Fateful Desire || Bang Chan

◇ 29 ◇

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For the next month or so, things had been going great within the Skz mansion. Myself and the majority of the others had become even closer, especially now that they considered me family, and it certainly wasn't long before I felt the same about them. I'd gotten comfortable, both with living in the mansion and being around the members. Well, nearly all of them.

Things were awkward between Chan and I. We barely interacted with each other, probably because of the awkwardness, but whenever we did, it was only ever on his terms, meaning whenever he needed to give me instructions or such, and even then he kept it brief, usually ending with the tips of his ears going red. I would've found it amusing if my own cheeks weren't burning as well. Being in his presence when he no longer had any animosity towards me made me anxious, but in a shy, butterflies-in-stomach kind of way. The others had noticed, and found it hilarious, which irritated me as much as the knowing looks, yet whenever I questioned it or got defensive, they never answered and usually changed the subject and distracted me. Regardless of the situation between Chan and I, I was just glad he wasn't hostile towards me anymore.

This definitely helped on the number of jobs and missions I had joined Skz on. Now that we were all trusting each other more, it made it easier to carry out these missions as we worked well as a team. It wasn't even long before they stopped putting a tracker on me, though it took an off-hand question from me for Jisung to reveal that to me. Not once did a lack of tracker make me want to escape; I was done with that now. If anything, it made me more grateful for how much they trusted me.

Jeongin missed out on some of these jobs at first as he was still healing, but the boy was a tough cookie and recovered quite well in a short amount of time. It was good to have him back on the team when out in the field; he wasn't even phased by his previous experience, and was raring to go from the moment he was given the all clear.

During these missions, and otherwise, I got to meet more of Skz's allies. Surprisingly, the majority that I'd met I hadn't actually wronged before, and the ones that I had were quick to forgive, especially after they'd seen my relationship with the Skz members. From this, I'd also got to make more friends, which was nice when we had free time to hang out.

Despite almost everything going well and being positive, there was one thing that had been playing on my mind a lot.

My parents.

After the conversation I'd had with Chan that night in the garden, the thought of my parents and who they actually were, along with their possible whereabouts, had been cropping up a lot. It had gotten to the point where I could no longer ignore it. Even though I was scared to ruin the perfect image I had of them, I finally felt that maturity I needed to want to know the real them. I wanted to know who they were, what they were like, and most importantly, why they abandoned me. So I had started to research my parents, or at least tried to.

My first obvious place to check for information was the orphanage. I'd first phoned them up to see if they had anything, but they'd told me no information about the parents had ever been given; they had simply handed me over and left. After thanking them, I then started working on hacking into their system; I had to be sure they weren't lying to me. They hadn't been.

Without any names, dates of birth, or even appearance descriptions, it was difficult. The only things I could go on were my surname and my own date of birth, but even that was quickly leading me to dead ends. But still, I persisted, trying not to get disheartened by my lack of progress.