Paper hearts

21

“Jeongguk you will get sick at this rate.” Taehyung says,hand rubbing circles on the alpha’s back.It doesn’t help the situation though,Jeongguk only sniffles louder,eyes brimming with another bout of tears as he holds three sheets of paper against his chest like a valuable treasure.And Taehyung thought he had it bad.

It all started with an envelope.Taehyung had bid goodbye to Jimin after they were finally finished with their long  list of “Things to do for christmas” following a heavy exchange of views over a cup of hot chocolate and cookies. Hoseok had picked up the kids not long ago saying he missed them (Taehyung doesn’t think anyones who deliberately wants to spend time with his brats is a human therefore he believes Hoseok is a god in disguise). 

So with no Jeongguk and kids in the house he thought he finally had the chance to start the drama he had been stalling for ages.Key word ‘thought’ because as he was proceeding towards  ̶J̶e̶o̶n̶g̶g̶u̶k̶'̶s̶ his room he saw a white envelope lying on the table.He frowned,picking up the envelope which he was sure didn’t exist few seconds ago.

He let out a confused sound when he saw “From: Jimin” written in black ink at the bottom of the envelope.Shrugging, he opened the envelope carefully and took out the three sheets.First sheet was a drawing or rather a scribble. There were four stick figures,each of them messily outlined with multiple colours.Two stick figures in the corners were tall while two in the middle were tiny. Taehyung had a vague idea of what this was.The stick figure in the right corner had his hands in the air holding two rectangular thingies which Taehyung deemed as an attempt to draw Jeongguk with his dumbbells,the one on the left had an arrow pointing to the figure and if you squint a little,you can see there was an attempt to write “pretty” .

 Taehyung laughed so hard he had tears in his eyes. Out of all the characters in the sheet the most hard work had gone on one  of the two kids in the middle and Taehyung knew whose drawing it was.Haru’s stick figure had long hair,by long hair Taehyung means the hair started from her head and was messily scribbled on the entire page (Taehyung just knows she was trying to be rapunzel with those yellow crayons) ,she even had a dress (Green crayon scrawled below the head) .

Haenul’s figure on the other hand wasn’t given much attention; in fact the circle that represented the head was replaced with angry blue lines.Taehyung guessed they fought on that day.His guess was confirmed when he looked at the other sheet and there was only one tiny stick figure in between the parents , there was a circle drawn at the far right corner of the page and had a arrow pointing to it which said Haru. Each figure had an arrow pointing at them with their name in a neat handwriting written probably by an adult.

The third sheet that Taehyung draws out is a letter.

Taehyung,

It hasn’t been long since I met you but strangely I feel like we have known each other all our lives.Thankyou won’t be enough to express the gratitude I feel to have you as my friend.

I thought of telling you in person but I decided a letter would be the best way.The drawings you saw just now was an activity in our class where we asked the kids to draw their ‘Family’. I didn’t think of it much at that time but after you told me about your relationship with Jeongguk I couldn’t hold myself from sharing this with you.

When I was passing them the blank sheets a student asked me what is a family.I told them that the people who are close to you.who love you, with whom you like sharing your time , the people whom you miss when you are away from them are family. In between the activity I heard an interesting conversation. Haneul’s friend Do hyun pointed towards his sheet and asked him if they both were his daddy.