Heal me // A Jikook Trilogy //

《1》Prologue

"Again," the boy told me, eying me intently, something glowing in his eyes where his face was otherwise neutral- not revealing anything.

"And this time you should put more weight into it. Your too scrawny and weak. You need to use your whole body to do some real damage."

My stomach made a loop, my insides twisting and causing my body to shake. I glanced down at the person in front of me, trembling on his knees.
He looked up at me with quivering lips, one eye already black, blue and swollen, the white in his eyes barely visible and lined with red.

"P..please," he croaked, the tears streaming freely down his face.
"I..I-I'm so s-s-sorry. I won't do it again."

He rubbed the palms of his hands together in plea while he still knelt, not daring to move another muscle.
"JK! I said again," came the sharp reminder of the boy sitting on a chair in the corner, one leg thrown over the other, leaning back in a casual position while taking long drags on his cigarette. A vision of cold, detached power.

I swallowed hard, my fists already aching from the beating he made me carry out.
To teach me.
To make me strong like them.
To make me a part of their family.

That word echoed in my head.
Family.
Belonging somewhere.
To be wanted.

The boy in front of me flinched as he saw my hand raise once more.
The sound of my fist connecting with his already bruised face echoed in my head, the pain in my knuckles flaring up once more.

I was weak.
I was scrawny and thin, but as demanded, I had put my inconsiderable weight into the punch.

The boy flew to the side, a whimper escaping his shivering lips and finally, I managed to draw blood.
It dripped from his nose onto the cold, concrete floor.

"Mhh, better. But you're still holding back. Next time, you won't."

I tried not to let anything show on my face.
To not reveal how seeing the blood made me feel sick.
I couldn't show weakness.
I would never be weak again.

I nodded, my head lowered but my back straight like I knew Suho wanted.

Suho.
Leader of X-EXO.
The first person who ever took interest in me.
Even though I was shy and scrawny and starving.
Even though I was nothing and no one.
Not wanted.
Not loved.
By neither my parents whom I never knew nor any other person who had ever been in my life.

The orphanage I grew up in had been a cold place, devoid of all warmth or care.
The nuns running the place had been nothing but strict.
The food had been bland and from dusk till dawn, we were preached about the love of God- yet I never once felt it.
Never once were my prayers answered.
There had only been more nothingness.
More ignorance and pain and misery.

The other children had tasted one sip of my weakness and fallen on me like raptures.
It still haunted my nightmares.

The night they locked me in the dark, damp cellar, spiders crawling over my skin, mosquitoes finding easy prey as they fed on me while I cried in front of the door, begging to be let out.
But all I had heard where the children laughing behind the closed door, enjoying my fear and desperate begs until my hands were bloody and raw from banging against the door and my voice too hoarse to even scream for help.

Or the time I was awoken in the middle of the night by the weird sensation under my blanket, only to find the other children had put snakes in my bed, laughing and hooting as I screamed in terror and tried to shove them away, only for them to thrown them at me again.

It had only gotten worse over the years.

I was bullied, beaten, used as an errand boy- nothing more than a slave to the boys older and stronger than me.
I thought I might get used to it.
Might get them to like me.