Saki’s Toy Box

‘Colours with Yelo’

After the day they had all had yesterday at the park, the youngsters of Brightside decided that it would be sensible to stay indoors and keep themselves as clean as possible. Jae had taken it upon himself to do the laundry, since they could leave no evidence behind of what had happened – as the photos would be protected but their clothes would not be – and out of all of them he was the best at it. Bradley was heading back to his flat to see if he could find anything worth salvaging as well as cancel his contracts and a few other ‘grown up’ things and Jongki and Kyung had gone with him to help out. There had been more than a few complaints at that notion but they had been over ruled and plus they were still on babysitting duty as punishment for getting completely and totally messy. Not that it was exactly a punishment of course; they all had adopted Saki as their little sister without having to even pause for breath.

Still, it was troublesome to know what to do with the girl as they were all still tired and after watching cartoons for the better part of the morning – which they had all secretly enjoyed despite how much they had complained – some of the others decided that they wanted to play on computer games and had set up the Xbox and the kinnect system. For a while the girl had been interested but had started to grow bored as they games were not the sort of thing that she liked.

Especially since the main focus appeared to be trying to beat Kyung’s high score which was a challenge that was pretty much so out there it was unbelievable.

Coming back into the living room, Kiyeol blinked in surprise at seeing his hyungs leaping about like mad things or else trying to encourage or sabotage their efforts but couldn’t see Saki anywhere. Instead of voicing his concern though, he just silently set about searching for the girl as the last thing he needed was yet more panic going around everyone.

He eventually found the girl in his room, which he shared with Sunwoo, Sang and Jae, looking curiously at the dolls that were sitting on Sang’s shelf next to his lower bunk bed. “Hey Saki, what you doing?”

Saki jumped and turned, before grinning brightly, “Just looking Oppa Yelo,” she toddled over to him, “Why are there dollies here? I thought you were all boys.”

Kiyeol couldn’t help but chuckle a little, “Sang hyung collects dolls, he’s a little weird that way.”

“Does he play with them?”

“No,” that the maknae knew for certain, “He just dresses them up real nice and then looks at them. Occasionally faffs on with their hair and stuff.”

Saki seemed bemused by this notion, “But why do that if not for playing with?”

“I’ve no idea,” Kiyeol replied, “he tried to explain it to me once and I just got confused.”

The girl giggled, “I can see that. Oppa Sang does appear to be very confused”

He thought the better of trying to correct the girl’s language skills cause she was extremely good for her age in his opinion and he remembered how much of a fuss his own little brother would kick up if he corrected him. Kiyeol’s heart clenched at that thought, he still missed Kibum dreadfully even though the last time they had talked it had not been in pleasant circumstances and he wished more than ever that the youngster could come and stay with them. But he knew that [name] would never allow that in the slightest and it hurt all the more.

Pushing those thoughts aside, he smiled down at the child, “Do you want to go back to play on the computer games?”

“No, they’re boring,” Saki said but looked up towards Kiyeol, “Can’t we do something more fun, Oppa Yelo?”

For a few seconds, Kiyeol mentally panicked because he didn’t know what could be considered more fun than computer games for a four year old but then had a sudden brain wave. Even though the others would probably horrendously once they found out, he was more than sure that it would do to keep the little girl happy. “Sure, just give me a second,” the boy smiled happily and moved towards his desk.

It technically wasn’t his desk as it was shared but he did have a drawer with a lock key which made it his own. After a little faffing, as clearly one of the others had muddled up the keys and not put them back in the right place, he got the drawer open and pulled out a couple of white artist pads and a yellow metal box which felt good to be in his fingers. Saki blinked, “Ohhhh, what’s that?”

“You’ll see,” he grinned and lead the girl to the kitchen table which had the most space available for what he wanted. He helped Saki up into one of the chairs, as she was just a little on the small side for them and gave her a pad of paper.

“We going to draw, Oppa?” Saki asked, her voice sounding really excited and her eyes fell back onto the yellow box, “They’re your crayons, Oppa Yelo?”

Kiyeol couldn’t help but grin just a little too enthusiastically, “Oh these are better than crayons, Saki yeondonsang.”

Opening the box, barely aware of the fact that he had just called her ‘little sister’, Kiyeol smiled at seeing the rows upon rows of brightly coloured pens, pencils, felt tips, fine liners, a small paint pallet and of course some wax crayons. It was a present that Kibum had sent him when he was talking to him a couple of years ago and Kiyeol had kept hold of it so that he could draw pictures with his baby brother when he ever came to visit.

“Oh wow,” Saki’s voice brought him back to the current situation, “They’re so pretty.”

“Glad you like,” Kiyeol said, selecting a pencil at random, “What do you want to draw Saki?”

The girl looked at the box in its pristine condition, at the paper and then at Kiyeol who was already beginning to make some marks on the paper. She repeated the process a couple of more times before looking at Kiyeol once again. “Can I really?” she sounded a little nervous.

Instead of answering, the maknae made a grab for the girl’s hand, directed it to the nearest available crayon – which happened to be the pink one – helped her to pick it up and the directed it to the paper. He grinned at her stunned reaction to the tiny dot of pink on the paper, “You’ve already started so of course you can use them Saki, I wouldn’t offer you them if you weren’t allowed.”

Saki grinned brightly and immediately started to colour on the paper, with big scribbles as all four year olds would do. The others only realised what they were up to when Jin came into the kitchen to get some drinks but there was little teasing as the little girl wouldn’t allow it.

Of course, their manager turned up abruptly later on which stopped the drawings completely and threw them into a world of darkness. However a couple of weeks later when he was back at home, hiding in his room from his accursed mother and step-father, Kiyeol found the drawings that they had been doing together and smiled at them.

He was surprised to find one which showed a strange stick figure with bright yellow hair and a smaller figure with pigtails and a blue triangle for a dress holding hands in what was presumably a park. Above the two, in wriggly writing was the names Saki and Oppa Yelo and Kiyeol found himself smiling as he couldn’t remember the last time he had received something so simply lovely and precious. “Thank you Saki,” he spoke aloud, “Thank you so much.”

A few days later he framed the picture and hung it on his wall, it helped to remind him that there was a family who cared about him over the next few painful months and when he joined the other at H/UN, the picture moved with him and was placed next to his bed.