The moment I stepped foot inside the orphanage, children came running my way, trapping my legs with their hugs. They looked up to me with curious eyes, some smiled widely, some stared with dumbfounded expressions.
"I thought bosses were old and fat." A little boy mumbled under his breath; but hearing it, I let out a laugh.
It seemed that the reporters had arrived before me. The flashes of the cameras came in from the other side of the room, and had immediately washed away the purity of the scene.
"You're so handsome!" The same little boy tugged at my dress pants. I crouched down and ruffled his hair. He grinned, revealing the gap between his teeth.
"What's your name?"
"Jonathan! I'm six!" He starts jumping up and down, and the others follow, hollering out their own names.
I'd talk to every one of them if I could.
A man came over to me with a badge hung over his neck. I peered down to look. 'Axl', it read.
"Hello sir, I'm one of the social workers, my name is Axl. How would you prefer to be called?"
He doesn't seem to like me much. I don't know what gives me this impression. Perhaps I'm just so used to people disliking me that I can sense it without any sort of observation.
"Just Jungkook is fine."
He simply nods, "We'll be taking a group picture in five. I suppose that's all that the reporters and photographers are here for."
I shrug, "No, probably here to wait for me to make a mistake. The more mistakes the better, they get more money."
Axl here, doesn't reply, instead he just stares at the clipboard in his hand. I'm figuring out what more words to say when another child runs up to me, smile connecting to their ears and all.
I crouch down next to her so we can level our eyes. It's important that people see on the same level, no matter what age. No one is below or above the other. That and my neck wouldn't be able to handle such an angle.
"The big brothers and sisters told me you gave us this much money." She spreads her arms wide with her fingers stretched out.
"Is it true?"
I cock my head to the side and contemplate, "Not that much, that's a lot of money!"
"It is! But even if you didn't give us that much," she smiled widely as she said this, "They said we can take out the broken beds, and get new toys too!"
That's good.
It's good that they're not just eating up the money themselves and really using it on the kids. I wouldn't want my money to go anywhere else.
I'm glad.
"You're like superman. Handsome and kind."
I feel my ears flame at her innocent comment. She throws herself onto me and I fall backward onto the floor with her arms wrapped around my neck.
I look behind her as I return the hug. The other children start catching on and see what they were missing out on.
Kids always want what they don't have.
"Why is she getting a hug?" One pouted.
"We get hugs too!"
Then there it was.
The stampede.
And then joined the flashing of the cameras.
/
"I need to go to the bathroom."
It's four o'clock now, meaning that it was time to leave. But I still haven't gotten what I came here for. I was occupied from the start to the end, by both the children and the staff. I was even pulled to the side by the reporters for an interview that was not at all in the schedule. It seems weak for the boss of such a big company to feel this, but it gets a bit too much sometimes. All the people, all the attention, all the camera flashes. It makes you want to hide sometimes.
But I pushed through a whole hour of it, and now it's time to leave. I am aware of the tight schedule so I simply cannot be truthful about this. So like a child, I make up an excuse to buy myself time to look for her.
Her.
I don't even need to say her name.
In my life, there's only one her.
Her.
Just simply her.
"Sir, maybe you can go after we've arrived at the company?" Jun suggested with his eyes to his watch.
I shake my head, "I need to go now."
He sees the determination in my eyes and droops his shoulders with a sigh, "Very well. Please go then."
I know where the bathroom is. But never the less I start to wander around the orphanage, walking down all the hallways and peering into every room. Jun is following closely behind, doing his job well as always. At a time like this, I'd rather have him slack off and leave me alone.
"Sir, I believe I just saw a bathroom right around the corner we passed?"
I shake my head, "I don't think that one has toilet paper."
He furrows his eyebrows at me, but I dismiss the look. There's one more room that I wish to check before I give in and admit to this defeat that I've missed my chance to see her. In all honesty, I don't even know if she's in this orphanage. We're both adults now, maybe she left and already moved away with a whole different life and a whole different job. Maybe for the past three years, I've really been holding on to pure nothing.
Maybe she's really gone.
But even if I'm just holding onto false hope, I'll grasp onto it tightly nevertheless. Even if this percentage is lower than one would wish, as long as it's not zero, it's worth holding on to.
"Maybe this room has a better bathroom."
I speak with my tears forming around my eyes. If I don't see her today I'm going to fucking lose it.
"Sir, we're really on a tight schedule. I don't mean to speak so rudely to you on your birthday, but could you please just compromise with the bathroom we found?"
I've never craved for his absence as much as I do now.
"Jun, just give me a minute-"
"Stop cleaning! Help me with this one please?"
I whip my head towards the room after hearing the voice of a young child. This wasn't the only room with the bright voices of children. There was just simply nothing that made this room more significant than the other ones before. But somehow, as if there were two strings attached to both my legs, I was pulled inside without a second say.
I swallow, hands shaking in the pockets of my dress pants. I try to keep a low profile as I nervously crept into the room full of children.
"Alright alright, it's rare to see you so passionate about homework."
I look to see a woman with a young girl. The woman is smiling widely as she walked to put the broom down against the wall. The little one pulled on her long skirt again and again to gain her attention.
I don't think I needed to see her face to know. And frankly, I don't think I needed to hear that voice either. My chest pounded uncontrollably before I had even entered the room.
My heart knew before my eyes and ears did.
My feet led me to this room and it wasn't a coincidence.
It led to me her.
Seeing her was like experiencing colours the first time, like finding a single flower in a field of green grass.
Seeing her was euphoria.
Same smile. Same eyes. Same dimples. Same voice. But yet so different, so new. There's something unfamiliar with her, a different shine that I've never seen before. She's glowing.
She's not just a girl. She's a lady now.
And it's the sexiest shit ever.
This is like falling in love all over again, with the same exact person. I didn't know that was possible.
"Aera." Her name rolls off my tongue, and despite not having said the word for at least three years, it's almost as familiar to me as breathing. Saying her name out loud had struck a chord in me, and even before we met eyes, the tears began to overflow.
She turns around at my voice. I suck in a breath.
Aera looks at me and she freezes, dropping the broom in her hand with her eyes wavering in shock.
"Jungkook." She stutters. My eyes lock with her watery ones, and she covers her mouth with shaking hands.
It's strange how a word can sound so beautiful once it's spoken by the right person.
I stride over to her with my heart pounding out of my chest, and I finally envelop her frozen figure in my arms.
Our skins meet, and it's like putting in a final puzzle piece. She doesn't speak and neither do I, but we're both crying. My arms are tight around her with my tears soaking through her shirt on her shoulder. She's stiff, but then she finally holds me with her trembling hands.
"You're real." She tremors, hands roaming around my skin, almost like searching for proof that I wasn't a dream, or a nightmare. I hope she wasn't assuming the latter. I don't know how she feels about me now. Does she hate me? Resent me? Have her feelings changed? Am I the only one still foolishly holding onto the past? I like to tell myself I'm thinking too much.
"I've missed you so much, you don't even know." She really doesn't. She'll never know. And even if I explain it with a thousand words, she still wouldn't understand. I shattered the moment my father sent her away.
I'd never cared about someone like that before. It was the first time someone made me feel safe and accepted.
Bangtan were the kindest people, but even then I doubted if they really liked me, doubted if I was saying the right things. With Aera there was never any doubt. I trusted her. It wasn't embarrassing to cry, or to be honest. She was the only thing keeping me from feeling like an outcast in this world. She was my shelter in a person. I don't know how else to say it.
I've been walking on hot black coal for the past three years.
It scares me to recite that. Three whole years without her. And still, I failed to forget. All the memories of her are fresh as if they were from yesterday.
And now as she's in my arms and I'm in hers, I only say,
Finally.
Finally everything is right again, everything is back to where it should be. My heart is back to where it should be, right with her's.
I'm holding her, trying to take in every bit of her, every little change, and every little thing that stayed the same; every bit of her that I wish to feel, to remember. But when I look ahead, I see my assistant, sending me a glare, then a hand signal saying that we were supposed to leave already.
No.
A lump rises to my throat.
I can't leave her.
Not after three years of missing this.
I hold her tighter as she cries into my shoulder.
"Sir." I can hear his anxious tone all the way from here.
But I don't want this.
If throwing away everything right now means that I can hold her longer, I'd throw all of this, straight into the pits of hell without a second thought.
But the truth is that I can't. I live in reality, a world where there's more than just what I want. There are things that I must do, that I must carry behind my back, even if that sacrifices what I love most. That is reality. That is what my life is.
"Sir, we need to go. You have a meeting scheduled in less than an hour's time." He strides over to us with an urgent tone and this time Aera hears it too.
I feel her grasp starting to slip away. She is about to break the hug and I feel my heart tightening.
"You need to go?" She sniffs, eyes red and swollen.
Aera wipes her nose with her sleeve and steps away from me.
No.
I want to hug her again.
"Sir."
Oh how I wish to sew his mouth right this moment.
"Aera, I'll come back. I promise." He's already leading me out the door now, and Aera follows me with longing in her eyes.
She nods, reaching for my hand again. Just as desperate, I quickly take it. Her grip on me is so tight it makes me want to cry again. With every step I take I turn back to look at her. We drag this out even till we're out of the building and already standing before my car.
"Sir," My assistant opens the car door and holds it open.
I don't want to get inside.
She lets go of my hand, but I don't loosen my grip on hers, "Aera." I say her name again.
I get inside the car and he shuts the door for me. While he makes his way around the car and to the driver's seat, I lower the car window frantically, hoping to buy more time so I can see more of her face.
I feel the car starting and my heart immediately stops.
Just one more second.
It's been three years and I've finally gotten the courage to hold her in my arms.
I can't just leave like this. I haven't said anything yet. All the words that have piled up inside me for the last three years are fighting to burst out, but I'm leaving now and this pain is harder to take than the pain from three years ago when I realized she was taken away from me.
People say that things seem much farther away from your grasp the closer it is to you.
The closer you get, the more you yearn, desire, and thirst for what's ahead of you.
And the wait feels so much more unbearable than before.
I've never truly understood that feeling until right this moment.
"Aera!" The car drives off slowly and I put my head out the window to see her walking behind, both desperate not to lose sight of one another.
"Come back, please!" She finally cried out.
And those were the last words I heard before the car sped up. I looked at her, I looked and looked until she grew smaller and become nothing but a small dot.