The Car Crash Club • Monsta X

xxii.

Hyungwon is eight when he realizes he is beautiful.

He's the tallest in his class, and that makes him popular with the boys. Everyone wants him on their team when they play games. And the girls like him too – he sees how they giggle when he looks at them and how they hide their petite faces behind delicate fingers. When he's shopping with Mother, other mothers stop to tell her what a beautiful little boy she has. And so Hyungwon decides, if everyone else was saying and thinking it, then it must be true. He must be beautiful.

Only Father has never told him that, and Hyungwon sometimes wonders why. He wonders if maybe Father doesn't like him as much anymore, but he knows this isn't true because Father brings him lots of nice gifts – toy soldiers, a handheld video game that Mother doesn't like, plastic dinosaurs. The presents are nice, but the bike is still the best present he's ever gotten.

Mother doesn't like it when Father brings him gifts. Hyungwon knows that the little presents all cost money, and he thinks she is worried that they won't have enough if Father spends it on Hyungwon. But even though Hyungwon knows this, he still doesn't want to give the gifts up. He likes playing with the toys and showing the other boys at school his handheld game. He's one of only two boys in the class with one, and sometimes, he lets them have a turn playing. He worries that if she takes his game away, then the other kids might not want to play with him as much.

But Father says he doesn't need to worry, that he can keep the game and that it's his to play with.

Although he and Father are going to go camping next weekend, and Father says he can't bring the game with because camping is about being with nature and not with technology. He says it'll be a boys' weekend and that it will be lots of fun.

Hyungwon's looking forward to camping, but he'll miss his game.

--updated 06/30/20, part 2/3--