Prologue

2004

 To say that the whole place was packed with nervous and cranky people was unnecessary. There was a ruckus near the departure board because all the flights had been canceled or delayed for something related to the suddenly ugly weather that promised tempestuous storms all along the journey, but the passengers who were supposed to board on those flights didn’t really care about that reasonable motive for them to stay at the airport, and kept on complaining with the check-in agents as though the fault was at them and not actually at the Global Warming. They had been comprehensive and tolerant with the whole situation at the beginning but waiting at the airport lobby for more than eight hours may have changed things a bit.

“Please, sir, calm down… we’re doing the most we can…,” The young lady who stood behind the information desk of one of those tumultuous gates tried to justify the inconvenience for the ninth time to the same person and the wrinkly man huffed and roared frustrated exclamations just like he had done in the previous times. There was a very comical frightened look on the woman’s face when the man started banging his fist against the hard surface of the desk but the security guard interfered in the outburst of anger right before she could release the exhausted tears that she had been suppressing ever since the first flight was cancelled. One of her co-workers came to give her some support and the lady soon enough started a likely one-hour-long speech about how she should have accepted the job in that boutique instead.

 The rowdy atmosphere kept going on and it would become even heavier whenever there was another announcement of either delayed or cancelled flights popping up on the huge electronic board placed in the middle of the lobby. Everyone was on their limit already; the peevish attitudes of each of them only causing the crowded hall to become even more suffocating and unbearable. And everything just got worst when there was another ruckus about missing baggage in three of the several gates at the disembarking area.

“I can’t find my Dollar anywhere!,” One extravagantly dressed woman would scream every two minutes after barging inside each of those gates with an empty roll cage tightly squeezed between her full of jewelry hands. “He was right here when I disembarked but then he disappeared along with the rest of my baggage, only his cage was left! Dollar! Come with mommy, my precious. Here, Dollar, Dollar.”

“If you lost your baggage after having gotten it off the baggage carousel, there isn’t much we can do, ma’am. It’s not our company’s fault if you were naive enough as to lose it in the baggage claim area of the Terminal you arrived at.” A tall security guard who has been following the hysteric person through the whole area explained under a hardly controlled tone, his impatience with her showing on each pores of his features already. The woman rejected the other’s words with a scrunch of nose and then focused once again on searching for her pet through the crowd.

 A small ball of fluffiness mingled itself between several pairs of legs until it came to a stop on the vast waiting area currently composed by hundreds of occupied and rather uncomfortable lined up seats. It swung its tail briefly before giving a few steps ahead and squeezing its face against the nearest ankle in sight.

 Hyukjae looked down to his feet and stared blankly at the white puppy that tried to get his attention but soon looked up again to observe the way the noisy woman kept storming around the airport lobby in search for the said pet. Hyukjae has been watching the whole scene for time enough to know how the woman’s baggage actually was still lying near the baggage carousel since she had gotten distracted by the fervorous shouts and thuds she heard coming from the departure area moments earlier and forgot to properly lock the metallic chains of the roll cage, resulting in she becoming too desperate because of the missing puppy to notice how her baggage was right beside her all along.

 Even though he knew it all, the teenager simply shrugged his shoulders when asked if he had seen a lost puppy somewhere and then snorted quietly at the retreating figure of the woman while allowing the tiny dog to stop hiding itself behind his legs. The fluffy tail of the puppy kept hitting the sides of Hyukjae’s ankle as he petted the small being in an endearing way, his hand giving soft pats on the dog’s head before signaling for it to go resume its travel across the airport. Dollar the hand that was caressing his fur and soon started crowding together with that sea of legs until his whiteness got out of sight.

 Lee Hyukjae consulted the big digital clock displaying on the luminous panel where several displeasing statements about the current flights kept creeping its way in bright red and groaned in annoyance at the late hour. It has been already five hours he was there, waiting. Of course he considered coming back home and choosing to take his flight another day but the problem was that he didn’t have a home anymore. Not literally, because his mother’s house was still up and proud where it has always been, but figuratively. Maybe the truth was that Hyukjae has never had somewhere to call home, at least not in that cursed family he was unlucky enough to be part of. There may be a place out there where he can properly install himself and feel comfortable enough with it as to call it his home, just like his mother had told him before she practically kicked him out of their house ‘for his own good’, so Hyukjae just needed to be faithful and everything would be alright.

 Somewhere behind him a couple fight started to steam up as though the atmosphere in that place wasn’t already at the verge of materializing itself in a heavy mass of anger and frustration. Hyukjae glanced at them with a bothered look and then came back to facing the front, his ears remaining quite focused on the discussion behind him anyway.

“Don’t try to deny it, I saw how you were all smiles with her!,” A blonde girl would yell and then the guy beside her would only roll his eyes and huff in a mix of disbelief and annoyance. The girl suddenly slapped his shoulder to get his attention, the echo of that slap sounding painful even for Hyukjae’s hearing. “And look at me while I’m talking to you!”

“You’re behaving like a crazy , did you know that? Nothing happened between me and her, for god’s sake, she’s my cousin.”

“Well, she doesn’t share your blood, does she?,” The gestures the youngster was doing with her hands to emphasize her point would nearly make her likely boyfriend flinch in anticipation since he was probably expecting to be slapped once again in public. “‘There’s no wrong if she doesn’t share your blood’, isn’t that what your father said that day? Isn’t that right?!”

“Oh, please, just drop it already! There’s nothing going on between me and her, can’t you see how gross this would be? We’re relatives, think straight for once.”

 The argue was put into a pause after the last comment coming from the guy’s part and Hyukjae found himself taking in those words and measuring them regarding his own principles. He would never do something like that, like cheating on someone. The simple thought about being part of something so despicable like that would bring an upsetting feeling to twirl his stomach and turn it upside down, his good judgment and sense of moral abominating everything about that. It was hard for him to understand what could lead someone to cheat on another, especially when the person would claim that loved the other one day and right then was skipping itself through the fence to have fun with that third wheel. Hyukjae didn’t understand it at all. He found it repulsive to the core and his rational mind has already sentenced that he would come to hate anyone who did something like that. Anyone.

 Hyukjae knew that all this aversion he had towards that matter came from the trauma he had developed through all these years. It came from the excruciating pain he has suffered from being the result of mistake, of a sin. Being looked down, humiliated, unwanted and even beaten up for something his mother did. It was clear that he had grown this intolerant towards cheating mainly because of that and he was actually ok with it. Cheating was wrong, anyway. There were no shades of gray about that.

 There were a few people paying attention on him and Hyukjae suddenly felt self-conscious about the faint bruises he had on his face from the beating he suffered that very morning even though he suspected that those strangers were actually wondering why such a young guy was likely traveling abroad alone. People in airports do this when they get too bored by the long waiting for their respective flights; they stare at everyone who is also waiting on the departure area and begin to wonder who they are and where they’re off to. Hyukjae was being the target of those silent wonders at the moment and he himself wondered if any of those who were analyzing him right now would come to discover how he was just traveling anywhere in order to escape from the hell of a life he had in here. It was mostly certain that no one would.

 It was mostly certain that no one would discover how Kyuhyun had taken some extra cash from his father’s wallet before picking up his suitcases and dashing to the front door to take the cab that was already waiting for him right in front of his house’s gate. Not that they would give much importance to it if they did, though. His father liked to pamper him a lot and it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if Kyuhyun came to find another great amount of cash inside his baggage while searching through it for his passport when in the airport. The only problem was that he wouldn’t know from where that extra money would have come, if from his dad or mom since the both of them kind of competed to see who would pamper him the most. Kyuhyun could just consider himself lucky.

 However, it seemed like his luck has been pretty short and passing today because the whole departure lobby of the airport was a total chaos when he arrived. There was an apparently rich,  maybe belonging to the high class of Seoul, elegant woman standing on her knees crawling over the floor as looking under each seat of the waiting area, seemingly looking for some money she has lost because she kept screaming ‘dollar, dollar’ every time she lowered herself further. The security guard who stood right beside her had such a helpless expression on his face that anyone could see how the man was nearly quitting his job that day or strangling the crazy woman who kept calling for money on the floor, maybe both.

 It was hard to see much thing in that crazily packed hall but the electronic board which displayed uncountable status of either cancelled or delayed for the upcoming flights worked just fine on giving Kyuhyun the hint that he wasn’t going to board in the plane that soon. Well, he wasn’t in a hurry, anyway. Deciding to do the check-in later, preferably when the place looked less like that savage jungle that it currently was looking like, he carried his baggage to the lined up seats of the waiting area. After a few minutes fighting against other three people for the seat that had just become available, Kyuhyun lost it and was forced to keep on standing near the information desk where more people kept pushing past him, his countenance showing all the signs of frustration as he puffed his cheeks and glared at the person who succeeded on seating in the waiting area instead of him. But once again, Kyuhyun wasn’t in a hurry, so he simply accepted it and breathed in and out while taking out his cell phone to distract himself a bit.

 Studying abroad has always been Kyuhyun’s dream goal and his major chance to do so finally came now through a full scholarship he was provided with after taking first place in the Mathematical Olympiad held on his school. His whole family was so proud of him. Neither him could bear the prideful feeling he had towards himself at that moment. That was such a golden opportunity, a golden chance for him to upgrade his studies and shower his future with success and prosperity, that not even the fact of him still being underage stopped him. His parents wanted to accompany him all the way abroad but they found that it would be better for the boy to pursue his dreams by himself so he could properly mature as a person during his stay in there. He would be living inside the institution’s Campus as soon as he arrived in there, what left no place for further worries regarding his basic necessities of survival, so Kyuhyun just needed to be faithful and everything would be alright.

 A sudden and quite loud thunder echoed through the whole airport before a thousand of heads snapped at the sheltered ceiling constructed in steel and then at the wide glass that allowed a clear vision from outside, the heavy rain which poured down mercilessly right across the wall making some people shudder in relief for not being under that tempestuous weather. That didn’t work on lowering the amount of complaints about the delayed fights, though. More groans could be heard coming from the information desk and some curses followed them suit right after. As it seems, the confusion in there would only come to an end when planes began to come and go once again.

 Kyuhyun shifted on his spot when something soft rested its weight right beside his foot and he thought that it was about another person’s baggage or such, his eyes proving him wrong as soon as he looked down and saw a tiny puppy seated half over his foot and half out. He stared at it in awe for a few seconds, wondering what that little creature was doing in a place like that and why, but before he could think further about that matter there was a high-pitched yell ringing on his ears as the elegant woman who was crawling over the floor from before appeared from nowhere and caught the fluffy ball on her arms at last.

“Then here you are!,” She exclaimed, obviously speaking to the dog which squirmed between her arms in an attempt to escape once more. “I was so worried, my baby, I thought they had kidnapped you. I’m glad you’re fine.”

 Kyuhyun remained where he stood, eyeing every little corner of the place that did not involved the woman who now stared at him with a likely studying gaze. He was already waiting for something like she accusing him for kidnapping her poodle so the most he did was avoid her for the most he could even though he believed it would make him look more suspect than ever. Whatever thing that the woman could be possibly thinking about saying to him, she chose to simply return her attention back to her puppy and start pampering the animal as leaving instead. Relieved yet a bit shaken from the encounter, Kyuhyun let out a low sigh and then wandered his eyes around the still crowded airport absentmindedly.

 There were times when Kyuhyun would stare off into nothing in particular while thinking about something else and right now was one of them. Thoughts about what may be waiting for him in that different country he would be heading off soon to complement his studies occupied his mind as he looked at everyone in the waiting area, so he failed at properly noticing how he was actually staring down some people in there while deep in thought.

 Maybe that’s why for the nearly seven seconds that Kyuhyun stared right at Hyukjae from across the packed hall with his single lidded eyes slight narrowed in wonder, his brain wasn’t aware enough as to register it. And apparently neither Hyukjae’s since right at that moment he also was too busy internally wishing to have a better life far away from his supposed family, the Cho’s one.

[Author’s Note]

 I knowwww, this took me almost forever to update ㅠㅠ (exactly two months after I posted it but you already know that)

 The thing is, I suddenly lost the want of writing this. I wrote a great part of it already but then some things displeased me and all of that got mixed with my current state of ‘nothing-that-i-write-feels-good-enough-wtf’ing for some reason and everything went down the hill after that. I’m slowly giving this a second chance 'cause I think that it wouldn't be fair with you if I just deleted this, anyway, so… yeah, let’s see what we can do :)

 Since this was the Prologue, it’s a bit shorter than the chapter itself because it’s basically an introduction of the main characters and such. They’re in 2004 here so it’s preferable that you imagine both Kyuhyun and Hyukjae in those pre-debut photos we have been wanting to delete from the internet and burn down from the world ever since then. (I looked at their pre-debut photos these days to better picture the scenes they would be in and jesus christ)

 ANYWAY, I don’t know when the very first chapter will be up since my mind is under a huge block with this fiction, but let’s hope it will be up soon. Oh, and it will take place in 2010 so brace yourselves and prepare your mind for the ‘Bonamana’ era~