Ishihara // ATEEZ ✔

extra #2: blacksmith's arrival

Year 3082

"I swear Kim Hongjoong you better get your ass back here or I will make sure you sleep outside tonight!" the old lady shouts, swinging the ladle with her right hand while her left is balled into a fist, shaking angrily.

Her greying hair seems to fade even more as she feels her blood pressure rising trying to keep the one child that has never been her favourite - a 15-year-old boy named Kim Hongjoong - in check. He always has something up his sleeves, and oh what she would do if she could rip off the damned sleeves. She somehow has a love-hate relationship with the child, but she can't say the same for the boy with the messy hair and a knack for being 'creative' as what he calls it. She doesn't know whether the boy loves or hates her; he is always coming back to bring upon a head-splitting headache to her, but then he will make it up at night when he says 'good night grandma' with the softest voice, a charming smile and a twinkle in his eye. The same thing repeats everyday. He is the most mischievous boy you will ever meet, but the sweetest boy as you get to the end of the day.

But right now, with a quick 'see you later grandma', she knows that someone in town is about to become victim to the boy's mischief yet again. And she also knows that her 75-year old legs are not strong enough to come running after the boy, so as she lowers down the ladle, she turns to look at the girl behind her, who has stopped crying but her shoulders are slightly jiggling from the remnants of her crying fest. The old lady's eyes travel to the jacket held in the girl's arms: the source of her crying, and the outlet of Hongjoong's creativity.

"Did Hongjoong do this to your jacket, Sheera?" the old lady crouches next to her, trying to keep her wobbly knees from giving way. She gently pries away the jacket from the girl, to try and scrutinize what Hongjoong had done to the piece of clothing. The original state of the jacket was supposed to be only black, but after the boy's creative addition, it has become a canvas of creativity. With limited colours of paint, the jacket has become a canvas full of flowers, abstracts and patterns that she can't make out what it's supposed to be.

The girl sobs. "Yes. I told him that I'm always bored of the same clothes we had to wear over and over again, so he offered to paint over my jacket. But he took the wrong one; it was supposed to be the other jacket that I have. This one was the present I got from my mother and now it's all ruined. He only said a quick 'sorry' before dashing off."

The old lady gives off a pat to the girl's back, who's clutching on the jacket as she mutters something about missing her parents. The old lady looks at her with pity in her eyes, but she knows that there's little she can do. As she tries to calm the girl down, she throws her vision to the signage just outside the door, its paint faded as it has been there for years and never changed. She reads the sign once: Sunshine Orphanage.

Hongjoong and the girl, Sheera, are only two of the 17 children she cares for at the orphanage. She treats all the children as her own, although there are some that she wishes would listen to her more.

She knows that the boy, Hongjoong, is talented and artistic: he knows his colours well, his eyebrows furrow as his hands diligently create a new mesmerizing world on a canvas. But his canvas are always the wrong ones: the abandoned walls in town, a faded sidewalk, a poor guy's shoes that he had stolen off the street and now this girl's gift from her mother. She knows that Hongjoong had always wanted to become a blacksmith, a job that can be the outlet to his creativity. Being a 15-year-old boy living in an orphanage with 16 other children, he can barely afford to buy himself a proper canvas. The paints were a gift from her to the boy during his 15th birthday and he has never stopped using them since. His supply of paint is almost running out, but he never asks for more. Instead, he would only go to her at night, kiss her goodnight and says that he is sorry for being the cause of her headache most of the time.