Secret || Chanlix

Chapter fifteen.

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"Faith, still not over that phase of yours, are you?" My father smirked, but the revulsion swirling in his cold orbs was obvious. His hands were clenched into fists by his side and my mother was clutching onto one of his arms with a similar expression of pure loathing and abhorrence towards me.

I struggled to hold in a sob as I forced myself to straighten up. I couldn't look weak and vulnerable in front of them. "I-it's not-" The words wouldn't come out. The way my father was glowering at me chipped away at the tiny flakes of courage I had. Eventually, all I could do was look down with a miserable whisper."Y-you know I don't u-use that name a-anymore."

My father cackled at my statement, but everyone else was silent. I didn't dare look up to see their reactions.

"You're a girl, Faith. Stop trying to deceive yourself." My mother's voice was cold and laced with detestation, but there was a hint of desperation in her words. "What have you done to yourself, my baby? What happened to your gorgeous hair? Where are those pretty tits? You used to be such a pretty girl!"

As she spoke, she let go of my father's arm and started walking towards me, stretching her arms out to cup my face. The second she touched me, I broke down. I thrashed around to get away from her grip, but her long, sharp fingernails dug into my cheeks and held me in place until someone - one of my members - grabbed her arm and pulled it off of me.

The second I was free, I stumbled back with a choked gasp and brought my hands up to my cheeks to feel the small crescent indents she left in my skin.

Jeongin, who I knew didn't understand because of the language barrier, stepped forwards to hug me then, but I pushed him away. If he understood, he wouldn't want to touch me. "I-I'm sorry." I whispered in Korean when I saw his hurt expression.

"Mum, dad, what's going on?" Rachel spoke up uneasily, protectively pulling Olivia closer to her. She used to do that with me when we were younger, but I used to always pull away. Even when I was a kid I knew that boys were supposed to be the ones protecting their sisters, not the other way around. In that moment, though, all I wanted was for her to hug me and shelter me from our parents.

"Well, Faith thinks she's a boy." My father said casually, like he was stating my favourite book. "Even though she has tits and doesn't have a dick, she still thinks she's a boy. Your mother and I didn't tell you because we didn't think it would be fair to put the stress of having a fucking mentally unstable sister on you."

"I'm not mentally unstable!" My fingers tugged at clumps of my hair in desperation as I cried out. Years of bottled emotions threatened to explode. "And I'm your son, not your fucking daughter!"

"You're not my fucking child." My father's response was immediate, his scowl making me cower back as he began to stalk towards just like he used to when he was going to beat me. "What you are is a girl, not some fucking boy. And I can prove it."

Then, he did something I never in my wildest dreams imagined he would ever do.

Before anyone could react or even try stop him, he was grabbing me by the shirt and ripping the fabric right the middle. My skinny, bandage covered torso peaked out from behind the torn fabric only slightly until my father fully forced it off my narrow shoulders. The ruined shirt fluttered the the ground delicately, but my scream was anything but. Horror gripped my throat in a suffocating grasp that morphed my scream of shock and terror into a choked wail.

I wrapped my arms around myself as fast as physically could, but the damage was done. They had seen. Everyone had seen.

Without even a hint of remorse or hesitation, my father snatched my arms and pulled them away from my chest, ignoring my desperate attempts to get away as I struggled to even breathe around the sobs ripping from my chest with every inhale.