suggestion from thejellybean and kira_bts, who are both truly beautiful people. your comments seriously light up my day, it's what keeps this story going. thank you for the suggestions, and keep them coming!

a/n: all the dialogue in this chapter is indeed english.

even though seven-eighths of the children in the jo family were adopted in korea, aimee was located halfway around the world when the jos decided to take her into their then two person family. that was before they packed up and moved to seoul, before aimee even knew what korea was, and before she found herself the older sister to seven rambunctious boys.

her brothers know her as strict and domineering, the tiniest in the family but the head of the household. before that, aimee was a petite nine-year-old afraid of everything, from the other children to her soon-to-be father. in the orphanage, she prefers to keep to herself, not out of preference like jungkook but out of pure fear. she doesn't say a peep to anyone, not to the other kids nor the woman who looks after her nor the counselor who decides that her silence is the result of her trauma.

she's scared of a lot of things, but what she's most scared of is men. after all, it was her father and grandfather who hurt her, who held their hands over her crying mouth and pushed up her shirt. her mother and grandmother were the ones who snuck her away and hugged her as they cried, saying "goodbye"s and "i love you"s as aimee's hand was taken by a strange lady and she was brought to the orphanage. the first time the (male) counselor walked in, aimee started shaking like a leaf and hid under her blanket. she was only coaxed out by her caretaker, who promised to be in the room with her as he spoke. two years later, she still hasn't shaken off that fear.

"you'll be going to a new family soon," her caretaker, alice, says gently one night as she tucks aimee into bed. "are you excited?"

aimee shakes her head. new family = new father, and aimee doesn't want a new father. while most children block their traumatic experiences from their brain, everything that was done to her is permanently seared into her brain and she doesn't know how to make the nightmares stop. if she could, she'd take out her brain and cut out the tainted pieces. 

"you don't want a new father, do you?" alice asks, hitting the nail right on the head. aimee shakes her head again. "don't worry, aimee," she continues. "we did the background checks, we went to their house to check it out, made sure no nook or cranny was left untouched. and i can tell you, with perfect confidence, that you'll be fine. we take this very seriously, you know."