The Odd Doctor Out | A Drama | S. 1

13 🩺 𝘉𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘯 𝘈𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯

'Wooyoung darling, you can have more cereal if you like. Look at Yeosang! He's eating enough to feed a horse!'

Six year old, broken Wooyoung, sat at the breakfast table in the Kang family's house, sitting perfectly still in his seat, staring down at his bowl, but not really seeing it. It had been exactly four months and twenty-seven days since the accident. Wooyoung was keeping track - even if it wasn't really by choice.

It had also been exactly one month and three days since he had come to live with his friend's family. He had spent the first few months with his grandparents, but as though a black cloud had been following Wooyoung wherever he went, tragedy struck again.

The pain of loosing a daughter, a father-in-law, and the stress of suddenly having to become parents, once again, was too much strain for his sweet grandparents. Wooyoung grew up very quickly, helping with anything and everything that his little hands could manage, getting frustrated and upset when he couldn't understand how to work the washing machine, when he couldn't reach the door to lock it at night, when the vacuum was too big and heavy for him to use, and when he couldn't sweep up all the dirt on the floor into the dustpan.

But little did he know that the harder he worked, the more his dear old Grandparents felt their hearts breaking.

One morning, just as Wooyoung had awoken from yet another sleep plagued with nightmares, he had wandered down the hall to see ambulance men in his home. One of them ushered him back, but it was too late. Wooyoung's heart had broken again.

His dear old grandmother had suffered a fall that morning.

Two weeks later, she passed away from deterioration, and a broken heart.

Wooyoung's tiny little chest felt as though he couldn't bare to see any more heartache in his family, but the morning he had awoken, and put on those black clothes again, just mere months after loosing his parents, Wooyoung didn't know what to do, or think, or feel.

The world was a fierce, unkind, and unforgiving place. That was a lesson he earned very early on in life.

When his grandfather fell ill, Wooyoung felt like everyone in his life was leaving him. He screamed and begged for his grandfather to not go - not to leave him like everyone else had in his life.

But alas, life was a cruel, cruel place to live indeed.

A lot of things happened around Wooyoung after that day, none of which he understood. He saw a lot of scary unfamiliar faces, and a lot of scary unfamiliar places. There were a lot of documents and a lot of questions, and all he wanted was for it to stop.

That was, until he was brought to the one place on the planet he still felt safe.

Getting out of the back of the police car, Wooyoung was guided up to the house that he knew very well.

The Kang family home.

Wooyoung would come to learn many years later that his mother who had been best friends with Mrs. Kang, had appointed her and her husband as Wooyoung's Godparents, should something have happened to his other relatives.

And so from that day forth, Wooyoung had become part of the Kang family.

His best friend became his brother.

His best friend's mother became his mother.

And his best friend's father became his father.

What was there's became his, and what was his, became theirs.

It would take him a very long time to feel confident in their home, and it would take him even longer to begin to rediscover that smile of his again that his parents had loved so very much, once upon a time.

But one thing that never left him, were the nightmares that plagued his sleep, haunting him with guilt and regret, of a time that he could neither change nor forget.

And so, just like when he was six years old, tiny and scared and lonely and heartbroken, curled up in his best friend's arms as he assured him that everything was okay, and no one else was hurt.

Wooyoung laid in his friend's arms once more, eighteen years later, feeling like although on the outside his body had grown and responsibilities had fallen upon him, he was still that same scared, heartbroken little boy; six years old, and desperately clutching onto those people around him that he loved, praying that they would live, just one more day.

~~~

A/N: I'm sobbing. That is all.

♡