Clementine! ||A BTS Family Story||

Chapter Eighteen

[Not Proofread]

   "Cherin is my youngest brother's daughter, that's how we're related." Iseul says while pouring Seokjin some wine into the stemless wine cooler she had brought. "Cherin's mother and my brother were never a good match for each other. The second I saw her, I knew she was trouble. I mean, they met at a club and slept with each other that same night. That to me spoke volumes." She says, pouring herself a glass. "Anyway, they were just a fling. She only wanted him because he danced so flawlessly. He had his own studio and everything, but after she got pregnant with Cherin, she made him leave it all when she was born because she worked in the city and threatened to give her up if he wouldn't take care of her. So that's what he did. Day after day, it was always some sort of argument, especially on the weekend. She was a party animal and taking care of a child was never in her plans."

   "That's so horrible." Seokjin replies, honestly not knowing what else to say.

   Iseul hums. "Sometimes she'd come home in the early hours of the morning, other times she'd come home so drunk she would start throwing stuff and yelling at my brother. Sometimes she wouldn't even come home at all. She'd go home with someone else." Continues Iseul. "When my brother finally wanted to put his foot down and told her that if she didn't clean herself up, he would take Cherin and leave, she did the most unspeakable thing."

   Seokjin was invested now. "What did she do?"

   "She called the police, told them that Cherin had said her father had been touching her all those times she was out living her life and partying and got my brother locked up." Iseul clenches her fists at the last part. "Over and over, I was trying to see where I had missed the signs. What could've moved my brother to do such a disgusting thing, and to his own daughter?" She lets out a sigh and glances over at Cherin and Hoseok. "My brother, he loves Cherin so much. He loved her so much, he was willing to let his dream die. Now he's living his days in a stone cold cell, thinking about her, no doubt. And just when he thinks she's thriving with her mother, she's given to me because her mother continued to see her as a burden on her own life." Iseul then shakes her head. "Ah look at me, doing all the talking!" She wipes her eyes carefully with her finger.

   "No no, please don't think that." Seokjin rubs her shoulder soothingly. "You've been thrown a huge responsibility, you deserve to vent." He tells her. "Our children's stories are tear jerker's too, honestly. Our oldest son was passed around a lot with his biological family when he was younger, then they just left him on the steps of the adoption center we got him from. He doesn't remember much about his real family and he's told us he's not interested in knowing anything about them."

   "Wow, that's pretty deep." Iseul comments. "Usually children who are adopted wonder who their real parents are."

   Seokjin shakes his head. "Not our Yoongi. He takes pride in us being his parents and he has the fight stories to prove it." They both chuckle. "Hoseok was in and out of foster care from early in his life. The agency told us that once he was finally settled in with his biological grandfather, the old man unfortunately died maybe half a year after he turned one year old and he was readmitted into the adoption center and stayed there for a long while before we brought him home.

   The twins, oh boy. We got a call from the agency a few years after we adopted Hoseok and they asked us if we were willing to adopt a baby boy. Apparently, the mother was going through a really bad postpartum depression and she had tried to hurt her baby, so her husband decided they needed to give their baby away. Little did we or the agency know, that it wasn't just one baby boy but a couple of babies. He just dumped them there and left without saying a word. Regardless, Namjoon and I were not about to separate twins, so we adopted them both." Says Seokjin. "My baby, Jungkook, he was thrown away. A homeless man found him while rooting through the trash. He was sound asleep too, the man thought he was dead at first. But when he picked him up, he said that he saw the baby opened its really big round eyes. He would've taken him in if he wasn't homeless." He lets out a big sigh. "They're all a handful, but I always say I'd adopt them all again and again."