A/N: I am emotionally wreak and having an existential crisis.
Min Yoonah had been one of those few children who had there childhood taken away from them. Her life wasn't the easiest, actually it wasn't easy at all. At the age of ten, her family had fallen apart when her father realized that he no longer loved his wife and felt other wise for his colleague named Jenny. It didn't take long for their affair to escalate and the divorce papers to get signed. Yoonah's mother had to move out of the four walls she and her children once called home. She always told her kids to never fall in love blindly like she did. "The world is a curl place and you two should walk with your eyes open." She regretted falling for the foreigner with gray eyes dusty blood hair. Their love story was one which could be put into movies or in minds of thirteen year olds, but the ending was not fit for their tale.
Yoonah's mother had rented a small apartment for herself and her two children; ten year old Yoonah and, her older brother, thirteen year old Matthew. While the siblings would be off to school, their mother would work at a near by restaurant as a waitress. Sometimes she would have to work over time, from three in the afternoon till eleven in the night, and by the time she got home, her kid would be off to bed after eating the food she made for them in the morning. Sometimes she would come back the next day or even the day after. Her kids never asked her where she was and what was she doing and she never explained herself. She had been paid just enough to get the school fie, house rent, and grocery bill cleared. Seeing his mother struggle to make a living, young Matthew had skipped his classes and school days to work as a helper in a small convenience store.
Yoonah, at that time, wanted to help by gathering money for her family but her bother didn't allowed her to do so. Matthew knew how important education and school was. And being the loving and caring brother he was, he wanted his littler sister to her the proper education and schooling even though they were in a poor state. He had done almost everything for her. Look after her. Worry for her. Care for her. Love her. Everything their mother couldn't do. He had encouraged her to take extra curriculum classes, not only to get her childish mind off of the cold truth but to fulfill her need to lear how to play the piano. Such a elegant piece of instrument suited Yoonah's character just right.
Yoonah misses her big brother Matthew. Being the last man in the family, he tried so hard to help his mother. When mother would come back home after a long and hard, he would leave her warm tea in the kettle and try his best to relive the stress in her back by washing all the dishes and cleaning the house. But it was never enough. Sadly, all the pressure got to her and trailed her thoughts in deep and dark places. She did all that she could do for her family and wanted the best for them. She wanted to make not a single mistake but she did. And that mistake was the biggest mistake she had ever made. She left her kids.
Matthew had come home after his class to change from his school uniform and into his work uniform. When he opened the door to their apartment, he expected to see what he saw almost everyday. All the lights off to save energy, and all the windows and doors closed trapping the smell of old sheets in their home. But instead, he saw the main table flipped over, chairs fallen down, windows and mirrors broken. As if some burglar had broken into their house. Although, when he checked the safe, nothing was misplaced. He found a dozen of papers scattered around their small living room. They were job applications with DENIED written on it with thick, bold, red letters. Each one of them had DENIED popping out of the page. He knit his brows together as he flipped to the last page. It was different from the rest. It had FIERED stamped on it with capital black letters.
He knew what his mother was going though but he never thought that she would leave him and little Yoonah. It was only then he realized what his mother did, or was going to do, when he heard the open faucet shooting water out in the bathroom. He rushed towards the bathroom. Water leaked out from the bottom of the bathroom door as his feet splashed on the wet floor of the hallway but when he got there, he found the door locked from the inside. He pounded the door with his small fists.
And then it hit him.
He ran outside in search for some help from the lady next door. The neighbor was a nice lady. She was old and wrinkles covered her face but she still had her un-dyed, black hair. She would bake bread, muffin, and cake and she would always knock on their door to share some with a cup or tea or juice. When he saw the old lady's face, words few out of his mouth and though he was staggering and tripping over his own words, the lady nodded and went towards the boys house while holding his cold hand in her warm one.
She called the police, it didn't take long for them to come and bust the door open. The second the door opened, thirteen year old Matthew ran inside, releasing himself from the old lady's grip and pushing past the officers who tried to stop him from seeing the horror. He met with a snow pale face hovering under the tub filled with rose tinted water. It was in the middle of winter and with the bathroom window open, he could see the small frost outlining the window and trailing to the bathtub. What a horrible sight.
+++
"There's a lot of explaining you'll need to do once we get to Seoul."
"I know that hyung."
"I think he might throw you in a pool filled with eels."
"He can do worse."
"You're right...He'll probably throw you in butt naked."
"Hyung, you're really not good at making people feel bad."
"I'm just being nice to you."
"Well you don't hear that everyday."
"Listen, I honestly don't care what the hell happened to you. I'd care less if you got shot on sight. It's just the fact that he is brutal to newcomers. Who knows what will happened to her. He'll make it hard for her to even breath in the same room as him."
"He wont be able to even lay a hand on her."
"Don't be so sure Jimin. He's ten times stronger than you, smarter than you and twice your hight."
"You don't always have to bring my hight up."
"You're short."
"We're the same hight hyung."
"No. I'm taller than you.
"Only by a centimeter."
"That still makes me taller than you."
"Whatever, we're getting off topic."
"You can't just -"
"I know."
"She'll be in -"
"I know."
"He'll -"
"No he wont. Trust me, he wont be able to do anything to her as long as I'm here."
"Don't jinx it."
"I wont. Plus, Seokjin hyung won't let him do anything."
"That's true. He's always been the softie...but that never made him any less than us."
"She'll be safe as long as she's with any one of us."
"Us — referring too?"
"Us three."
"Three?"
"You, me and Seokjin hyung."
"Oh hell no. I am not going to babysit her or take part in any of this shit."
"You already did by helping me."
"She was going to die. She lost a dangerous amount of blood."
"So you don't want her to die."
"Of corse I don't. You should be the one to die."
"That's a little harsh, don't you think?"
"Shut up."
"I'll take that as a 'yes, I will help'."
"Ugh, fine. But if anything wrong happens, I'm throwing you under the bus and taking her with me."
"I'll make sure that doesn't happen."
"Good."
"Great."
"How about we go downstairs and see what you got out from A.J.'s headquarters."
"Sure."
"I think she needs some alone time. Us talking might wake her up and we don't want that. She's too weak. She might even get the migraines but that's normal for her in this state."
"Whatever you say Dr. Min Yoongi."
+++
Yoonah wakes up in pain as she attempts to turn to her side but fails. She winces and suck a breath through her teeth as her body tightens. With a pounding head and a paining upper body, mainly towards her right shoulder, she opens her eyes. She opens her eyes and squints as the bight light around her bits into her sight. Soon her vision adjusted and she scanned the room as she turned her head. A soft feather pillow with a white pillowcase rested beneath her head and a fluffy cover kept on top of her. The double bed that she laid on was white and almost everything else in the room was white too. The walls alternated from white to baby blue, the night stand was white wood with a white and black lamp, and even the carpet was white. Everything was either a polished or dull white besides the flowers in the vase and the painting above her head.
Her hand unconsciously moved up to her right shoulder, underneath the sweater, and the pain shoots her as hard as the bullet did the other night. Wait, she stops herself. Then it hits her. Her head raises a little and she examines the bandaid on her bullet wound. How did I get here?, she thought, Am I in heaven? She chuckled at her stupidity. Slowly but surly, she got herself to sit upright before carefully swinging her legs onto the fur carpet on the floor. She used the nightstand as a sport to get out of bed and began to limp around. Wherever she was, it was definitely one of the nicest place she has been in after a very, very long time.
She was still a little dazed from what happened. All she remembers is that from the strange warhorse she ended up in a maze with a huge man after her and then that stranger saving her. And after what happened, her death was inevitable. But she was here, living, breathing and walking—limping from room to room. The events played over and over in her head and they made her stomach turn. "I need to get out of here." She thought out loud, "But where am I?" Limping over towards the bathroom, she looks at her reflection. She's wearing different cloths. Her shirt is replaced with on oversized black sweater and her jeans is replaced with— "Oh dear god... Just-just no." She sees her bare legs in the full length mirror. The cream sweater only covered half way down her thighs. From different eyes, her body seemed fine. Attractive actually. Like an average twenty year old's body. Completely normal, nothing was wrong about the way her body curved or the way her hips dipped. But from her eyes, she hated her body. Everything about it. The way the wrong eyes adored her legs, chest, shoulders and waist, was disgusting. She preferred to the fully clothed.
Scrunching up her face as if she just tasted something foul, Yoonah turns away from the mirror and spots her cloths overflowing the laundry bin in the bathroom. Though she had very little things, all her belongings here in there; her stained shirt, worn out jeans, her phone in the pocket of her jeans and, the most precious thing in her life, her necklace. The thin silver chain held a golden pendant. It was molded into a tree and had three small gemstones embedded into its branches with equal spacing between them. On her tenth birthday, her brother, Mathew, awarded her for her first "two-digit number" as he said. He worked hard and saved so much to buy that necklace. The old neighbor lady accompanied him in his journey to the jewelry store.
She smiled to herself while holding the luminosity metal her hand. Due to the wound on her shoulder, she applied as less pressure as possible on it and carefully rounded and locked the chain around her neck. She turned back at the mirror to only see how beautiful the necklace was. It reminded her of Matthew. The pendant hung low on her torso as her hair doubled down chest and waist. Her wild tousled hair was shiny and clean. All the things and bits of crips leaves were brushed out leaving her hair untangled and straight. While I was passed out, she thought, someone took care of me.
"Did you see her naked hyung?"
"What? No!"
"Then? I thought you practically bathed her."
"Sometimes I wonder why I haven't killed you myself."
"Oh god. Answer the damn answer."
"I used a wet towel. I couldn't just let the gash get infected after all my hard work."
⫸ ⫸ ⫸
Thank you for reading.
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