If only Kyungsoo had been like Jongin and hadn’t gone home that night. Then he wouldn’t have been in so much pain; then he wouldn’t have had so much trouble getting to work the next day. The moment he stepped through the door, a heavy object collided with his chest, shoving him backwards so that his head crashed into the cold, hard, ice-covered concrete ground. The object (which was in fact a brick) landed on his chest, making it difficult for him to even breathe. “Please…” he spluttered, pushing the brick off his chest – which used up every ounce of energy in his weak body. “What did I do wrong this time? Whatever it is, I’m sorry.”

“What did you do?” He heard his father growl. “What did you do? So you’re stupid as well as blind. How dare you make the mistake of thinking that someone cares about you?”

“Father…” Kyungsoo whimpered meekly. “What are you talking about? I don’t understand.”

 “Of course you don’t!” The wicked man gave his son a harsh kick to the leg. “Someone is with you – ‘a friend of yours’ is what you probably think he is. Well, he’s not.” Another kick – to the face this time. “He hates you. Everybody hates you. You’re just too pathetic to see it.” He stopped kicking him then; he didn’t do anything at all.

“What do you want from me?” Kyungsoo whimpered, holding his hands out, grasping desperately at the empty air. Finding nothing, he withdrew his hands, holding them to his chest.

“Leave.” His father commanded in a cruel, callous voice that was colder than the winter air. “I never want to see your pathetic face again! Get out of my sight! After what you did to your mother… after that… you will never be anything but a useless, vicious little-”

He froze, dead in his tracks, as Jongin stepped forward and bent down, taking Kyungsoo’s hand. Kyungsoo drew his breath in sharply when he felt the warm skin of Jongin’s hand brush against the cold of his. Of course, it hadn’t occurred to him that the warm hand belonged to none other than Kim Jongin. No, he merely assumed it belonged to a kind stranger that happened to take notice of his abuse (regardless of how unlikely that seemed). With little to no other options, he allowed the owner of the hand to pull him up to a standing position. Jongin’s arm s around Kyungsoo’s waist, pulling him closer, and Kyungsoo sighed softly as he relished in the comfort of the arm body pressing against his. He was so comfortable that he almost forgot about his abusive father. Almost.

He was reminded by another swift kick to his leg and the sickening sound of skin slapping savagely against skin. He felt the kick… but not the slap. And then he realised that it must have been his mysterious rescuer that the slap had been directed towards. However, this was not the case. Jongin – his mysterious rescuer – was not the one towards whom the blow had been directed; he was in fact the deliverer of the blow, and it was Kyungsoo’s father who felt the pain radiate from the now red patch of skin on his usually pale face. Kyungsoo tightened his grip on Jongin’s hand, and now he was faced with opportunity to do so, Jongin hurriedly pulled the cold body he was clinging to away from the attacker and down the street. Fortunately for them, Kyungsoo’s father chose not to chase after them; if he had, there was a strong possibility that the two of them would have been found dead the next day.

After twenty minutes of being dragged across the frozen concrete, Kyungsoo eventually heard the sound of a key being pushed into a lock, which was followed by the sound of a door swinging open and colliding with a wall. He was led up a small step and pushed into a room that was didn’t feel much warmer than the cold air that flooded the surroundings of the house. Then the door banged shut and a bolt slid across it, preventing it from being opened. Jongin’s hand reattached itself to Kyungsoo’s and the younger pulled the latter across the carpeted floor to a large white leather sofa, upon which they both sat down.

Kyungsoo was alerted to the presence of a third party when he heard footsteps coming from his left-hand side. He turned his head in the direction of the noise, but obviously no sight greeted him. Jongin’s maid was standing in the doorway, and – noticing the stranger that was sitting next to the master of the household – she used sign language to ask Jongin about the stranger beside him. He quickly signed a reply that meant “He’s a friend from school. He’s blind, so he can’t see you. Could you get us both a hot chocolate? It’s very cold outside.” The maid complied immediately, and within a few minutes Kyungsoo’s hands were wrapped around a scorching mug of hot chocolate and the maid disappeared upstairs, leaving the two of them alone. Usually Kyungsoo would have disliked the sweltering heat that the hot chocolate was emitting, but after being in the cold for so long it was more like Heaven than it was Hell.

If it had been possible, Jongin would have asked him how he was feeling. Seeing as it wasn’t, he settled instead for wrapping an arm around his waist and pulling him in so that Kyungsoo’s head was resting on his shoulder. “Who- Who are you?” Kyungsoo whispered, his voice trembling. No reply came. He considered the possibility of Jongin being his rescuer – the evidence for such a theory was there – but that seemed too… too outrageous. Why would Jongin have been at his house? And why would Jongin have protected him? Why would anyone have protected him? But... for argument’s sake… if it was  Jongin, it would explain why he felt so relaxed – so comfortable – around the stranger even when no words had been exchanged between the two of them.

Once they had both finished drinking their hot chocolates, Jongin set the mugs down on the glass coffee table in front of them before one again taking Kyungsoo’s hand. This time he led him up the stairs and into his bedroom, where he sat Kyungsoo down on the bed and disappeared into his en-suite bathroom to brush his teeth. Five minutes later, he reappeared beside Kyungsoo and gave him a gentle shove to the chest, causing Kyungsoo’s back to crash into the mattress and his head to land on a pillow. Jongin lied down beside him and pulled the thick duvet over both of their bodies, engulfing them in a mass of comforting heat. It didn’t take long for them to drift off to a peaceful slumber. Kyungsoo fell asleep first, the warm body beside him relaxing him. Before Jongin’s eyes fluttered to a close and before he lost consciousness, he pressed his lips lightly against Kyungsoo’s. Because as far as he was aware, it was the only way to show Kyungsoo how he felt.

♥♥♥

Kyungsoo’s suspicions of the stranger’s identity were confirmed the next morning when – after being dressed in a clean, well-kept school uniform by the stranger and fed a cooked breakfast that was more delicious than he had ever had the ability to dream of – he was pushed into a car and driven to school, the stranger staying by his side all the while without ever saying a single word. When the car finally came to a halt, the stranger – who he now believed correctly to be Jongin – led him out of it and towards the main school building. They entered the classroom hand in hand and sat down in the same seats they had sat in the day before – only this time they were both glad to be sitting with each other.

“Kyungsoo, please move back to your own desk. You will both be taking a test so I can see exactly what you need help with. Do you realise how far behind you are, Kyungsoo? It’s frightening, really.” Mrs Shin’s voice quickly put an end to the peaceful atmosphere that embraced the two students, and Kyungsoo immediately moved back to his original seat for fear of angering the teacher. She handed out the test papers – one being written in braille for Kyungsoo – and wrote down the instructions on the board at the front of the room for Jongin. “You each have two hours to complete the test. No communicating whatsoever. You may begin now.” Kyungsoo winced internally when the words ‘no communicating’ left his teacher’s lips. What was he going to do? Hit Jongin with his cane?

The test wasn’t difficult; it was his handwriting that was the problem. He just couldn’t understand why he wasn’t given extra handwriting lessons, or why his bad handwriting wasn’t excused on the grounds that he couldn’t and never had been able to see what the letters he was attempting to write were supposed to look like. Kyungsoo put down his pen the second the bell rang for break; Jongin, on the other hand, continued to write – that is, until Mrs Shin forcefully took away his test paper.

Instead of leaving the room the moment he was dismissed, Kyungsoo walked to Jongin’s desk and took his hand, leading him out of the classroom. And then Kyungsoo was falling behind and it was Jongin who took the lead again, taking him up to the art room – Jongin’s second home… or possibly even his first. The sat down by the window, and for the entirety of break time, Jongin sat etching the details of Kyungsoo’s face onto a page of his sketchpad with the lead of a sharpened pencil, while Kyungsoo sat listening to sounds of the pencil lead scraping lightly against the paper.

Two hours later – after spending an hour marking his own test paper (because Mrs Shin happened to be a very lazy teacher) and another hour solving Maths problems – Jongin made his way to the dining hall, instead of the art room like he’d initially planned, with Kyungsoo in tow. Naturally (and correctly) assuming that Kyungsoo had no money with him, Jongin paid for both their lunches and pulled him to a table. To Kyungsoo, the quiet of the dining hall due to the lack of people meant tranquillity. If Jongin had for one second taken his eyes away from Kyungsoo’s, he would only have thought of the loneliness that surrounded them. But he didn’t. He only saw the serenity in Kyungsoo’s unseeing eyes.

Halfway through dinner, Jongin noticed that his companion wasn’t eating. He promptly halted his own actions and opted instead for picking up the pieces of food on Kyungsoo’s plate with his own chopsticks and holding them up to Kyungsoo’s lips. He watched, entranced, as Kyungsoo hungrily devoured everything that was brought up to his lips. And then he noticed that Kyungsoo was smiling, that he was always smiling despite having never being able to see. People used the phrase “to never see the light of day” as a negative one, but Jongin would put it to them that if someone who had never seen the light of day could be so happy, was it such a bad thing? It was, of course, if said person had once been able to see the light of day, and that ability was taken from them. But by itself, no, he decided, it was not such a bad thing to never see light of day. That being said, if he had had the ability to cure Kyungsoo of his condition, he would have done so in a heartbeat.

Once school was done for the day, the same car that had driven the two of them to school drove them back to Jongin’s house. Kyungsoo didn’t care about the silence that enveloped the two of them as they sat together on the leather sofa in the lounge; all he cared about was the comfort and warmth of Jongin’s chest as he laid his head against it.

But an hour and a half before they were due to go to the café to meet the owner, Yixing, Jongin left Kyungsoo alone in the house with the maid as he had somewhere else to be. “Jongin-ah?” Kyungsoo called out after hearing the front door slam shut.

“He’s gone out to meet a friend of his,” a female voice – belonging to the maid – answered, startling him.

“Who are you?” Kyungsoo asked warily, though he didn’t believe that Jongin would leave him with someone who wished to harm him.

“I’m Jongin’s family’s maid,” she replied. “And may I ask, what is your name? And who are you exactly?”

“My name is Kyungsoo – Do Kyungsoo. I’m Jongin’s…” Friend? Acquaintance? Why would you allow a mere acquaintance to stay in your house? “I’m Jongin’s classmate.”

“Really?” The maid seemed surprised, and that in turn surprised Kyungsoo. “Jongin told me you were his friend.”