Author's note: This is the first story I've written that isn't in any way about me. It's still written in the first person, like all of my other stories, but all of the characters and events in this story are purely fictional. Readers of my other stories will recognize many of the same themes at play here, but I'm trying out some new kinks, too. If you like this story, then check out my profile, where there are many others like it. And if you like these characters, then let me know in the comments and I'll consider writing a follow-up. Happy reading.
...
They say there's nothing stronger than a mother's love, and I believe that's true. Usually, that maternal instinct is a strength, but it can also be a weakness.
The way a mother loves her children can her vulnerable and easy to exploit. Often, it's the children themselves who take advantage of their mother's love, using it get what they want. But our children aren't the only ones who use our feelings to manipulate us.
Sometimes, it's their so-called friends who are pulling the strings.
...
My name is Nikki Kim. I'm Korean American, second generation, born and raised in Los Angeles. I have two children, both boys. At the time of this story, I was 34-years-old, my older son was 14, and his younger brother was 11.
As you can probably tell from those ages, I got married quite young for a girl of my generation, but not so young when you consider the community I grew up in. Like a lot of Korean immigrants, the Korean church played a major role in my upbringing. Neither of my parents were particularly religious, but they were both very culturally conservative when it came to adopting American values. As a result, church or school made up basically all of my social life growing up, and the rest of my free time was spent helping out at the little hole-in-the-wall noodle restaurant they ran in LA's Koreatown neighborhood.
I was never very rebellious growing up, perhaps because my older sister was rebel enough for both of us. She was four years older than me, and throughout my childhood, most of my memories of her involve her fighting with my parents. She used to get into these epic screaming matches with my Mom about the way she dressed, her hair and makeup, her friends and her spending and her schoolwork. But the biggest blowouts always had to do with boys.
Technically, my sister wasn't allowed to date at all, but my parents might have let things slide a bit if she'd been going to get patbingsu or tteokbokki after church with some nice Christian Korean boy. Instead, she was constantly sneaking out of the house and climbing into cars driven by white guys that she had met god knows where.
Once, when I was around 13, I asked my Dad why he and Mom were always so angry at her.
"Your sister is brainwashed," he said solemnly. "White boys, they'll say or do whatever it takes to get what they want. We try to tell her, 'You can't trust them,' but she never listens."
"But what do they want, appa?"
"Don't ask such questions," he grunted, turning away.
After watching my sister go to war with my parents on a daily basis, I did everything I could to be the perfect daughter. I studied hard, helped out at the restaurant, and steered clear of the white boys I sometimes saw looking at me in the hallways at school.
I guess I should say now that my sister and I are both very pretty. I know that Koreans are supposed to be very modest and all, but of the Seven Deadly Sins, I've always been the most susceptible to Pride, and specifically vanity. I'm aware of the way that men look at me, and I know these details are especially relevant to this particular story.
I have the kind of natural features that many women in Korea try to achieve through plastic surgery. My face is heart-shaped, tapering gracefully along my jawline to my delicate, pointed chin. My nose is with a dainty and upturned, a little button at the bottom of a narrow bridge. My lips are full and pouty, which I like to accentuate with various shades of lipstick. Pretty makeup and cute clothes are two of my biggest indulgences, but they're easy to justify to my husband because he feels that he's the real beneficiary.
These days, I wear my dark, silky hair in long, light-brown waves streaked with soft, amber highlights. I have dark, almond shaped eyes and clear, soft skin that takes on the color of milk tea when I'm tan.
I'm about 5'4, and like most women who live in LA, I work hard to keep myself in shape. Thanks mostly to daily jogging and yoga, I'm proud to say that I wear the same size jeans (2) as I did before my older son Danny was born.
However, becoming a mom did change my body in a different way that my husband certainly appreciates.
When I first met Steve, we were both students at Santa Monica Community College. Like me, Steve is a second-generation Korean American and a Christian. He's the sweetest man I've ever met and handsome to boot. I fell for him right away. We dated for about six months before he proposed, and we got married right after we graduated from SMCC.
After graduation, Steve transferred to UCLA to get his bachelor's in engineering, but I got pregnant soon after we got married. This was actually what I'd been hoping for: I'd always wanted to be a mom, so much so that it almost felt like this child was my destiny. I planned excitedly for his arrival as my belly grew, my breasts growing larger as well, swelling from a modest 32B to a fully loaded 34D that looked even larger on my petite Korean frame.
At first, I was embarrassed of my large breasts, and I tried hiding them with pregnancy dresses and loose-fitting clothing. But Steve seemed to love my big tits, frequently joking that he didn't realize babies came with a free boob job. I told Steve that my boobs wouldn't belong to him once the baby was born, but that actually turned out not to be the case, because neither Danny nor his brother would breastfeed. We tried with each of them, but eventually, we just resigned ourselves to using the bottle. This might be part of the reason why my boobs never returned to their former size. More than ten years later, I still wear a 34D bra, and Steve still can't stop congratulating himself for landing a wife whose tits got bigger after the wedding instead of her waist.
But I can't stall any longer before I tell you about my older son, Danny. My sweet, beautiful, incredible Danny.
Danny is the on autism spectrum. The first few years of his life, he was practically nonverbal. Those early years, before he was diagnosed, were the worst of my life. I did everything, tried everything, to get my son to open up, and nothing worked. I never knew I could feel like such a failure. I wasn't even 21-years-old when Danny was born, and I felt completely in over my head.
Things seemed hopeless, but when Danny was finally diagnosed, I felt a renewed sense of purpose. I knew what was going on, and I was going to try everything in power not to let it rob Danny of the life I wanted for him.
We tried so many things. and then one day, Danny picked up a Rubik's Cube in the waiting room at his doctor's office. It was almost magical watching him with it--I still get chills when I think about it.
I'd never seen my son show so much interest in... anything. His level of focus as he manipulated the cube, spinning the rows from one side to the other, was absolute. No one had told him what the rules were, but he seemed to understand intuitively that the same colors go together.
I pulled out my phone and bought him his first Rubik's Cube that very minute. When I got home, I looked up how to solve it, and spent the weekend watching YouTube videos with Danny so that we could learn how to solve it.
Today, 11 years later, Danny is among the fastest Rubik's Cube players in the world.
The progress he's made has been incredible to watch, and not just as a Rubik's Cube champion. I had no idea about this when Danny started, but there are actually whole communities and competitions that bring people together. People will travel the world to play this game, and Danny has. For a kid with developing social skills like him, meeting friends like this has been a godsend.
Of course, it's also how Johan entered his life, and mine.
Before they'd ever even met, Danny idolized Johan. We'd found him on YouTube, where he posted videos of him speed cubing in front of his webcam. Danny had never seen anything like it. Johan was solving these puzzles in seconds, sometimes one-handed, sometimes blindfolded. It was like he was some kind of sorcerer on the screen, casting his spell over the cube, and by extension my son and me. As I made dinner, I would watch over Danny's shoulder as he sat in front of his iPad, playing with his cube, trying to solve the puzzle as fast as this blond German boy living in South Africa.
As Danny watched more and more videos, I came to know a bit more about Johan.
He was five years older than Danny, the son of a German diplomat and his South African wife living in Praetoria. He was the reigning champion and world record holder in several speed cubing events, including the coveted 3x3 title. In addition, his YouTube videos were wildly popular, and he was probably as close to being a celebrity as you can be solving a Rubik's Cube. To Danny, whose whole world revolved around the Rubik's Cube, Johan was practically a god.
Of course, he was still just a shy, gawky 13-year-old when Danny met him for the first time at a tournament.
The thing that impressed me more than Johan's cubing was the kindness that he showed to Danny. He was so generous towards him, gracious even, in a way that teenage boys rarely are. He befriended Danny despite his autism, and despite the age difference between them. They were bonded by this shared love of speed cubing.
Or so it seemed. I don't really know anymore. After what happened, I can't stop second guessing things.
Johan and Danny became closer and closer friends, talking online, seeing each other regularly at tournaments. And Johan was more than just Danny's best friend: he was his mentor, his rival, his older brother.
And the closer they became as friends, the faster Danny got with the cube in his hands. Pretty soon, my son was the one setting records and winning world championships, and Johan was coming in second... or worse. After a few years of this, Danny had broken almost all of Johan's world records, except one: the 3x3.
The reason that the 3x3 is such a big deal in speed cubing is that the 3x3 cube is the classic, iconic Rubik's Cube that everyone remembers. They make cubes in lots of other sizes, but they're mostly only used by people like Danny and Johan who cube competitively. The 3x3 cube is the one on people's desks, their lab benches, their bedside tables.
That year, the World Championships were in Australia. Usually, the entire family would come to these events, but tickets to Australia were breathtakingly expensive, and Steve had to work, and my younger son Riley had baseball. So Steve and Riley stayed in Los Angeles, and for the first time, Danny and I traveled by ourselves to a Rubik's Cube tournament overseas.
