When human hybrids first started appearing in the world, it wasn’t uncommon for those who shared the traits of litter bearing mammals to have what humans consider “high-order multiple births.”  Of course, it’s really just part of the nature of cats, dogs, and some other species to bear large litters.  

By the time Yoongi and his siblings are born, these litters have become rare, their births dangerous, and their existence largely frowned upon.  After all, how can any hybrid family afford to support five or more children on their own, now that they are no longer kept as pets?

It’s one of the complications of the Hybrid Civil Rights Movement, a nuance that some full-blooded humans have used to keep their position of power.  It has only been illegal to keep a hybrid as a pet for a handful of years, and while the change enabled hybrids to be gainfully employed in any field, the discrimination is still quite apparent.  Few ever move out of entry level positions, and while employers aren’t legally allowed to turn away hybrid applicants because of their race, many seem to find other reasons to shut them out.

This is the situation that Yoongi’s parents find themselves in when his mother is forced to deliver her eight babies in the hospital rather than at home.  Her own doctor had keeps the secret for her and makes house calls over the seven and a half months she manages to carry the babies, but when her labour progresses too quickly her choices become to expose herself and save her children, or die with them in her bathtub.

She was a store clerk before the swell of her womb began to grow too quickly, and her husband works the the graveyard security shift at a local factory.  They had hoped that, if only they could bring their children into the world and help them to thrive in those first few months, they would be able to keep them.  Poor but happy - plenty of people live that way.  

She cries when she wakes from the cesarean to learn all eight of her children are under surveillance in the NICU.  A social worker is talking with her husband, but pounces as soon as it’s clear she is awake.  She’s hardly lucid thanks to the anaesthesia that’s still wearing off and the painkillers that are being freshly released into her system, but she tries to think fast, to prove that she and her husband are capable of providing for their children.

They aren’t seen as unfit parents, but a decision is still made on their behalf.  Two days after giving birth, they are sent home with the three thriving babies of the bunch.  The other five are too small or suffer from complications that will require special care, and it is determined that the Min family cannot afford to provide that kind of care.  They feel incomplete, leaving over half of their children at the hospital, but there is nothing they can do.  It is a battle they can’t afford to fight.

Yoongi is the smallest but healthiest of his siblings.  Their traits are varied, except among the two sets of identical twins.  He is unique, though, and his beauty has all the nurses cooing over him from the moment he is put in their care.  His fluffy white ears are the same as his mother’s, reminiscent of their Persian lineage - something paperwork proudly proves up to his grandmother, who was the last to be born before the HCRM began - and his hair is just as soft and pale as the ears it grows around.  At first, they are concerned with how closely his skin matches the hue, as well, fair and seemingly touched by moonlight.  The days that pass prove that he is healthy despite being drastically underweight.  Even as he fills out, he remains petite, even next to his siblings.  Eventually, he is the first released to a foster home, and his life as a ward of the government begins.

Yoongi is five years old, and he has lived in three foster homes throughout his short life.  It isn’t that he’s a bad kid or anything; in fact, each guardian that has passed him on has praised his intelligence and his quiet, reserved nature.  He sleeps more often than he gets into mischief, and in his waking hours he flourishes in every lesson he’s ever given.  No, it’s not that he’s an ill-behaved child at all.  It’s just that a human child is much more desirable than a hybrid one, and his first two families hope to adopt one day.

The Su family seems harmless enough, and they don’t push Yoon