LOVERS FATE (Jaehyun X Reader X Taeyong)

Chapter 2: Memory Lane

You woke up early to cook breakfast for yourself and your younger brother, Braxton Y/l/n. So far, it is only you two in the household for now. Your aunt wanted to help by living as a neighbor across the street. You appreciate her and know you could not raise Braxton all by yourself. You needed the help while you attend school and find a job to work at the weekend. You decided to raise Braxton after witnessing both of your parents' death at a young age of ten years old. Sometimes you have nightmares of it that haunt you in your sleep. You could picture them brutally murdered with an Axe (I'm spelling the weapon but autocorrection thinks I'm spelling something else) by a thug from a mafia gang. When you remember your friends saying that Lee Tae-Yong is part of a mafia family, it's like you are battling yourself to choose what to believe. Half of you does not believe the situation or think it's weird in general since there are not much of mafias these days but the other half wanted to trust your friends' words. Either way, it brought back horrid memories of that night that you hope would not visually be in your thoughts, only in your night terrors.

Ever since then, you have noticed there were a few shady individuals walking around in the city at night as if they run the whole town. You wondered if they were part of an actual mafia or just thugs that act like they're big and bad.  You did not want to find out, so you always scurry home to your brother. In a way, you were smart to do so because if you were curious then you might've been in danger. That is something your eight-year-old brother should not imagine if you were in trouble and he could not help you or wonder if he would ever see you again.  That would be tough on a kid. 

Sad to say, Braxton was just a few months old after both of your parents passed, so he had never met them. The only way he could know what they look like or know of their personality is from you. Sometimes you would show him pictures of yourself as a baby while your parents held you in their arms. It pains you not to know of how Braxton feels of not knowing who your parents are or simply to remember their touch. You could not imagine knowing what that feels like to wonder who your parents were at that young of an age. You tried your best to talk about them a lot with wonderful memories of traveling and how they wanted both of you to live in an adventurous way, to not hold back and be bold. Of course, nothing dangerous, but something fun and exciting to do. Whenever you tell him those exciting stories, you can see his face brighten in amaze as he listens to you. Braxton is a strange kid who's incredibly smart and you wondered if by chance he got that trait from your mother. 

There was a time when you wanted to clean, so you crawled up from a ladder that leads to the attic. You notice there were a lot of items covered in cloths and dust. You walk around the dirty attic while trying to fight the cobwebs off of you as you saw a chest with your mothers name on it. You slowly walk up to it and brush the dust off of it. You were glad it was small but the lock on it was old enough to pull off. When you opened the box, you see a single item--a journal. You read through it and knew she wrote each passage from when she was a teenager. Each day about a book that she read of wondrous adventures and what she wanted to do. There were more extraordinary subjects that your mother spoke of that you did not expect of a teenager to ever say. She even wrote a passage of her first day as an archaeologist. You were amazed by how brilliant she was. She was the type of person that wanted to explore the world and to gather treasure from each country that she visits. She had an impressive dream that sadly had not come true, but maybe it can if someone had the same interest in it. Even if he didn't, then maybe it will still be nice to know of how their mother was like.

With that thought in mind, you ask him a question as you continue to cook breakfast; "Hey, Braxton, do you wonder about exploring someday?"
"No," he shook his head as you sat a full plate of two pancakes, scrambled eggs, two strips of bacon, and toast. "Thank you," he happily said as he grabs his fork and began to eat. 
"How silly of me to ask an elementary kid about something so ambitious for now."
"It's okay but why did you ask?"
"Because you remind me of our mom," you respond casually as you sat down with your plate in hand.
"How do you know? I thought you were my age when..." he paused as he notices your calm smile began to slum. He drops his fork to hold your hand as he apologizes, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything."
You show a slight smile, "don't be sorry. You have every right to ask questions of our parents. I may not have known our parents for long but as I was cleaning, I found moms journal that has her dreams in it and of her career that didn't last long."
He questions your theory of how similar he was to her, "how do I remind you of mom?"
"The knowledge she wrote in that journal of books and wonders that made me think of you when you told me of what you learned on your field trip. That time you went to the museum!"
He began to look curious as he heard your statement, "could I read it sometime?"
"Of course! I'll give it to you right now," you quickly ran to your room then pick up the journal and ran back to your brother. You hand him the book, "here you go."