Requested by: ByunBaekButt

Characters: Yun [LUNAFLY] & Kim Yura [OC]

Premise: Yura goes to Hongdae each week to see Yun perform.  With life as an orphan leaving her down, she finds hope in his voice.

Author: Admin K, DivinestSense

Coming Home

“Yura, let’s go!”

“Jie, listen, I really don’t think—”

“Yah, your thoughts don’t matter—it’s my birthday and you’re my sister so get your in gear and let’s go.”

Groaning from her spot on the old, beat up couch, Yura forced her body to move into action.  Not a single cell in her wanted to perform any form of physical action, but she would not deny Jie this—not on her birthday.

The two of them had been best friends since they entered the orphanage as teens.  Having grown up together in the same, tiny, overpopulated building, the only thing that prevented them from being sisters was genetics.  Bitter and pessimistic from her experiences in foster care, it had been Jie, with her bright smile and optimism, who had pulled her out of the slump she had been in.  

Since she was given up at birth by her mother, Yura had been passed from family to family, each one with the hope of finding her perfect fit.  At first she had been hopeful—thrilled at the possibility of having a place to call home, yet her illusions were quick to be shattered as for one reason or another, the each foster family could not take care of her.  From having step siblings to nothing, each time she was moved it felt as though fate was taking her life away from her—as though everything she had known (albeit for a short period of time) was a facade.  

Each transition had her expecting less and less until one day—when she had turned sixteen—she decided that she was through with the foster care system—that her heart could not handle any more breaks.  Removing herself from that world of giving and taking as a minor, she was put in an orphanage.  It was ironic how pitiful the word “orphan” sounded despite the fact that she was the happiest she had ever been.

(Even so, she was rather miserable.)

Like anyone in her situation, to say that Yura had trust issues would be an understatement.  Deep down, she knew that her problem stemmed from the foster care system itself rather than the actual people and families involved, yet she was young and could not help but look for someone to blame—for someone to pin all of her tears and remains of her heart on.  The system put a great deal of stress on foster families and the more she thought about it, it was unrealistic for her to have believed that she would be kept.  Towards the end of her life in the system, she had been a teenager—a young adult—she was almost in the “real world” as adults like to call it.  It did not make sense for a family to keep her when was already so close to being of age.  

So they tossed her aside.

Looking back on her younger years as an ignorant, optimistic child, what killed her the most was that she never saw it coming—that she never truly understood the flaws of the system.  For a while, each new family was a home for her—how could it not have been?  The mother would smile at her and everyone would be so kind, so smile-until-your-cheeks-hurt kind; A young girl would never imagine that those were the faces of people who would not even have the gut to say goodbye to her when superiors from the foster organization came.

That was the problem with people like that—with people who were just always kind and always polite; She never knew where she stood.  What she could have perceived as a genuine smile could turn out to be a forced veneer.

She hated that.

So with all that in mind, she had to hand it to Jie.  It would be difficult for anyone to suffer the amount of rejection the two of them had and manage to see things through rose colored glasses, yet Jie had managed to do so, and for that Yura was eternally grateful.

While Yura had forced herself to mature quickly and focus on the future and independence, Jie had held on to anything that reminded her that she was still only a teenager—that she wasn’t expected to have the world figured out.  They were only seventeen and to Jie, that meant screaming for her favorite stars and eating street food in Hongdae.

So that’s what they were going to do tonight—go to Hongdae and celebrate her sister’s birthday;  Tomorrow she could return to her life of worries and stress.

“I’m all ready—you better be standing when I walk out of this door.”

Whining as she rose to her feet, she glared at her best friend as she walked through the door.  Just because she was willing to do what Jie wanted did not mean had to be pleasant about it.  

She would never admit it verbally, but a part of her despised seeing other young students their age outside of school.  In the classroom, they were all the same with their matching uniforms, but outside—especially at night in a hip area such as Hongdae—she was reminded of how different she (and Jie) was.  While they paraded around in the newest trends, she was wearing clothing a few sizes too large that had been passed down to her through the orphanage.  She liked to tell herself that she didn’t care what others thought of her—and most of the time that was true—but there were some looks—some once overs—that people gave her that made her feel ashamed.

She hated pity.

She hated the glances that spoke without words—the ones that told her she was stuck—that there was no way to get out of where she was.  Simple stares told her so much about what people were thinking;  They thought that just because she was in an orphanage (and willingly on her behalf in her defense) she would come of age only to end up in debt and alone—that being raised in a house with countless other children was the best it was going to get for her.  Because to them, there was no way that someone in her living situation could make something of herself—because to those outsiders looking in, her situation defined her potential.

“Get that look off your face right now.  Smile and wish me happy birthday.”

Giving her friend a tired smile, she reached out and hugged the other girl.

“Happy birthday, Kimchi," she said.  

Jie did not know her last name and after being tossed from family to family in foster care, she did not really desire one.  When Yura and her became close, Jie had decide that it only made sense that sisters share a last name, so she would take Yura’s: Kim.  Yura found it funny how “Kim Jie”  sounded like “Kimchi.”  What had started as their inside joke had a much deeper meaning to Yura, though.  

Kimchi was something so common in Korea—something so mundane and ordinary to them that most people only realized its importance when they traveled abroad and missed Korean cuisine.  It was also a fact that many children were forced into orphanages and other forms of alternative care because of the negative views of being a single mother in the nation—she and Jie were parts of a statistic.  

Kim Jie—as a figure rather than a person—was a common thing, yet she would never trade her for the world

“Thank you.”

As the two of them made their travel to Hongdae, Yura smiled and listened intently as Jie rambled on and on about the things she wanted to do—about the sights she wanted to see and all she could do was laugh and support her friend’s enthusiasm.  Even though she was tired, adventures like this were one of the reasons she loved Jie and she would be a fool not to embrace every moment she had with her crazy companion.

“Yura, this is it!”  Jie squealed as the bus came to a stop.  Quickly getting off, the two of them took in