Sins Are for Angels || 2Jae fanfiction

KYG - Tailing Trauma

A/N: Basically just a backstory on Yugyeom aka a little spinoff I made - spur of the moment after talking to ultyoungjaechoi <3
This is not the beginning of anything, simply an addition to tie up the loose ends I feel I left too sprawled regarding Yugyeom's character.

It is not something Yugyeom has ever been able to forget; the way he watched all the other kids get picked up from pre-school one by one and most of the teachers go home until he was forced to get into his snowsuit and sit outside on the low stone fence with his favourite teacher; Chi Eunae, until his father finally came into view at the end of the snowy road. With the aid of his bike, he approached with what Yugyeom remembers as lightspeed. With an apologetic expression and what looked like a bruise on his temple, he took Yugyeom into his arms and apologised a hundred times to his son and Eunae. With a firm yet gentle tone she had said it was okay this once but this was not something they should have to do many times. His father huffed out his words of understanding without taking time to catch his lost breath.

"Make sure to treat Yugyeom to something delicious on the way home," Yugyeom remembers her saying. After saying her caring goodbye to Yugyeom, she had flashed a smile at his father that Yugyeom never understood before years later. An emotion so kindly demanding was way too complex for the five-year-old who was ready to go home, eat and sleep.

On the way home, they picked up his older brother from a friend's house and the boys were treated to an ice cream in the middle of snowy Seoul without a single complaint. Their father was particularly gentle that walk home where they sat on a bench in the park while he watched his sons eat their ice creams and had asked them about their day at pre-school and primary school. "I'm glad to hear that, my son," Yugyeom remembers him saying to them many times that afternoon. It was like the clueless silence before a storm little Yugyeom and his brother should never have had to go through.

It was a year of confusion, no one really speaking to Yugyeom in a language he could understand. His father did his best but with a custody lawsuit on full blast, he was being pushed away from his sons unfairly. Yugyeom began primary school mid-chaos where he was seated behind this kid; Choi Youngjae, who would glance back at him every now and then with a big toothy smile. They became friends on the first day and would spend every day together in school and after school. Going to Youngjae's house became a daily occurrence. Yugyeom loved it there. The love in that home was something that had been missing from Yugyeom's. Despite hardships, Youngjae's parents were there for him and his older siblings and even Yugyeom when he needed a hug from an adult who could squeeze all the confused suffering out of his little body like his father was able to.

His brother was the one who would come to pick him up, only a couple of years older than Yugyeom, Youngjae's parents began to worry about Yugyeom and his brother's situation and it was this that turned their situation around in one fateful evening; one of the worst days in Yugyeom's memory but the best one for his future. Yugyeom's mother had begun screaming at his father after more than a whole bottle of wine and often pointing to their children who had huddled up next to each other and cried on the sofa where they had quietly been watching television before. That fateful knock on the window had changed everything. Just as Yugyeom's father had received what became the premises for a new bruise, Youngjae's mother had knocked. This was all the lawsuit needed; a witness and the evidence on his father's face and the emptied bottles on the kitchen table.

With a legal promise to visit their mother once a year until the age of 18 with an official present, the boys were in their father's full custody. As much as Yugyeom understood that hitting someone was bad and that his mother often scared him to the point where he would rather she was not around, it still confused him when she no longer was. In some twisted way, he did miss her.