Worlds Apart - Taekook - Book 2

Chapter 286 - Stumped

"W-will I have more things?" Sukmin's face is creased with pronounced confusion. The situation didn't require such detectable expression but the boy who was younger than his years, found many simplistic occasions, quite big.

Sukmin was awake before Billy and Marie, as usual, unless Billy was running errands or taking a trip to the wholesalers. They worried that Sukmin didn't get enough sleep but they understood that he had a lot going on in his head and they suspected that sleep wasn't something he got much of when he was sleeping rough.

When he woke up, he liked to check his phone for messages and play merge games. He had his own personal routine... messages, games, blinds opened fully, blanket around his shoulders... then he would get a glass of strawberry smoothie and wait in the lounge, in Billy's chair, for the diner owners alarm to sound and then Sukmin knew that Billy would be the first to appear.

"What do you mean?" Marie asks. They were up earlier than usual, they had a lot to do before the car was arriving to pick them up for the wedding. She'd made sure, several times, that Sukmin knew there would be a change to the morning routine but when they emerged from the bedroom, the young lad was where he would normally be.

"It's not... it's not a lot." He says, looking at a box and his duffle bag.

"You still have more to pack. We haven't packed up your games yet. Once we are settled in the new house, Ash and Heeju said they will take you shopping."

"Hobi said he will g-get me art... for my wall! H-he said I can choose! H-hobi... he said we will go to a new exhibition... a new one! Hobi... said we might need a hotel! D-do you think... Should I go? Can I?"

Marie, sitting at the dining table with her morning cup of green tea, dressed in her loungewear trousers and sweater, can't help but smile. "If you want to go, you can go. Will you feel okay about getting a hotel? In your own room?

Sukmin shows visible astonishment, "O-on my own? With... n-o... no-one else?"

"I don't know? I was just presuming that you would have your own room?"

Sukmin shakes his head quickly, "No... I wouldn't like that."

"Let's talk to Hoseok about it and see what the options are. Do you think that will help?"

"Yes... that will help."

"Have you been to a hotel before?"

"I... it was a bad hotel... it had a playground... only g-good children could go there... I had to see from the window." he licks along his upper lip to remove the pink moustache from his smoothie.

Marie doesn't want to know why the hotel was bad. She'd learnt that Sukmin was taken to a variety of places when he was younger and he was usually kept in a room. The purposes for the visits seem to have been for some kind of religious sermon or what she would only describe as an exorcism of sorts. Most of what Sukmin has said sounds like it was straight from the script of a Hollywood blockbuster and it terrified Marie that people like that were out there and probably believed they did nothing wrong.

What she hated was that Sukmin didn't understand why he wasn't good? By the standards that he was being raised in, he could never be their version of 'good' because of his learning difficulties, not to mention that his birth was deemed as punishment in itself. It was confusing for him to be told now that he was 'good' and when he was given praise you could see the cogs turning in his mind as he registered the words and there was perhaps a comparison to his childhood.

It must have been incredibly confusing for him but he was dealing with it in his own way and with the support of the diner owners. Marie hated hearing about the bad things that happened to Sukmin. She hated hearing the words used to describe him, words that he believed were true. She could picture the scene of little Sukmin watching out of the window as other children played on the swings and slides. She knew that Sukmin would've accepted their reasoning. He was a curse, so naturally, it wouldn't surprise him that he wouldn't be allowed in a place where good children went.