sohee to be colorblind even if they shared the same dad, but for Seyoon there would be a fifty-fifty shot. She could be biologically related to both and still be the only color blind one.
“We don’t know. We never decided to DNA test them. It could be either. It doesn’t matter,” Dongeun says it with much finality. It doesn’t matter. She thought of both of them as her siblings when there was no chance they were biologically related, it doesn’t matter now there is a chance.
“Is this a good time to come out? Because I’m gay,” Yesol decides to go for it. It’s not like there is going to be a better time.
Mom, dad and papa all laugh at this and it’s all good. Yesol gets her water and goes to bed and doesn’t spend too long staying up and texting Ameera. They only end up talking until after Ameera’s lunch break in the UK.
When morning comes mom, dad and papa explain things to the others, with a bit more effort because Seyoon and Sohee have much weaker English than she does, but things do go well. Then they all rush for school because they always do.
Life moves on after that in the same patterns it always does. Yesol has three parents at her football games, she has three grandparents on holidays (papa’s mother and both of dad’s parents), she has a younger brother and sister.
She learns a few secret truths along the way. Mom has always run the show she knew that, but she runs some other shows as well. She sees it in the few detectives that tend to have ‘a polite chat’ every time some scandal suddenly results in the well off perpetrators suddenly turning on each other like rabid dogs, like mom could make people turn on each other like that, which as Yesol learns, she totally could. Dad gets invites to events with a plus two when they really want him to come because he is the worst at hiding that his heart, romantically, belongs to two. Papa’s knife collection takes on more meaning, but it is a very careful truth that he has never hurt anyone with them.
Ha Yesol grows up; loved.