THE ORANGE GIRL

chapter twelve

Staring at you for a long, painful minute, his face suddenly crumpled under the realisation. A long arm was extended, draping around your shoulders and hugging you close, his shuddering breaths calming to a steady pace. The position on the stoney floor was uncomfortable, cold, but you could not care when your brother was so still, a statue wrapped around you as though he wished to protect you from the past, but he simply had no choice.

"Before you were put into jail, you had been sending me letters," Kiyoung started, his voice unnaturally level. You peeked up at him to find his gaze staring vacantly at the wall opposite the room. "I have no idea how you figured out the address where I was located, but I assumed with your sudden position as the Boss that you must have gone through all the files, hunting for where our parents sent me. For you, it must have felt like you were calling out into the dark, since I could never send you anything in return, though you had never asked me to respond in the first place.

"It was the content of the letters that was concerning. You were angry, so damn infuriated that you had been thrust into the role as the leader, but over time you became accustomed to it. There was a man that you talked about, Min Yoongi-" At this point you stiffened, and Kiyoung only held you tighter "-Who you said was a childhood friend turned enemy. It was peculiar the way you wrote about him, every word felt as weighty with fondness as it did hatred. I remember him vaguely from the past, but I was too young. Anyway, that's not the point.

"The fact is that the letters started coming a lot less frequently, and at that, the details had become wary," Kiyoung softened into a murmur, fingertips idly stroking your arm. "You drifted back into that attitude of wishing your life were different, of not wanting to be within the organisation, and you were dubious about your followers, more specifically those in your closest circle. Apparently they had been behaving oddly, distant, and you immediately suspected that they were plotting something much greater against you.

"The final letter that I received from you told me that you believed you were finally going to be free. I had screamed at my caretaker the day I received it - you remember the guy that used to look after us as kids? He was the one who lived with me while I was away, who practically raised me - but I demanded that he let me come back home, because I honestly thought I think I will finally be free, Kiyoung meant that you were going to off yourself. But then a few days later, the newspapers were screaming the headline The Queen Has Been Dethroned! and there you were, a SWAT team surrounding you, and you had this huge grin on your face and it honestly felt like it was directed at me. Look at me, Kiyoung. Free at last!

"That was why I was so shocked to see you just now," Your brother sighed, shifting back so he could look at you properly, his hands coming up to frame your face as though he still could not believe you were real, physically there. "I thought you were still in jail. Though I assumed something must of happened, since these bastards scavenged the country for me and brought me back here like some pathetic hostage."

Taking his wrists gently in your palms, you gingerly ran a thumb over the splotchy pink ring. "They did this to you?"

Kiyoung gave you a small nod, a tilt of his lips in a smirk that you recognised as mischief when you were both only children. "Well, I wasn't going to go with them easily, not when they refused to explain what the hell was happening. They... They killed Jonghyun, the caretaker. That was when I realised something was definitely not right. Who would kill their own men, their family?"

Nothing seemed to slot into place, none of the words he spoke triggering at your memory. They were just empty vocalisations of a past that remained to be a blank slate in your mind, and although it all felt so unreal, unlikely, it all made perfect sense to have occurred. Why else would you have been locked up? Why else would so many people want you dead? The fragmented visions of your family all those years ago provided slight hints, the absence of your parents on the odd Christmas, the sending away of Kiyoung for his protection from what must have been the organisation, the kind man who would always slip into the picture when your parents had business to deal with, we will be back later, sweetheart-