HOME AWAY

INTRODUCTION YOONGI

Desperation.

I was the complete opposite of her, because everything in me screamed for help.

Back then.

Before I had met Hoseok, before I knew what living on the street meant.

I was fifteen. Young, dumb and broke.

The memories of the days before I was thrown out are fuzzy, jumbled, unorganzied in my brain and unapproachable. I'll be honest, I don't like to think about that time.

I repress it every occasion it comes up. I do something else, I distract myself.

But not this time.

When I looked at the way her forehead crinkled and the ragged breath that came from her mouth, the murmuring and lost gazes she threw around before falling into that numbness again, I softened.

I actually softened, shoulders slouching and resting on a wall after angrily kicking cans and other objects around.

Hoseok didn't even wince once, he knew me all too well. He knew my past, my history.

One should never give their life up so easily like she just did.

"Please, leave me..."

Her urgent whisper sent shivers through my spine and I remembered again, I remembered how it felt to fight. To fight for my life.

Long ago

"Please, help me..."

Desperation.

"Please, please help me."

Desperate. I want to live.

My hands were shaking, it was my sixth day outside with no home.

One of the coldest winters in history, is what my mind told me. Everything was so, so cold.

Imagine you're sitting at a busstop, and your bus is late. It's cold and you're angry but at least you have a jacket and this is only temporary.

This wasn't temporary, and I didn't have a fucking jacket.

"P..Please..."

My hands became clammy and turned from yellow to a pale blue tone. There was nobody I could beg for, no one would cross these streets in these temperatures, no one in the right mind would.

And the few ones that did, quickly paced away from me.

When my heart started slowing down and I felt my eyelids become heavy, I was embracing the numbness. Numb is weird, but numb isn't pain. Pain was definitely the worst.

Slowly, very slowly, I started to lay down on the ground forgetting to hiss at the pain from the pavement cooling my already bruised arms.

My nose was bright red, and I unconciously still mumbled for help until I drifted off to sleep.

"Help-"

I was feeling and hearing absolutely nothing except that loud roaring numbness inside my brain, consuming my every thought.

I didn't hear it when that person shouted in my ears, I didn't feel it when they slapped me in the face, bruising my face even more.

"WAKE-"

Black.

Then, I heard them. Him. His voice.

It was hard to understand, he said something about waking up, not giving up...