ballerino

 

He’s very clumsy.

Kim Jongin couldn’t help but sigh again for the fourth time in the last thirty minutes. He was happily swinging and was imagining himself could fly above the sky of the way he swung back and forth with the blast of wind hit against his body but without a wailing from the younger boy like this.

Jongin dropped his feet back to the ground as the swings stopped swinging. He looked to a small boy about his size was crying and wailing about how hurt his knee was. That small boy had just skinned his right knee.

Jongin ran a little toward the small boy, a small smile was on his plump lips seeing how cute the boy was even with watery eyes and wet face—he couldn’t help but think that way, the boy was too cute for his own good enough to let Kim Jongin enjoyed it a little when the small boy was being like this but he never told he did. (He liked, loved all kinds of cute thing, and that’s a common knowledge about him.)

He knelt in front of the small boy and patted the boy’s head tenderly to get his attention. He dropped his gaze to the small boy’s knee, there was a small scratch. A heavy sigh escaped from his lips. When he would stop being this clumsy?

“Did you fall again, Sehunah?” Jongin asked gently.

The small boy, Sehun, lifted his head up to Jongin. He was still crying, wailing about how hurt his right knee was between his hiccups—he kept calling out for his mom and Jongin. The boy nodded his head slowly, refusing to look into Jongin’s eyes which were intently gazing toward him. The older boy was worried about him yet he still made him worried. He was ashamed by himself.

Jongin’s face softened after hearing the younger boy mumbled he was sorry for being clumsy again and made him worried. And Kim Jongin being Kim Jongin, the tender and the loving hyung for the small boy named Oh Sehun, he caressed the boy’s head to comfort him, gently saying, “Its okay Sehunah. Hyung’s mad at you. I’m just worried that you always get yourself hurt and crying like this.” He tucked the boy’s bang that was covering his eyes to behind his ear.

Yet the younger boy was crying louder and harder this time, he felt touched by his loving hyung. “Hyung, Jonginnie hyung, I’m sorry. I promise I’ll not being clumsy ever again and I’ll not make you worried again. Sehunnie is sorry, Hyungie.”

Jongin put his short arms around the younger to comfort him and whispered some sweet words that would help the younger to stop from crying.

“There, there, my little Sehunnie.”

 

 

The first time Kim Jongin met with Oh Sehun, about three years ago, when he was playing swings with Baekhyun on the playground near their school after school. Baekhyun was helping him to push him when a loud cry interrupted their happy time out of nowhere.

Jongin the first one who noticed the cries, he asked Baekhyun to stop from pushing him. Jongin’s doe eyes swept over his surrounding wandering where the loud cry came from. A small gasp escaped from his lips once the both of his eyes had found a small boy—about their size—was crying while hugging his right knee, a red ball was rolling on front of the boy. Jongin assumed he had just fallen just had skinned his knee, judging from the blood on it.

Without wasting his time, little Jongin ran toward to where the crying boy was, Baekhyun followed from behind. The boy was very cute, extremely cute, that’s the first thing Kim Jongin thought about the crying boy as he clearly seen in his sight.

The boy had a small face with sharp chin yet looked cute, a pair of small eyes and thin lips perfectly on his cute small face. His skin was totally opposite from his, the milky white skin, the boy’s skin was even fairer and paler than his cousin, Danna.

What a cute boy! Jongin’s inner self couldn’t help but to squeal, he indeed loved cute things.

Jongin knelt in front of the boy, his right hand hesitantly reached out to the crying boy’s hair. “Hey, are you okay?” Jongin put a friendly smile as the boy lifted his head up and looked at him with unshed tears in his eyes yet before Jongin could open his mouth, he heard the boy mumbling, “Mommy…”, in very cute way.

Kim Jongin really wanted to hug and squeezed the boy in front of him right here and there. How could he not do, especially seeing those small eyes were wet with unshed tears, those rosy and squishy cheeks to pinch on and his thin lips that continuously called out for his mommy. He looked like a cute kicked puppy.

(Jongin really wanted to kidnap and kept the boy for him, alone. But he had to argue to not to do that. So he shrugged it off.)

“Hey, are you okay?” Jongin’s voice was a lot gentler. His small hand kept caressing the boy’s hair.

The boy was still crying, almost dead down now, his body was trembling. The boy didn’t resist when Jongin and Baekhyun helped him to steady on his own foot and lead him to the bench. Hesitantly he nodded his head as Jongin said, “I’ll be right back.”

Jongin ran to get his backpack, he remembered his mom had put some band-aids—with Krong print on it, of course. He cooed the small boy—that’s the habit he got when he’s trying to make his baby cousin; Danna, to stop crying. Baekhyun in the other hand was rubbing the boy’s back as Jongin tried to clean the blood from his knee. The boy started to cry, much harder and louder than before.

“Mo-mommy it hurts…”

“There, there, little one. It’s almost done.” Jongin carefully put the band-aid on his knee, just wanted to make sure it wouldn’t make the boy cry again. Jongin smiled with satisfaction. He tried to get the boy’s attention with tenderly wiping the unshed tears on his rosy cheeks and giving a light caress on it.

The boy looked directly into Jongin’s eyes, Jongin noticed the look of the boy’s in front of him. His small eyes didn’t blink at all, his lips were parted slightly. There was a soft spot for the boy in Jongin’s heart as he looked at Jongin that way.

“Does it still hurt?”

The boy shook his head, nuzzling onto Jongin’s caresses. Just like a puppy, Jongin thought.

“What’s your name little one?” A voice asked. That’s Baekhyun. He just had to ask this because it would be freaking long watching his friend, Jongin, fondled the boy they had just been helped out. They looked like a puppy and its master. (He found they looked cute, really, speaking truthfully.)

The boy smiled shyly while playing with his short fingers. “Sehun, my name is Oh Sehun.” Then he looked down at his laps.

Jongin was trying so hard to not squealing or pinching the boy’s rosy cheeks, he was too cute that he couldn’t help himself. But Byun Baekhyun was, he was squealing and pinching Sehun’s cheeks, loud and hard.

 

And Oh Sehun turned out to be their new neighbor. (Jongin and Baekhyun were jumping and ran to hug the clueless boy once they knew the news. They pulled Sehun along to play with them a whole day until their parents got angry because the boys forgot to eat their launch). The cute little boy Sehun was a shy and easily got blush every time Jongin and Baekhyun treated him like a baby— they didn’t let him to do anything, just let the hyungs did, Jongin and Baekhyun told him that, scolded him. The cute boy who had an adorable lisp every time he spoke, the cute boy who liked holding Jongin and Baekhyun’s hands, the small boy who loved drinking bubble tea every day and won’t share it with anyone beside Jongin and Baekhyun Hyung, the boy who loved his hyungs, Jongin and Baekhyun, more than his actual hyung.

Oh Sehun.

Both of Kim Jongin and Byun Baekhyun were in love once they found a boy named Oh Sehun. So was Oh Sehun.

“Does it still hurt, Sehunah?” Jongin asked for the nth time today, he was just too worried about the younger boy. Like a mother hen he was. They were on the way to home, it’s almost noon.

Sehun swung their intertwined hands back and forth. He smiled cheerfully to the older boy beside him, “It doesn’t hurt anymore, Hyungie,” he looked down at the Krong band-aid on his knee, “I’m okay right now because Jonginnie Hyung helped me.” He beamed.

Jongin sighed in relief, secretly praying to God to not let his dearest little boy Sehunnie fell and got hurt again. Amen.

“But Sehunah, what if Hyungie wasn’t there when you got hurt? Hyunggie isn’t always there for you every time.” Jongin tried to sound as gentle and caring as he could. He had always been thinking this, he couldn’t keep up to be beside him every time to help him with this and that yet again Jongin still wanted to baby the younger boy even they got older. Selfish, he knew.

The younger boy pouted, puffing his left cheek, saying, “You’re always been there, for me, because Jonginnie Hyung loves me so much.”

He was right, he had always been right. Jongin really wanted to hate, no, dislike, the boy for doing this to him. But he couldn’t, it was Oh Sehun out of people. Oh Sehun was Oh Sehun, he couldn’t say no. Kim Jongin did love the younger boy too much, enough to hurt himself for the boy.

 

“Dear God, Jonginnie really wants to have a son just like my little Sehunnie, he’s cute and I love him, so much.”

 

 

 

▲▼

 

 

 

This feels like Déjà Vu.

Those words kept chanting in Kim Jongin’s head. His body suddenly stiffened and turned cold in one second. His hands were trembling and were covered by cold sweat. He was shocked, he was in fear.

He really wanted to run as far as from here, from his class, and hid to everywhere that he couldn’t be seen. He hated this kind of feelings, it’s killing him inside slowly. He wanted sunk into the earth and gone from this world. All he wanted was to not believing what he had just heard. He wanted to believe they were completely lies, the real ones.

Kim Jongin felt like he was dying, once again.

At 10 A.M. sharp, His class was leaning about human reproduction. At first Jongin was curious about it, he really did pay all his attentions to this class. Especially when he heard his teacher had mention how the babies were made. His eyes just couldn’t tear away from the screen in front of the class, absorbing every word the teacher was saying.

(All Jongin remembered this far, it took nine month to bear a baby inside the womb, just like his mom and aunty had told him before years ago.)

Jongin’s body didn’t move an inch as he heard his teacher saying, “Human is divided into two, male and female. Female, as you have heard before, they can bear babies in their womb because they have a uterus and for male they donor their to female. That’s the simple of way to say how the babies are made. So girls, you have to be proud was born as female, you all give birth to all human in this world. And for you boys, you have to respect and protect them. Got it?”

Everyone nodded and exclaimed ‘Yes!’ but not for Kim Jongin. He kept silent, his body didn’t move, his face became paler and paler as the time went by.

The memories when one of his teachers before said he was a boy and couldn’t be a mom kept playing in his head. He remembered, she said boys would be a daddy not a mommy. He wished he didn’t remember this.

He was not a female. He did not have a womb and a uterus just like the all girls did. He had . He was a male, completely a man whom would impregnate girls.

He was a male, he couldn’t be a mom.

“…They were lying.” Was all he could say.

 

 

 

His parents noticed it, both of his older sister also did. They all noticed that their dearest boy didn’t speak at all after he had gotten home. He went straight to his room after saying a weak of “I’m home” with a forced smile. This boy wasn’t their dearest boy at all. Their boy Jonginnie always smiled every time he got him. He would drag both of his sisters to knit together—yes, his hobby was knitting—or playing with his dad even helping his mom cooking in the kitchen. He had always been their sweet boy Jonginnie. But where he was now?

The boy who now was locking himself in the room was not their boy, he was not.

“I think we should check him. I have a bad feeling about him now,” Jongin’s mom finally spoke up after arguing about they should or should not check Jongin.

Her husband looked at her for a moment before looking toward their daughters whose nodded their heads. “I think we should.”

They stood in front of Jongin’s door. Jongin’s mom insisted her husband to knock the door right now but he didn’t do instead just stared at the door. She pushed her useless husband and knocked Jongin’s door. “Jongin sweetie, are you asleep?”

They waited but there was no answer from Jongin.

“Jongin-ah?”

Again, there was no answer so she opened the door and luckily it wasn’t locked.

The room was completely dark, there was no light come through to the room. But they noticed there was something under the covers. They knew that was Kim Jongin.

“Jonginnie sweetie?”

A hiccup.

Kim Jongin was crying.

Jongin’s mom went straight to her son and slid under the cover too pulling her crying son to her arms. She drew circles on Jongin’s small back and kept whispering sweet words that always helped her to make Jongin stop from his cries since he was a baby.

“Jongin-ah, what’s wrong?” His oldest sister asked.

Jongin shook his head against his mom’s collar bone, just crying and hugged her more tightly.

Jongin’s mom cupped Jongin’s small head in both of her hands. She gently wiped the tears that were still running down on Jongin’s cheeks. “Sweetie, tell mommy what’s wrong?”

Hearing the word ‘Mommy’ Jongin’s cries grew hander and louder. The word ‘Mommy’ became more painfully now.

“Why we-were you li-lying?” Finally he spoke with crack and sore voice. How long had he been crying?

“Jongin-ah,”

“Why were you lying I could become a mommy when I’m growing up. Why did you tell all lies those past years to me, why did you let me eat those lies and gave me a hopeless dream? Why did you give birth to me as a male instead of a female, mommy, why?” He sounded so hurt and sorrow.

Jongin’s mom couldn’t help but cry too. It hurt her too seeing her son like this, really. No, it’s not like she wanted to tell lies to her only son. But she just couldn’t tell the truth that she and her husband had hidden it even before their son was born into the world.

“Mommy, why was Jonginnie born as a boy? Mommy, does God hate Jonginnie so He doesn’t let Jonginnie to be a mommy just like you. Mommy, tell me why, please.”

She quickly wiped the tears on Jongin’s cheek, telling, “No, no my son. God doesn’t hate you. He loves you with all His heart. You are the gifted boy that God loves so much, you are special Jonginnie. You are my special gift from God above there.”

Jongin covered his ears with both of his palms. He shook his head hysterically, refusing to hear lies from his mom again. He was too tried to believe all lies she had told him.

“I hate it! I hate being a gifted boy! I have never asked to be born as one!” He shouted on the top of his lungs. “All I wish that I was born as a girl, mommy! I don’t want to be a gifted boy, I hate it. I wish I was a girl just like you and nuna…”

This was not the reality she wanted, her son misunderstood what the gifted person meant. “Listen Jonginnie, you are special, the very special one. Being a gifted person is very special. It’s more special than you born as a girl my love. Jonginnie, please believe in mommy.”

Jongin just shook his head, too tired to say anything more.

“Jongin love, you can become a mommy, you are—”

“Don’t! Don’t tell me with all your lies anymore mommy. Jonginnie is too tired to believe in it anymore, please.” He begged with watery eyes and trembling hands that were clutching onto his mom’s one piece.

 

“Why does everyone hate Jonginnie, even God too? God, why was Jonginnie born as a boy?”

 

 

 

“We should tell him the truth.”

They were sitting on the couch in the living room after Jongin had fallen asleep—he was too exhausted crying for hours. He fell asleep in his mom’s arms, still hiccupping in his sleep.

“Are you crazy?” his wife couldn’t help but snap a little, not that loud since their children had just fallen asleep. She closed her eyes, running her fingers to her hair weakly. The event had just happened was still fresh in her memory. How hurt her son looked with teary eyes, how sorrow his voice as he spoke. How fragile her only son looked with his small trembling body in her arms.

Kim Jongin, her son, he felt betrayed by his own parents.

She felt failed as mom for Kim Jongin, letting her son crying his fragile heart out like that. She felt miserable, couldn’t tell the truth to her son until now. She felt bad she had been lying for a long time about the truth her son was a hermaphrodite.

It was too late, Kim Jongin had said he hated had been born as gifted person. He hated himself had been born as a boy instead of a girl.

“We can’t.” She said firmly.

“What? You are the one who always insist to let him to know the truth he is a hermaphrodite. But why do you not want to let him know the truth now? It hurts me seeing our son suffers like that, he has to know.”

She let out a heavy sigh, “It also hurts me. But don’t you remember how hurt he looked just now saying he hates he was born as a gifted boy. He said it by himself, you know that too!” She snapped.

“But he didn’t know the true meaning of him being the gifted boy. We still have a hope to tell him the truth.”

She kept silent for a moment. “What if he still hates the truth he was born as a hermaphrodite?” She hoped it would not be happening. “I just, I’m just afraid he lives with hatred against himself.” She went to her husband and sunk herself into his embrace.

“He will not. His dream is become a mommy. Was born as a hermaphrodite is only way to grand his dream. We have to tell him.”

 

 

The breakfast time at their family a little different than the usual days, was a bit stiff and too quite. Sometime Jongin’s parents and both of his sisters stole a glance toward him, yet the said boy didn’t know. He was too busy playing his spoon with unfinished omelet on the plate. They sighed in despair. Jongin was still upset about yesterday.

She elbowed her husband on his torso, signaling this was the time to tell their son about the truth. He cleared his throat feeling nervous all of sudden.

“Jongin-ah,” “Mom, Dad,”

They both said in unison.

They chuckled but Jongin did not.

“What did you want to say, Jongin-ah?”

Jongin threw a weak smile. “Can I say it first, Daddy?”

“Sure, go ahead, little one.”

Jongin looked across his family before opened his mouth to say something but he reminded silent. He was still unsure about this.

“About my dream,” his voice was so low than he thought it would be.

“About your dream? Son, listen. I have to tell you—”

Jongin quickly shook his head, mumbling, “No, Daddy. I don’t want to have a hopeless dream anymore. That dream I have buried it, I want to forget it.” He smiled bitterly. “Mommy, Daddy. Jonginnie wants to be a Ballet dancer.”

“—really can become a mommy, you are a hermaphrodite, my little Jonginnie.”

Just let it be as a secret now.

 

 

 

Kim Jongin, when he was ten years old, he hated himself because he was a boy and stupidly believed he was very blessed had been born as a gifted boy. He regretted he did.

 

 

 

 

▲▼

 

 

 

A/N: this is words vomit. A longass one, pardon me. I'm sorry this a boring one, I'm not a good writer either, speaking honestly. this part is basically for little boy Oh Sehun's presence.