This is a revised chapter! It is edited and re-written. So, if you think you have read it, do read it again as it is longer than previously updated!

Then

In a room illuminated by only the street lights across the road, a young boy, at the mere age of eight, sat against a sliding glass door leading out to a small balcony, huddled under a blue blanket that had crowns littering all over it as a design. Arms wrapped around the legs folded up to his chest, the boy stared at the starless sky of spring. It had stopped raining just moments ago and his eyes followed a single drop of water as it slid down along its path. He could not sleep, his chest feeling tight and painful, and he did not know how to stop the sobs from leaving his lithe body.

“You miss your mom?”

The boy turned to look at the source of the hoarse voice, a crack in the sentence. He had to crane his neck up to have a good look at the boy who seemed to be years older. As the older boy sat down next to him, he turned away but nodded, trying his best to stifle any more sobs and wiped the corners of his eyes.

“I miss mine, too,” the taller one said, as he sat down, a ghost of a smile against his lips as he stared outside and up to the sky, “Been without her since I was twelve,” the boy noticed that his eyes were shimmering as he continued, “There was a fire one night and she saved me, threw me out of the window. My mom, my only hero.”

The young one stared at him, a question hung on his lips. When the other glanced at him for a brief second, he stared down at his knees, ashamed to be caught staring.

“Trust me. It hurts lesser through time. You won’t have time to miss her during the day and maybe night when all you will be able to do is drop dead. What are you, seven? Eight?” he didn’t wait for the boy’s answer, “Means your head will collide with the ground before nine,” then, as if it was an afterthought, he added, “If they let you, that is.”

The boy worried his lips, his brows creasing, before he spoke for the first time since he arrived at the orphanage, his voice hushed, “I don’t want to forget my parents,” the boy hated how scared he sounded. But he was scared… Mom’s gone.

“You won’t, you can never will. They’ll come in your dreams; torment you when things are very bad. You’ll call out for them but as you grow that will become less often. You’ll feel like it’s all futile. Em… No use, you know, because they won’t come during your wake,” the other slid an arm around the small shoulder and tugged the boy closer until he leaned into his side, “When that starts to happen, just know that you have me.”

The sobs came back and the tears rained. The boy pressed his face into the other’s shirt, his entire frame wracking. No one had hugged him since his parents’ death, no one had led him to cry onto their shoulders, and no one had told him that they would be there for him. When he calmed down enough, he wiped his red eyes with the back of his hands and looked at the face of this angel, his angel, “Are you my guardian angel? My mom always- used to say that angels are as nice as you,” he already thought he was but it was polite to ask.

It brought out a chuckle from the teen, “Only if you are mine too.”

Giving a toothy grin, the boy nodded as he pulled his blanket off himself, pointing at one of the crowns, “My mom made this. Said I’m his prince,” the smile faltered slightly and shyly, he asked, “Do you want to share?”

The other nodded, a genuine smile grazing his lips. He took the blanket and wrapped it around the little boy’s shoulders again, “I’ll just hold you.”

They stayed there for a moment, stuck next to each other while another eleven children of various ages slept behind them in the room that barely managed to fit them all. The younger one was almost asleep when suddenly something dangled in front of his eyes. A flat metal carved into a two-dimensional diamond.

“My mom gave me this. Said I was her jewel, her most precious prize possession. Want to share it?”

The boy stared at how the other’s eyes watered, shining as a jewel would. He nodded, grasping the metal gently while the other still held on to its chain.

And just like that, they were chained together.

***

Now

He was not running, not for long. He turned a few corners and as soon as he slid off his jacket and hat, along with his blonde wig, the Jewel Prince walked, as casual as any man would be, strolling at night. Shouldering his bag once again after cramming the black jacket into it, he fished a pair of round glasses from his pocket, ruffling his thick, black hair out of its tie. Stopping at a convenience store to get a Popsicle – strawberry, his favourite – the Prince perfected his transition into Hyukjae, on the ice while reading through a book.

Tonight’s break-in was fairly easy. Minister Hwang’s house was heavily guarded at the entrance – as were the other high-status individuals’ houses he went to before – but not on the second floor. Using his grappling hook gun from the tree right outside the house, the prince was in the house in less than twenty seconds. The password to the minister’s safe box was not even a challenge.  After the third try – the date he was elected, this man, seriously! – the Prince had his hands on the cash, leaving behind the jewellery. Those were troublesome and would be hard to trade without raising suspicion. All he wanted was the money and money could easily be scrambled and traded; in a few transactions, the serial numbers would be mixed and there would be nothing to trace him back to.

He took out a dictionary, flipped the first hundred pages until he found the cut out in the middle. The prince took his time arranging stack after stack in the rectangle hole perfectly deep enough for the size of bills. When he shut the thick dictionary, it looked completely usual, non-valuable, and, treating it like any other book, he tossed it back into his bag.

Using a liquid paper as he always did, the prince drew a diamond, taking his time with it, finishing it with a crown on top. He could not remember when he started leaving behind the signature. It was probably after he was dubbed having an allergy with metals as he kept leaving behind precious diamonds and rubies, which was a new level of stupidity for the media. Thus, to correct them, he created his emblem. Now, they called him the Jewel Prince, exactly the name he chose for himself.

Getting out was not as simple but that was to be expected. The alarm rang and the Prince rolled his eyes as he jumped down from the second storey. Dodging two guards took him some time but he managed to slide passed them and out the gate after getting a few kicks out. And now, he had taken off the mantel as the Jewel Prince and became just a man having a night stroll in town.

It was not healthy, psychologically speaking, to keep on calling himself between two names, two split characters; Hyukjae knew this, he was majoring in it. But, it made it easier to get the job done, to separate his daily life from his routine night. He needed a way to focus on his studies, his will to help those kids who had to go through the same luck as him. Having thoughts of regret that came with the