It was dark before Leo got up off the bench and began his trek home. He opened the door to find Ahjumma, Lee Bongcha, standing there looking red-faced and furious. Her hands were on her hips and she was nearly spitting fire when she started yelling at him.

“Where the HELL have you been, young man?! I told your principal the last time he had to call because you’d skipped school for God knows what reason that you would not miss again for the next semester. I am not saving your sorry again, and you have a month’s worth of detention.” Leo’s mouth dropped open in fury. “You heard me. Hakyeon has your homework, now you’d better get yourself upstairs and do it.” He skipped school too you know. “I’ve already yelled at them. Now .” Ahjumma had always been adept at interpreting his silences.

He heard her muttering angrily to herself as he went up the stairs, and snickers from the other rooms as he passed them. He wasn’t surprised; he didn’t think there was a person halfway to America who hadn’t heard her screaming at him. Leo took a sidestep in the direction of the titters without looking at the faces peeking through at him and the doors slammed shut, much to his satisfaction.

Ken wasn’t the only one around here who was scared of him.

Leo opened the door to his own room and found the others scattered about, mostly doing homework. N merely pointed to his own stack on his bed and he nodded wearily, picking it up and sitting on the floor, as Ravi had the desk.

“I’m sorry.” N said, finally looking up from his essay. “I tried to tell her to go easy on you, but she said...um, she said she didn’t care how upset you were. We didn’t tell her about Hyuk.”

“Hey, Leo-hyung?” Hongbin’s voice was hesitant as Leo turned to face him, though without his usual glare. He just felt tired now. I hate my life. “We should probably bandage your hand. It looks pretty bad.” Leo looked down in mild surprise to find that there was dried blood smeared all over his split knuckles after their experience with the brick wall and he clenched his hand, wincing as the skin split more and fresh blood dribbled out of the wound. N sighed and got the first aid kit from the washroom, sitting down in front of Leo and making him hold out his hand. Leo hissed in pain as N cleaned the area with a disinfectant wipe and wrapped some gauze spread with ointment around the injured hand. Leo nodded and N accepted the thanks.

“Be more careful next time you want to punch something.”

Leo nodded again tiredly and spent the rest of the evening doing his homework in the relative quiet of the room. The only sounds to be heard were the running footsteps in the hall where several of the younger boys were playing their nightly game of tag before getting yelled at by Ahjumma to shut up and go to sleep already.

One by one the boys shut their books, took cold showers, and went to bed after a long, emotionally draining day until only Ravi was left, steadily working his way toward college.

Leo couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned and punched his pillow and cursed in his head. He tried to focus on the scratching of Ravi’s pen on paper, Hongbin’s sobbing breath above him, and the light patter of rain on the window, but nothing soothed him into the darkness of sleep. The one night he needed the emptiness and it wouldn’t come.

Every time he closed his eyes he saw Hyuk’s pale face, never to smile again, never to look delighted to see Leo again, never to do anything again. A voice that sounded disturbingly like Hyuk’s echoed in his head.

You swore, hyung! You swore to protect me always! Where were you, huh? Where the hell were you when I needed you the most??

Leo buried his face in his pillow to simultaneously block out the guilt in his head and keep himself from screaming.

Ravi heard him moving around and turned in his chair, knowing Leo wasn’t asleep. Leo ignored him, hoping to be left alone, but as always, the world didn’t work in Leo’s favor.

“Are you all right, hyung?” Ravi asked, somewhat hesitantly, probably unsure of why he even asked; he knew Leo wouldn’t answer. Besides, it was painfully obvious that none of them were all right and wouldn’t be again in a long time. Maybe they never had been.

Leo didn’t move or acknowledge Ravi’s inquiry. He heard the younger boy hesitate again, perhaps wondering if he should go over to him, but even Ravi was wise enough not to do that. Leo heard the pen scratch on Ravi’s paper again and he relaxed slightly, but at the same time thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if someone cared for him for once, hold him tight as he’d once held Hyuk when he was scared and tell him that everything was going to be okay.

They’d learned very early on that no one was going to comfort them when the bad dreams took over. All six of the boys had been in the home since they were toddlers, either abandoned or all alone in the world after the death of their parents. They all took their first steps here, spoke their first words here, knew every inch of the building backwards and forwards. They had quickly formed themselves into their group and everyone else had done the same. If you weren’t part of a group, then you were an outcast, unable to join one. The home had stopped accepting new boys several years back and Ahjumma was simply waiting until the last one left so she could have her life back again. She had a long way to go; N was the oldest in the home and he wouldn’t leave for another year. The youngest was only eight.

They had given themselves their nicknames after watching a movie about spies when Leo was ten. Only Hongbin refused another name. It was Ken’s idea; he said he’d always wanted an English name and promptly named himself Ken, refusing to answer to Jaehwan unless it was an adult. They’d each named themselves, even Leo, who normally didn’t deign to take part in what he considered their dumb games. He secretly liked the name Leo, as much as he’d said at the time that he thought this was stupid. But even now, at 18, he still thought of himself as Leo rather than Taekwoon.

As the second oldest in the group, Leo quietly took care of the younger ones, helped by N, who had a more boisterous approach. Leo closed his eyes and thought of another night, one where Hyuk was younger and much more innocent. Leo was a lighter sleeper than the others, who could sleep through the end of the world if no one woke them up. He’d been woken up by a cry from the bunk bed next to him, and found 6-year-old Hyuk sitting up in his bed, breathing hard and looking scared. Leo was only nine, but he climbed out of his own bed to sit on Hyuk’s, since there was no way anyone else was going to come.

“What’s wrong?” He whispered. Those were the days that he still talked, but only to them. He’d never talked to anyone else, to the point where the school social worker gave him the distinguished diagnosis of “selective mutism” when he was eight that was eventually updated to “progressive mutism” four years ago, when he stopped speaking altogether at the age of 14.

“A bad man was chasing me.” Hyuk sobbed into his blanket. “He wanted to hit me like Ahjumma did today when I took the cookies from the kitchen.”

Leo gathered Hyuk into his arms and rocked him slowly back and forth, whispering comforting words into his ear. Gradually, Hyuk’s tears slowed and came to a stop. “Is that better now?” Leo asked, and Hyuk nodded. “Don’t worry Sanghyuk-ah.” Leo focused his gaze, intense even at nine, onto Hyuk. “I’ll protect you forever and always. I’ll never let anyone hurt you, okay?”

Hyuk looked at him with wide eyes that were somehow too serious for his age. “Promise?”

“I swear.”

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This chapter made me really want to bring Hyuk back to life. And I think I'm starting to ship Neo...

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