It was your ninth birthday, and Harabeoji had taken you to the ballet.  Afterward, you lightheartedly danced around him as you left the theatre, gracelessly twirling and laughing as you imitated the ethereal ballerinas who had captivated you all night.  As you passed the alley beside the theatre, a noise caught your attention–before your grandfather’s, for once.

“What is it?” he asked softly as you pulled away to peer down the dark alley.

“I thought I heard something,” you murmured.

There was a crash, and then you saw him, a skinny boy, no older than six, clothed in rags that had once been white, and now showed more than they covered.  He had pulled something out of the trash and was…was he…you gasped in horror, eating it?!

At your noise, the boy looked up, large, luminous dark eyes taking up most of his face.  At the sight of the both of you, those eyes darted around, looking for a place to run, but the alley was blind, the only way out past you.  

“Hey…  Hey…” you crooned, softening your voice the same you would with a feral cat, or stray puppy.  “It’s okay…

Harabeoji stood at the mouth of the alley, saying nothing, a quiet support.  

Slowly, you walked closer, each step breaking your heart as the proximity clarified your vision, showing you protruding ribs, and bruises in various stages of healing that peeked through the holes in his clothes like stained glass.  When you got too close, the boy began to panic and back away, and you stopped.  

Uncaring of your birthday finery, you plopped down on the dirty street, your lowered height causing you to have to look up at him.  You stared at each other for a long time, until you saw his breathing begin to settle.  “What’s your name?”

The boy’s eyes darted from you, to your grandfather, and back to you.  You watched the wheels of his mind turn as he realized that even if he got past you, he probably couldn’t escape Harabeoji.  He chapped lips. “Jongin,” he piped, a clear, sweet soprano.

“How old are you, Jonginie?” you asked softly.

“Don’t know.”

Your gaze shifted to the food in his hand.  “Are you hungry?”

He swallowed involuntarily, but hunger won over pride.  “Yes.”

Reaching into your bag, you pulled out a couple of cold bungeoppang left over from before you went to the theatre, and held them toward him.  “Do you like sweets?”

Jongin’s face flushed.  “Yes,” he said quietly.

When he made no move toward your outstretched hand, you smiled.  “Go on.  You can have them.  Please?”

His eyes shot to yours at that word.  “Please?”

“Yes, please.  I want you to have them.  Please take them.”

Slowly, cautiously, he edged forward, each step tentative, as if he were ready to turn and take flight at any moment.  When he was close enough, instead of snatching the sweets as you thought he would, he carefully closed his hand around them, taking them from your palm before slowly backing away.  Once he felt that he was an appropriate distance away, you guessed, he made quick work of them, his fingers for any crumbs.  

“You’re younger than me,” you said quietly.

“Yes.”

“Are you still hungry?”

His eyes shone, and he nodded once.  Twice.  “Yes.”

“Would you like to come with noona?”

Jongin’s eyes flickered back to your grandfather, and uncertainty passed across his face.  

“That’s Harabeoji.  This noona lives with him.  He’s the best person in the world.  He teaches noona things, and he takes care of noona, and Sehunie, and Baekhyunie…”  You didn’t even have to ask him to sense your grandfather’s approval.  “He wants you to come.  You can meet my brothers…we can play.”

Jongin just blinked, his face blank.

“Harabeoji is teaching me how to cook.  Would you like to eat what noona cooks?  I need someone to help me, because I’m not very good, yet.  If you came with us, then you could eat what I cook, and you could tell me what’s good, and what’s not…  It would be so helpful.”

“Helpful?” he asked carefully.

“Mm,” you nodded.  “I don’t trust Sehunie, and Baekhyunie to tell me when it’s not delicious, but you’d be honest, right?  You’d help me, right?”

Jongin in a shuddering breath.  “I could…help you? You want…my help?”

“Yes, please!  You could live with us, and help me, right?  Would you do that for me?  Could you do that for noona?”

He was silent for a long time.  Then, “Noona?”

You silently let out a breath that you didn’t know you had been holding.  “Yes?”

Jongin slowly held out his hand.

You took your time getting to your feet, not wanting to startle him.  But by the time you made your way to him, his hand was still out, and his liquid brown eyes stared up at you.  You wrapped your hand around his, and he leaned into you, head nuzzling into your bony chest.  

“Noona?” he said, and his voice sounded very far away.

“Yes, Nini?” The nickname fell from your mouth as easily as breathing.

“I’m tired…”

“Let’s go home.”

***

Nini clung to you for the next several months. Wherever you went, whatever you did–he was there.  He took his job as your taste tester very seriously, at first not eating anything not prepared by you, but that ended quickly, as Harabeoji soon began tempting him with various delicacies.  Nini followed you everywhere, crawled into your bed every night–clinging to you like an orphaned puppy, and even whined at bathtimes until you scrubbed his back, washed his hair.   

You pretended to gripe about it, but secretly, his clinginess warmed your heart.  It was like having a puppy that could talk.  When finally Nini stopped crawling into your bed at night, when he stopped demanding that you help him scrub, though outwardly you acted relieved, inwardly, you were a little disappointed.  You knew that it couldn’t last–both of you were growing up, but you missed your sweet, now chubby-cheeked, boy.  

It didn’t take long to discover Nini’s talent.  In addition to the training that Harabeoji gave all of you, teaching you to harness and manipulate each of your incarnations of the Force–a power wielded only by a select few that manifested in countless ways, but was honed by using a special sword as a focus–after learning of Nini’s propensity for dance, he sent him to the local academy.  

Your family had been premier bladesmiths for the Knights who wielded the Force, for generations.  Yet, there were others, followers of the Dark, who hated your family, hated what you stood for, and wanted nothing more than to see your ruin.  Perhaps shortsightedly, the forging of the distinctive blades was passed down from parent to eldest child, so that no more than two people alive ever knew the craft.  But the adherents of the Dark, steadily growing in power throughout the centuries, had finally achieved enough power to eradicate your family line.  

You didn’t really remember your parents.  Just a soft, sweet-smelling woman who sang you lullabies, and swung you up high, and a deep-voiced man who carried you everywhere, and swung you up even higher. Fortunately, you couldn’t remember the day that they were taken away.

For a time, you were happy.  Baekhyunie was loud and cocky, but clever, Sehunie was quiet, but fast and agile, and Nini…  Using the Force didn’t come easily to Nini.  His training sessions, first with Harabeoji, and later with you, were always grueling.  He tried his best, but he just wasn’t made for fighting.  He had a gentle, loving spirit that rebelled against the very idea of causing anyone harm, even to his own detriment.  

You, on the other hand, were like the blades your family created–tall, and whipcord thin, fast, and precise.  You took to your lessons with the ease of generational breeding, and did your best to try to instill the principles that came as easily to you as breathing, in Nini.  

But…despite his perfection in dance, he was always a bit too slow, a bit too clumsy, in swordplay.  He never could concentrate enough to summon the Force to his sword.  If you were being honest, these things were probably easy enough to train out of him, if it weren’t for one fatal flaw.  

Nini hesitated.  

You would always complain of this to Harabeoji, who would just nod with a faraway look in his eyes, and then reach out to your hair, calm you down, tell you that not everyone takes to the Force at the same rate.  

So, you continued on, much as you had, finding Nini next to hopeless, but wanting to protect him, and give him the tools to protect himself, all the same.  Even when Baekhyunie, and Sehunie surpassed him, and also tried to teach him through sparring, he would just smile ruefully, and lose again. But you never –none of you.  Despite the fact that Sehunie was the youngest, you all felt a curious sense of protectiveness for Nini, who seemed too fine, too exquisite for the earthy existence of a blademaster of the Force.  

One day, when you were 16, Harabeoji called you to the training room, and told you that it was your job to protect your brothers, but, when the time came, to know when to fall back, to protect from behind.  If only you could have known then why he seemed so urgent, why his eyes burned into yours until you promised, until you swore by your own name that you would do as he asked, then maybe things could have been different.  You were old enough. Good enough.  Even Harabeoji admitted that you far surpassed where he had been at your age.

But when the dark day came, he kicked you out, made you run.  You had sworn by your own name to protect your brothers, and when you made to ignore Harabeoji’s command to leave, he reminded you of that binding.  When later, all of you had returned, enclosed in an illusion of invisibility created by Baekhyunie…  You don’t remember the day that your parents were taken away.

But you’ll never forget the day they took Harabeoji from you.  

***

Baekhyunie had always been clever.  Apparently, unbeknownst to you, Harabeoji had taken each of your brothers aside, in turn, directing them to protect you with their lives.  Baekhyunie had started early, secreting away money and essentials, creating a plan for escape, if the need ever arose.  

You moved from the relatively quiet countryside to a bustling city, halfway across the country, found an apartment in its heart.  Baekhyunie believed in strength in numbers, feeling that if you hadn’t lived in such a remote area that someone could have come, someone could have helped…  But it was too late for that.  Harabeoji was gone.  

You had always wondered why you hadn’t seen it, hadn’t known that they were coming.  In the silence, in the dark, you cried yourself to sleep, knowing that this–Harabeoji’s death, you and your brother’s self-imposed exile–was all your fault.  So you threw yourself into training, poring over manuscripts to finish your own bladesmith training, and hammering your body, every single day, into the strength of a sword, to protect what you had left.  

Baekhyunie and Sehunie adapted well to city life, but despite Nini growing to tower over you, there was something gentle about him that drew bullies to his side like sharks scenting blood.  He would come home, night after night, with new cuts and bruises, lock himself into the bathroom, cry while the water was running under the pretense of taking a bath.  

You saw.  You never said anything, but you saw.  Time after time, you would slip into his bedroom at night, patch him up, clean his wounds and wish that he would talk to you.  But he would never tell you who was doing this–would never let you see.  As soon as you tried, a wall would crash down over your sight, and you wouldn’t be able to see anything of him, until he was ready.  You asked him how he did this, but he would just shrug, smile contemplatively.  

“You don’t need to know everything about me, Noona.”

You wished that you could protect him better, shield him from the pain, hold and take care of him like you did when he was little and looked up to you like you were the moon and stars.  But that was a luxury t