"A lonely star, she sits by the lane.
Holding hands with the sky,
She stares down at her people,
Nobody, nobody, hears her cry.

A lonely star, she waits for that day
When her hands will be held,
But oh, her lover
Left her heart impelled.

A lonely star, she remains their still
Her shine now old and dull,
Her heart now hollow.
She hopes that there's an end
To her miserable dream.

A lonely star, now she's sick.
She lays on her bed
Counting her days.
A lonely star, now she's gone and dead."

⊱ ───ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ─── ⊰

"Yeori Eonnie! Eonnie!" A woman in her  mid thirties shrieked as loudly as she could. Yeori Dam, one of the senior board members of the orphanage under  the Busan church, was sitting with her fourteen year old daughter, teaching her the basics of sewing. 

"Yes, Ahyun? What's the matter? What happened?" Ahyun had now sat directly in front of Yeori.

"Aein, my daughter, she's missing." Ahyun panted. Yeori immediately panicked at the information but her skin remained calm. She did not speak about anything and left the room hurriedly.

With quicker steps than usual, she swept her body through the meadow across their orphanage, screaming the sixteen year old girls' name. Her voice echoed through the night, nobody replied.

By the dawn of the next day, Seokjin, the girl's father had appointed a search party to go through their county. The whole night, Yeori and Seokjin searched around their neighborhood but were ultimately unsuccessful. Ahyun had cried all her tears, praying to God that her child returned but past 20 days, nobody found her.

The police had conducted a search near the ocean, just in case there was a suspicion of a drowning teen. Nothing yielded.

Seokjin had grieved for his child but had admitted that the girl was trafficked. His friend, Jang Seun Ho, was the chief of the police stationed at Busan. According to his reports, several children in their neighborhood were kidnapped and trafficked. They believed that Sweety, or according to her formal name—Aein, had fallen a victim to their hands.

"Mai, I lost everything that I had."

⊱ ───ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ─── ⊰

"Oi, Kook, wake up!"

"A little more. I want to see what happened to Sweety!" I grunted.

"Sweety? Now who's Sweety? Yo, get up, up!" The people in my dreams violently shook and fell apart. Jimin shook me out of my sleep and my dream, the story I've been trying to complete for about a week.

I sat up, scrunching my eyes and groaning at him. I looked at him with disgust on my face. I wanted myself to appear angry but whenever I saw his face, something in me wanted to hug the boy all the time.

"I hate you, Park Jimin!" 

"Tell me about your dream." He pushed the duvet aside from the foot of my bed, sitting up on it. I arched my back, relocating my bones to the correct socket. I let my eyes get hold of the environment around me and started to face Jimin.

"You really wanna listen to my dreams?" I miserably tried to not appear surprised and delighted but holding a stern face was harder than I thought it'd be.

"Yeah, why not? Who was Sweety?" He threw a corky smirk at me. Did he assume that a loser lover like me would be in a relationship? Not a god damn girl, or even a guy, has ever looked at me with interest in their eyes. Only puppies hold their interest for me.

"I don't know who Sweety is. But you know, ever since I was a child, I had this peculiar series of dreams that are all messed up in the timeline but belong to one solid chronology. It is about a lady, Mai. Somedays she appears as a child, some days as a teen with her lover, some days grown up with a heavy pregnant belly and the other days as an old mother. Sweety is someone else's daughter, whom Mai calls as hyung."

"I see. Then? What did you see today?"

"Today, I couldn't see her much but Sweety, she was missing and her parents, Mai and a search party had scanned all neighbouring localities. She was no where to be found and the police consider that she might have been trafficked. At the end, Sweety's father tells Mai that he lost everything. I wanted to see what happened but you woke me up."

I exhaled a sigh from the depths of stomach, a slight tinge of disappointment engraved in it. Jimin sat back and nodded to my words. He suspended his head heaven wards, his eyes closed and his face still.

"You know, Kook," he began, "my grandmother had also been trafficked and then to save her dignity, my gentleman grandfather bought her and married her. Although I am unaware if my mother was my grandfather's actual daughter, my mother used to say that her grandfather and father had been the best men she knew."

"I've never met your mother. Why don't you introduce me?" I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. I was aware that Y/n's mother died of cancer and her father had also been dead for a few years now, but Jimin, I knew nothing about his ancestry. Antonella and I lost our mothers in the same tragedy.

"My mother? Boy, I haven't met her in fifteen years."

"Why not? Is there any family disputes? It's okay, you need not tell me that. I'm sorry."

"No, no, it's okay. I haven't been asked about my family since I left school. Seven or eight years maybe. Why are you apologising? Actually, no one cares to ask about my story. I listen to a variety of stories by a variety of people needing a place to confide. I do not have anyone for myself to confide in." Jimin hung his head low, his eyes still closed shut.

I had already got up by the time I asked him about his mother. I shoved everything on the window aside and turned the AC on. I sat next to Jimin and rested a hand on his palm.

"You chose to listen to my stories. I am all ears. Tell me, I'll listen to it and never judge you for anything that has come up your way."

Jimin smiled.

"I don't have family disputes. I don't have a family. My last living family was my mother and she expired when I was ten years old. Since then, factually, my family is my orphanage. I'm an orphan, Jungkook."

"I'm an orphan too, hyung. Yes, I do have a living family of my cousin and uncle but there's nobody I can really call mine. I think, I will relate."

"Please, I pray to God that no other child has to relate with me. At least not the boy I consider my bestfriend."

"I'm your best friend?" The light smile flower on my face. In my whole life, I've never been called as anyone's best friend. I've lived different lives but not a best friend.

"I think so. Don't worry, you don't have to feel the same. I have four best friends, people who made me feel alive. Seeing them makes me fucking terrified, that I found them. My halmeom, Antonella, Y/n and you."

"Thank you. And no, I feel that too. I've never spoken the truest of myself with anybody but you. Antonella knows me without me having to tell her anything. Y/n, I tell her a lot but sometimes being a guy, I feel uncomfortable talking about things I wouldn't want ladies to hear. But you, I don't know what you are, but I tell you everything."

We looked up at bright morning. It's rain today yet so the hues of grey and blue painted a scenery in our sight.

"You know, Jungkook, I could easily be as old as your nephew had my ancestry not been what it was. My mother had me at fourteen. Sweety, you said right? My mother was also called that by her grandparents. Were you dreaming about her?" He whispered. I remained quiet. I wish I wasn't dreaming about her.

His gaze didn't change, a droplet of tear dripping down his moist eyes, sketching over his soft skin.

"I tired my best. My mother was born to a tough situation, her mother being sold to a sex racket. She was born out of wedlock but trust me, she was growing up like any normal school going child. Then at thirteen, she was raped and I was born. I didn't know my father until I was ten years old, the day she died. If you ever find my diary, it has a picture of her and me. Our last meeting. I never saw her after that, not even her corpse."

Jimin shut his eyes closed. The tears we'e now prominent around his red nose. Jimin suppressed an ear piercing cry but I heard it. I knew it. There are certain feelings that you can not explain by just words.

The feeling of a colour, say red. It's different. It's not like dipping your hand in a basket of freshly plucked and washed strawberries with the scent of vanilla in the air from a nearby bakery. It's like walking on legos but warmer and you feel not the sting of the blocks but the heat of spikes.

For Jimin, it was like a hammer beating a nail through his gut, a drill penetrating flawlessly through the little gaps in his ribs. Nobody, I pray, has felt it. But we feel it. Empathy.

"The picture was clicked by my mother's rapist, murderer. My father. She couldn't recognise him the first time she saw him after 10 years. We were at Haedong Yonggungsa temple. She requested him to click a picture of us. After that picture was clicked on my mother's most cherished gift, a Polaroid camera, the man offered to pay for my education if my mother slept with him."

"What?" The look on my face changed to disgust. Jimin looked as unperturbed as ever. He surprised me with a chuckle.

"My mother ran away with me at 16 when the society rejected her for being a teen mother, a rape victim, a vulnerable being and a literal child. She had basic education with which she couldn't sustain both our lives. She chose to be in prostitution. Yet so, providing me better education was very hard. Her grandfather used to pay for her education but died a year before she had me. She agreed to sleep with the man."

Jimin stopped and held his tears back. Why were we taught to not cry? No, it's not a boy thing. It's an Asian trope. You'll never find an Asian sort of Asian cry, be it a girl or a guy. Never. But why?

"The man kept his promise though. Before he slept with her, he wrote a check on my name. My mother kept it in her diary. My last possession of my mother. But that night, she fell into a deep slumber, never waking up again. My mother's owner at the pub, when I recently met him in my first year, reported that she was so badly assaulted and fucked that her young body couldn't bear it. She had sustained multiple internal damages and her face wasn't worth seeing when they discovered her dead  body in the bathtub, all soaked in blood."

"How'd you know it was your sperm donor? I'd rather say that. Father isn't a word, a responsible emotion. Just contributing in the formation of a zygote does not make someone a father." My heart sank at what he told. Yes, I do not relate to it. Yes, I don't want any child to relate with it. Why do good people suffer all the time? Where are you, God?

"Fifty percent of my DNA matched with the perpetrator. Does that define? He couldn't be my sibling. You share fifty percent DNA with your parents and full sibling. With Antonella you'd share something like twelve to fourteen percent."

"Oh, right. What happened after that?"

"After that, I was left on the street. My halmeom, owner of my orphanage, adopted me. Fed me, sheltered me, clothed me, payed for me. And I turned out a disappointment." He chuckled an unbothered smirk.

"Why? You're doing pretty amazing. You earn over 10k per day. Why would you be a disappointment?"

"You don't wanna know."

"I do."

⊱ ───ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ─── ⊰

I'm writing a few sensitive chapters starting here.

The thing is that this book takes a lot of effort for me to write because I never felt the emotion of being in love and seeing someone as something more than just a normal person.

Tell me, do you feel the pain that any of my characters hold?