Su Ah's POV:
"Weirder shit's happened." She could throw in as evidence the many scandalous acts her own siblings were capable of. And their behavior, Mia's and Su Ah's included, was definitely no poster material for proper mental health, for the young and impressionable to model themselves upon.
Mia, the most sensible in that aspect, would probably take a moment or two to agree on that.
The way those amber eyes squinted and became dangerously still was a glaring tell. She stared down, pensively, a moment. Then a deep sigh resonated through her nose. "Su Ah, the only people capable of 'perverted' things is us. Mom's... normal. Sure, sometimes she treats him a bit better than us, I can understand. He's her favorite after all. But this... if you're talking about the possibility that she might... might want more than a... parent-child relationship, that would be ridiculous. I mean, come on."
She huffed, folding her arms.
It was funny, and kind of absurd, to watch Mia argue in her own self-defense.
Or more so, their mother's defense. As if Su Ah were going on an unreasonable offensive rant against their poor mother.
"Can you be so sure...?"
Her stomach felt tight and upset, and the veins of her temple were throbbing anxiously.
It made no sense to her to justify any form of obsession for another living human being, including a son or a daughter. Why it could only end poorly for both parties. Su Ah was a vivid witness of what a crushing experience that sort of bond could be on a person down the road, despite all the false sense of security and pleasure it often brought to the short-sighted fools who played with fire.
Mia let out an exasperated sigh, her thin lips stretching into a humorless smile. "And where'd all this come from, anyway?" She gave Su Ah a quick, thorough once-over, her perfectly manicured eyebrows furrowing, before settling onto a look of unmitigated disbelief. "Jeez, did you have a bad dream or something because of..." She gestured vaguely at the both of them. "This? You think Mom's gonna snatch him from us?"
Her look of disbelief, at her own words, turned into one of amusement, to the point Su Ah wouldn't have been surprised if she just doubled over and burst out in the most obnoxious laugh in the world.
"I saw her." Su Ah stated simply.
And that was just about enough to make the amusement dissolve from Mia's face. It froze there, for a split second, then sharpened. A suspicious look arose next, Mia's face as hard and unmoving as it'd ever been. "You saw her what, exactly?"
"In the laundry room... late last night."
"......"
For several drawn-out moments, there was silence. Mia just stared at her, without a word, almost in a dead-stare. The previous trace of emotion, confusion, irritation or suspicion, slowly left her countenance and was replaced with that deadly look of blankness.
"Explain."
It might've been the look of utter seriousness in Su Ah's eyes, but Mia leaned forward, listening intently, all joking and games suddenly forgotten, her knees now planted firmly against the mattress. Her mouth set into a firm line.
Still, Su Ah struggled to come up with an appropriate phrase to properly communicate her outrage. How were you supposed to tell someone their mother got off on sniffing their little brother's underwear? Well, there was no better way to sugar coat it, not that it deserved the sugar.
She took a deep breath and then whispered it out fast, and in one breath.
"Last night, I passed by the laundry room. I saw the lights still on, peeked in, and... found Mom on her knees in the laundry room sniffing a pair of Jae-il's underwear!"
She repeated what she saw, describing the exact details of it, what was actually going down between Eun Ha and the underwear in the laundry room the other night.
"And the more she smelled the thing, the more t-that look appeared on her face!"
Mia didn't look the slightest bit disgusted at the tale's end, but more like perplexed, or confused. She kept quiet, a slightly cautious glimmer behind her eyes. "Are you... really, 100 percent sure of what you say...?" She was even doubtful. The disbelief returned. She closed her eyes briefly as if to hide how silly she thought the concept was..
"Okay... let's say you weren't hallucinating from not having sex, or you did not take the wrong meds last night..." Mia reached over and cupped Su Ah's face, gently at first, then increasing the pressure as the seconds passed, the cogs behind her eyes appearing to have shifted slightly. "For argument's sake, let's say all you've said is true."
Su Ah's poor cheeks were squeezed and abused like balls of dough by her older sister. Her facial bones started to ache, even the mere corner of her lips were bent into a tight 'V' shape from the forced pull Mia was exuding upon her. Su Ah, not to be outdone by the strength of the hands pressing her cheeks together, also cupped Mia's face and began to remold her jaw in similar fashion.
"You think I'd lie?" Su Ah ground out, cheeks pulling as taut as Mia's own cheeks under her slender grasp. "About something like that?!"
"You..." Mia would have smiled in irritation if not for her stretched skin. "You think I would not call bullshit?!" She stressed each word with an additional painful cheek-squeeze, but their voices and tones remained whispery and controlled.
The hands paused as they both nursed their own aching cheeks, sitting upright with equally petulant looks upon their faces.
"No more games, Su Ah, is that really what you saw?!"
"Yes, damn it! I'm telling you!"
"How..."
Mia's words slowly deflated in cadence, coming out like an outtake of a hissing balloon.
xXx
Mia's POV:
"I want a visual confirmation."
It didn't matter how she sounded, she was going to come across like a nutcase. She knew that much.
But would Su Ah spew something completely ridiculous and nonsensical?
Mia wasn't one to really care. But now it seemed Su Ah had come across something actually alarming, however. And the idea low-key terrified Mia a little.
This entire scenario seemed so preposterous that Mia doubted her ears a dozen times during that brief, 'short-talk'.
"What? Visual confirmation?"
Su Ah gawked at her older sister. Mia herself didn't feel pride in even suggesting this course of action. Su Ah didn't, either. "I mean, maybe you got it all wrong? Maybe you saw wrong? It's not like you stayed to watch the whole thing."
"Well, that's true, but..."
"If she did it once, then there's a chance she'll do it again."
"... how are you so sure that she will do it again?" Su Ah was skeptical.
To be fair, who wouldn't be skeptical?
The whole point of this insane investigation was to confirm whether their sweet mother had gone down the deep end or not. Mia figured if it came to be, better get to the bottom of things as fast as possible. So, she told Su Ah. "All the best kidnap cases happen with repeat offenders and recidivists. People rarely change or evolve out of their habits. Once she gets an appetite for a certain taste, there's nothing that can quench her thirst, except the one and only."
A huff. A stare. She regarded her sister warily, her tongue circling in her cheek. "What are you suggesting we even do? Wait for her?" Su Ah asked.
Mia sneered in disapproval. "We'll just do a repeat of what you did last night. Stake out the laundry room after everyone's supposedly asleep. If she's got a habit, she'll slip up again. And if she doesn't... well, then you're just losing your mind and I get to tease you about it for the next decade."
Su Ah stared at her, cheeks still flushed from their ridiculous pinching match.
The idea felt both juvenile and oddly exciting—like they were kids again, plotting to catch Santa in the act, except the man in the red suit had been replaced by their own mother deep-throating their brother's laundry.
"This is insane." Su Ah muttered, but she was already nodding. Maybe she had indeed seen wrong and wished for confirmation of sorts, a more indisputable truth, for her peace of mind.
The mind could come up with terrifying visualizations when given a basic, incompletely-lit template, and a criminally ill intent. Indeed.
"If this is all your dirty dream or something...!"
"It's not."
That seemed to be the case, anyway. Looking back, Mia could probably pick up the slight changes and cracks in her behavior in the past few weeks, the constant attention towards him, and the certain type of love in her gaze whenever she laid her eyes on their dearest brother.
She didn't know how to feel about that... having her own mother as a love rival?
Mia scoffed. "When did this family start to get so filthy? You'd think it'd have ended with the both of us, hm?"
Su Ah offered a meaningful silence as an answer, not wanting to think about that.