Episode 5

The problem is, people love babies. No one likes twelve-year olds like Jeongguk. His cheeks are chubby, but not chubby enough. They want someone to coo at, someone to raise as theirs, someone who will believe they care, someone who will believe they are parents.

Jeongguk will never believe someone else is his mother. 

The boy who gets adopted is a replacement. Parents lose child. Parents want another one. The boy is ecstatic. Jeongguk himself does not want to fill shoes. He does not want his home to be a consequence of tragedy. He does not want people who call themselves his parents to look upon him with a sadness in their eyes. Or maybe he just does not want to confess his envy.

His adoption frees up a bed. That means the Gyeongs have a spare bed to fill. The Gyeongs are nice-er. They are three people, three adults in this household. There is a Mr. Gyeong, a Mrs. Gyeong, and a Miss Gyeong, who is a sister. Mr. Gyeong works. He does not communicate with the children in the house too much. Himself and Miss Gyeong are orphans and they are not actual siblings. They were adopted by the same family by mistake because of their shared last name and ever since they have clicked as if it were fate for them to meet, so they repay the karma of the world for bringing them together by setting up a foster home to give children the same opportunity to find their destiny.

Destiny. Jeongguk, at this point in his life, does not believe in destiny. It’s difficult to believe life has a plan for you when it steals your mother at 10. People who believe in destiny tend to be happy people. Jeongguk is twelve, knows little about life, yet more than other boys who are twelve, boys who are not in the system. Mostly he knows he doesn’t know, mostly the difference between him and boys with happy families is that he is aware of his own ignorance to what life holds. One thing he is sure of, however, is that he is not happy. 

He’s okay, that much he is, he’s okay. But he’s not happy. He’s been trying to learn new feelings, but happiness, he thinks, is something he knew before and is slowly starting to forget. With his time at his aunt’s, he learns a great deal about anger, frustration. He learns more about loneliness, less about trust. He certainly does not learn happiness.

The thing that is closest to it that he learns is the pride and cocky joy of victory. Jeongguk counts the times he’s won a race. Fourteen. When he tells his coach he has to leave the team because he’s moving to another school, the coach almost offers to adopt him. What he feels at that is certainly not happiness. He doesn’t smile. He smirks. It’s not an appreciation of him, it’s an appreciation of his ability to run. That, he is proud of, that, he is confident with, but that, he knows is not as whole hearted as he thinks happiness should be, as it was with his mother in the simplest moments. 

So no, on paper Jeongguk does not believe in destiny. Though a small portion of him finds it hard to believe that it is a coincidence that this very same week, miles away from the Gyeongs, Mrs. Park is deemed unfit to raise children and stripped off her rights to be a foster parent for a little while because her hoarder OCD is acting up too much. 

One bed free and six boys needing new allocation. Yet, the boy that ends up at the Gyeongs is none other than Taehyung. This has to be somehow predetermined, Jeongguk feels, when they bring him in for introductions with this ladybug suitcase.

His hair is better. It’s nicely cut, falls slightly over his eyes. He’s grown taller, lankier. He’s still bony, but there seems to be more meat on his stomach. His clothes don’t fit him, still, so Miss Gyeong takes him to the mall the following day and buys him a few t-shirts.

This time round, Taehyung is the one that doesn’t know anyone and Jeongguk is the one who knows where stuff is. With pride at his knowledge and comfort of his surroundings, he wants to return the favor, show him around, offer him a bed and hold his hand. He’s outgrown hand-holding personally. There isn’t much room for hand-holding in this world, really, but if Taehyung needs it, he’d be ready. 

But the Gyeongs have a bed for Taehyung and he isn’t half as shy as Jeongguk used to be. He meets the rest of the boys quickly, flashes that toothy, boxy smile at them almost immediately, and Jeongguk has to wonder if the boy even remembers him. It makes him curiously sullen that he might not, that he doesn’t appear to need him at all. 

He doesn’t know then how many times Taehyung has gone through transitions like this, that it is an instinct for him to blend in, that new surroundings are something common and he’s developed a fluidity to his personality that allows him to chameleon himself into a space almost disturbingly quickly. He doesn’t know Taehyung last had a home when he was four years old.  

Jeongguk refuses to be the first one to talk to him, but Taehyung seems to be talking to everybody but him. Maybe it is then he learns the unflattering flutters of jealousy. The sensation of Taehyung next to him, of his palm slipping into his own was his first experience of some semblance of comfort after he was ****** into the System. It was small, a small gesture, a short moment, but it was peculiarly meaningful. To him. 

Taehyung himself does not seem to care much. He speaks to everyone. He smiles at everyone. Taehyung is special, but Jeongguk, apparently, is not. 

Everyone experiences feelings differently. For Jeongguk, jealousy is angry and strangely vengeful. He is almost pointed in speaking to one of the boys he’s formed a tentative friendship with. 

“I’m Taehyung.” 

It’s the first thing he actually hears him speak, after an hour and 46 minutes of being there, not directed at him, or perhaps not only directed at him. When Jeongguk turns, looks at him, he finds his eyes focused on the boy he’s speaking with, rather than on him, and he’d glad and mad at the same time. He certainly doesn’t want his introduction, obvious proof he’s forgotten.

But he hasn’t.

“Hoseok,” the other boy shakes his hand, flashes a smile as equally bright as Taehyung’s to him. Jeongguk thinks he gravitates to people who are not afraid to genuinely smile. It puts him at ease. Hoseok, for one, rarely stops grinning.

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