It all happened too fast. One minute Baekhyun was out in his private little grove in the woods, joking about the future with Jihye, and the next, he was being forced to cram everything that was important to him into a single tiny suitcase. He sat down heavily on the narrow little twin bed crammed into his bedroom, looking around at the place that had been his home his entire life. There were old Pororo posters tacked to his walls, along with a few of his favorite soccer team. There were photographs of his parents, his grandmother, his friends. It seemed impossible to leave all this behind.

But then Mr. Ji was in the doorway, Baekhyun’s grandmother hovering behind him with a mixture of concern and frustration. “We’ve wasted enough time here,” Mr. Ji said coldly. “Let’s go.”

Baekhyun glared at him. “I have to say goodbye,” he said.

But Mr. Ji shook his head. “There’s no time. We need to leave now if we’re going to get to Seoul at a decent hour.”

“But these people are my friends! They’re my family!” Baekhyun burst out.

“No, your family is in Seoul,” Mr. Ji said, brushing imaginary dust off his suit jacket. “Now let’s be on our way.”

Baekhyun barely had enough time to kiss his grandmother goodbye, to promise to call her every single day and that he would eat well and take care of himself. He didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to Jihye or any of his friends, the people who were as much family to him as his grandmother was.

The ride to Seoul was about four hours from Mangyang. Though Mr. Ji sat in the back of the limousine with Baekhyun, he took out his laptop before the driver had even turned the corner and immersed himself in what Baekhyun was sure Mr. Ji believed to be important work. Baekhyun tried to ask him a question once, a question about the family he was going to live with, but Mr. Ji had sharply told him to be quiet and Baekhyun hadn’t asked any more questions.

Night had fallen by the time they reached their destination, and Baekhyun was starting to get sleepy. The Kim estate loomed up out of the darkness, a veritable fortress of Victorian grandeur set far back from the road, an impenetrable security fence surrounding the vast acreage.

Baekhyun pressed his nose up against the tinted glass, gaping as the electronic gate opened up to admit the limousine.

Mr. Ji sniffed disdainfully and closed his laptop, replacing it in its leather carrying case. “Try not to drool on the upholstery,” he suggested nastily. “It’s quite expensive.”

The limousine parked in the circle drive in front of the house, just on the other side of an elaborate marble fountain. A set of stone steps led up to an enormous door with stained glass windows on either side that revealed nothing of the interior.

The driver hurried to open the door, and Baekhyun followed Mr. Ji out of the limousine. The air was thick with the scent of blooming flowers and swaying ferns.

The front door was opened by a uniformed servant before the two even made it up the stairs, the man bowing low as they crossed the threshold. Baekhyun uncertainly bowed back, but the servant steadfastly refused to look at him.

“This way,” Mr. Ji said shortly, beckoning Baekhuyn to follow him.

Baekhyun tried not to gape as Mr. Ji led him along corridors hung with gilded portraits of ancestors he didn’t know, up and down staircases carpeted with imported rugs, through high, arched doorways with intricate carvings. He had never seen such opulence before, not even on television or in movies.

Mr. Ji stopped abruptly in front of a closed door, so quickly that Baekhyun, who had been looking at a portrait of a very old and very mean looking lady, nearly ran into him.

Mr. Ji sniffed disdainfully, as he had done a hundred times since picking Baekhyun up in Mangyang. “Make yourself presentable,” he barked in a low voice.

Baekhyun looked down at himself. He was still wearing the clothes he’d put on that morning, back when the thought of leaving his little village was completely laughable. His jeans and polo shirt, while of decent fashion standards back home, looked totally out of place in this palace. He smoothed down his shirt and tried to flatten his unruly hair. He wasn’t quite sure how else to make himself look ‘presentable.’

Mr. Ji sighed at Baekhyun’s obvious ineptitude but he knocked on the door anyway.

It was opened from the inside by a maid, dressed in the same uniform as the man downstairs. She, like the one who had let them into the house, bowed low and refused to make eye contact when Baekhyun tried to smile at her.

There was an elderly woman sitting at the far end of the lounge, an elegant tea set placed on the polished table before her. Though she was probably around his grandmother’s age, perhaps a bit younger, she looked nothing like his sweet and caring gran. This woman was dressed in a fitted lavender suit, her hair dyed dark. Her face was strangely wrinkle-free despite her age; Baekhyun couldn’t help but assume it was the result of a lifetime of plastic surgeries.

The woman looked up when Mr. Ji and Baekhyun came in, Mr. Ji bowing low.

She took one look at Baekhyun, standing just behind Mr. Ji, and set her teacup down. “Oh no,” she said, in a rather pinched voice. “Oh no. This just can’t be right. You don’t mean to tell me that this is Sohee’s child?”

“I’m afraid so, Madam,” Mr. Ji said apologetically, still bowing low. “This is the child you sent me to retrieve.”

The woman got to her feet with the help of an intricately carved cane, coming closer, eyes scrutinizing. “What a wretched little thing,” she muses in disappointment. “He doesn’t look much like Mooyi. He looks like some urchin you might see on the side of the street.”

Baekhyun didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or indignant at the way she spoke so rudely about him, as if he wasn’t even there. “I’m not wretched,” he said sharply. “I’m actually very smart. Top in my class, you know.”

The woman’s eyes widened quite a bit and, for the first time, she looked him directly in the face. Then she turned to Baekhyun’s . “Mr. Ji, please contact this child’s tutor immediately. It’s obvious that he needs to come immediately to begin this boy’s training. He clearly has no notion of appropriate etiquette.”

Baekhyun flushed. His parents and grandmother had instilled in him proper values, and he had grown up as a polite, respectful boy. He was quite put out with this old woman and he’d been here for only ten minutes. “Excuse me,” he began hotly.

The woman turned her icy stare on him. “The first rule of this house, young man, is that you will only speak when spoken to. And you may refer to me as Madam and nothing else.”

“Madam?” Baekhyun repeated. “But aren’t you my grandmother?”

The woman stared at him for a long moment, then barked out a most unpleasant laugh. “Mr. Ji, have one of the girls show this child to his room. It looks like we’re surely going to have our work cut out for us.”

“Right away, Madam,” Mr. Ji answered without hesitation.

“Wait just a minute-!” Baekhyun began, but Mr. Ji already had a good hold on his arm and was dragging him out of the lounge.

It wasn’t until they got outside that he realized they had gotten something of an audience. Staff was crowded around the corner, whispering to one another, eager to get a first glimpse at the new person who was to become their master. When Mr. Ji and Baekhyun appeared, however, they all scattered for fear of being reprimanded.

Only four young men remained, dressed similarly in slacks and button-downs, faces all vaguely similar. The first three eyed Baekhyun with obvious dislike before turning and leaving. Only the fourth regarded the newcomer with anything other than disgust, but his curious gaze lingered only for a moment before he followed the other three.

“Girl,” Mr. Ji barked at a maid who had lingered too long in the corridor.

She looked positively terrified as she approached Mr. Ji. She bowed politely, waiting for her order or her reprimand.

Luckily for her, it was an order. “Show Mr. Kim to the suite that has been prepared for him.”

The girl bowed again to show she understood the direction. Mr. Ji immediately took his leave without another word to Baekhyun, leaving him with the girl.

“My name isn’t Mr. Kim,” he said to the girl as she led him through more corridors and up more staircases.

The girl hesitated, but refused to look back at him.

“My name,” Baekhyun repeated. “It’s not Mr. Kim. It’s Mr. Byun. Byun Baekhyun.”

The maid gave him the tiniest of looks over her shoulder, giving him a wavering smile that she quickly hid. She clearly wasn’t used to chit-chatting with the Kim descendants. Baekhyun stopped trying to make conversation with her. It seemed that, even among the staff here, he was really and truly alone.

The brought him to a large door on the third floor before bowing and leaving. Beyond the door, Baekhyun found an elaborate sitting room, with Italian furniture and more gilded paintings on the paneled walls. Beyond the sitting room was a bedroom, whose bathroom and closet both were larger than his bedroom back in Mangyang. The closet was already stocked with nice clothes that appeared to be roughly Baekhyun’s size, though how they had known his measurements was beyond him.

Setting his suitcase – which seemed meager and ratty compared to the elegance of these rooms – beside the bed, Baekhyun flopped down on it. His stomach grumbled – it had been quite a while since he had last eaten – but he doubted he could just stroll down to the kitchen for a snack. He doubted he’d even be able to find the kitchen.

So he rolled onto his stomach and pressed his face into his pillow, hating this unknown world he had suddenly been into. More than anything, he wanted to be back in Mangyang. 

So Baekhyun has arrived and met his maternal grandmother. Doesn't seem like things will very very easy for him, does it?