The sun brings me comfort

Chapter 21: And Then...Then The Sun Shined

It took one day to turn their lives upside down and it took a week for the biggest ball to drop on the big family of 8 when the parents were called in to take blood tests.

Nothing had prepared them for the news they heard or the emotions that burst through them. Jinae had wailed loudly and laughed at the same time in pure happiness mixed with heartache with anger at it all thrown to the man who took their baby.

Cha Haneul had kidnapped the child and had been keeping him in a basement for most of his life like an animal locked in a cage. He abused and mistreated him as well as gave him nothing but hurt and lies. There was no saving him from his punishment and thankfully there was enough proof to lock him up for years never coming in contact with the boy ever again.

It made them tell the younger ones of Hoseok and even though they were angry and sad which was rightfully so especially since they were not included in the big secret but they had joined in the hope for the bloodtests to show what they all knew already.

The situation was complicated indeed since social services were mixed in as well and they had to go through so much before they would get rights to see the boy but when the time passed and they had gotten back the results there was no denying that their lives had changed in a matter how weeks.

They had gotten their son back....their Hoseok

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Hobi had never felt so alone yet content in his life. He was sitting on a bench outside- outside!- and curled his toes into the grass keeping his eyes locked on the fresh smell of outside surrounding him. Every single thing scared him in the short amount of time he was ripped from everything he knew and had to just be thrown in a whole new world he had been taught to fear.

Yet....yet nothing ever felt more beatiful than the outside world

Hobi wasn't exactly sure how everything escalated so fast but somehow it ended up with him being healed and fed without reason and allowed out the moment he was cleared as well enough.

It was like a dream....but.....

Hobi lowered himself to sit down on the grass and to look up closing his eyes to let the heat of the sun warm his skin. The sun outside felt just as amazing as he dreamed hoped but something was missing, the comfort it gave him felt so empty and he knew the reason why.

He missed his friends. He missed them so much even during the nights when he clutched onto Mang which he got back a few days ago, he still hoped that he would see them again. Learning that people from the outside- or more appropriately called people who had lived in the open world while he was trapped- were good people was a hard thing especially since he was alone with them as they questioned him and put needles in him but it was all for the good of him supposedly.

It didn't stop him from hoping he could be with the ones he trusted once more especially not when he could count the differences in how the people at the hospital treated him and how his friends had treated him. They treated him with kindness and care but it all seemed so empty when he remembered the soft warmth of kindness and care he got from not only his friends but their brothers as well.

It didn't help that he was kept in the dark of everything that happened until a day ago when he was informed his supposed father- which he also found out he wasn't supposed to stay in the dark but was actually kept captive by a strange and horrible man that posed as his father- would never come near him again. He didn't know how to feel about it since he didn't completely hate the man who he saw as his only family but he was happy to be safe and know that life didn't revolve around bruises and coldness.