"Be Gentle" • NamKook •

•1•

It was a cold dry day in Seoul. The sky was grey and the animals were deep in hibernation. Namjoon and his friend, Hoseok, were visiting an adoption center to spread love for the holidays. Since Christmas was the following week. It was really Hoseok's idea to bring his friend along in his family tradition, since he wasn't back home with them anymore.

The two were wrapped from head to toe in warm coats and scarves and jeans with boots to keep their ankles warm of the freezing weather.

"So what do we do again?" Namjoon gripped the edges of the paper plate of sugar cookies that Hoseok had forced him to cook for the kids.

"We just go in and wish the kids Merry Christmas, we can stay a bit longer if they want us too. The kids in my old orphanage liked when I would sing and dance for them so we usually stay for a good hour." His friend smiled.

"Hoseok." Namjoon sighed. It's not that he didn't want to do all of that, it's just that he wasn't so sure that the idea of it was his thing. He wasn't ever really that good with kids, even though he was a giant one at heart.

"Fine. Let's just give them the cookies and we'll see what happens." Hoseok chuckled, finally understanding his friend's defiant behavior. Namjoon nodded hesitantly to that idea and Hoseok lead the way in. The place itself was more bare than he expected an adoption center to look like. Everything was a horrid tan wood that clearly hadn't been replaced within the time it should have. It looked like they had tried to decorate it for Christmas but gave up halfway through. One wall however was filled with different color sticky notes.

Along it came the smell of musk, cheap perfume, and plastic. All of which burned Namjoon's nostrils to the core. He nearly coughed as they got closer to the front desk where an aged woman -with way too much make up on- sat filing at her nails.

"Can I help you boys?" She didn't look up from her artificial nails.

"We came to give these cookies to the kids, can we see them?" Hoseok spoke for the two of them while Namjoon wandered off to the sticky note wall.

He skimmed over most of them, quickly catching on that each child had made a Christmas wish. Most said the same sad thing, that they wanted a family for Christmas. Others said that they'd like a new toy. But there was one that stood out to him. Not because it was dirty and crumpled and looked like it had been through hell and back, but because it said in squiggly light handwriting, "I want to go outside."

A few of the chapters are out of order so you may have to skip around when it comes to chapter 7, 8, and 9. I've tried to move them back into the correct order but for what ever reason, Wattpad just doesn't want to submit the change.

Also I got my inspiration of this book from _snarky_ After reading "The Boy In The Wardrobe" I loved the idea and just had to write my own version. So I 100% recommend their book to you as well if you like this one. Warning: they're still on hiatus lol