Thirteen-year-old Jung Kook held the fabric up to the light. The sequins he had been sewing on glittered against the midnight blue of the velour. He smiled at the slight contrast of the silver and ivory sequins now visible under the lamp. It was almost eight in the night, and he had wanted to complete most part of it before dinner. So Hee Noona wanted it before five in the morning so she could rehearse in it. Just then, the flap to his tent was pulled aside.

“Oi, Jeon!” bellowed Taecyeon Hyung, his towering frame standing in the doorway. “Have you completed the harness I asked you to make?”

Jung Kook braced himself as he turned around to face the older, much bigger boy.

“There isn’t enough leather,” he tried to explain. “Yoongi Hyung will bring more in the morning!”

Taecyeon strode over, cuffed his collar and pulled him up so that Jung Kook’s nose was almost touching Taecyeon’s. The older boy’s eyes were cross and intimidating.

“I thought I made myself clear that I wanted them by morning,” Taecyeon growled.

In a desperate attempt, Jung Kook had to lie. “Bang Seonsaengnim says So Hee Noona must have her costume by morning.”

Taecyeon’s face twitched but his grip on the boy’s collar loosened. So Hee was their biggest and most popular star. The owner of their troupe, Bang Si Hyuk, favored her and always put her needs above others. While So Hee had indeed asked for her costume by morning, Bang had said no such thing.

Taecyeon pushed the boy back roughly. “I want it done as soon as Yoongi brings the leather.”

“Yes of course, Hyung.” Jung Kook lowered his eyes, feigning submission.

Taecyeon glared at So Hee’s half-made dress on the boy’s worktable and strode out of the tent.

Jung Kook breathed a sigh of relief. He picked up the dress so that he could sew on a few more sequins before Soo Bin came calling for him for dinner.

The Hybe Circus.

The newspapers called them a bunch of rag-tags, but they were immensely popular. In a time when circuses were dying out, the Hybe Circus had managed to thrive. They travelled through the country, setting up their tents and moving from one town to the next in their vans. During winter, the circus settled in a little clearing on a mountain, away from the prying eyes of people who considered them troublemakers and thieves; the same people who would pay to watch them breathe fire and swing in the air inside the confines of the circus tent did not trust them outside of it. 

Like most of the kids in the circus, Jung Kook had been picked up by Bang Si Hyuk as a baby. While the other kids were trained to swing from trapezes, balance on ladders or juggle balls, Jung Kook was taught to sew and stitch. Declared sickly and weak from a young age, he even walked with a slight limp after a trapeze accident as a child. The older boys in the circus bullied him, but he had learnt early on that the best way to tackle them was to not fight back. They got bored quickly if he did not respond, leaving him for something more exciting. Perhaps it was a patience inculcated from spending so much of his time with older people.

He had been taught to sew by the women who had been making clothes for the circus even before he came. There were three of them- one he called Elder Mother because she was the oldest, another he called Aunt Mal Ja (because she didn’t like to be called ‘mother’), and to the youngest, he called Younger Mother. He would sit sewing with them, joining in their conversation about how winter radishes were best grown, about the elephants they saw in Thailand, the best way to sew in a hidden zipper, and about Nichkhun’s many lovers. And then they’d warn Jung Kook that he would never see the end of it if he went around breaking girl’s hearts the same way. But Jung Kook knew that he could never get a girl, let alone as many as Nichkhun did. Girls did not like boys who walked with a limp, stitched costumes, and smelled like an old woman. But that was ok. His nine-year-old self had a hard time accepting that he would never swing from a trapeze or breathe fire from his mouth. But now, he had learnt to actually enjoy making costumes (even though he would never admit it to the Hyungs) and he liked the company of his three ‘mothers’. The women, never having raised a child of their own, doted on him. All the harshness that the boys in the circus threw on him were washed away by their gentleness.

Among them, Jung Kook grew into a young man, unseen, unheard but always seeing, always listening.