Above and Below // SeongJoong

3. A Cage of Promise

DISCLAIMER: I have limited knowledge of the law, so please excuse any mistakes or inaccurate representations of reality. This is fiction, and everything that happens does not reflect any real events.

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It was cramped and dark, suffocating and dusty, but it was the only place he felt safe in, far away from the deafening chaos outside his door. Bloodcurdling screams, objects being thrown and crashing everywhere, and most of all the shouting. Shouting all the time, it never seemed to end.

Surely, no one would hear even if he cried now? Even if they did, no one would think to look in a place where monsters lived, right? Back then, he really believed so.

He was dreaming. Seonghwa knew he was dreaming, but no matter how hard he tried he could not get himself to wake up. It felt more like... he was trapped.

He was still a kid then, too young to comprehend the justifications behind actions and construct memories that stick. But the same thing had happened so many times that he was starting to understand.

"When will you stop pestering my family?" his mother had pleaded again, hysterical, desperate, and afraid. She did not wait for an answer though, that night after he'd returned home from playing by the river. She only gasped, and asked another question, "Where's Hyeonjung? What did you do to my husband?"

And then there was silence, or at least voices too soft for Seonghwa's small ears to hear. There were heavy footsteps accompanied by growing grunts, followed by a lifeless thump, and another scream. Someone was talking, but his own sobs made it hard to listen.

His mother was crying, too. "No!" He could tell she was trying to be strong, yet her words wavered. "You're not taking away my son as well. I won't let you."

The chaos broke out again, just like before. He whimpered under his bed where monsters once lay, and he wondered if the monsters were out there, coming to get him.

"What could you possibly want with a little boy?"

A shadow appeared in front of him. For a second he feared that he'd been found, but no, the figure looked too odd to be a shoe. A car drove past, momentarily flooding his bedroom with a beam of yellow headlight.

It was just a boy on all fours, crawling towards him. It was just Yeosang. A smile spread across his tear-streaked face to see a familiar friend. They'd lived in the same neighborhood, in houses right next to each other, and one day discovered that their basements connect with a secret tunnel. That must have been how he found Seonghwa and joined him in his hiding place.

"You have a son of your own, so why are you doing this?"

Seonghwa thought his friend would be happy to see him, too, but Yeosang was only crying and not smiling. "My dad's coming," he hiccupped, "to take us away. I have to inherit his business, he says," he hiccuped again, "but I don't want to. He does bad things. He's going to make us do the same."

Seonghwa's smile was long gone, though he forced himself to choke back a sob. He had to do something; he was the older one. "Don't worry," he said, trying to be as strong as his mother was. "They can't force us to do bad things. We can still be the good guys."

"Like secret agents?" Another car passed by and the tears in Yeosang's eyes glistened.

A door banged open, and all of a sudden the chaos was spilling into his room, the basement half-submerged below the surface, the place that was supposed to be safe.