The faults in Byun Baekhyun

Chapter 18: Jealousy

"What?" Baekhyun repeats for about the third time in two seconds, shocked.

"It means my fucking parents abandoned me in someone else's fucking bin when I was 2 fucking months old, you fucktard." Chanyeol replies impatiently. Baekhyun sits there, blank. Then he remembers what he had said to Chanyeol this entire time, without once thinking of what the other might've been feeling.

"The whole world is full of love. Otherwise, how can you be born?"

"Not everyone grew up in that lovely world of yours, Park Chanyeol. Not everything in this world is made out of love. In fact, nothing is. Love is only an illusion."

"How would you know about my situation? Just because you were cared for 'lovingly' by your parents, doted on, born with 'love', doesn't mean everyone ..."

Automatically, Baekhyun feels guilty.

"I'm sorry." He mutters quietly but earnestly as he looks up at Chanyeol, who had stood up and put his hands in his pockets. "I-I didn't know ..."

"Uh, it's okay." Chaneyol replies hastily, suddenly flushed because he hadn't been expecting Baekhyun to apologise, and now that he had, Chanyeol doesn't know how to respond to that. "I guess it's better I don't remember them." There is an awkward silence.

"So ... what happened?" Baekhyun asks hesitantly, almost shyly. Chanyeol almost smiles (but he refrains himself from doing so) – this side of Baekhyun is cute too.

"Why do you care? Shouldn't you be minding your own business?" Chanyeol teases, almost grinning as he watches Baekhyun flush in embarrassment.

"Well ..." Chanyeol begins anyway, a sign that he's willing to share the roots of his past with his roommate. "All I know is that when I was two months old they dumped me in some trashcan to die, naked except for a necklace and a small letter tied around my neck with my full name, birthdate and a small message. Winter was coming, and I was naked. Almost as if they're leaving the details for my gravestone." Those words somehow leaves a chill down Baekhyun's spine.

"Then my guardians were throwing something out and they found me, blue and nearly frozen to death." There is a short solemn silence.

"Don't get me wrong." Chanyeol adds quickly. "My guardians are great, they treat me the same as they treat their own daughter. I feel very lucky. I feel like a normal boy in a normal family ... It's just that sometimes, I can't help but think to myself ..." Chanyeol laughs, breaking off his personal story. Baekhyun can sense the bitterness behind it ... "Why did they have me in the first place? If they didn't want me, then that means I'm not important enough, and if I died, no one would care."

Well, this guy must be a fucking idiot to still believe in that shit after going through this. Baekhyun thinks to himself despite feeling kinda sorry for his roommate.

"But then I realised that my guardians cared and that my sister (that is my guardians' daughter) also cared, and that's all that mattered. I was so stupid to think that I didn't matter, so selfish to contemplate death when I had barged in the lives of those who gave me nothing but their everything. It's strange to think about it now: I had actually contemplated death so many times." Chanyeol laughs again as he thinks back to what an idiot he was. He wouldn't trade anything for the life he has now, with the people that love him, even with his birth parents who abandoned him.

"My parents didn't want me, didn't love me, but this family that had accepted me did. Even though they found me in a trashcan, they never treated me like a burden – Rather, they treated me like a blessing. I guess you can call me lucky. They love me, care for me, and that's why I think love is most important." Chanyeol finishes, smiling brightly, and there is some part of Baekhyun that envies him, envies this innocent, pure-hearted Chanyeol that, even though he had had a taste of the real, dark world, this horrible world that was nearly going to taint him, he still didn't let that faze him.