"All my life I've been waiting, Minho. Am I just not lovable? Am I ugly? Do I have a shitty personality? Am I too annoying? Too clingy, maybe?"
"You're just sixteen." Strangers by the shore, jipaws-
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Jisung was eight when things started going wrong.
Minho was ten when his Jisung first came crying from school, threw himself into the older's arms and stayed like that until he fell asleep, lulled by exhaustion.
The next morning, Minho asked what had happened. Jisung chose to keep quiet and say he just had a bad score in a test. Minho had too many worries already, and Jisung didn't want to add on to the older's pressure.
But it kept happening, time and time again. Minho eventually stopped asking, instead silently comforting the younger, soothing him to sleep for him to be gone by the next morning, off to school again.
It was a cycle only weekends were able to break.
During the time Jisung had off school, he was okay, just how he always was. He smiled, laughed and played around. He cuddled Minho to sleep when the caretakers sent them to bed and started talking about random stuff that went through his hyperactive mind, stuff he knew Minho would listen to.
It was one of those nights when it slipped. On a Saturday night, Jisung couldn't keep up the front anymore.
His mind got a little depressed during the afternoon, Minho sensed it in the way he got quieter than usual.
It was that night when Jisung hugged his best friend tighter than usual, needing his warmth.
"Why do you think people hate each other?" he quietly asked. Minho stroked his brown hair in slow motions to calm him down enough for him to fall asleep, just like always.
"It depends, Sunggie. Maybe they fought really bad or maybe the other person did something horrible."
At his ten years, Minho was more mature than the rest, even if he hadn't gone to school. Life taught him the rough way things he shouldn't know at his age, and he kept them away from the smaller kids at the orphanage. That included Jisung.
Minho was there for everyone, especially the most rebellious children. They were just troubled, after all. They knew what being in an orphanage meant and didn't understand what they did wrong for their parents to abandon them at such young ages. Minho was there to comfort each and everyone of them, he was there to explain how maybe mommy and daddy just couldn't take care of them, but that it surely didn't mean that they did something wrong, that they weren't loved.
