Chapter Text
Yoojin didn't know how long he'd cried.
His tears had run out—his eyes so swollen they ached—yet Seri continued to rock him back and forth in her arms, telling him that everything would be all right with such earnestness that he almost wanted to believe her, but Yoojin was far too old and far too jaded to fall for such words, never mind the fact that she couldn't possibly even begin to fathom what she was talking about.
"Do you want some water?" Seri asked after a while.
He nodded wordlessly.
She grabbed the glass on his nightstand and put it in his hand, and Yoojin greedily gulped the water down, letting it soothe his sore throat.
"More?"
Yoojin shook his head.
He let Seri take the empty glass from him, and as he wiped his damp face with his sleeve, his mind cleared somewhat, his thoughts catching up to him, and he realized just then what exactly was at stake.
F*ck.
This was bad.
He shouldn't have lost control like that. He should've played dumb, or at the very least spent a second to think about how she worded her question. If she had truly known about Yoohyun, she wouldn't have had to ask to begin with. Now he had to find a suitable excuse for his breakdown lest she should start suspecting him, something that absolutely must not happen. Not until Yoohyun was born.
He could see what would happen now if he told her the truth with perfect clarity.
He'd tell her he was a grown man stuck in the body she birthed, that he came from another world and had lived even longer than her, and that his hands were as tainted as she thought them pure, and her face would contort in abject horror. She'd tell Sunghoon, and then they'd send him to an orphanage faster than he could say no.
An imaginary friend that disappeared on him, maybe? It was a stretch, and he loathed the thought of having to pretend that Yoohyun was nothing but a figment of his imagination, but how else was he supposed to cry over someone that didn't exist?
He needed to quickly smoothen this out before she could have time to think.
Mentally bracing himself, he gently pushed at her arms, and when she let him go, he turned his gaze towards his lap, curled his shoulders inward to appear even smaller, and jutted out his bottom lip. He finished it off with a dejected but perfectly guileless look. I am your innocent son.
"Mom, actually, Yoohyun is—" Yoojin began to lie, but he was surprised when Seri suddenly took his small hands in hers, her grip achingly gentle.
"Yoojin."
At the sound of his name, he reflexively looked up at her. Their eyes met, and Seri gave him a soft, sad smile.
"It's okay," she said. "You don't have to tell me right now. Mom can wait. I'm just very thankful you finally got to cry while you're awake."
Yoojin found himself completely wrongfooted.
Confusion. Doubt. Apprehension.
None of them were present on her face, not even a hint.
His excuses died in his throat, and Yoojin was left floundering.
Lee Seri wasn’t blind.
From the moment Yoojin was born, she knew her son was different. It wasn't until he turned four months old that she realized just how different he was from a regular child. She had lost count of how many times she'd been taken aback by his precocity since then, but it wasn't that that made her worry.
It was how Yoojin tried so hard to be happy.
Whenever he was in the presence of others, he'd smile and act like a regular little boy, oohing and aahing at picture books and party tricks, but as soon as he thought he was alone, his eyes would dim, and a cloud of sadness would overtake him.
Seri had tried to take him to a psychologist once, but somehow Yoojin sussed out where they were heading, and he had given the biggest tantrum she had ever seen from any child, and she'd ended up driving him to the ice cream parlor instead.
She hadn’t heard any stories from her parents about anyone in her family being the same—she once made the mistake of asking her parents what kind of kids she and her siblings had been back when they were little, and it prompted her mother to begin a half-hour long tirade about how Seri and her brother and sister had given her a migraine at least once a week and made her age twice as fast while they were growing up. The onslaught of past grievances, though laced with undeniable fondness, was only brought to a halt when her father distracted her mother by offering to take her out on a date—
“Now’s your chance, sweetheart,” he had whispered conspiratorialy once her mother's back was turned, and Seri graciously took the opportunity to escape
—and when she thought to ask Sunghoon if any of his family were like Yoojin, he had simply replied that everyone from his side of the family was normal.
Normal. Seri had tried not to take offence at how he said that word—a little bit proud, as if being different was somehow wrong—but it still stung. In a slightly passive-aggressive retaliation, she had driven straight to the bookstore afterwards and bought a dozen books all too advanced for a child Yoojin's age, and when she got home, she stared Sunghoon in the eye as she presented them to Yoojin, and his disgruntled huff felt like a win.
Thankfully, Yoojin had started to spend less efforts in acting like his age after that, at least when it came to his intellectual giftedness.
But he only grew wearier with each passing year.
She wanted so badly to help him. His nightmares. His anguished cries of Yoohyun. The way he'd sometimes watch the flames in the fireplace for as long as they'd let him, the whole time looking sick with longing.
Questions sat at the back of her throat, desperate to claw their way out. What it was that made her son look as if he was slowly breaking from the inside? Why was he always crying for a brother that didn’t exist?But she was afraid of what would happen if she asked. She couldn't trust her clumsy, inexperienced hands to piece him back together if he broke.
But when Sunghoon had asked that question earlier, and Yoojin became so terrified, Seri decided that he had suffered alone long enough.
She was sure now that whatever Yoojin was keeping from her was something big. Possibly even unnatural. But Lee Seri would bathe in a vat of acid before she let that affect how she saw him. He was her son and that was that. No matter what he was.
"Mom will wait for as long as you need."
Yoojin couldn't believe what he was hearing. He searched her face again for any sign of distrust, but all he found was understanding.
This woman, really…
His eyes stung with nonexistent tears—Yoojin let her pull him closer, and when she wrapped her arms around him, he closed his eyes and listened to the steady beating of her heart.
Okay.
Let's wait together.
Despite his trust in Seri, Yoojin spared no effort in ensuring he and Yoohyun would get a better life this time around, which meant he had to consider the chance of them being orphaned yet again.
Back then, he was only fifteen when he and Yoohyun lost their parents in an accident, and with neither a huge inheritance nor relatives to fall back on, he had no choice but to drop out of school so he could get as many odd jobs as possible to keep Yoohyun taken care of. He was well aware that it was the only thing he could do, but a part of him still couldn’t help but be bitter about it, not because he hated giving up on his education and working till his young bones ached like an elderly’s—his baby brother was more than worth those hardships—but because he’d had to stay away from Yoohyun. Those were countless hours of his life spent apart from his little brother who was then only a young kid. If only they’d had enough money to keep them afloat, at least till Yoojin graduated from college.
This time, he promised he would do better, and so he started saving every penny he could, giving his sweetest smile to adults in family gatherings in exchange for affection he subtly suggested be expressed in the form of cash.
“I plan to be a businessman one day,” he’d announced in a family gathering one time.
He made sure to deliver it with just the right amount of self-assurance that adults find hilariously adorable in children, letting them fully believe he would soon find a different dream, as children were wont to do, never even realizing that as early as then, he was already proving to them that he could be one by parting their money from their wallets.
He began to actively request Seri for school books way beyond his years to explain his advanced academic knowledge in case he had to take an exam to skip a few years of school and thus be allowed to start college early.
Sometimes, however, when a different nightmare would catch him in his sleep, he’d find his skin itching with anxiety the next day, hearing whispers in his ear that told tales of darker futures and suggesting even darker plans to prevent them from coming true—“Perhaps you could convince Sunghoon to get a better life insurance.”—and Yoojin would have to shake his head and keep himself busy till they disappeared. He refused to stoop so low as to resort to murdering an innocent man. It might’ve been too late to keep his hands free of blood—
Yoohyun’s body leaning against his chest, blood painting Yoojin’s shirt red and spreading warmth in a sick, twisted parody of what he felt when he saw his little brother for the first time in his life
—but all the lives he took back then belonged to people who deemed Yoojin’s own as worthless and had done their best to rob him of it.
Besides, he'd reason with himself. It wouldn’t do to land myself in jail.
Yoohyun would be lonely without me.