HOMRA One shots (K project)

A Runaway - Part 2

~ Reader's POV ~

I wasn't raised the way a lot of kids are.

I would stare in house windows from the streets, watching a child spending time with their mother and father, living normal lives, and being...happy. I watched them laugh and play and eat dinner, while the winter wind nipped my nose and my stomach rumbled, reminding me that I needed to find food and shelter so I would last another night.

I wasn't ever nurtured or cared for in the way that a child should be, I was thrown out at such a young age, put in a facility where they tried to 'fix' me. When the whole time, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't erase the image of all the blood from the walls of my mind. I scrubbed at it so hard, but it never came clean. I missed my parents, I hated whoever took them away that night, and I hated whoever decided that a child should be chosen or picked among a line of a hundred others.

Yeah, they put me in an orphanage when I was 2, right after the... murder.

I was never picked, my eyes lacked that childish sparkle and I never had those bubbly rosy cheeks or a darling smile. People always just walked past me and I would watch as some other lucky kid got pulled out of the group and into the arms of new welcoming parents. Not that any new 'parents' could replace my family anyways.

I got sick of it after a while, three years to be exact; and so, I ran away. Lived on the streets for a couple years before they caught me again, and right back I went,

Trying to be 'fixed'

Getting glares or concerned looks from awaiting parents,

Watching other kids being adopted.

It was the same thing, day in and day out.

"You're getting better!" They would say,

Then there would be glares,

And parents,

Then other kids getting adopted.

Although one day, a couple's shadow actually loomed over me for more than a minute, and I remember hearing mumbles about "this one, I can feel it."

An hour later, I had packed my things and was getting in a car with newfound hope and the ghost of a smile upon my lips, possibly on the path to a better life.

...

It wasn't meant to be, a week or so later I was dropped right back where I started, no improvement, no change, if anything I was worse.

The couple decided I was too broken; they didn't want a kid who didn't speak, who wouldn't play and who wouldn't smile.

They didn't even bother to give me time to grow.

The orphanage was upset, I could see it on their faces as I walked through the halls. They promised the couple that they would 'correct' the issue and find them a new match right away.

Then it was back to the same old thing.

"You're getting better!"

Glares,

Rejection.

"Well, tomorrow will be a new day."

Glares,

Rejection.

And as the years went by, and as I grew up and my mind developed, I learned things. I learned a lot of things. I needed to learn things to distract myself from the life I had lead. I needed a new beginning. And so, I began to patch those holes in my head, make a difference between reality and dreams, I taught myself what my body needed and how the world operated, I read books, not normal books, but history books, political books and medical books. I studied personalities too and became fascinated by it. I could tell if someone was lying by the age of 10 and I could determine if someone was a full-on criminal just by looking at them by the age of 15. It was all body language and facial expressions. When it came down to it, people at the orphanage began to call me a genius. Funny how quickly their perspective changed.