CHAPTER TWO: BACK THEN

KIM JONGHYUN

Both Minho and Taemin had noticeable looks of surprise on their faces. It had always been the typical reaction. A large number of my family even questioned why I’d be around a girl that didn’t have the same dream as I did, let alone the possibility of reaching it.

“I’ve known her since I was about seven, about two years before she lost her voice,” I said, sitting on my mat and toying with the tiny doo-dads and thingamajigs I’d purchased during my travels. “Lost her voice… sounds less dramatic that way, people lose their voices all the time. Even back then people would pick on her a lot.”

            “Why?” Taemin asked.

            “I don’t know, a lot of the boys would pick on her because she was shrimpier, I guess, and her parents weren’t around. She was just an easy target when you get down to it. She was my neighbor, just down the street from me, so I knew her before she started school.” I looked up across the faces of my fellow band members and counted only three. Onew had excused himself, probably to help Minah knowing him, as he already knew everything about it.

***

            My parents told me I should bring Minah over to her house, since her parents were busy and she shouldn’t walk home all by herself. I didn’t see what the big deal was. It was only three blocks away, but nonetheless I pedaled my bicycle towards Kim Yunjo’s house. Her parents tended to watch after Minah since her older sister was usually over to hang out.

            I didn’t know where Junyong was, but apparently she was away from Yunjo’s house if I had to get Minah.

            My parents told me I shouldn’t mess around but Minah was turning eight next week and I’d earned ten dollars working around our yard, so I stopped a block away, figuring I could look at some toys to give her. The shop carried mostly handmade stuff, necklaces, bracelets, rings, but in the back there were little wooden cars and dolls and other things little kids would get for their parents.

            Minah’s latest project had been to talk her parents into buying her a baby kitten, but they simply weren’t going to have that in their tiny, clean city apartment building, so I decided the perfect idea would be a small stuffed cat. A small, over flowing basket held stuffed animals. Dog. Elephant. Monkey. There it was, a small, blue eyed Siamese Cat. It was perfect. I looked at the tag, three dollars, and decided to look at the necklaces, too.

            I didn’t know anything about picking out necklaces, so I decided on a locket. It was different from the others, shaped like an envelope, and it hinged opened so messages could be placed inside. The necklace was only two dollars, so I got us some sodas, placed everything in my bikes basket, and started towards Yunjo’s house. When I knocked on Yunjo’s door, everything was quiet. I knocked again. Nothing.

            I pressed my ear against the door, and listened closely. It was very light, but I could hear distant wailing on the other side. The door was unlocked, so I opened it and stepped inside. It was louder now, and without a doubt the sound of crying. Feet suddenly stomped across the ceiling, so I rushed up the stairs. Only one door was opened at the end of the hall, and inside Yunjo was running, angry, back and forward across the room, throwing pillows, blankets, at one point a water bottle at Minah, yelling at her “What!? What do you want!?”

            Minah looked up from her knees for the first time, and saw me in the door way. “J-Jonghyun?”

            A month later, her birthday present became a get well soon present.

***

            “Get well soon?” Minho asked. “Was she ill?”’

“No.” The members, even Key, looked… well, amazed, sad. It was a number of things really. Key’d never been told the whole story, only that she was mute and endured months of therapy. With a sigh, I lay back, head on my arms. “Not physically, no. No one knows what happened, except Minah. Even Yunjo didn’t know. All she knows is that Minah was playing outside, and twenty minutes later she came in crying like she was. Her sister, Junyong, was shot not far from there, she was on her way over, and about the time Yunjo got the call from their parents, Minah was in the house. Maybe she heard it, no one knows. She couldn’t have seen it and made it back, no one saw her.”

“And after that?” Taemin questioned.

“After that, I took her on a bike ride, and we ended up at my house. She didn’t talk the whole ride. She never talked again. Her sister died, she was only like sixteen. Minah wasn’t planned, she just happened really late on. We skipped Minah’s birthday, obviously. After two weeks she was in the hospital, after four I was allowed to go see her. She went back to school after two months.” I paused and sat back up, playing with a palm-sized stuffed bear on the table. “School was hell for her. She was in special classes, with mentally disabled kids, but she had lunch with the rest of us, and played outside with the rest of us. They bullied her all the time, but she always looked really happy.

“Our biggest focus was communication, so we could talk easier. She’d look up different kinds on the internet and we’d learn it together. None of it really worked for except she can do Morse Code. It’s mostly just for if she’s in another room. When I left her parents sent her here, to live with her grandparents, because they couldn’t keep up with her all the time. They work really hard to provide for her, so her grandparents can stay retired, and to pay for her therapy bills.”

The rest of the story, the band knew. I’d visited her once, and it had been a year since.

“Get everything out that you need. If Onew’s down there helping, she’ll have breakfast ready soon.”