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Sehun hasn’t been back to the Kim Mansion in five years, when he was still in high school.

The place doesn’t look that much different. Still as grandiose and enormous as ever. Sehun’s even had some happy memories here, when he and Kai would sneak into the older’s room to simply hang out and cuddle with each other.

So Sehun isn’t afraid of this place, in general. But more because of who he’s here with, now.

What am I doing? he berates himself internally. Why did I agree to go with Jongin? Why am I letting him show his side of the story? Why, Sehun?

Because you don’t understand why Jongin did what he did and you still care, Sehun answers himself, closing his eyes in resignation.

“This is the window,” Jongin speaks, catching Sehun’s attention. He follows the older’s gaze up to see a window on the second floor, closed shut. “It’s the window of my old room. One time I couldn’t take being locked inside anymore so I jumped out. Bruised my legs. Halfway across the courtyard I realized I forgot to take my inhaler with me. I would pretty much asphyxiate to death without it, but I didn’t care. I pressed on. I needed to press on, get away from here. I probably would have died a block down the road.”

“But you didn’t,” Sehun murmurs, recalling the day Jongin had called him ‘an angel’.

“I didn’t, because I never went far. Because I saw you at the gate.”

Sehun makes a choking sound, that day as clear to him as yesterday. Kai had skipped school and Sehun was worried for the boy, had braved going to the Kim Mansion by himself to check up on him, only to find him all bruised up by the entrance.

But it wasn’t Kai, Sehun now knows. It was Jongin. And Sehun couldn’t tell the difference back then.

“I know that I was delusional, and you were so worried for me because you thought I was Kai,” Jongin continues, eyes far away as he leads Sehun inside the mansion, where the living room is. Stands in front of the couch they both sat on that day, when Sehun had cared for Jongin’s wounds. “I know that your affections weren’t for me. But I was so starved for attention I breathed you in like you were air, anyway.”

“I remember you asked me if I was so nice to you because I was dating Kai,” Sehun breathes, wincing. “And I told you I would be nice to you, whoever you are.” Oh, god. “Did I… Did I inadvertently lead you on?”

“I was touched when I heard that,” the other admits. “It was like a dam opening and flooding across my chest. There is something special about you, Sehun. You make ed up kids like Kai and me feel… wanted. Like it wasn’t a mistake we were born. That it was…” Jongin’s voice cracks at this. “That it was okay for me to―to live. To continue living. That I wasn’t better off dead, instead.”

“Jongin―”

“Let me show you my old room,” Jongin cuts in abruptly, hurrying up the stairs, leaving Sehun to scramble after him.

Right away, Sehun notices Jongin is leading him to a small hallway hidden in a corner to the left. They weave in and out of the walkways like a maze, until he stands in front of a small, nondescript door, painted black and dreary-looking.

Sehun can tell this room isn’t like the rest of the rooms he’s seen in passing. This is nothing like Kai’s room, where there are double doors, painted white with golden engravings at the borders, radiant looking. This looks like a door in the basement of a torture chamber, instead.

The sight that greets him when Jongin opens the black door isn’t much better.

It’s a tiny room, perhaps a fifth the size of Kai’s bedroom. There is a twin bed squished into a corner, a desk and chair, a closet next to an opened door revealing an equally tiny bathroom, and… that’s it.

The whole room is painted in pitch-black walls.

Sehun feels horrified just looking at it. Jongin hasn’t the lights and the only light source is from the window to the right of the bed, barely big enough for someone to squeeze through and jump, like Jongin did.

“This is where I lived for eighteen years of my life,” Jongin tells him, voice calm though Sehun is feeling anything but calm at the moment. More like horror. “It has basic necessities for me to live, I guess?”

“But why―I mean, you’re still their child!” Sehun points out. “How can they do this to you―”

“I heard I refused to come out,” Jongin replies. “My mother gave birth to Kai no problem, but apparently I didn’t grow right. My organs didn't form right. I have a weak heart and somehow got an infection in my lungs as a fetus and I was choking on blood and contaminating the womb after Kai came out. I was going to die in the womb. My mother was going to miscarry me, if she couldn’t push me out in time, so they had to do a C-section. Except it was a really bloody process and in the end my mother found out she could no longer have any more children thanks to me.”

Sehun widens his eyes. He didn’t know this.

“She was distraught. And it turns out in the end I was a barely-alive baby, anyway. I had to live via cryonics, encased and almost frozen in a glass tube, for the first six months after I was born, because my lungs were so weak I couldn’t even breathe in normal air. Even after that, I still had to live separated in a glass room with specially filtered air otherwise my lungs would have an attack. Since the day I was born, I lived in the hospital. I couldn’t go home―never knew what a ‘home’ was―until I was six years old.”

Sehun only gasps, feeling sick to his stomach at Jongin’s story.

“At that point, my mother had thought of me as a demon child―a cursed child who robbed away her ability to have kids again, and my father… well. He’d only needed one person he could cultivate and groom to b