Chapter Text
“Give it back.” His fists were clenched tight, unclipped fingernails kneading into his skin. They surrounded him on every side like vultures cornering their prey. From their height and bad acne, it was obvious they were much older--most likely high schoolers.
Eunyung hadn't realized who they were when they first dragged him and his backpack into a dark alleyway. But once he got a good look at them, he realized who they were. Honestly, they weren't much of anything. Just a couple of low-lives who grouped together to form a gang.
A guy he used to hang out with--who was out doing too much crap to stick around long enough for Eunyung to learn his name--warned about a local gang who beat him up once for some of his money. Of course Eunyung was unlucky enough at the wrong place, wrong time to have his own snatched right from his backpack.
Now, they stood over him, cackling. "Or what? What’s little Eunyung gonna do?”
Before they had a moment to think, Eunyung lunged for the closest guy, causing him choke on the laughter as he toppled him off balance.
Using the startled moment, Eunyung raised his fists to punch him square in the nose.
Arms wrapped around his backpack and he went slamming into the concrete of the alleyway. His wrists quickly got pinned next by two of the other guys before he is able to sit up. Eunyung struggled and scratched as the dude he knocked over glowered over him, hand cupped over his nose and blood dripping through the cracks of his fingers.
Eunyung had know idea that he had hit that hard.
He smirked. Good. It would leave a nasty mark soon.
“Crazy bitch…you almost broke my phone you know that? Do you have any idea how much money it would cost to replace it? Do you!?”
Eunyung started to shout again before a kick to the leg made it stifle into a cry of pain.
“Shut up. Someone could hear.” The guy knelt down until they were eye level of one another. “You want your money so bad, huh? Crawl like the pathetic fucking dog you are to Hansol station. Then maybe you’ll earn your treat.”
Eunyung considered his options for a moment. Which there wasn’t a lot of. They were bigger, stronger and not to mention he was completely outnumbered. He scowled, thought about lunging for another hit again, but there was no point really. He needed the money more than anything.
He sighed, a sign of defeat.
The group snickered and eased their grip on his wrists—which he took advantage of to wriggle out of their grasp.
His hands tightened around the backpack straps as he examined it for damages. “You better give me my fucking money back. Or I’ll kill you.”
The bullies glanced at each other, a knowing smirk tugging at the ends of their lips.
“Holy shit! He actually fucking did it.”
Slowly, Eunyung lifted his body from the ground, arms trembling as it braced his weight. Filth and blood marked his legs from the knee upwards. He took a single step and felt as if he was learning how to walk for the first time again. Every foot forward had either too much or too little weight applied. He struggled to maintain the balance.
Eunyung stopped before them and simply extended out his scraped palm.
“The hell?” The dude whose nose he punched (who now wore a bandaid over the swollen bruise) raised an eyebrow.
Eunyung stood his ground, expecting the dude to rustle in his pockets for the won.
”You seriously think we still have it?”
Eunyung’s head hurt.
Another threw an arm around broken-nose-dude. “Yeah, You took too long, kid, and we got hungry.”
His body couldn’t support him anymore and his legs collapsed under him. His hands managed to break his fall as they pressed against the cold floor.
A foot nudged his stomach. "Hey, get up. Who carries that much won around like that anyway? We had to teach you a lesson not to flaunt.”
Five months.
Five months of scraping together whatever he could find to collect enough won to escape again. This time for good. His amount wasn’t meant to sustain him for long, not at first anyway, preferably for the next few months on the streets. Then a job would come along that he would quickly snatch up—under a fake ID of course, telling he was much older. Then he would be able to actually live. Only then would he really be able to stay afloat.
“Hey, stand up.” The foot nudge pulled him down to reality again.
Eunyung said nothing.
“Didn’t you hear me? I said, stand up.”
As much as he would have liked to be able to stand and run away, his damn legs wouldn’t function anymore. He was also suddenly aware that he was breathing too much, intaking sharp, jagged breaths of air that clung to the sides of his throat wrong.
He didn’t stand, but his fingers twitched.
The second kick came harder, knocking the air from his lungs. “Useless,” one of them muttered.
Eunyung’s hand suddenly closed around something—a broken shard. From a bottle, maybe. But it was sharp enough for the plan that was working out in Eunyung's mind.
The third kick never got a chance to land.
With a cry, Eunyung swung aimlessly. The glass sliced through fabric and skin. Someone screamed. He didn’t see who. He didn’t care. He was up now, rage overdriving strength.
Fist met jaw, another blow to the ribs. The one who had kicked him first stumbled back, a small trail of blood running down his arm, eyes wide with disbelief.
Eunyung’s chest heaved. “Fucking bitch…” he muttered, voice raw from too much silence and too little air.
He could end it now, he realized, with a dirty piece of glass from the station floor. The blood on Eunyung’s hands felt colder now. He stared at it, then at the same stain on broken-nose-dude’s. His grip on the broken glass tightened. For a beat, he seriously debated it—ending this here, really making them hurt.
But instead, he let the shard fall. Letting it shattered against the impact.
Eunyung struggled to keep standing upright, adrenaline driving through him. His body screamed otherwise.
The moment he put weight on his legs, pain splintered up like a wildfire. A brutal, sharp ache that flared through bone and tendon. His knees buckled under the pressure. He collapsed hard on the concrete, hands skidding forward to catch himself.
“Bro, what the hell,” one of them shouted. “He’s crazy—he’s—shit, are you getting this?”
A voice cursed behind. “He messed up the video a bit.”
His head snapped behind at the voice where he was met with a phone. He quickly put his elbows up to cover his face. Eunyung would be done for if he ever managed to make his way on to the internet.
“Whatever, I got enough of this, let's just get away before anyone sees us.”
He heard the padding of feet and words like youtube upload fading across the platform.
Eunyung needed to do something. But his thoughts were hard to make sense of.
The spikes of pain kept everything else quiet. The screaming in the back of his head was gone too, or at least subdued to background noise.
He needed to do a lot of things, actually. Like one, sending those motherfuckers to their grave. Second, he needed to get his money back. But before any of those things, he first needed to find something he could lean back on—just to stop the spinning for a while.
Eunyung crawled, shapes blurry and dark at first, but enough to make out where he needed to go. He turned and leaned his backpack like a pillow so the dirty station wall would support his back.
Alright. He did it, step one was done. But what action could he take now to stop the bleeding?
Home. He could go back home.
His stomach churned at the scene that would unfold as soon as he stepped through the door. Screams and shouts followed by kicking and punches thrown. They expected him to come crawling back, because they knew how weak he was. He coughed, spitting up some blood and his chest shakily heaved. But if he returned, then in the next following days, he would grab the school bag hunched in the corner and run out the door and the never ending cycle would restart.
No, that house wasn’t an option anymore. Home was only for the weak. Eunyung Baek was anything but that.
He just needed to close his eyes for a moment—but not sleep, just take a breather against the wall as the sound of the trains rumbled in the background.
Eunyung didn’t know how long he had his eyes shut for. But as he heard people come and go from the station, even though he couldn’t see them, he could feel the eyes on him.
“Mom, look.” He heard a voice suddenly say after some time. It was small, like his. So it must have been someone around his age.
There was a following gasp, and a much older feminine voice spoke, “Oh my god…”
There was no doubt in his mind that the horrified gasp was directed toward him. But it did make him wonder how messed up his face was. Maybe he could go check in a bathroom mirror later just how bad it was. There was definitely a lot of blood earlier, but he just assumed it was from the other guys.
If he kept his eyes shut, they would pass by just like they all did.
“Haejoon, hold my purse for a second.”
Then a warm cloth hugged his body and his eyes fluttered open. A woman and her son stood in front of him, looking just as shocked as he was.
The woman’s hand tightened around her son’s own. “I’m so sorry, I thought you were sleeping,” She quickly apologized, and Eunyung looked down at the cloth laying in his lap. It was a jacket. So soft and warm against him that he couldn’t help but lean into the touch.
“Who did this to you?”
He looked up again and the woman’s face was hardened into a confusing expression. Worry, he figured. But there was possibly some anger knit into her eyebrows as well.
He cracked a smile and winced in pain. Oh shit. It hurt to move those muscles. “Nothing happened, ma’am. I just had a little accident and fell.”
The lie escaped his tongue as naturally as he breathed.
“I could take you to the hospital at least. There’s one a few blocks down, it’s a walkable distance--"
“No.”
Eunyung knew the exact hospital she was referring to. Unfortunately, it was the same one his mom would eventually be getting off a shift from. She couldn’t see him like this.
The woman blinked at his cold response, surprised at the quick change of tone.
He quickly fixed his face and forced himself to form a smile again.
”Sorry, I mean no thank you, because it’s really not that bad. I was just letting my eyes rest for a moment. It’s really not that serious to go to a hospital for.”
“Do you want me to call you parents, then? Your mother maybe?”
Hard no.
Fuck, this lady was such an annoying bitch, he thought. She must not have been normal. Any normal person seeing a scrappy kid bleeding out of every possible corner would quickly keep walking past. Any sane person would whisper the key words ‘delinquent’ or ‘troubled’ that always followed him around like a relentless shadow. Then they would turn their heads the opposite direction and pretend they never even laid their eyes on him.
She should’ve just minded her own goddamn business, he could see stares stopping to peer at the interaction between them. Did she always come up to random kids on the street like this? What a crazy bitch. Eunyung could imagine she had nothing interesting going on in her life if she was taking pity and giving out jackets to every kid she came across.
The black-haired boy tugged on her shirt. The woman knelt down as he whispered something in her ear. Eunyung made his eyes tear away from them.
“Oh dear…then, would you like to come to our house? Just to clean up the injuries and not risk an infection.”
Eunyung studied the woman for a moment. She didn’t look like a typical kidnapper—the kid clinging on to her shirt lessened any chance she would actually try something. But at the end of the day, Eunyung was tired. Limbs sore, and body shaking, he wasn’t sure if there was any fight or flight left in him.
So, he agreed.
It was a blur on the road to the strange lady’s house. The homes and apartments began to smear together and eventually he stopped paying attention to his surroundings all together in order to avoid the headache.
Their pace was slow too, or maybe Eunyung knocked into the concrete too hard as everything in the world seemed to be slowing down.
Her son, Haejoon, he remembered the boy was called, snuck glances from time to time when he thought Eunyung wasn’t looking. Eunyung saw though, the way his eyes trailed noticeably from the stinging scarred knees up to his bruised face. He felt like garbage under the stare. The feeling of being hyper aware of every ache or mark under the glances didn’t stop until time decided to speed up and they finally arrived at the steps of the house.
He took it in. Potted plants, chalk drawings on the pavement, and a bright ‘Welcome Home’ mat before the door. Very un-kidnapper-like. Which was most likely a good sign.
Inside, she ushered him into a bathroom where he sat down on a small plastic stool. The lady then excused herself to lead Haejoon into another room—the living room, he assumed—as sounds of a tv flickered to life. The lady came back and she went through her cupboard until she pulled out a white medicine kit and kneeled before him. The door was left open, allowing the cartoon’s action sound effects to follow into the bathroom along with the strange smell of incense that seemed to cloud the entire house.
She didn’t talk much as she worked.
The silence was strange. Not tense, but also… careful. Like she felt that she would spook him if she suddenly brought up a conversation. Eunyung watched her hands, nimble and pale, as they rummaged through antiseptic wipes and bandages with practiced ease. Her hair was loose but pushed back to focus, a few loose strands falling out on her temples. She didn’t look old, most likely around his own mom’s age, and her clothes were plain with just a faded sweatshirt and jeans.
“Your knees first,” she said quietly.
Eunyung didn’t move. He stared straight ahead, jaw tight.
“Is it okay if I touch you?”
He gave a reluctant nod.
The antiseptic stung like hell. He hissed through his teeth, the breath rattling in his still sore ribs. His shoulders curled inward slightly, bracing himself.
“Sorry,” she murmured. “This one’s deep.”
“No shit,” he muttered, then looked away, expecting a reprimand that never came.
Instead, she let out the softest laugh. “You’ve got a mouth on you. Haejoon picked up that kind of language when he was younger. Took some time to keep him from cursing.”
Eunyung’s lip twitched, but he didn’t smile.
She moved to the other knee, then to the shallow cut on his cheek. He tried not to flinch, but her touch was warm, her movements efficient. The smell of rubbing alcohol made his eyes water, or maybe that was just everything catching up to him at once.
"Almost done," she said, applying the last of the bandages with gentle fingers. He studied her handiwork as they hid away the dark red bruises effectively. Most of them were of anime characters or heroes like Spider-Man and other things that he didn't recognize. Her son, Haejoon, was probably into that sort of thing. “There! Now, are there any more injuries I should look at?”
Eunyung almost shook his head no before going, what the heck? He agreed so far. He then quietly lifted his shirt, not daring to look at her reaction to the blemishes layering his pale skin.
“You can hold my hand if you’d like. For the pain,” she offered.
When the antiseptic came in touch with the open wound he cringed and instinctively clutched onto her.
Eunyung sighed out of relief when she finally finished up and clicked the box shut.
“I did my best, but I’m not a nurse or anything.”
“You could’ve fooled me,” he muttered.
The woman gave him a half-smile. “Years of scraped elbows and playground accidents. Haejoon was a climber.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he just stared at the floor.
After a pause, she walked into the adjoining kitchen. “You’re hungry?”
“I’m fine.”
“You look like you haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
“That’s ‘cause I haven’t.”
There it was again—honesty, too sharp and too quick, before he could figure out if it would earn him pity or disgust.
The woman paused, then spoke again. “There’s some leftover curry in the fridge. Just let me heat it up.”
He didn’t protest this time.
She used her hand to knee to push herself up. But before she was able to exit the bathroom, Eunyung had to ask, “Do you have a phone?”
She turned. “Yes, I have a phone. Have you decided to call your parents?”
“…No.”
“Ah." she opened her mouth as if to say something but changed her mind at the last minute. “It's alright to use. Haejoon installed some games that you might think are fun anyway.” She handed it over.
Eunyung waited for her to leave.
But she stood in the doorway instead. Eunyung felt a slight shift in mood when she looked over at him once more.
“You don’t want to tell me what happened?”
“Feels like you already thought of something.”
“I have an idea…yes.” She said, slowly, in a way that made him uncomfortable.
“What’s your name?” she asked again after a while.
“It’s Eunyung.”
“Eunyung,” she repeated, like she was testing the sound of it. “Pretty name.”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s not.”
“I think it is.”
That confused him. Everything about the lady and the situation confused him. Adults didn’t work like that, they didn’t willingly take in randoms into their homes to simply patch them up. They didn’t. “You don’t know me,” he said flatly. “I could be a criminal. Or like, one of those kids who steals from people trying to help them.”
“I don’t think you’re that kind of kid, Eunyung.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I don’t know anything about you. But I know you let me help you even though it was hard. I know that you did it because you needed help.”
He looked down at his hands. Dirt beneath nails and red flushed around the knuckles.
He risked a glance at her, searching for the usual expression—fake concern, masked judgment, the tell-tale flinch. But she just looked… present. Calm. Not desperate to fix him, just willing to sit with the mess.
“…Why are you doing this?” he asked, voice low.
She thought carefully about his words. “Because when someone’s bleeding in front of you, you try to stop the bleeding. You don’t walk past. That’s just what you do.”
He didn’t respond. He couldn’t.
The moment she left the room, Eunyung leaned back in the chair, wrapping his arms around his stomach where the pain had settled into a dull throb. He looked down at the screen of her unlocked phone and quickly clicked on the youtube button.
At first, he tried searching up a variety of different terms like, ‘Hansol station’ or ‘Hansol station bullies’
His eyes lingered over to his bandaids.
‘Hansol station knee.’
A recently uploaded video popped up with a blurry thumbnail of a dirty floor. “Middle Schooler Knee” it was called.
He made sure he had the audio lowered before he clicked on it.
Being in the fight was one thing. Seeing the other point of view as he attempted to make himself seem larger while they beat him to the ground was another. The audio was clipped at certain moments, he noticed, which made the entire encounter seem much more confusing to piece together for the average viewer.
Most of the comments were laughing, calling him a deranged or crackhead homeless kid who decidedly attacked the uploaders.
Thankfully, the recording was too shaky and blurry to properly see his face. He was unable to pause between the moment the phone was directly in front of him and when he held up his elbows to cover himself.
He was safe, technically. It wouldn’t be possible for somebody to decipher his face through the poor camera quality. The proof was there nonetheless and it didn’t calm his twitching leg.
He hadn’t cried. Not when the door slammed behind him for the final time. Not when he ran down the alley, skin catching on rough bricks. Not when he slept behind a dumpster last night, holding a school backpack closed around his chest. But now, in this warm house with the smell of curry still lingering in—
He felt something crack.
Just a little bit.
He swiped at his face before anything could fall.
“Can I stay here?” He went up to Haejoon’s mom with the request after they had all finished eating together. “Just for the night, I promise.”
“Do you really not have any place to go?” she asked, almost in awe that Eunyung was truly not tied to anything.
“I have no home,” he finally said, slightly above a whisper. “Not anymore.”
Her face fell into a soft smile as she told him that he could stay as long as he needed to.
Guilt immediately followed when he realized that request was too much when he found out that they didn’t have an extra bed. But she insisted on the more comfortable mattress that she and Haejoon usually shared. She would sleep out on the couch in the living room instead.
”Besides,” she said, “The ghosts would like to meet their guest too.” She walked away before Eunyung even processed or questioned what she meant by that.
Maybe tomorrow, he’d leave. Maybe tomorrow, she’d call someone that a homeless kid was with her. But for tonight… he had a place to sleep. And maybe, for the first time in a long time, that was enough.
It was hard to settle into a nice, warm bed when a stranger was side-by-side along with you. But Eunyung could make do. He’s dealt with worse by now. Haejoon didn’t try talking to him, which was fine by Eunyung as he didn’t feel inclined to necessarily chat with him either. They both lay on their backs, staring up at the ceiling before Haejoon decided to turn to his shoulder. His breathing slowly declined before it eased into a slow rhythm.
Sleep came for Eunyung soon after.
He didn’t dream. Not usually, at least. And when he did, they were commonly quick flashes of scenes of some friends before he woke up minutes later.
Nightmares, on the other hand, lingered longer.
Eunyung was in the woods and his feet rapidly carried him through the dark tangle of branches and leaves before he even processed where he was. Eventually, his pace relaxed and he was finally able to take in his surroundings. It wasn't cold, but with every breath, the exhale was crisp.
He didn't know how long he walked in the strange forest until he was confronted by a singular door in a clearing. He tried to look around it, but no walls or rooms connected to it.
When he built up the courage to push it open, he smelled the alcohol before he saw any. He immediately wanted to exit but no door was behind him.
Cracked walls, splintered furniture, and beer bottles in every corner of the room. Eunyung recognized it all too well. His house.
“You’re not going to look for our son?” Eunyung almost jumped out of his skin at his mother's voice. He blinked and a new scene suddenly unfolded before him: his father slouched over his mother's cooking while she refrained from direct eye contact.
Eunyung looked to his father who continued eating, also keeping his eyes low. “He’s your son.”
“But what if something happened to him? What if he doesn’t come back—“
“Woman.” His father interrupted her. “What did I tell you about raising your voice?”
Eunyung’s mom’s lips remained in a rigid line.
His father sighed, “He’ll come crawling back. Just like he always does.”
A mother could break a child as easily as she could nurture it.
Eunyung hoped that this time his mom would be willing to fight for him. That this time she would care enough to oppose his father.
But that fight never came.
Instead, she sighed, and wordlessly shut the door to their bedroom to sleep. He walked past his father who ignored his presence–maybe because he didn't see him, or just didn't want to. Eunyung slid down to the dirty floor and pressed an ear on the door. He wasn't sure what exactly he was listening for. He craved to hear her voice behind the thin barrier muttering to the police, asking anyone if they had seen her son. He was only met with silence and the god awful stench of a newly lit cigarette filling up the house.
Eunyung woke up in a cold sweat.