Jeon Shiro was a patient woman. Wether it had been in her private life or her job, she's proven to be nothing but deeply, unshakably patient.

Even as her son, her own blood and flesh, started to get out of pocket by drinking, sleeping around and befriending these people that were definitely influencing him badly, she had progressed calmly and with patience, to make sure to break down every single ladder he had built to get over her walls made of years of careful shaping and educating.

She had done a good job with her son, had guided him as he needed and had granted him exactly the right amount of strictness. Only through her guidance had he been able to achieve what he did, to eventually get where her parents failed to bring herself.

All of this, she wouldn't have been able to do without the patience of a saint - but tonight, she felt, would even her well-renowned fortitude get pushed to it's limits.

"Pass me the salt, dickhead." The damned tomboy in front of her grinned provocatively at Shiro's son, a flair of competition in her voice as it always seemed to be - as if she was constantly trying to prove something. But what? All she did was being loud and brash and inappropriate, and Shiro was afraid the poor girl was doing it on purpose.

Her son's roommate had walked in with a pair of heavy, black combat boots, an oversized black t-shirt with the print of a masked, white haired cartoon man on it, and a way-too-short red and black plaid skirt. Together with her tired eyes and smudged eyeliner she looked like a girl from one of these Japanese cartoons her son had watched occasionally when he was younger.

Which was fitting, as Shiro had to learn, since the girl was an artist, of all things.

The word tasted bitter on her tongue and she had to grimace when she thought of it.

Young people with aspirations of becoming artists where lazy and untalented, using art as a ridiculous way to cover up their incompetence with meaningless strokes on white paper. A waste of money, that's what she had taught her son, to make sure he wouldn't get any funny ideas.

Don't understand her wrong, Shiro appreciated good art, classical art, but... whatever this girl saw as "art" definitely did not add up with Shiro's image of the craft. And because Shiro had always been convinced that her opinion was law, Y/N was nothing but a waste of space in her eyes.

Sadly did her son seem awfully fond of said waste of space. And that was what was making her patience run thin for good.

"I said pass me the salt." She made grabby hands towards Jungkook, who answered with a curt "sure" and passed her said item, not even looking in her direction.

Shiro was aware of how domestic this whole gesture had been, yet neither of them seemed to think much of it.

"Sure"

Something about this simple response had rubbed her decidedly wrong.

"So, you do art, sweetie?" She asked in her usual sweet voice, putting down her chopsticks in favor of smiling sugary at the younger.

Said girl looked at her unimpressed, tired eyes low-lidded and... bored? Vexed? It was hard to tell.

"Yeah." She retorted, clearly not fooled by Shiro's honey act.

Generally, did the girl not seem to play her usual game of false pleasantries. She seemed to be the rather straight-forward type.

So, Shiro dropped the act and took the chopsticks back in her hand, "What are you doing at Uni then?"

"I...study?" She seemed confused about the quite obvious question.

"If you were talented you wouldn't need to." Shiro dead panned.

"That's bullshit." The girl snorted, taking a sip of her water, the cuss word making the older woman flinch annoyed, "I'm not born with knowledge about perspective and composition and shit. I go to uni to improve."

"What do your parents think about that?"

"That I'm studying art or-?"

"M-hm."

"My mom loves it. Said she's happy that she doesn't have a 'dry fucking office working minion' as daughter." Y/N smiled when quoting her mother, a small, ironic grin that hinted a good relationship between them.

Shiro couldn't decide wether she was jealous or glad that she and her son didn't have a relationship like that.

"Isn't it beautiful when parents support their children in achieving their dreams." The girl said passively, making Shiro freeze. 

"I see my son has biased you with his misguided image about me." The woman cocked a brow, throwing a quick glare at Jungkook.

His roommate shrugged, "I'm not seeing the misguided part, but sure."

Shiro sighed deeply. A long, dramatic sigh that was meant to scold Jungkook before she even started, "You are so incredibly childish, Jungkook. Are you really running around telling everyone about your personal issues, like a little boy? That's silly."

He balled his fists underneath the table, shaking his head with a smile, "No."

"Really? Because it doesn't sound like to to me. If even your roommate heard your dumb little story before."

"-okay, listen here, ma'am." Y/N cut in, "I've never met a person who's less comfortable about talking about themselves than Jungkook. And I'm realizing why, right now." She mad a pause, giving the older woman a chance to retort something. Shiro didn't know what to, "Jungkook is my friend, and as that he has every fucking right to tell me about what's bothering him. And you are."

Shiro's lips formed a thin line, back straightening silently, "You're a terrible girl, Y/N-"

"-haha thanks-"

"-but I appreciate your honesty. I don't meet people as blunt and perceptive as you very often. But my education is none of your business and Jungkook knows that."

"Education??" She echoed incredulous, "He isn't- he is not a child."

"But he sure acts like one, antagonizing me albeit all my years of effort." Shiro answered bitterly.

"Look, I get that you're frustrated, but if you'd just drop your stuck up act he'd let you back-"

"Drop it, Bambi," Jungkook gave her a crooked  grin, "You don't wanna know how often we've had this exact conversation already. I'm getting tired of it." He stood up with screeching chair, clearing his throat, "I'll uh, go upstairs for a second." He looked at his mother, "Please leave her alone Shiro, you are antagonizing her as much as she is antagonizing you."

The woman watched how the girl stood up as well, almost mechanically, as if pulled towards her son by an invisible string, following his path upstairs.

"You are antagonizing her as much as she is antagonizing you."

To Shiro, her son has never been right about his complaints. When he accused her of projecting her failed dreams onto him, of manipulating him and locking him away from a world of individuality, she hadn't listened, ever.

She'd rolled her eyes and brushed it off as a phase. And as this phase turned out to stay a little longer than expected, she'd brushed it off as pure lack of understanding, ungratefulness and childish behavior.

And as this girl, this outsider, who was the polar opposite of what Shiro had always wanted in her offspring, was arguing so childishly, it was like she was proving her point. It infuriated her that she was right when she said that he isn't a child anymore. This just meant she would have it harder to help him get back onto the right track.

Y/N was wrong about a lot of things but not about the fact that Shiro didn't have her son in the palm of her hand anymore.

Silently, she stood up and began to clear the table, her eyes occasionally falling onto the stairs to where Jungkook and Y/N had escaped. She had followed him so naturally.

The woman didn't even want to know what those to were up to upstairs.

___

sorry for the boring chapter, I promise next update is gonna be cooler

xx