The armoured hearts

Brotherhood

(Hi 🥺💗 I hope that you are all feeling great ✨️ Love you 💗)

Kinn was too young to remember or to know why Erika stopped working for them. Al he knew was that he had missed her for years before just growing up without that woman. She was a friend of his mother and she often came to help her, she often came to play with him because Tankhun didn't really appreciate her. He was too focused on his drawing to even try raising his eyes towards someone else than his own family. A nostalgic emotion was spreading in his whole body, through his veins, he was feeling that some answers could be found. Even if he walked ahead, a part of his childhood always asked his adult one why she suddenly disappeared. It didn't look like something Erika would have done to them.

Kim was just eating, looking at Kinn and wondering if he often was moving his lips without talking. Deep in thought, he looked like this but what the boy needed now wasn't to end this breakfast, he wanted to run away. He wanted to stop questioning everything, realizing how exhausting it was to put things in perspective. Nothing to follow was written on a paper, a part of him missed this, the simple way he had been living. He wasn't feeling for now the greatness of being able to express his own self in the middle of those cores, all different, all meaningful, but all from the same group, and yet so unfair with each other. This Kim saw it inside the brothel. He saw things that didn't feel right and he could analyze again that he had been sharing words, sentences and thoughts about something. It surprised him sometimes to witness how logical and natural thinking had become for him.

"P'Kim, you're okay?" Porchay asked, seeing his frowned eyebrows.

Kim nodded, taking the boy's hand and walking away. "Let's just go."

Star followed them happily and Kinn observed what happened with a really soft grin. He didn't know what Porchay made of Kim but he looked so attached to the boy, he looked so strongly in love with his presence...it was reminding him about his own relationship with Erika, or he might see her through everything now that he knew she was this close.

"Kinn!" She screamed, standing up when she saw him. They were all already sitting on the sofa, surely waiting for him. She came to him and opened her arms. Kinn's eyes began to throw up the missing days of his childhood, snuggling in her chest and hugging her tenderly. She still smelt the same, she was still the same. "You grew up so well." She added, caressing his cheeks.

"How are you feeling?"

"Like I can at my age." She laughed. "But, you all needed something from me?" She asked with a suspicious expression.

"Yes...just let's sit back." Kinn smiled, helping her by taking her arms and it didn't feel as if she was an old woman, not because she wasn't but because she would always be his one and only woman figure after his mother, always.

—

They all thought that she would reveal deep and dark secrets, that they would be disgusted or even that she wouldn't know anything. They went through everything, they told every detail they had. Kim and Porchay kept their silence, intimidated by this unknown human, their hands still squeezing each other's in an attempt to keep their pressure down. She didn't let any sound come out before the end of the explanation. All she did was sigh, tears appearing in her eyes. She stood up and pulled Kim up at his worst surprise, his eyes panicking a small amount. But Porchay's hand was still in his, keeping him safe. No one understood why she suddenly hugged someone she might never have met before. Some sob could be heard before she moved away, caressing Kim's hair tenderly. Another sensation, that hand was so warm and her eyes so full of kindness, it cut Kim's voice, he didn't understand at all what was happening. She sat next to him, keeping the other hand in her own.

"I am so sorry...you had to live this, sweetheart..." She painfully said.

"Erika...help us please, no one is getting anything..." Kinn said, losing his patience, he wanted to know what she meant.

"I am sorry...it's just unbelievable..." She whispered, looking down at the ground, trying to put her thoughts together. "I don't know how to even talk about this..." She said, letting go of his hand and moving herself to face the four boys. "Listen...when...back then...when your mother had you...she also had a third child."

"Did she?" Tankhun immediately asked with his mocking expression, he couldn't believe those words, he couldn't just take them as the truth, the one he was kept from, in the dark, for years.

"My Tankhun...it will be hard to hear I know...but I was there, I even saw the baby...you won't think that I could lie naughty kid?"

Tankhun laughed at this, remembering the time she would use those words to scold him. Now, he could understand and get how tender it was from this woman. He could look at his past with so much happiness. "I wouldn't dare." He played, in a sassy voice.

"You better." She said warmly. "But...yeah, she had this kid...and she...he disappeared...but I saw him, I saw him getting into other's arms, I saw him being pushed away from his mother. This was why Korn menaced me and menaced you two if I wasn't running away, if I couldn't disappear by myself...I did...I was so stupid that I did...your mother...she died not so long after right?"

"Well...father told us that she got sick..." Kinn explained.

"In reality she contacted me...she asked me to confirm that her son was alive and I did..I did because she was my friend and I couldn't lie. I could only get information from far away...I learnt that he just kept her inside, he just jailed his own wife in her room so she wouldn't be able to ask for her third child...or to give the idea in someone else's mind..."

"Do you think... that she killed herself?" Kinn asked, his voice shaking.

"No...when I heard about her death, I tried to understand...I could get some information, you know how easily money can turn someone's side...she just...she couldn't see her two sons and she didn't know where the last one was..."

"So ?" Kinn asked, his voice unstable.

"So Kinn, dying of sadness is something that doesn't only happen in books...but I give to you that I don't know more about this...it might always stay a mystery..."

"Okay, but get to the point Erika please..." Tankhun complained again, feeling that she had a hard time talking about what she really wanted to say.

"Her third child...she named him Kimhan..."

"Kim...han..." Kinn repeated, his face turning towards Kim and becoming pale. "You meant that..." He couldn't finish pointing at this Kim he knew nothing about.

"That's not possible!" Tankhun immediately said. "That isn't..."

"Though...you look alike...I mean...it always was in a corner of my mind..." Porchay sad quietly, worried to scare them away.

"It...it doesn't explain anything at all though." Tankhun added, feeling attacked by those words.

"It explained it all..." Kinn sighed, his hands on his forehead trying to think. "It explains why Kim was all alone there under father's order...it explains why no one ever heard about him...it explains...a lot..."

"I don't...get it..." Kim's voice echoed suddenly in a really quiet but surprised tone.

Most of them here could totally just connect the sentences and found the weirdest conclusion to their story. Kim was just too disconnected from them to get it without a clear and stable explanation. And it brought coldness and winter over their hearts to just realize in front of their eyes the result of what their father had built behind their back.