criminal of hearts ; jaywon

four.

tw // mentions of suicide, bullying, brief mention of homophobia

im sorry riki

it wasn't that hard to get ni-ki in. lander high was surprisingly lax when checking up with ni-ki's story, which was simply "ni-ki is about to graduate from his home school but since he's in south korea for the time being his family wanted him to experience a real class at least once". lander high was less than humble when hearing this, their response being "yes of course, our school is one of the best in the world. why wouldn't you want to come here?"

ni-ki struggled in front of the mirror, trying to figure out how to put on his tie. admittedly, he'd never done it before. there was some truth in the statement that he was homeschooled, but  he was schooled by the nun at the orphanage at which he was brought up. 

yes. ni-ki had no idea who his parents were. his first memory was a wrinkly elderly woman - the head nun, he presumed - singing him an old japanese lullaby. it sounded ominous to the ears of baby riki, and he remembered breaking down into cries to the scary sounding tune.

he grew up lonely, afraid to mix with the other kids in his orphanage. not like they'd want him to mix with them anyway. they almost looked down on his existence. every time ni-ki would do so much as come close to them,  they would push him away. they wouldn't share their toys, let them sit with them during his meals, make him sit at the back of the classroom. 

the meaner ones used brute force to keep them away from him, and it always confused ni-ki what he had done to them. over the years his weak and fragile body became more and more bruised, and his emotions more and more damaged. 

at  some point it became so bad that the nuns had to move him into his own separate room, make him have separate meal times, separate classes, and overall just keep him alone as much as they could so that he wouldn't be hurt by the others. they bullied him so badly that even they couldn't even be stopped by the nuns.

of course, it was almost an even worse hell for ni-ki. the world he knew was painted with a palette of shades of black, white, and grey. he despised it, and wanted it to all to end. he constantly felt worthless, useless, with no purpose, and with no good reason to be alive. multiple times he'd even attempted to end it all, but were forcibly stopped by the nuns.

until earlier that year. a certain blonde haired young man walked into his orphanage, a tall and handsome raven haired young man the same age as him by his side. the nuns questioned them, they were deemed "too young" to adopt a child, and not to mention it seemed a bit weird to them how two men were adopting a child. 

but just then, the blonde haired man saw riki sitting in the corner by himself, his face puffy from tears and body obviously covered to conceal the scars of his emotional and physical pain. his heart wrenched for the boy (and it rarely did that), and so he asked the nuns if they could take him.

ni-ki at that point was already too old to be considered a child, so he was just working for the nuns. though the nuns were very pleased to know someone wanted to take their riki in after so long, though he was now no more a child. better late than never, right?