Soora's POV

I ran towards the door as soon as I had put the last spoonful of rice into my mouth. “Jongup?!”, I shouted, stepping out with my shoes tied loosely. He had never missed an opportunity to reply to my texts and he was usually the one who had to go look for me, because I got lost more often.

Daehyun had jumped up right after me, his cheeks stuffed with meat and rice when he grabbed my wrist before I actually left the house. I spun around and he swallowed everything at once. “Wait, just running off like that won't help, I'll help you. Just wait a minute so that I can get ready too, okay?”

“I won't get lost, don't worry-”

“But there's a thunderstorm out there and it's dangerous. I'll accompany you, no matter what, alright?” I bit my lower lip, fidgeting around in restlessness while I waited for him to put on his shoes.

Zelo leaned back on his chair, quietly taking another serving of food. “Go look at the barn, I'll go the other way when I'm done with eating. I don't know where he went, but don't worry too much, okay?” Daehyun nodded, but the stick-figure raised an eyebrow until I gave him a becalmed smile as well.

He would help me if I was restless and I knew this was proof of his trust in me. “Thank you”, I whispered shyly. “I'll try to remain calm.”

Daehyun lay an arm around my shoulders. “Jongup is old enough to take care of himself, maybe he is at the barn to protect himself from the rain, who knows?”

“Maybe...”, I mumbled, looking at Zelo once more, whose cat-like eyes were following me after glancing at Daehyun for a split second. “Put on another jacket before leaving, it's cold now that it's raining...”, stated I when my classmate escorted me out of the house and we started searching.

Zelo's POV

Since grape-head hadn't been where we had left him, I had just walked back to the main house without thinking twice. I mean, every normal human being would run back to where it's dry when it was raining, right? Looks like this guy was not of that kind. Okay, actually I didn't give a about him, but I was still thinking about what I had seen in the morning: him and the girl. Maybe this wasn't of my concern, but recently, I had discovered that I wanted to help the girl if she needed something. The fact that grape-head was missing now made her look restless and I sighed before saying that I'd go look for him too.

He hadn't worked at the barn, but in all her anxiety, she didn't seem to notice it. Then I'll have enough time to look for him on my own, I thought. I can ask him then. Ask him what? Stuff... nothing special...

I finished my second serving silently and stood up, observing everyone at the table. “I'll go then”, I stated and went to grab my shoes at the entrance, when I got myself another jacket, like the girl had told me to, and left the house. Since when did I do what she wanted me to? Never mind, just go look for the grape-head.

The rain was pouring down on me as I rushed through the rows of trees, towards the sector where he had been working. “Grape-head!”, I shouted at the top of my lungs, blinking the rain out of my eyes. “Grapes? Are you there?” But I didn't get a reply. Wouldn't that guy have noticed anything by now? I frowned, my breath quickening, because I was running by now. Stop, left, right, forward, stop, left-

Wait. I had spotted a ladder, about thirty meters away and I slowly walked closer to it, catching for breath. Nobody would have left a ladder out here. And there was a basket next to it. “Grape....head?”, I whispered and a quiet groan caught my attention. There he was, lying in the mud next to the tree as if he had been struck by a lightning....maybe he was, who knew? I squatted, shaking his shoulder. “Hey, wake up. Yo, how can you sleep in the rain?!”

He groaned once more before slowly opening his eyes. “Soo...ra?”

I shook my head. “Zelo. You have to deal with me for now. What happened?”

“I...” Grape-head tried to sit up, but decided that it was a bad idea and I helped him until he could lean against the tree where it was a bit more dry. “The ladder was wet and I guess I slipped. My head hurts.” He touched his head and flinched, making me sigh. Maybe he had a mild concussion and I shouldn't strain him too much. The fact that there was a small trace of blood running down the side of his head underlined my opinion. At least it seemed to have stopped bleeding a while ago.

“We'll stay here for now until you feel a bit better, okay?” He nodded in reply and I sat down next to him to spend the next few minutes in silence.

“This silence is awkward”, he then mumbled before glancing at me. “How's your rib? It was contused when you got to stay with Soora. And what's wrong with your hand?”

My eyes widened at the fact that he remembered my state from about two weeks ago and I lowered my gaze to find my bandaged hand resting on my knee. “My rib is fine, I guess, it's not as bad anymore...my hand...” I thought of that day at the orphanage, when I had hit the wall. “It's nothing...serious. I'm fine...” I swallowed, pondering on what I wanted to ask. “Say...grape-head... You and the girl. You're sleeping together?”

He must've heard a tiny bit of my uncertainty and he smirked a bit. “You could say that.” I raised an eyebrow and his smirk widened into a smile. “It's not the way you think, alright? It's part of our story.”

I sighed. Why did everybody here have some sort of story anyway? “Now spit it out... I mean, we've got time.”

“Prying into other peoples' affairs? You're curious?”

“Maybe? You're not rich like rainbow-man after all. How did you get to know her?”

He giggled a bit. “Rainbow-man...Nice one. I didn't meet her like you did, I wasn't a thug...at first”, grape-head mumbled and I wanted to retort something, but he raised his hand to stop me. “However, here I go:”

I have never been rich, that's right – my mother worked for her Mum, like some kind of personal maid. We didn't have much money in general, but working for that woman was fun and we didn't need the money, because the Kims would always take care of the more expensive things. They really were kind.

The Kim family had a son called Himchan; we got along well. He was four years older than me and I was like three years old when another member joined the family: A tiny baby, a girl, called Soora. Kim Soora.

Himchan and I played with her a lot and we shared everything – I was like their third child, which made my mother very happy. One day, I was about seven years old, Soora fell asleep while we were cuddling and I was buried under her, unable to move without waking her up. That's when I started to sleep over at her place. Every time she had a bad dream, she would come to me and snuggle up against me. “You can just go to your Mum or Himchan”, I had said once, but she shook her head, saying that it didn't work that way.

I was important to her and it made me proud to be of use to someone, knowing that my grades were not the best after all. When I went to middle school, there was no time to go to the Kims every day. We didn't see each other except for the week-ends. When I found a lot of new friends at high school, I stopped going to her completely. Mum would tell me how sad Soora was because of that, but I was sixteen years old, pretending to be an adult. “She should grow up”, I had said back then and went out with my friends.

They weren't the kind of friends you wanted to have around: they started smoking, drinking and went to one club after the other at the age of sixteen. It was tiring, but I felt like, for the first time during my school days, I belonged to someone beside my second family. I shouldn't depend on the Kims, I thought back then. With that attitude, I got into a lot of fights, wanting to show that I could take care of myself. I got beaten up so bad, my knuckles were all bloody and my face was blue.

Grape-head chuckled as if it was funny. “I didn't realize how stupid I had been until she stood in our apartment.” I glanced at him, trying to imagine him in a dark alley with black clothes and a gang of about 4 guys. It didn't work, he just didn't look like that kind of person. That guy had gone through something that could be compared to my situation, just not as unfair – he was the one to choose this path after all, while I wasn't.

He continued his story.

It had been a whole year since we had seen each other the last time and I was in bed, beaten up once again and with a fever. I thought I was imagining things when she stood next to me all of a sudden. My mother had called her in helplessness, but I thought she was an imagination and the words just burst out of me. “Soora, I'm having a bad, bad nightmare”, I stated deliriously, grabbing her hand. Her childish smile was completely hidden behind an expression of worry. I knew it: In just one year, she had become more mature, being serious when needed, and where was I? “I might even be living inside of it. I can't wake up.”

“It's alright. I'm here with you”, she had replied and lay down next to me on the bed, hugging me like she had always done it as if I had never been gone.

My lips parted once more to breathe a single word. “Help”, I murmured, and she shivered.

“You know what? I've been having nightmares too”, whispered Soora when I was half-asleep already. “I dreamed of one of my brothers. I thought he had abandoned me.”

She then started crying, over my injured face. She wasn't mad, she wasn't disappointed. All she wanted was that I felt better. I felt guilty. I pressed her against my body, realizing how stupid I was to think, leaving her would make me an independent human being. I realized how much I had missed the casual talks, the randomness of our thoughts and I promised to take care of her until the day she would send me to hell. “A sister won't leave her brother alone”, she replied then.

He watched the raindrops fall for a few seconds, far away from where I was and yet right next to me, before he snapped out of his trance. “Ever since that happened, we sleep next to each other whenever we can't sleep, it works miracles, I swear.”

The girl's patience surprised me. Every normal human being would have given up on grape-head back then. They really had a tight bond after all, but still... “It sounds as if you were friendzoned... brotherzoned, to be exact”, I noticed and the other one grinned.

“You could say that, yeah.”

“You don't seem to hate that position.” I raised an eyebrow and he seemed to get what I wanted to say.

“Of course, I liked her. She was the only girl I talked to for ages after all. But knowing that I'm important to her is enough, I don't need her love, because she's my sister. It's complicated and difficult to explain, but I'm not craving for her like I did once.” He shrugged with a smile. “I feel kind of castrated, if that makes it more clear for you.”

That comparison was far-fetched and it caught me off-guard, making me laugh. “That sounds painful”, I stated between two deep breaths and he grinned back. “And you're right: I don't understand that. Grape-head, you're interesting, you know?”

The purple-haired man snorted, but didn't reply to that statement, leaving us in silence for another ten seconds. “Zelo?” I glanced at him. “Would you mind giving me your number?”

“I'm not interested in you, mister castrated, if that's your reason for this”, I retorted dryly and he shot me a glare, resulting in both of us grinning again.

“That's not it. I just want you to contact me whenever there's a problem with Soora. You're around her whenever I'm not, you're watching over her somehow. I just feel better, knowing that I can contact you, you know?” I hesitated for a moment, because it sounded as if I was some kind of bodyguard. A bodyguard that is afraid of criminals, I thought bitterly, concluding that the grape-head wouldn't do anything that might be dangerous for Soora. And betraying me to the Untouchables would cause trouble for her. So, he wasn't dangerous.

I took out my phone and he recited his number for me to write down before we did it the other way round. At first, I wanted to save him as “Grapes”, but I bit my lower lip and glanced at him. “Uhm...your name was...?”

“Jongup.” I don't know why, but he seemed kind of amused about the fact that I didn't remember any names. I shrugged it off, typing in his name instead of the purple food. Jongup...hyung, I thought and it sounded strange inside my head, which is why I decided never to say it out loud.

“Do you feel better?”, I asked and he touched his head just to flinch a second later. He didn't. I sighed, writing a message to the girl. “Found him, we'll be back in ten minutes.” Removing some of the mud from my pants, I got up and squatted down again, my back facing Jongup. “Get on”, I ordered. He didn't seem to get it at first, but after a few seconds of silence, his arms wrapped around my shoulders and I heaved him up. Piggyback rides. When was the last time I had to do this? Probably with the kids at the orphanage.

“You know, you're not a bad guy after all”, Jongup mumbled against my jacket when I started moving, his forehead resting on my shoulder. He had to be exhausted after lying in the mud for about an hour with his head hurting.“Take good care of Soora.”

I stopped for a second and snorted. “What's with that statement? It's not like I want to take her away from you”, replied I seemingly casually and Jongup yawned.

“I'm not so sure about that”, he whispered before his breath became smoother, signalizing me that he had fallen asleep. I kept still in the rain for a few seconds, staring at him with wide eyes even though he didn't notice it as he was sleeping within seconds.

After shaking my head, I slowly stalked forward, buried in thought. Why did I feel like this farm-trip was more important than I had assumed at first? And why did I feel like Jongup wanted to be some kind of friend? “Everybody's confusing me”, I groaned as I made my way towards the old house in the middle of the farm.

I'm in the midst of learning for my final exams, I hope you're not mad at me for making this story complicated and/or taking so long to update. Just remember: I love you all for your patience!

And I'll say it again: I hate how this editor kind of destroys the normal line spacing°^°