The Search | BTS (Kids-Teens)

39

"Mr Chang, I am calling from the Gwangju Child Services."

"Yes, speaking."

"We have a boy here with us, named Jung Hoseok. We believe he's the boy you are looking for. One of the missing sons from the Kim family case? We have spoken to his family. Perhaps you should meet them in person too."

"Thank you so much. We will arrange for them to come to Seoul with the boy."

Teacher Chang clamped his hands over his mouth to muffle his scream of joy. Excluding Jungkook whom Teacher Chang already knew of, and the three other boys who are still undergoing the reunification process, they've finally done it. They've found him at last.

The last missing son.

Teacher Chang blinked back the tears which stung in his eyes as he stared at the picture of a thin boy dressed in torn farm work clothes, emailed to him by the Gwangju Child Services.

He whispered. "Wait for me, Hoseok. I'll bring you home."

*******

The first thing that caught Teacher Chang's attention was how protective Hoseok was when it came to his little sister.

They had brought the boy in. Mr and Mrs Jung could only join them later in the day. They had a school who was going for a school trip to their farm. So Hoseok and his little sister were brought to Seoul first.

Hoseok and Haru were brought to the playroom where lots of other children were playing. Hoseok, being older than most of them, sat alone, reading a book quietly. Teacher Chang noticed how he would take interval glances at Haru.

According to a chart, Haru was five years old. But she didn't seem to mingle very well with the other children. While the other kids played with the cooking sets, Lego blocks or cars and the lot, Haru was staring at the posters of numbers, alphabets and names of flowers. She took only a few looks at the information, and then turned away from the posters. She began reciting it all from heart.

"What's wrong with you?" An older girl poked her in her side and asked. Haru opened her eyes and stared up at the older girl. "You're so weird."

"It's not weird. Look, it's interesting to learn the alphabet." Haru said energetically.

"Aren't you five years old?" Another older girl asked. "Five-year-olds don't memorise information about insects and flowers. That's only for the big kids."

It was indeed an unspoken rule at the children's home. It came along with the silent establishment of a hierarchy that formed over the years. The children noticed and learned that when couples came to choose a child, they were generally more inclined to adopt a child who was cleverer than his peers of the same age. The older children would have lost points for remembering that they are orphaned, and are more likely to remember their trauma. With that, most couples refuse to adopt children who remember. It was easier to make a younger child forget.

But to make themselves stand out on Visiting Day, the older children would recite difficult poems, or talk about the most exotic flowers or insects they read about in books. They had to show the couples that they were better than the others. Hence, the older kids hated it when a younger child could recite information better than they could. Because after all, they were all trying to fight for a place in a family before it was too late to be loved and taken care of as a child. None of the kids wanted to grow up before they could enjoy what it was like to be a child, and all the social workers understood that.