Jekyll & Hyde | m.yg. ✔

여덟: brutal past

"This happened when..." Eunbi dragged her words, in an attempt to signal Yoongi that it was his cue to pick up now.

As long as she could avert, she would try her best not to make Yoongi remind of his brutal past again. Poor boy's family was a happy one, and it was just too much soul-crushing to have heard about how their bond had to meet its end.

"When I was like, nine or ten years old?" Yoongi scrunched up his nose cutely when he could not quite figure out how old he must have been when the accident took place, making Eunbi pass a sorrowful smile at him.

"Wait," Eunbi interjected into the moment when a rather complicated notion crossed her mind.

If Yoongi was still a kid when he had gotten separated from his family due to the cruel fate, why did he arrive in the care home so late? Where had he been all along? Had he been alright?

Eunbi realized that she had forgotten to continue after objecting some moments prior, when Yoongi's intrigued gaze fell upon her. Cracking an absentminded simper, she recollected her thoughts somehow and worded them out for Yoongi to comprehend.

"My aunt... had taken me in after the accident. But as I grew older, I guess I became more of a burden to her. She had her own children to look after too, and I totally get her stance of ousting me for that. After all, I was never her own flesh and blood. Her prioritizing her children over me was only rational. Moreover, it was about time I did something on my own. So, before she could kick me out of the house, I told her that I would like to part ways too. I would've roamed on the streets, gotten into a gang or stuff if it hadn't been for this care home. My education is free, the food, the clothes— I get everything that I need to survive. I'm glad I got to know about this place." Yoongi posed a subtle grin, his soft features reflecting the level of contentment that he was experiencing because of the one right choice that he had made on his own for himself.

"I'm proud of you, Yoongi." Eunbi whispered as she patted Yoongi's back lightly, a gesture that undoubtedly eased the latter's apprehensions even more.

"What happened to you, by the way? You told me when we first met that you're one of the oldest residents of this care home... meaning that you must be living in here since you were a little girl. Did your parents too—"

"My dad was an alcoholic. It didn't matter to him how his wife and kids were doing— if they had a good meal or sleep or not. All the money that he— given that he managed to retain a job— or mom earned would go down the drain because of his infatuation with those glass bottles. Mom got so angry one day that she greeted him with a knife in her hands at our doorstep, threatening him to either leave our home or his obsession. None of her threats worked, though. Dad eventually snatched the knife from mom only to twist it in her own gut. Mom died on the spot, before she could even receive the treatment for no one came to rescue her for about an hour." Eunbi's eyes seemed like how they must, when laden with so much remorse and guilt.

Even though it was not Eunbi's fault that her mom died, a pricking accusation that her conscience would always attack her with, made her feel awful for having failed her.

"And your dad? He didn't try to hurt you, right? He couldn't have hurt his own kids—"

"I knocked him out with one of his own bottles before he could come after me. Though that's another thing that he, as well, never woke up after that." Eunbi uttered.

However this time, her eyes were not glistened with tears of grief. Rather, she looked like an emotionless monster that did not have a trace of repentance in her heart, about killing her own father. She was also cautious at the time though, about her portrayal of self-pride regarding her efforts of being able to save herself that day, that it was not too much conspicuous.

"Did you have to undergo lawful procedures to get away with it then?" Yoongi asked bearing a shocked expression, finding it hard to register everything that Eunbi had been briefing to him.

"I had to spend a year in juvenile detention center for that, for protecting myself. Can you believe that?" Eunbi snickered being amused at how, all her life, she had been done wrong.

"Don't worry," Yoongi mumbled lovingly as he slipped his hand over Eunbi's, and resumed, "I'm proud of you. It must not have been easy to live like that. I'm glad that you could make it till this moment. I'll always be there for you from now on. You're no longer alone, Eunbi." Yoongi let out his words with utmost sincerity, and deep inside her heart, Eunbi could also feel that every single bit of what Yoongi had said was genuine.

And that he would never turn his back on her.

🚨

a/n

i think it's clear how this chapter was from 2010 (since the end of the previous chapter had already been set in the past) and the fact that taeyeon is there on the header image👁️👄👁️

also, thank you so much for 200 reads! i srsly didn't expect this book to reach this amount of reads so soon😭