C is for Childhood

“Can you at least try?”

The twins didn’t even bother looking up when YoungJae walked into DaeHee’s room unannounced. DaeHyun was sitting on her bed, just flipping through his iPad, while DaeHee was cleaning up her room, clearly just doing something to pass the time.

“Depends,” DaeHee spoke up as she placed a few books back on her shelf. “Can you convince me she’s not a psychopath?”

YoungJae’s fists clenched immediately at the name she called Kae. He could feel his heart beat rapidly in anger, but he kept a cool façade to keep the conversation civilized.

“DaeHee, psychopath is a little harsh, don’t you think?” DaeHyun argued with a laugh. “I think mental is good enough.”

“No way. That girl is officially a psychopath, and that’s coming from me.”

“She’s not a psychopath,” YoungJae muttered out through gritted teeth. “Stop calling her a psychopath. Just because she has problems…doesn’t make her a psychopath.”

DaeHee finally turned and stared right at YoungJae.

“YoungJae, I’m saying this because I care about you. The girl IS a psychopath. She reminds me of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I don’t know how you got her to be all cute and fuzzy like she is now, but I know what I saw. Her eyes were demonic. And she was going to stop at nothing to kill me if you hadn’t stabbed yourself,” DaeHee explained seriously.

“You think…I don’t know that? She’s the reason I can’t move my arm, DaeHee. I ing know she has problems, don’t tell me these things like I’m blind!” YoungJae screamed back, all thoughts of being civil out the window. His behavior shocked the twins into silence, so he continued. “But that’s Kae! That’s the Kae I know and that’s the Kae that you’ll get to know! She might have tried to kill you, but she also saved your life, DaeHee! Why? Just because I said I would be sad if you were gone. I don’t know what’s wrong with her, but I will find out, so for ’s sake, up your pride and just do this for me! I beg of you!”

As he panted heavily from his rant, glaring at DaeHee, he fully expected her to yell right back at him for his behavior. But she merely stared sympathetically back at him. With an unsure sigh, she walked over to him and ran her hand along his casted, limp arm.

“YoungJae…I’m just worried about your safety…why are you going to such lengths for someone that almost killed you?” she asked gently, glancing up at him. Her eyes showed that she was slightly hurt from his words.

“Because she was the only person who cared about me growing up,” YoungJae answered. His voice cracked as he bit his lip and looked down at the ground. “You wouldn’t understand, DaeHee. No one really understands here…You’ve always had DaeHyun. You don’t know the feeling of being alone, of being unloved, of being abandoned. Your parents…they left your lives because someone killed them. My parents…they left my life because they didn’t want me. And that’s how I felt growing up. Unwanted. Even the caretaker at the orphanage I was at…she merely took care of me because that was her job. That’s how I felt as a child.”

A small nostalgic smile adorned his face as he reminisced. “But Kae…cared. Maybe it was because she needed me too…but that didn’t matter to me…we were never apart, there was no reason for us to be. To see her like this…I don’t know what she had been through…but I hate it. That girl you met at the doorway, that is the Kae I had known. Please…can you trust me and be nice to her?”

She smiled in pity for her friend. YoungJae jumped when her thumb rubbed his cheeks and only then realized that he had tears in his eyes.

“Okay…I’m sorry, YoungJae…I didn’t mean for things to go that far…we’re just really worried about you,” she whispered, hugging him tightly. YoungJae looked up at DaeHyun when he felt his friend’s hand on his shoulder.

“We just…weren’t sure if you realized…exactly what you’re so close to…” DaeHyun explained, being very careful with his words. YoungJae sighed. He knew they were right. He knew Kae had serious problems. …but he refused to call her a psychopath. She can be helped. He was going to help her and he was going to make sure that she no longer hurt people.

“I’m sorry, YoungJae…we have your back, you have our word,” DaeHee promised as he hugged her back and buried in his into his shoulders, allowing a few tears to escape as he realize just how bad things were.

~

“Jae?”

Kae whimpered as she walked out of the shower with a towel wrapped around herself. YoungJae told her to go take a shower and he would be back with some clothes. Despite how dirty she was, she didn’t shower for long because she was scared.

It was scary.

It was lonely in the shower.

And all she could hear was herself.

She didn’t like it.

So she just showered as quickly as possible and left in search of YoungJae. She swallowed nervously as she peeked her head out to see if she could see any signs of YoungJae. Her hair was dripping wet since she didn’t exactly try to dry herself off.

“Jae?” she called out again apprehensively. Nothing here was familiar to her.

Suddenly, a door close by opened.

“Kae!” YoungJae called out in surprise with a set of DaeHee’s clothes in his hands. “What are you doing? You’re dripping wet! Did you finish your shower already?”

Irrationally, she felt tears build up in her eyes and she cried out, “Jae!”

YoungJae was surprised when she charged forward and collided into his stomach, crying to his chest.

“Kae…thought Jae left her…” she whimpered, clinging onto his shirt desperately, getting all his clothes wet. He hugged her back tightly.

“I’m right here, Kae…I just went to get you some clothes…” he answered with a smile. “Go change, I’ll be right out here, okay?”

“You…promise you won’t go anywhere?” she asked, her lower lip still shaking as she stared up at him. He wiped her tears away with his thumb and nodded.

“Of course. Has Jae ever lied to you?”

She shook her head with furrowed eyebrows as if she felt insulted that he would even ask her such a question. A hearty laugh flitted out of YoungJae’s mouth as he ruffled her wet hair.

“Go get dressed and I’ll dry your hair for you, okay?” he offered. She took the clothes and went back into the bathroom to change immediately. A smile naturally stayed on YoungJae’s face as he watched her go back into the bathroom. However, once she was inside, the smile fell into a stare of pain and pity.

Even the Kae he met back then wasn’t this insecure about being alone…sure, she hated it…but when she was a child, she always tried to stay strong and kept her tears in as best as she could. He chewed on his lower lip in thought of what she must have been through. His heart began racing in fury while his fist clenched. He wanted to make that bastard pay. He wanted to revive him from the dead and destroy him little by little for breaking Kae like this.

“Jae?”

He jumped when he felt her hand on his. His eyes found her worried, lost ones. His smile returned.

“Hey, you finished?”

“Is…Jae okay? Did…Kae do something wrong?” she asked, fear evident in her voice. He shook his head.

“I’m okay. And Kae is going to be okay, too,” YoungJae answered, taking the towel from her and rubbing her hair gently with it. She giggled with her eyes closed to keep the water from landing in her eyes.

“Kae is okay as long as Jae is okay!”

She missed the look of pain in his eyes at the statement, only hearing his laughter in response.

“Well, Jae is only okay if Kae is okay, got it?”

“Neh~”

~

The rest of the day went by fairly quickly. The whole fiasco with bringing all the boys back took up most of the day anyways. DaeHyun decided to just sleep in DaeHee’s room. He figured Kae would probably just be more uncomfortable if he was there. Besides, DaeHee wouldn’t mind spending a few nights with DaeHyun. The two were glad they managed to get out of the whole mess together.

As YoungJae crawled into bed, Kae looked over at the empty bed and then back at YoungJae. She slowly began crawling into the empty one, a slightly unhappy frown on her face, before YoungJae’s voice interrupted her actions.

“Hey, silly…what are you doing?”

She turned around and pointed at the bed, “Bed?”

He rolled his eyes with a smile.

“So you don’t want to sleep with Jae?”

At his offer, she smiled widely and shook her head.

“No, Kae wants!” she answered, bounding over and jumping straight into the bed.

“Yah! Careful or you’ll break the bed!” he joked as she giggled, snuggling up against him. With an affectionate smile, YoungJae pulled the covers over the two of them and hugged her close with his good hand. He looked down to see Kae’s eyes immediately start to flutter close in exhaustion of all the events that occurred that day. He quietly played with her hair for awhile before asking.

“Hey, Kae?”

“Jae?”

“Remember when we snuck out that one night to see if we could see the meteor shower?”

She giggled and nodded.

“Ahjumma got really mad at us because we both got sick from staying out all night. Oh, what about that time you threw that big eye kid’s shoe into the tree? Ahjumma was SO mad at you but you still refused to go get the shoe, so he had no choice but to just walk back with one shoe.”

“Psh, that kid was an . He actually pulled out some of your hair once!”

“Ah! And that time that cat got stuck on that tree and we saved it?”

“Oh right, and we named it Silly because it ran straight back up right after we got him down. I hope he’s okay…oh, remember when we made that really big sand castle and pretended to be the king and queen of the world?”

“Yeah…then that big eye kid killed the castle…”

“Damn, that kid was seriously an .”

“Jae was so mean to him. You even put glue in his milk once, remember?”

“Yeah, because he poured honey on your head!”

“Ah? Is that what happened?”

“Aish…Kae…you really bad at defending yourself back then…”

“…did Jae hate it? Having to always care for Kae?”

“Of course not! I just hated how everyone always picked on you just because you couldn’t talk! It was so stupid! Aish, or how when you could talk, they picked on how you sounded ‘stupid.’ AIGO, IT JUST PISSES ME OFF THINKING ABOUT IT!”

Kae giggled again as she cuddled closer to YoungJae, sleepiness slurring her words now.

“My favorite…was when we made our necklaces…I just wanted to make for Jae…but I broke it…so you fixed it…”

“It was better that way,” he commented.

A small yawn from Kae.

“…I’m happy…Jae still has his half…very happy…”

“I’m happy you still have yours too, Kae.”

“…losing Jae…was the worst…painful…hurt…Kae was so lost without Jae…”

His eyebrows furrowed as he gently her head to calm her back down.

“Never want to lose Jae…” was the last thing she said before falling asleep. YoungJae sighed as he hugged the girl tightly against himself. It was as if he was afraid everything would turn against him and take her away from him again.

“Why…has things always been so hard for you? What did you ever do to deserve anything that happened to you?” he whispered quietly to himself as he watched over her for a little longer before he fell asleep as well.

He had wanted to ask her what happened after they got separated, but he would save that for another time when she had settled down more.

They had time.

And he would use it wisely.

Tomorrow, he was going to start doing some research on what was wrong with her.

The time that they had been apart.

Something changed in her.

=====================================================================

LOL. I COULD ONLY LISTEN TO “ZERO” WHILE WRITING THIS OR ELSE THINGS WOULD HAVE GOTTEN TOO DEPRESSING TOO SOON.

IN OTHER NEWS, HOLY , I LOVE YOU, YOO ING YOUNGJAE.

~Kira :3

P.S. To those that haven’t watched it yet, B.A.P’s One Shot. Absolutely beautiful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zRzl1d5vNU

P.P.S. Some addition pictures from BTS~

Loving the one with YoungJae hugging Zelo. :)

All those hatin on YoungJae are just jealous you ain't as badass as him.