Deranged // Taekook

Chapter Nineteen: EXTRA

"I don't like this present, Daddy..."

"It's okay, Hobi. Maybe you'll like it another time."

He received a big teddy bear from his father that night.

"If you stay a good boy and don't tell anyone, I'll give you another one."

He didn't like it the next night either. He didn't like it the night after that. He didn't like it when mommy left early for work and Hojin was asleep and his daddy locked him in the bathroom. He didn't like all those other times either.

But Hoseok's father kept on.

And Hoseok didn't know why.

There were times when Hoseok tried to fight back. But his father would hold his little body down to the point where he couldn't move. Bruises would form on his skin and he was forced to cover them up. His father also made sure to wash Hoseok's clothes and his sheets so his mother wouldn't see the blood or the fact that Hoseok started peeing in his bed again. He started having bad dreams, feeling his father's hands all over him and all the other things the grown man did to him.

The abuse went on not for days, not for months, but years. At some point, Hoseok got used to it. It was a normal thing, right? His friends were going through the same thing, right? But why did it make him feel bad? Hoseok didn't understand. His daddy liked it so that meant he had to like it too, right?

Hoseok became depressed at around ten. When he was eight, he stopped wanting birthday parties and didn't invite anyone from his class. Mostly because, by seven, he stopped talking to people. He was scared he'd accidentally tell someone what was happening and that would make his father mad or maybe his friends would make fun of him. He lost all of his friends by nine, and by ten, Hoseok felt all alone. Because he was alone.

He also stopped letting his mother read to him. He just wanted to sleep before his father walked in. He wanted to be asleep during the process.

It was getting harder and harder to look his father in the eye.

He celebrated his tenth birthday with just his family: mom, dad, his three-year-old brother Hoseung, and his sister Hojin who was an infant at the time. His aunts and uncles and a few cousins were there as well.

"Hobi, why don't you smile anymore?" His aunt had asked. "What happened to our sunshine?"

Hoseok didn't know where the sunshine boy he once was went. He didn't understand anything that was happening to him and he knew his mother and father saw it, but no one wanted to talk about it. He just felt...down. It was an everyday thing and he didn't know how to get rid of the feeling. When his father was around, a tightness would form in his chest and he felt as though he were suffocating. His skin would crawl and his throat would constrict. But when his father wasn't around, he felt a little better. Not enough to smile, but enough to breathe.

Then, when he was eleven, his 6th-grade class learned about rape. A guest speaker had come to Hoseok's middle school and everyone in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade gathered in the big gymnasium to listen. She talked about sexual harassment and how men and women can experience it; she talked about molestation, rape. Men are less likely to report sexual assault or rape due to toxic masculinity; sex workers are less likely to be taken seriously when reporting sexual assault or rape.

"And the sad thing is, when children suffer from sexual abuse all their life, they get used to it," the woman had said, "it's scary for them, but they adapt and they accept it. It's their normal."