↳  KWON SOON YOUNG  권순영

↳  About : Where you never thought that in your life time, you would run away from home or fall in love with a stranger. 

[tw: emotional/verbal abuse, slight depersonalization, dysfuntional family]

↳  Word Count : 2565 (and this is still part 1 istg)

↳  Admin : Shalyha

The starts blinked out in the sky disappearing, the icy wind hitting your face.  As you stuffed your hands into your jacket, you jogged into the corner store.  It was the first little shop you'd seen for the last hour since you had left the city.  You laid your knap sack onto the floor by the kimchi fridge and looked for the cheapest thing in the aisles.  The door opened agian, the wind chimes rang, and he let the cold air in.

You usually fought with your family, it was really nothing new.  But for some reason, on that specific day, they had decided to call out every single fault you had.  Out of nowhere, out of thin air, that thin rope of civility and tolerance had been cut.  Your family was supposed to be your pillar but instead they insisted on digging your grave.

“You were a mistake,” Alcohol fueled words rang through the house.  Stilling the air, words unsaid now known.  “You shouldn’t have been born.”

Of course, this wasn’t the first time this situation had played out.  This conversation had happened too many times that you knew it would end with your dad sleeping in the car, your mom passed out drunk, and your siblings staying with friends.

And you’re left alone.

But this time, the atmosphere was different.  It felt hostile, it felt like you were left in the forest to be eaten.  You were but a white rabbit left in a field of green with a pack of wolves.  More words slurred, spit out of their mouths.

Disgusting, worthless, arrogant, dirty, liar.

A failure.

If only you were guy, if only you were perfect, if only you were normal, if only you didn’t have depression, if only, if only, if only.

“Why can’t you just leave,” She shook her empty bottle dangerously close to your face, her body odor revealing that she hadn’t bathed since the last time you had seen her.  “The other abomination is already gone, go ahead.  I’m not planning on stopping your useless .”

Your brother stepped into the room, pulled her back, and pulled her to the couch with an unreadable expression.  She regarded him as an abomination and refused to acknowledge his very existence. Because he was a he when she wanted him to be she.

“You should leave,” His voice cracked.  “I’ll stay, someone has to stay here and watch these two to make sure that they don’t burn this house down.”

“Where am I supposed to go?  What about my jobs? School?” You shook your head furiously and bit your nails.  If you stop working, then that cancels out one more paycheck that this family desperately needs.  The school administration won’t stay silent about a student missing the entire second semester of the school year either.

“What about you?” You asked.  Your mom had stirred awake and had started to mumble words under her breath.

“I’ll apologize to your managers for you.  And, uh, I think the principal already understands our situation,” He tried to give you a smile but he looked so tired.  It physically hurt to even see your brother attempt to smile.

“Come with me, we could get a couple part time jobs and live like we’ve always wanted!”  You hurried to the attic where you kept your ‘escape bags’ just in case it became too unsafe to live here.  Technically, you barely even lived here anymore, only staying three days at a time.  Working had kept you busy enough to forget about your family.

You ran down the stairs clumsily, carrying both of your escape bags. 

“I can’t,” He looked up and you could swear it was the most vulnerable he had looked since who knows when.  His eyes quivered and her heart ached with pity.  He was going to stay no matter what she said.

On the couch, your sorry excuse of a mother was vomiting into a rusted bucket from the neighbors.  You could hear your dad’s snoring from the hammock out on the front lawn.  

“You know my phone number, you know where to go if you have to run away,” Dropping his bag down, you hugged him for what seemed like a lifetime.  With a heavy heart and a heavier conscience, you walked down the cement steps. 

Down the sidewalk you had known for years, down the lane of familiarity and into the cold, harsh reality of living alone.

Truly alone.

Kwon Soonyoung wasn’t lonely, he definitely had a lot of friends.  But being raised in the country side, it was truly restricting.  

He knows that without labor workers, without farm workers, the world would have gone down the drain.  He knows that his family works hard, he knows first hand the struggles of not earning enough money for food.

“If I see you doing this witchcraft one more time,” His grandpa waved his broom in the air. “You aren’t going to be eating for a week!”

He couldn’t dance.  He couldn’t sing.  He couldn’t rap.  Anything song that came out after the mid 20th century, he wasn’t allowed to even hum.

“Don’t even think about going into that store!” His mother would yell at him if he even looked in the general direction of the book store.  “You’re going to be working on this farm, we don’t have the money for your education.”

No dreams, no education, no motivation in life honestly.

Behind his parent’s backs, he would practice with his friends.  They called him a star, they knew that out of their group, he was destined to go far.  That was how they started calling Soonyoung, Hoshi.  In Japanese, according to the elderly rice wine seller down the road, it meant star.  And to them, Hoshi was definitely their star.

He would sing and dance to Beyoncé in the pepper fields.  He would recite his alphabet as loud as he could in his neighbor’s tiny lettuce patch.

He was happy.  They were all content with their simple lives.

But one day, it all came tumbling down.  To Hoshi, it felt like there was a tornado even though the sun was out.  It felt like his heart had dropped a hundred kilometers into the Earth and was only held by the unfairly thin string of fate.

It was sunny, the