Kim Kibum: Age 6

Kibum stared around the unknown room, hesitant and scared. Kim Kibum; aged 6, had just watched his parents be gruesomely murdered. He had no idea where he currently was but he was seated on a comfortable velvet sofa, waiting for the woman who had just left him there minutes ago to come back. After watching his parents being murdered hours ago, he was still in shock.

Just hours ago, Kibum hid himself in the confinements of a storage closet. The darkness enveloped him and silence hung around the air until he heard a door slam open, glasses breaking and the chilling screams of his mother. He had no idea what was going on.

Curiosity sparked his brain, and he slowly opened the door just a crack and peeped through. The scene was not a pleasant one. Broken glass with droplets of blood on them were scattered on the floor. Men who were wearing black clothing and who were fully covered were destroying their once peaceful residents. The toy cars in the corner of the room where Kibum was once playing were now fragmented and forgotten. Their once plain white carpet was now drenched in crimson red and his mother’s corpse lay wounded and bloody on the floor. His eyes darted to where another man was pushing his father up against a wall with a knife being held to his throat. The man muttered something inaudible to Kibum and at neck-break speed, his father’s throat was slit and the man unhandled him and stepped back. He watched as his father’s limp body slid to the floor with blood rushing down his neck.

Kibum clamped his hand over his mouth and gasped. The men’s attention was turned to the storage closet and he immediately slammed it shut, wanting to be enveloped in the darkness once again. Kibum buried his face in his knees with his hands to his ears. He counted slowly in his head just waiting until this nightmare was over and he would wake up. He heard the door being opened and he felt the short breeze from outside rush into the closet and he lifted his head up slightly so only his eyes could be visible to the men staring down at him. They stared at him for what seemed like hours in silence…just staring. Kibum stared back with watery eyes. He sniffled and the door was closed slowly. He buried his entire face back in his knees and waited until he woke up…

Now, hours later, the woman had now re-entered the room and Kibum watched as she took a seat in front of him with a notebook and pen in hand. She had started asking him questions like ‘how do you feel’ and ‘tell me what happened.’ He refused to answer any of them. Words just couldn’t escape his mouth no matter how much he forced them to. They just came out as gasps for breath until he started hyperventilating. The woman calmly told him to breathe. Breathing was a difficult task. After everything that had just happened over the last few hours, he couldn’t breathe. In a way, he didn’t want to.

Kim Kibum: Age 13

Kibum stared blankly at the sea of students in front of him. The sun was up but in Kibum’s world, the sun hadn’t come up since his traumatic experience seven years ago. Everyone around him was just a blur as he watched everything play in front of him like a silent film. No matter how loud it was, in Kibum’s world, noise was non-existent. It was just him and his thoughts.

After school, Kibum would walk down the same street to get home. Home was no longer a happy place. Home was no longer his sanctuary like it was before. He was adopted shortly after the incident but no matter how nice his foster parents were, they would never be like his birth parents. No matter how much they cared for him or loved him, it would never be the same.

Kibum had accidentally bumped into a gang of students from a different high school. The tallest one approached him and pushed him to the ground, forcing him to apologise. Kibum stared blankly up at him and he seemed to be more furious each time he wouldn’t answer him. All of them crowded around him at once.

That day he arrived home with a black eye and bruised bones.

Kim Kibum: Age 16

He counted slowly. That was his thing. It was his pass time. When classes seemed to go on for too long he would count. When anything seemed to go for too long he would count. Like his life, his life went on for too long, so he practically spends every moment just counting slowly in his head and waiting for everything to be over.

Class had just begun and he was already getting picked on by his teacher. He had asked him to solve an equation he had just written up on the board. Kibum just went with the number he was up to in his mind.

“272”

“Correct”

“What a lucky guess,” he mused, and his day continued from there.

Kibum floated through the crowd of students like a ghost, invisible to those existing around him. It was like he didn’t even exist for such a short time until someone thought it was okay to interrupt his time of serenity and bumped into him, Kibum’s belongings crashing to the ground. Kibum picked them all up hastily and slapped away the hand that tried to help him. The guy said sorry but Kibum took it as merely a whisper which went through one ear and out the other. Kibum pushed past him without looking back.

Kim Kibum: Age 17, September 23^rd

Earlier that day there was some sort of news going around school. Apparently it was a student’s birthday and everyone was invited; everyone.

That night Kibum attended because Jessica his friend—his only friend—had convinced him to go. It was funny because that day was also Kibum’s birthday but he was at a party celebrating someone else’s birthday. He couldn’t care less though. Why bother celebrating your birthday? It only means that you’re one year closer to dying.

Kibum stood awkwardly at the corner of the room. The lights were dimmed, bright colours flashed across the room and the music pounded loudly against his ears.

“Could you at least pretend that you’re having fun?” Jessica yelled at him. The noise was too loud so the yelling was a complete necessity.

Kibum shook his head. Why bother? If he wasn’t having fun, then why bother pretending to? He forgot what it felt like to have fun anyway.

“Come on!” Jessica urged. She picked up a random plastic cup from the floor near them and brought it in front of his face. “At least have some Coke!”

Kibum displayed an expression of dissatisfaction and slapped the girl’s weak, stick-thin arm away from his face. The bright lights, the people, the spiked drinks, the entire atmosphere; it overwhelmed him. He couldn’t remember the last time he attended a party. He couldn’t remember if he’s ever attended a party. If he hasn’t experienced a party yet, his first impression was pretty ty.

Jessica folded her arms and pouted. “You’re no fun,” she stated sincerely. As if he cared.
“I didn’t ask to be invited to this party. In fact, I distinctly remember being dragged out of my dorm to attend this massive ,” he said impatiently.

“Party, Kibum. Party,” Jessica corrected his inappropriateness.

Kibum scoffed and simultaneously rolled his eyes. “Look around you Jess,” he told her. “There’s a couple there who look as if they’re eating each other’s faces off, there’s a guy and two girls there lip-locking with each other and there’s two girls on the couch getting it on. This place is populated with extremely teenagers. If it’s not an , then it can potentially turn into one,” Kibum explained and Jessica seemed as if she didn’t understand a word he was saying. “Excluding us of course,” Kibum added and glanced at her quickly and watched her roll her eyes slowly.

“Relax,” she told him. “You’re so tense. Live a little. Loosen up.”

It was Kibum’s turn to roll his eyes for the second time that night. “I enjoy self-control too much. Feel free to loosen up by yourself though.”

Jessica thought for a moment before replying, “Are you sure? What are you going to do by yourself?”

“Leave,” was Kibum’s immediate response.

“Exactly,” Jessica replied, confusing Kibum slightly. “And I can’t let you do that.”

“Why not?”

Jessica exhaled deeply. “Come on!” she urged once again. “This is good for you. Get a taste of freedom! Be a ing teenager for God’s sake! I’m so tired of you wanting to be trapped inside that hypothetical glass box of bittersweet emotion and sadness! I just want you to live! Take a drag, indulge yourself in some underage drinking, do whatever the you want. Go ape !”

Kibum looked at her slyly and raised an eyebrow. “Do whatever the I want?”

“Yes!” she shouted exasperatedly.

“Well then,” Kibum began. “I enjoy my hypothetical glass box of bittersweet emotion and sadness so once again go loosen up and indulge yourself in some underage drinking on your own, okay?”

She glared. “…One drink is all it will take to satisfy me.”

Kibum sighed. “How about you think about it this way? The cops are going to barge through that door any moment and we’ll all get our asses put in jail and that will be my one time of living and loosening up to make up for my entire life of living in a world of traumatising bull.” 

Jessica shrugged. “Fine…But what makes you assume cops are just gonna barge in here any moment and bust our asses?” she asked dumbly.

“Well Jess, the bright lights, pounding music that you can hear from five blocks away, the hundreds of intoxicated teenagers crammed into one tiny house makes this place as inconspicuous as .” Kibum answered sarcastically. “And underage drinking is totally legal.”

Jessica sighed. “I can’t take you. I’ll leave you alone now you irritable . I swear you’re, like, on a period every day.”

“Have fun,” Kibum called to her as she walked away from him and wagging her from side to side which disturbed Kibum to such an extent.

“Looks like she’s gonna wag that over to Donghae,” someone spoke beside him, successfully startling him.

A guy, about an inch short of him, had suddenly teleported his way to Kibum’s side with a drink in hand. 

“…You are…?” Kibum asked.

The guy looked at him and their eyes met, making Kibum feel extremely self-conscious. The guy’s eyes were big and they sparkled in the dim light. His eyes; they were the only thing in his vision and it was like they were reading Kibum’s soul like a book.

“Kim Jonghyun,” he answered. “Otherwise known as the guy you bumped into and tried to help you recollect your stuff.”

“…If you’re looking for some sort of apology then you’re not going to find it…A genuine apology at least.”

The Jonghyun guy chuckled. “I’m not looking for an apology.”

Kibum nodded and stepped away from the guy. “I’m going to go now,” he announced to him. He didn’t forget to mentally add that he hoped they’d all have fun getting arrested because Kibum swore that he heard sirens blaring from a few blocks down.   

Kim Kibum: Age 18

“Don’t tell!” Jessica pleaded, followed by countless desperate pleases. Kibum rolled his eyes and continued his leisurely stroll around the mall with the frantic blonde drama queen right beside him.

“Don’t tell! Please don’t tell!” Jessica pleaded once again.

Kibum sat down on an empty bench. Jessica sat down next to him. “I won’t tell,” he calmly told her.

“Good,” she sighed in relief. “My parents would torture me and send me to a ing preppy all-girls school where they teach you how to sit up straight and encourage abstinence if they find out that I lost my ity—they’ll probably hear it from Ms Loud-Mouth--Face Nicole.”

“And I know how much you don’t want that to happen,” Kibum replied, not actually caring about his best friend’s current situation.

“Exactly,” she sighed as she reclined in the bench. “And if they send me to that all-girls school like they planned last year with the whole party incident then I won’t be able to see my Jongie!” she whined.

“One; I warned you that you’d all have your asses busted by the cops—“

“You promised that you wouldn’t go on about that—“

“And two… Jongie? You’re ting me right?”

Jessica rolled her eyes. “We’re in the pet names stage of our relationship now,” she said.

Kibum chuckled. “You hit that stage long ago. Apparently we’re at the ing stage now.”

“Shut up!” she snapped. “That’s not a joking matter.”

“I’m not joking about it,” Kibum replied. “You guys are at the ing stage, right? Unless you’re a huge like Nicole tells me and you cheated on him with Donghae?”

Jessica’s eyes narrowed which is a definite sign that you’re on a thin line with the girl. “I’m not cheating and you promised me you’d stop talking to Nicole!? She demeans me!”

 Kibum laughed. “You’re still angry about the Choi Minho thing?”

Jessica buried her face in her knees. “Don’t talk about it! It’s embarrassing!”

“Come on Jess, everyone knew he was…fruity…”

“I didn’t!” she squealed. “You should’ve informed me that he was gay before I decided to ask him out!”

Kibum rolled his eyes. “One; everyone knew he was ing that kid in the dance group—“
 “Taemin,” Jessica interrupted.

“And two, I didn’t know you were planning to ask him out!”

“Whatever. If it wasn’t for Nicole constantly reminding people about my public humiliation then it wouldn’t have been a ty year.”

“Besides the party thing,” Kibum added.

“You’re not helping me at all,” Jessica complained.

“I never do.”

**********