The earliest memory Bomi has is her sliding down a mini slide in her backyard. The winter air was frosty and squinting through a breeze she saw her parents on the other side of the window. Her daddy grabbed her mommy’s wrist. Her mommy yanked her arms out of his grasp. She couldn’t make out the muted shouts through the window and even if she did she wouldn’t have understood.

All Bomi remembers is that her daddy and mommy pushed each other around, and that a little Baekhyun put his little hand over her eyes.

Some time later she recalls Baekhyun walking her to kindergarten because her parents were looking after her grandmother at the hospital - he scowled and complained he was going to be late for school. Bomi walked particularly slow that morning, stomping on every freshly fallen fall leaf just to hear the crunch. Baekhyun pulled her along by force, while she whined about her legs aching. As he bent down to give her a piggyback, she sped off to the other side of the street.

That day, for the first time ever, Baekhyun raised his voice at her.

Bomi was late for kindergarten, and she was crying.

When the Byuns came over for dinner, she locked her door and sulked in her room. Baekhyun dug around for the key and barged in, greeted by a parade of dolls aimed at his head.  Instinctively he ducked his way through her bulleting toys and showered her with his water gun. In turn, Bomi squirted her water bottle up his nose and into his ears. They were both scolded for making a swimming pool of her room.

Slowly they grew out of fighting with water guns and star war laser swords and learned to irritate one another in other ways. As far as Bomi can remember, she was always better at sports than Baekhyun. Whenever she came back home with a gold medal and added the prize to an accumulating pile of sport honors, Baekhyun threw her a disgusted frown.

The day after she showed him a Taekwondo trophy Baekhyun started Hapkido. But no matter how hard he tried, sports wasn’t the category he could beat her in. His friends in the background would laugh at him and Bomi would join with them. And gradually his friends started to become her friends. 

It wasn’t long after Bomi entered middle school. She was completing her homework in her room, now clear of water guns and other toys and replaced with bookshelves and a desk.

“Honey?” Her mother peeped her head into her bedroom.

That evening Bomi had to spend a night over at the Byuns. As she walked out of the door, she didn’t fail to see the broken glass shards scattered over the floor in the dining room. Baekhyun didn’t ask when she strutted into his room and into his bed. After she closed her eyes she only felt the lights go off and his door quietly close behind him as he went to sleep on his sofa.

Nights like that repeated themselves over two years and increasingly frequently. Eventually Baekhyun’s dad built a joint mattress beneath the boy’s bed for her to sleep in.

Before she knew it, Baekhyun graduated from middle school. She praised herself for buying him a bouquet of flowers and wearing a checkered dress for his ceremony. And as soon as she arrived she regretted - he already had a dozen bouquet towered over him. He smirked triumphantly when he saw her and laughed at her unfitting attire. She kicked his shins and dumped her bouquet over his head, ignoring his showering of profanities at her turned back.

Outside the auditorium, Bomi kicked the walls, waiting for her parents. Five minutes later her father walked out, alone.

“Your mother didn’t come,” he explained.

There was no family dinner that night, and Baekhyun’s mom ran over to check everything was all right.

Everything was not all right.

Bomi’s mother wasn’t at home, or was never going to be back.

Bomi’s father was scurrying around the house, packing anything essential.

Bomi herself was sitting in the corner of the sofa watching the clock tick by.

He and mother are separated now, her father explained, it’s all for the best.

In twelve hours she was going to take the plane to America.

***************

The first time Luhan met Bomi, he was over at Baekhyun's house doing homework with Chen - at least that's what they attempted but ended up running a blockbuster marathon for an entire evening. Without a knock, a grumpy girl marched in with a frown, and headed straight for Baekhyun, she slapped him across the back of his head. He and Chen leaped up to hold back a flailing, infuriated boy throwing fists in the air in retaliation. The girl didn't miss the opportunity and presented him several punches in his stomach screaming, "Where's my diary you filthy darned Byunboy?"  

It took the two a good thirty minutes to break them apart. Chen somehow found his way around to seduce Bomi with ice-cream yogurt and his rather repulsive way of winking at girls. He gave her more than enough winks for Luhan's insides to take as she half-reluctantly trailed after him out of the door while Baekhyun's wriggling wrists were still cuffed. As the door closed, Luhan spotted a pink notebook in his friend's backpack hanging on the doorknob. It was too girly to be Baekhyun's. 

The second time he met her, the trio were at the arcade. He didn't know what he was doing there - he and he was losing pathetically. "Ouch," Chen mocked as Luhan's character earned a blow across its face again for at least a hundredth time. Giving up, he slouched back and took a gulp at his cola to cool the stress. As he felt a shadow looming overhead, he swirled around to see Bomi in her Taekwondo outfit and her black belt fastened around her waist. He pressed his lips together tightly to prevent laughter because she looked so ironically unthreatening and, rather, only smaller than she already was. 

With a concentrated frown Bomi tweaked around with the keyboard over his shoulder, her ponytail occasionally tickling his nose whenever she made violent attacks at the buttons. 

For the first and the last time Luhan won the game. 

When Bomi entered middle school Luhan's rent lease ended and his family moved into her building. They started walking together in the morning, and eventually ended up waiting for each other after school to stroll back home. She joined them at lunch almost everyday and scavenged for them every recess. He started to doubt she even had other friends from her class, or any other friends other than Baekhyun, Chen, and himself. 

She wasn't so happy when their examinations approached.

"That means you're graduating soon."

"No really."

"."

When they did graduate, however, he didn't expect for her to disappear so quickly. He caught a glimpse of Bomi amongst the crowd wearing a conspicuous pink checkered dress, tiptoeing and waving at him. He beamed back, but when he searched for her after the ceremony ended, she had already gone home. 

"Here," Baekhyun said as he held out a bouquet of roses. "I think this was meant for you but she was too embarrassed and horrified by your face that she ran away. No, actually you would have been the one horrified if you saw her in that petrifying, ridiculous dress."

Luhan woke up early the next morning to go jogging up the hill behind the playground of the apartment block. He bent down to fasten his shoelaces when the gate doors opened and Bomi's father half-jogged to the car park with a large luggage slumped on his back. Bomi followed soon after, trudging. Her gaze was on the ground, expressionless, and when her eyes caught Luhan they rounded a little in surprise and immediately looked away. 

He stared after her, counting her three hesitant steps after which she suddenly her heels and ran back to him. Luhan frowned curiously. She bent down and smiled wistfully, looking straight back into his eyes. Then quickly and slowly her eyes closed and her lips were on his left cheek. 

"Bye Lu," she whispered and sped off after her father. 

And like that Yoon Bomi came and went. 

*************

sorry if anyone was offended with the cursing.

i might as well warn those people now, i do kind of swear often

i'm not sure if i'm rushing or dragging with the story. this is still about the past and i don't want to whiff over it just to get my point across, but it's not even that detailed. i just get this feeling this is too brief and careless and at the same time too slow and boring so OTL