𝐅𝐢𝐯𝐞 || 𝐉𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐨 ✓

13: Fine

"Jisoo, your arms and face..." Jin stared, looking at the red marks.

"They whipped and punched me." Came the answer.

Jin was shocked. Poor Jisoo...

Tears filled his eyes. He hadn't experienced the pain, but he could almost feel it just by looking at it.

"A-are you o-ka-ay..." he battled the tears forming in his eyes. He had, yet again, failed to protect her, because that was what he had entrusted himself to do. He closed his eyes for a moment, stopping the 'w' word from popping up in his mind, hence fat tears were released from his brown orbs and made their way down his soft cheeks. Slowly, he sank onto the floor.

"Please don't cry, they- they don't hurt. Really. I promise." Jisoo lied, wiping away his tears. The wounds still stung. She hadn't seen this Jin before. It was new to her- comforting someone else.

"I... I'm sorry." Jin opened his eyes and breathed out, although his tear stains were still visible on his sculpted, beautiful face. Jisoo was crouching over him, the bruise still on her forehead, wrists still red, arm still red, face still red with whip marks. "I'm sorry I let you be hurt. I... I thought I could do something right for once, and help you out of danger... but... but I guess I thought it wrong." A stray tear escaped his eye.

"Why are you apologising, Jin? They should be. They hit me. They did wrong. You... you did right." Jisoo hated that she herself started crying so easily as she breathed those words out. Why would Jin think that way? When was he ever wrong? And when did she ever prove the people out there right? It seemed like a reverse to her.

You... you did right.

Those words came at Jin's heart like a well-aimed arrow.

"No, no, no, I'm always wrong. Wrong for liking pink. Wrong for throwing a tantrum. Wrong for running away. And letting those people hurt you, beat you..."

"Please, no. Jin, you are right. Because you didn't leave me. They did wrong, and you made it right."

Time stood still for a moment, letting silence take over. Silence that forced the weight of her words to sink into Jin for once.

He closed his eyes, leaning his head against the fence, breathing out a jittery breath, wondering whether this was a dream.

She closed her eyes, sitting beside him, and wondered whether she would ever do anything that was good enough for the people around her.

Both children slipped into slumber, with the girl's head softly resting in the crook of the boy's head, and the boy's head on the girl's.

***

His phone buzzed.

Jaewon didn't check the caller identity and answered it, thinking it was from the hospital. He was wrong.

It was a video call, and he was going to regret it.

The person speaking didn't not show his face. All that he could see was his mother, struggling to live.

He screamed, almost dropping his phone.

"MOM! NO!"

"I told you. We have her." Came a male voice from somewhere else.

"SHE CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT A F*CKING BREATHING TUBE! WHAT DO YOU THINKING YOU ARE F*CKING DOING?" Jaewon yelled at the sickly sight of his mother in the backseat of her car. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

"It is a last resort. We got no report from our men in the building, so something must have happened to them. If we can't get them that way, then we'll do it this way."