it's a beautiful thing.

nulla // it's a beautiful thing.

HE SAW HER on the news recently. Briefly, but she caught his eye.

Bright, ginger hair; dull, dark eyes; pale, freckled face. Nineteen. Kidnapped and raped for four years in Daegu. Managed to escape with her three-year-old son.

Devastating, he thinks. A full-fledged trauma.

Meanwhile, he laughs with a carefree air, deciding that those depressing matters won't chain his mind and endlessly sadden him, just so long as he can live his own life. He knows this sounds selfish, but he also knows that these tragic things unfortunately happen to people every day. When he thinks about it like that, the world suddenly becomes too large for him to breathe and live, and he really doesn't want to live every day with a soul too drained to keep moving forward. To him, the least he can do is live thankful that he hasn't experienced the worst of the world.

And hopefully never will.

Soon, he forgets about what he saw on the news once and moves on. Slows down. He breathes in deeply through his nose.

He sits on a park bench with his head tilted up high, reveling in the still air. No breeze. The flaming sky is clear, the evening is quiet, and the streetlights flicker on as the sun gracefully sets behind him. The stars peek out through the orange paint like little lights through blanket holes when you kick it up in the air and lock your legs in place.

"God's masterpiece," he sighs, smiling with his eyes fluttered closed.

She has such a hard time.

Judgmental gazes plague her life. Being born unwanted and having to live constantly pitied in society forces her to stitch the corners of her lips up, smiling through it all. Whenever she wants to break, she pulls the thread and smiles again. "It's getting better," she says to herself. Something always cracks inside whenever she says that.

She holds onto his small hand, thumbing over his ever-growing palm, letting go for a moment to let him free. Her child races no one with stubbly legs to the swings. She trails behind him as she thinks to herself. It is a rare sight to see him so eager to explore since he loves tight spaces and enclosed areas.

Where he feels safe.

"Mama!"

Her hands find her arms at the sudden chill that courses through her body. There's no wind around. She just suddenly, painfully remembers that she is a mother.

An unfit, unready mother, just barely holding on to get up every morning to give her child breakfast and work to earn the money for the food, the books for him to read, and everything else, so that her life now revolves around him in hopes that he will grow up to be a normal, healthy, appreciative child with a bright future.

There sits a stranger on the bench, a human she wants to ignore. "Orion," she hears him mutter.

His voice thrums low against his throat and causes a disturbance inside her.

A man.

"Mama!" Jihoon shrieks excitedly again.

The stranger's eyes crack open to roll his head to the side. His entire face brightens at the sight of a small child, who can't be more than three years old, kicking his little legs on the swing with little patience to his mother's lethargy. Adorable.

A tiny being with rosy cheeks, peculiar eyes, and chubby fingers. Baby feet. High-pitched voice.

"You're a beautiful thing," he says out loud, standing up and glancing at the child's mother, as if to ask permission to play with her child, when he stops. His smile freezes on his face.