She met him on the stairs.

It was on what should have been a perfectly ordinary night whilst she was tottering down the stairs to fetch some warm milk for her younger brother that she met the unfamiliar boy on the stairs. This was a strange occurrence in itself, and not one which she had been expecting. She might have screamed, were it not for the fact that the boy had tearstains covering his little face and that her father’s hardened hands were clasped gently around the boy’s shoulders as he guided the boy up them.

Her eyes fixed with the boy’s widened ones. They stared at her intently, and were red and swollen but not to the extent that she couldn’t tell that they were pretty. She had always thought his eyes were pretty, even to this day.

“Sungmi, sweetie, what are you doing up so late?” her father asked softly, causing her to look away from the boy who was smaller than she was and up to her father’s faintly lined face. As always, there was no anger there.

“I was getting milk for Sunghee. He can’t sleep well, Daddy,” the small girl explained, glad it had not been her mother who caught her out of bed afterhours.

Her father smiled warmly at his daughter and stepped around the boy to scoop her up effortlessly into his arms. “What a good girl we have here,” he whispered to her, kissing the top of her head quickly. Sungmi’s eyes flitted back to the boy who was staring up at the exchange.

“Daddy, who’s that?”

Her father stretched out a hand to the small boy and waited whilst the boy considered if he was going to take it or not. Finally, his small hands reached up and intertwined with the man’s.

“This is Kyungsoo. He’s going to be living with us from now on.”

Sungmi blinked several times at the news, then looked back at the boy her father had just identified. “Why doesn’t he live with his mummy and daddy?” It was not asked maliciously, merely curiously.

“Shh,” her father hushed her quickly, leading the boy up the stairs as he carried his daughter. “Not now, sweetie.”

Although dissatisfied by this answer, Sungmi didn’t ask again. Instead she enjoyed the sensation of being carried up the stairs, but kept her eyes on the owl-like boy. When the three of them reached the top of the stairs, her father set her down and took both her shoulders within his hands.

“Listen to me carefully. You mustn’t tell Sunghee or Sungsook about this, ok?”

Sungmi frowned a little, confused. She loved her siblings very much, and couldn’t think of why she wasn’t allowed to tell them about this. As triplets, they considered themselves to be very open with one another. And they would surely wonder why it had taken her so long to return to their room. “But you always say not to lie,” Sungmi breathed out quietly, glancing down.

Her father considered this for a moment. “Yes, that’s true,” he agreed with a little nod. “But there are times when a little secret is better than the truth.”

Still frowning, Sungmi didn’t know if her two siblings would feel the same way.

“Why must he be a secret, daddy?” she asked, glancing at the boy again. Once again, he was staring at her.

Her father let out a little sigh. “It won’t be a secret forever – just until we are able to let him stay here comfortably.”

Sungmi still felt somewhat conflicted, biting hard on her lip. Her mother always said not to lie, and her father did sometimes too. So why was she allowed to do it now? A little tear of frustration escaped her eye, causing her father to chuckle at his daughter’s clear confusion.

“It’s to protect him, sweetie. We’re going to protect him. But you mustn’t tell anyone he’s here just yet.” He lifted his hand and used the pad of his thumb to wipe away that single tear. “Big girls don’t cry, ok?”

This time Sungmi nodded along with her father, swallowing a little. He was always right, after all.

“Good girl. Now off to bed,” he told her, standing again and returning to the boy’s side and taking his hand once again.

Sungmi rather reluctantly headed back to her room where she was met with the gentle sound of her two siblings snoring away. It seemed that it had been a waste to go try get milk for Sunghee since the boy had been able to find sleep by himself. She slowly turned back to the door, knowing her father had taken the boy to the spare room at the end of the corridor.

Sungmi never considered herself to be rebellious, and nor did her father, but her mother had always said she had that streak in her. And as she quickly scurried back along the corridor once the coast was clear, Sungmi found herself wondering if her mother might be right after all. She came to the front of the spare room. There were no sounds from inside, and upon opening it a little, she saw there were no lights on either. Poking her head through to see if there was anyone in here, she was met with nothing but darkness.

Through the dim though, she could make out a shape moving to sit upright on the bed upon also noticing her. It was too small to be her daddy or mummy, so that meant it was the boy.

Sungmi wasn’t sure for certain but she felt like he was staring at her as well. She wondered if he knew why he had been brought here. Since her father hadn’t explained it to her yet, she was very curious.

“Kyungsoo?” she called softly; timidly, as she stepping into the room.

There was a pause. Then a faint rustling. Sungmi’s eyes narrowed in an attempt to see what the source of the noise was.

 “Y-yes?” the figure replied, voice sounding a little hoarse from crying.

Sungmi’s eyes relaxed upon hearing the boy speak.

“Can I come in?” she asked, as if she wasn’t inside the room already.

“Y-yeah.”

Sungmi took several steps into the room and found herself feeling with her hands until she found the bed. She then sat on it and turned towards where she believed Kyungsoo to be sitting.

“I’m Sungmi,” she told the faint outline. She thought she saw it nodding in response. “Are your mummy and daddy coming here too?” This time she saw the figure shake his head.

“No. They’re dead,” he mumbled quietly.

She didn’t know what to say to this, but she suddenly felt bad for this boy. Stretching out her hand, she found his and took it. Children find concepts such as loss odd to deal with, but Sungmi offered him the only thing she thought could help him.

“Then you can stay here and share mine. You can share my brother and sister, too. My sister is a bit moany, and my brother is sick but I love them a lot. And you will too.”

The two of them kept their hands tightly gripped together, Kyungsoo squeezing tightly and Sungmi squeezing back just as hard. At some point that night, Kyungsoo started crying and so Sungmi took it upon herself to tuck him under the covers and sit with him as he tried to find sleep, hands still clutching onto one another tightly. In the end, when Kyungsoo’s soft whimpers were exchanged with light snores, Sungmi knew he was sleeping. Instead of taking her hand from his though, she simply lay down beside him and slept there for the first of many, many nights.

When Sungmi was seven and Kyungsoo was eight, they had the situation explained to them properly for the first time. Kyungsoo was in fact the only child of one of Sungmi’s father’s friends who had fought alongside him during his term in the m