Broken Promise | Monsta X Jooheon

3//Crybaby

"You seem to replace your brain with your heart. You take things so hard and then you fall apart."

"Are these all the books, Nana?"

"There's still two more boxes, but I've got those!"

"No, you don't, now, sit down and watch tv when I'm done with these, I'll make something for you to eat."

"You mean for us to eat."

"Yes, Nana."

Looking everything but convinced, Nana side-eyed me before reluctantly turning and ambling up the stairs, leaving me to put the four boxes of books onto the shelves.

My Nana was one of two people in this world I gave two shits about.

She and my mom hadn't been on speaking terms after my mom decided to abandon her life as a pretty successful acrobat and marry my father, whom Nana hated with every fiber of her being.

I hadn't even met her until my mom's funeral. We'd been the only two people there.

All those people that claimed to be my mom's friends? They were nowhere to be seen.

I would later find out my dad was busy fucking a pretty woman in Bora Bora who would eventually become my step-mother.

It hadn't been a great way to meet your grandmother but when she saw me curled up by my mom's casket, silent as my mother despite the sobs restricting my breath, it had apparently been love at first sight and she'd been the only person who cared ever since.

That one night when my step-mother, Andrea, put me out and I found out just how dangerous a female body can be, I'd gone to my Nana's bookstore in the city and she'd treated me in her apartment above it.

It would ruin my father's reputation if I were to go to the hospital and people found out I was gang-raped, especially if word got out about why my thirteen-year-old self was out on the streets at that time anyways, so my Nana had been my only option and she didn't disappoint.

She'd asked questions, of course, but they were questions that I'd never answered.

To this day I don't think she knows the full extent of what happened and that's the way I'd like to keep it.

In between my various methods of self-destruction, I tried to make sure I found at least two hours out of the day to visit her and help her with the shop.

While I was on the second box of books, I heard the bell ring as a group of chattering people came in — people my age, by the sound of it.

God, they were loud.

I stayed where I was, continuing to put up books.

I'd ring them up when the time came but there was no need to go out and speak to them. If it wasn't obvious already, I'm not good with people.

After that night Andrea put me out, I'd spent a year and a half going out of my way to be vicious to any and everyone I could find.

It had been the most draining year and a half of my entire life and directly led to the blossoming of my other bad habits.

Once I started those other habits, I realized how much going out of my way to hurt people drained me. My background considered, I'd been sheltered and kept locked up my whole life for our reputation's sake, so I was already awkward with people to begin with. That year and a half had been the first real human interaction I'd had in my life and I'd forced it way too hard in all the wrong ways and ended up traumatizing myself far more than actually helping.