Lost Boys [9/11]
Title: Lost Boys
Character: Changmin-centric, but everyone's going to appear in it.
Length: 9/11
Rating/Genre: PG in general; it's AU haha.
Summary: The sight is unnerving and his heart starts to race. In the back of his mind, alarm bells are going off. Something is not right.
---
Nine
The days get shorter and Changmin finally sets a deadline for himself: he’s leaving by the end of the week, before December is done and before he stays too long for him to not want to go.
Subconsciously he starts making up for time he knows he’s going to lose. He practices with Yoochun in the streets, pointing out random objects and having him read them, make short poems about them, impromptu statements, simple essays; they add, multiply, subtract and divide in train stations, by fruit stands, in the playground, while crossing the street. He spends time with Junsu at the bakery and accompanies him on errands; they juggle oranges, debate on differences between milk brands and laugh as they hang upside down from fire escapes. At home he talks to Yunho about anything and everything he can think of; there’s philosophy and pop culture, science and trivia, and once Yunho surprises him with a thin book containing sudoku puzzles that he says was a gift to him from Jaejoong before but which he never really got around to solving because “it tried my patience.” He even tries to be friendly with Jaejoong, bowing to him and calling him “hyung” on occasion and expressing pleasantries every so often. Jaejoong constantly ignores him of course, choosing instead to start a conversation with either Yoochun or Junsu but Changmin lets it slide every single time (which, for him, isn’t easy to do but he does it anyway, with much effort).
He doesn’t know if or when he’ll see these people again (or if they’ll even allow themselves to be seen), and every day, every single additional moment he spends with them, he feels his heart break a little. “Sometimes I feel as though you’ve always been here,” Junsu tells him with a bright smile as they walk back from another errand, their faces numb but their spirits high from all the brightly decorated storefronts. “As though we’d always been five from the very beginning. Ah our dongsaengie…” and as he trails off, Changmin can already feel the familiar stirrings of heartache in his chest.
A day nearly on the threshold of his deadline he’s by himself in the apartment. Yunho’s gone out with Yoochun for a walk and Junsu is at work, and Changmin brings out his backpack from inside of the coat closet where Junsu hid it and where he still keeps it. He rifles through its contents, checking one last time to see if they’re still intact: a few clothes, a flashlight, his mother’s picture.
He wonders where he'll end up. If he'll make it out of this adventure alive. He counts the last of his money. Hong Kong could be nice, he thinks, Or Thailand. I can get a job. I can come back and I'll find them.... He pauses. Sighs. Or maybe, the thought comes unbidden, much to his surprise, I could just go back--
“I know who you are.”
He nearly dies of fright at the sound of Jaejoong’s voice. Quickly he stuffs his passport and ticket money back into his backpack, before whirling around with a speed that makes his head spin.
“Jaejoong…hyung!” he stammers, adding the honorific at the end because it seemed already right to do so. Jaejoong is standing by their dilapidated refrigerator in a navy coat and jeans he recognizes to be Yoochun’s, looking neither triumphant nor smug. In fact, Changmin notes that he might even look a little sad.
The sight is unnerving and his heart starts to race. In the back of his mind, alarm bells are going off. Something is not right.
“What…do you mean?”
“Don’t play innocent with me.” Jaejoong hisses. “I knew from the day Junsu dragged you in here. I’m not an idiot, Shim Changmin, despite your perceptions.” It’s the second time Jaejoong has said his full name (the first being the time his camera was stolen), but this time, the older man’s tone has an underlying meaning.
Changmin’s eyes grow wide. Of course he should have expected this. He should have. After all, there are TV reports, radio reports. His face might even be plastered up on a billboard in Gangnam. Why in the world is he feeling so afraid now? Lie quick, he tells himself, but his brain seems to have stopped working and his mouth is dry as cotton. Jaejoong continues to stare, his mouth set in a thin line on his face.
“Surprised you’ve been found out? The entire city is on its toes to keep a lookout for you. They’ve been handing out pictures of you in the streets.” As if to prove it, Jaejoong reaches into his pocket and pulls out a crumpled copy before scrunching it up into a ball and tossing it over to the top of the refrigerator. “You no longer look like that boy in the picture of course but perhaps the presence of a few birthmarks will jolt people’s memory? It’s not every day that a runaway child that’s the sole heir to a grand fortune is found. In the streets with a bunch of petty thieves no less. It’s enough to drive any parent into madness.” At the words, Changmin expects a sneer from Jaejoong, but the older man merely states them as they are, adding no relish to his tone. Jaejoong even looks regretful, making Changmin afraid of more confrontation, afraid of what he may find.
He worries that the others might already know as well, if not before then now, and that there’ll be hell to pay. The fright must show on his face because Jaejoong breaks the silence with a tsk-ing sound.
“Look at you. Worried about what the others might think of you? Yunho and the others have no idea. They’re blissfully ignorant in that sense, like children. I haven’t had the heart to tell them, to break the news that their beloved dongsaeng is playing them for a fool.” Jaejoong’s words cut like knives and Changmin is more than a little stung. “They only think you cry out in the night for a mother you’ve lost. They don’t relate it to Kang Ji Min, long-suffering wife of Shim Chang Wook, the politician.”
His mother’s name sounds absolutely foreign passing through Jaejoong’s lips, and Changmin feels his ears go red.
“Don’t tell them, whatever you know.” He almost sounds as though he’s begging, and if this were a different time, in a different situation, he’d probably be disgusted at himself, but the thought of Yoochun, Junsu and Yunho never talking to him again and branding him as a hypocrite is more than enough to bring his soul down to its knees, even if he were in front of Jaejoong. “Please. Hyung. Don’t tell them.”
The older man merely makes a snorting sound, but doesn’t offer any promises. “Spill,” he says.
“He never loved her,” Changmin says sullenly. He feels his shoulders slump as though from defeat. “She died hoping he would but he never did. It was only always me, never her. I hate him for it. He practically killed her.” Surprisingly, the poisonous anger he used to feel for his father isn’t as potent as before, as though he got tired from feeling it. He lowers his head. “I ran away to hurt him…hopefully as much as he hurt her.”
Jaejoong’s brow puckers. “You’re a fool.”
Silence grows between them, but it’s no longer filled with anger, only tension.
“You knew…all along.” Changmin says slowly. It’s useless to deny; Jaejoong, as he’s already discovered, is no fool. “Why confront me now?”
At the words, the older man in front of him seems to pale, the twinkle usually present in his eyes lost.
“I never planned to. I was too pissed at you to care…imagine, a boy doted on by both his mother and his father runs away just because his mother dies, and he can’t stand the thought of being alone with his father who obviously pampers him. It’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard of. My own parents…my mother never wanted me, could never look at me, could never even fucking take care of me. She was bipolar and my father spent all his time trying to prevent her from killing herself, stabbing her endlessly with needles. She finally succeeded, goddamn locked herself in the garage with the engine running.” Jaejoong let out a hollow laugh. “My father took out a goddamn rifle and fucking shot everything in the house. Wanted to shoot me too but I ran away.” Jaejoong looks almost delirious as he speaks, his eyes gleaming. “I was thirteen. Last I heard my father checked himself into the looney bin and has been there ever since.” His face changes, and in the dying afternoon light, Jaejoong looks almost apologetic.
“You…had everything, and I couldn’t fucking comprehend why you would run away,” and Changmin knows it’s meant to be an apology. “Half of me wanted you to die on the streets to teach you a lesson, the other half wanted you to get the fuck back to where you came from. I know what it’s like. I’ve had to fight to survive for eight fucking years! Why didn’t you listen? Couldn’t you fucking get it? Do you actually like being hungry? Do you like freezing your ass off? Can you actually stomach the sight of any of your friends suffering?”
The impromptu confession leaves a weak feeling in Changmin’s knees. He should have known. Anybody ever tell you that like repels like?
“What Yunho’s got, it’s called Crohn’s disease. It’s not fatal but it can lead to stomach cancer if you’re not careful. Yoochun also gets asthma from time to time. My father was a doctor and I used to watch him treat people with these kinds of diseases every fucking day. Do you know how worthless and helpless I feel when I see Yoochun and Yunho sick, knowing I can’t do a fucking thing? Do you know how that fucking feels like? When you watch your own mother being tied down to the bed by your own father because he can’t-”
Jaejoong suddenly clamps his mouth shut, as though realizing he’s just spilled more than what he intended. Changmin isn’t shocked to see tears glassing over the older man’s eyes.
“I couldn’t help my mother either,” he says quietly, and Jaejoong turns away, his chest heaving up and down. His knees seem to fold up from under him and Changmin watches as Jaejoong silently curls himself up into a ball on the floor, his face hidden by a shaft of black hair, and stays still. It’s a full minute before he speaks again, before the anger and bitterness disappears from his voice, only to be replaced with something that’s faintly tinged with remorse.
“I sold your camera. Yunho needed his antibiotics and Yoochun cough syrup. I tried to get it back at some point but I couldn’t.” Suddenly Jaejoong looks so tired and so so small. The image of the crafty, quick-witted adult disappears and reveals that of a lost, insecure child who’s seen too much of what the world can offer and who’s still unaware of what he’s doing or where he’s going. “You called me a thief. Maybe I am, but I steal…it’s all for them. They’re the only ones I’ve got. If I lose them I’ve got nothing. I will be nothing.”
“I’m…sorry, Changmin-sshi.” Jaejoong says the words as though they pain him. “And for whatever happens next…I’m sorry as well.”
Changmin jumps to his feet, a terrible feeling settling in the pit of his stomach.
“What did you do?” he asks, suddenly alert. “What did you do?”
“Your father…has promised a handsome reward to anyone who can inform him of your whereabouts,” Jaejoong finally says. “I…I just came from the nearest police station and they’ll be coming over…to pick you up.”
TBC
Character: Changmin-centric, but everyone's going to appear in it.
Length: 9/11
Rating/Genre: PG in general; it's AU haha.
Summary: The sight is unnerving and his heart starts to race. In the back of his mind, alarm bells are going off. Something is not right.
---
Nine
The days get shorter and Changmin finally sets a deadline for himself: he’s leaving by the end of the week, before December is done and before he stays too long for him to not want to go.
Subconsciously he starts making up for time he knows he’s going to lose. He practices with Yoochun in the streets, pointing out random objects and having him read them, make short poems about them, impromptu statements, simple essays; they add, multiply, subtract and divide in train stations, by fruit stands, in the playground, while crossing the street. He spends time with Junsu at the bakery and accompanies him on errands; they juggle oranges, debate on differences between milk brands and laugh as they hang upside down from fire escapes. At home he talks to Yunho about anything and everything he can think of; there’s philosophy and pop culture, science and trivia, and once Yunho surprises him with a thin book containing sudoku puzzles that he says was a gift to him from Jaejoong before but which he never really got around to solving because “it tried my patience.” He even tries to be friendly with Jaejoong, bowing to him and calling him “hyung” on occasion and expressing pleasantries every so often. Jaejoong constantly ignores him of course, choosing instead to start a conversation with either Yoochun or Junsu but Changmin lets it slide every single time (which, for him, isn’t easy to do but he does it anyway, with much effort).
He doesn’t know if or when he’ll see these people again (or if they’ll even allow themselves to be seen), and every day, every single additional moment he spends with them, he feels his heart break a little. “Sometimes I feel as though you’ve always been here,” Junsu tells him with a bright smile as they walk back from another errand, their faces numb but their spirits high from all the brightly decorated storefronts. “As though we’d always been five from the very beginning. Ah our dongsaengie…” and as he trails off, Changmin can already feel the familiar stirrings of heartache in his chest.
A day nearly on the threshold of his deadline he’s by himself in the apartment. Yunho’s gone out with Yoochun for a walk and Junsu is at work, and Changmin brings out his backpack from inside of the coat closet where Junsu hid it and where he still keeps it. He rifles through its contents, checking one last time to see if they’re still intact: a few clothes, a flashlight, his mother’s picture.
He wonders where he'll end up. If he'll make it out of this adventure alive. He counts the last of his money. Hong Kong could be nice, he thinks, Or Thailand. I can get a job. I can come back and I'll find them.... He pauses. Sighs. Or maybe, the thought comes unbidden, much to his surprise, I could just go back--
“I know who you are.”
He nearly dies of fright at the sound of Jaejoong’s voice. Quickly he stuffs his passport and ticket money back into his backpack, before whirling around with a speed that makes his head spin.
“Jaejoong…hyung!” he stammers, adding the honorific at the end because it seemed already right to do so. Jaejoong is standing by their dilapidated refrigerator in a navy coat and jeans he recognizes to be Yoochun’s, looking neither triumphant nor smug. In fact, Changmin notes that he might even look a little sad.
The sight is unnerving and his heart starts to race. In the back of his mind, alarm bells are going off. Something is not right.
“What…do you mean?”
“Don’t play innocent with me.” Jaejoong hisses. “I knew from the day Junsu dragged you in here. I’m not an idiot, Shim Changmin, despite your perceptions.” It’s the second time Jaejoong has said his full name (the first being the time his camera was stolen), but this time, the older man’s tone has an underlying meaning.
Changmin’s eyes grow wide. Of course he should have expected this. He should have. After all, there are TV reports, radio reports. His face might even be plastered up on a billboard in Gangnam. Why in the world is he feeling so afraid now? Lie quick, he tells himself, but his brain seems to have stopped working and his mouth is dry as cotton. Jaejoong continues to stare, his mouth set in a thin line on his face.
“Surprised you’ve been found out? The entire city is on its toes to keep a lookout for you. They’ve been handing out pictures of you in the streets.” As if to prove it, Jaejoong reaches into his pocket and pulls out a crumpled copy before scrunching it up into a ball and tossing it over to the top of the refrigerator. “You no longer look like that boy in the picture of course but perhaps the presence of a few birthmarks will jolt people’s memory? It’s not every day that a runaway child that’s the sole heir to a grand fortune is found. In the streets with a bunch of petty thieves no less. It’s enough to drive any parent into madness.” At the words, Changmin expects a sneer from Jaejoong, but the older man merely states them as they are, adding no relish to his tone. Jaejoong even looks regretful, making Changmin afraid of more confrontation, afraid of what he may find.
He worries that the others might already know as well, if not before then now, and that there’ll be hell to pay. The fright must show on his face because Jaejoong breaks the silence with a tsk-ing sound.
“Look at you. Worried about what the others might think of you? Yunho and the others have no idea. They’re blissfully ignorant in that sense, like children. I haven’t had the heart to tell them, to break the news that their beloved dongsaeng is playing them for a fool.” Jaejoong’s words cut like knives and Changmin is more than a little stung. “They only think you cry out in the night for a mother you’ve lost. They don’t relate it to Kang Ji Min, long-suffering wife of Shim Chang Wook, the politician.”
His mother’s name sounds absolutely foreign passing through Jaejoong’s lips, and Changmin feels his ears go red.
“Don’t tell them, whatever you know.” He almost sounds as though he’s begging, and if this were a different time, in a different situation, he’d probably be disgusted at himself, but the thought of Yoochun, Junsu and Yunho never talking to him again and branding him as a hypocrite is more than enough to bring his soul down to its knees, even if he were in front of Jaejoong. “Please. Hyung. Don’t tell them.”
The older man merely makes a snorting sound, but doesn’t offer any promises. “Spill,” he says.
“He never loved her,” Changmin says sullenly. He feels his shoulders slump as though from defeat. “She died hoping he would but he never did. It was only always me, never her. I hate him for it. He practically killed her.” Surprisingly, the poisonous anger he used to feel for his father isn’t as potent as before, as though he got tired from feeling it. He lowers his head. “I ran away to hurt him…hopefully as much as he hurt her.”
Jaejoong’s brow puckers. “You’re a fool.”
Silence grows between them, but it’s no longer filled with anger, only tension.
“You knew…all along.” Changmin says slowly. It’s useless to deny; Jaejoong, as he’s already discovered, is no fool. “Why confront me now?”
At the words, the older man in front of him seems to pale, the twinkle usually present in his eyes lost.
“I never planned to. I was too pissed at you to care…imagine, a boy doted on by both his mother and his father runs away just because his mother dies, and he can’t stand the thought of being alone with his father who obviously pampers him. It’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard of. My own parents…my mother never wanted me, could never look at me, could never even fucking take care of me. She was bipolar and my father spent all his time trying to prevent her from killing herself, stabbing her endlessly with needles. She finally succeeded, goddamn locked herself in the garage with the engine running.” Jaejoong let out a hollow laugh. “My father took out a goddamn rifle and fucking shot everything in the house. Wanted to shoot me too but I ran away.” Jaejoong looks almost delirious as he speaks, his eyes gleaming. “I was thirteen. Last I heard my father checked himself into the looney bin and has been there ever since.” His face changes, and in the dying afternoon light, Jaejoong looks almost apologetic.
“You…had everything, and I couldn’t fucking comprehend why you would run away,” and Changmin knows it’s meant to be an apology. “Half of me wanted you to die on the streets to teach you a lesson, the other half wanted you to get the fuck back to where you came from. I know what it’s like. I’ve had to fight to survive for eight fucking years! Why didn’t you listen? Couldn’t you fucking get it? Do you actually like being hungry? Do you like freezing your ass off? Can you actually stomach the sight of any of your friends suffering?”
The impromptu confession leaves a weak feeling in Changmin’s knees. He should have known. Anybody ever tell you that like repels like?
“What Yunho’s got, it’s called Crohn’s disease. It’s not fatal but it can lead to stomach cancer if you’re not careful. Yoochun also gets asthma from time to time. My father was a doctor and I used to watch him treat people with these kinds of diseases every fucking day. Do you know how worthless and helpless I feel when I see Yoochun and Yunho sick, knowing I can’t do a fucking thing? Do you know how that fucking feels like? When you watch your own mother being tied down to the bed by your own father because he can’t-”
Jaejoong suddenly clamps his mouth shut, as though realizing he’s just spilled more than what he intended. Changmin isn’t shocked to see tears glassing over the older man’s eyes.
“I couldn’t help my mother either,” he says quietly, and Jaejoong turns away, his chest heaving up and down. His knees seem to fold up from under him and Changmin watches as Jaejoong silently curls himself up into a ball on the floor, his face hidden by a shaft of black hair, and stays still. It’s a full minute before he speaks again, before the anger and bitterness disappears from his voice, only to be replaced with something that’s faintly tinged with remorse.
“I sold your camera. Yunho needed his antibiotics and Yoochun cough syrup. I tried to get it back at some point but I couldn’t.” Suddenly Jaejoong looks so tired and so so small. The image of the crafty, quick-witted adult disappears and reveals that of a lost, insecure child who’s seen too much of what the world can offer and who’s still unaware of what he’s doing or where he’s going. “You called me a thief. Maybe I am, but I steal…it’s all for them. They’re the only ones I’ve got. If I lose them I’ve got nothing. I will be nothing.”
“I’m…sorry, Changmin-sshi.” Jaejoong says the words as though they pain him. “And for whatever happens next…I’m sorry as well.”
Changmin jumps to his feet, a terrible feeling settling in the pit of his stomach.
“What did you do?” he asks, suddenly alert. “What did you do?”
“Your father…has promised a handsome reward to anyone who can inform him of your whereabouts,” Jaejoong finally says. “I…I just came from the nearest police station and they’ll be coming over…to pick you up.”
TBC