Salty tears warmed his chubby cheeks as he sat there in the cold - eight years old and crying in the snow. He hated it here. He hated the people, he hated the weather, he hated the language that he could just barely understand. He hated it all and he wanted nothing more than to be back home in Los Angeles with his friends and family. But instead he was here with his aunt because his twenty-something year old parents decided they needed time to "find themselves". And apparently that meant traveling the world without their son. 

Never in his short life had Mark felt so alienated and abandoned. 

He wondered if anyone in this country would understand him. Or even accept him. 

"You look pretty ugly when you cry." 

The youngster paused his sobbing. Snot running down his nose and tears streaking down his cold cheeks, he looked up. 

"W-what...?" 

"What, you don't understand Korean? I'll say it in English for you then. 'You look ugly when you cry'. Want it in Chinese, too?" 

Mark was taken aback. Not because of the boy's rude disposition, but rather the fact that he spoke English. And not the broken English that his classmates had been using to taunt and . Actual, fluent English. 

"You... speak English?" Mark asked tentatively. 

"I just spoke it, didn't I? Jeez. You're not just ugly - you're ugly AND dumb." 

Mark wiped his face with the sleeve of his jacket, his emotions finally calming into something he could take control over. 

"You're kind of a jerk..." he told him with a scowl on his face. 

"I guess.... But I got you to stop crying, didn't I?" the boy offered with the first genuine smile Mark had seen since arriving here. 

He didn't know it then, but the boy in front of him with a big mouth and a bit too much sass was going to become one of the most important people in his life.