Doubler || NCT || Completed

37

"We settled down into a kind of rickety house in a small city, and after some time I went back to school. Dad was very strict about everything but I know that he tried to take care of me. I spoke with Taeil, Hyunsook auntie and Sungho uncle on the phone daily because we had moved too far to visit, and dad didn't want to endanger his brother's family anyway. He kept in contact with his doubler friends and tried to keep up with the movements of poachers and hunters. It felt like we were holding our breath all the time, but it was okay." Yujin's voice was quiet. "Until they found us."

Jeno was holding both of her hands and she stared at them, wondering somewhere in her mind how it had such a calming effect on her anxious state. Despite his calming hands, it took her a while before she could continue.

"Dad woke me up in the middle of the night after getting a call from a friend, and basically yanked me out of my bed. We ran away from the house and he took me into an apartment building nearby. Somehow, he knew the keycode. It was dark and echoey on the hallways. Dad dragged me to the boiler-room in the basement and told me to change into my animal form. I started crying but complied when he yelled at me, telling me that there was no time to be scared. After I had shifted, he picked me up, stuffed me into a smelly box and dumped the box to the shelf with other boxes."

Yujin had to stop once again. Jeno was staring at her and she could see that he was feeling her pain together with her.

"Dad said that he was sorry for everything and then he left. I never saw him again."

"He left you alone in the boiler-room in your animal form?" Jeno repeated Yujin's story.

She nodded.

"I was too scared to disobey him, so I stayed there, waiting as a harvest mouse. At some point the lines between my human and animal sides started to feel blurry. Time didn't matter anymore. When Sungho uncle came to pick me up, I had been in the boiler room for two days but it didn't feel like it. And when he picked up the box I was in, I didn't recognize him."

"What about your dad?" Jeno asked carefully.

Yujin's nails buried into his palms but he didn't even flinch. Her eyes were watery again and old, dark guilt froze her blood. Rationally, she knew that it wasn't her fault but the feeling was stronger than her thoughts.

"I don't know exactly what happened, but our home was burned down and his body was found by the fire department."

Jeno swallowed. "That's fucked up." His voice was coarse.

It was the first time Yujin had heard him swear. "I know."

"What happened to you after that?" he asked after a moment.

"Sungho uncle took me back to Hyunsook auntie and Taeil. Well, he took what was left of me. I was completely lost between my doubler and human sides, and couldn't transform back to human. I recognized Taeil pretty quickly but it took me longer to realize that I know auntie and uncle as well. Taeil didn't leave me alone for a moment and for the next week or so he carried me around. He even skipped school because Hyunsook auntie said that he couldn't take me there with him", Yujin recounted and sad smile found its way back to her lips. It was easier to speak about this part of the story.

"That sounds like something Taeil would do", Jeno commented.

"He spoke to me constantly, telling me all about the fun things we had done together. He repeated my name over and over again and told me stupid jokes. Eventually his efforts paid off, and I managed to shift back to human."

Jeno sighed in relief, as if it had happened 15 minutes and not 15 years ago.

"The poachers managed to find me once more, about a year later. We lived near other doubler families, and since they were aware of my past, they weren't the biggest fans of having me around. Auntie and uncle had managed to convince them that it was safe to have me there but, clearly, they were wrong. We hadn't known about the poachers' system of information before but we learned that it was a thing, when one of the older doublers notified the entire community of a weird bunch of people asking weird questions around the city. The entire community vanished in less than a day, as all of the families fled somewhere else. Many of them cursed us and blamed me for everything, one even tried to hit uncle."