Dreamer || Jongho (A Treasure Tale)

The Cliffs of Ulso

***WARNING: Domestic violence, including depictions of child abuse ahead. Please read with caution and if you are particularly sensitive to this issue, feel free to message me for spoilers. It does improve after the first few chapters but the content is disturbing.***

Every day was accompanied by the constant sound of metal. The clang, clang, clang of Father pounding out another weapon in the blacksmith shop was the song of Jongho's childhood.

It was a rhythm, so he added his own melody.

Jongho had a good ear, so even his distracted humming as he sat in the house listening to the hammer and the furnace was a pleasing tune, a building block for a symphony.

He was his only audience, and for the rest of his life it looked like it would stay that way.

Jongho didn't remember his mother very much. He knew she and Father often yelled at each other and that she was often bruised and tired and that one day she just left.

And Father had been so angry that he had struck Jongho for the first time. That had been some time around the age of four or five and he had sat in his room stunned for the remainder of the day.

He was young but he knew it wasn't normal, that the other children had mothers and fathers that lived together and that no one hit them when they hadn't done anything wrong.

Jongho didn't even think anyone hit them when they had done something wrong.

He worked out soon after that the reason Mother left was likely related to Father's fits of rage.

And sometimes he resented her for not bringing him with her.

It was unlikely he'd find someone else to rescue him, with their neighbours all being far away and the people in the town being equally poor and burdened.

Ulso was nothing more than a backwater village, the smallest settlement on the edge of the peninsula, tucked away into the cliffs so tightly that you could miss it if you were sailing past.

But Jongho had never been anywhere else, and he had never known any other Father.

Days like this were good. Father worked on his weapons, and the bottle was far away from him. It was when he drank from it that he became a different person, and Jongho either made himself scarce or suffered the consequences.

By the age of ten he knew to lock up the smithy if Father ever forgot. There were sharp, hot weapons in there and they were the last thing a drunk Father ought to get his hands on when he was raging.

Today the sun was out and he hadn't touched a bottle yet, nor had he found anything to blame Jongho for. So he sat in the house and worked on his reading while Father clanged away in the smithy. Not being enrolled in any school or taught by any tutor, he struggled through the lessons Father bought for him on his own, although according to him Jongho was "doomed to manual labour and nothing else" just like he was.

He had composed a little song while he listened to him, and he wished he knew how to write it down, but hardly anyone in Ulso even listened to music, much less knew how to make it.

The worst town in Jaecho could never afford such luxuries.

Just like every night, that dreadful feeling grew in Jongho's stomach when he heard the day's work stop and knew he would have to face his father.

Generally, he could avoid him. They both rose early and went about their own business until supper time, and even though Father cooked his own food in the day, he expected Jongho to prepare the evening meal or there were consequences.