「 simple ; lee jihoon 」

[ four : 첫사랑 ]

Happiness, is just a dream that everyone wants.

________________

IT WAS 12 AM.
A small boy, with even smaller, broken dreams continued to journey on the road back home.

Sometimes he wondered if he was really on the right track, or careering down this path of his with no aim for the future.

Jihoon sighed. He was no more than a five year old boy, no more than a petite, small frame. At the age where he should be playing with cars, cuddling into his mother's soft, warm embrace, wailing whenever he wanted something and having people rush to his command.

Kids at his school get that. Kids at his school don't have to do dirty work to earn their school fees.

What's most annoying of all, is that the imagination of kids run to big, big dreams.

Dreams of being astronauts, warriors, doctors and archaeologists.

Jihoon's dream, is to live a normal life.

He can't even have that.

It's as small as a seed. Maybe a small, dormant seed.

A flower grown in a dream that can't be blossomed.

As his thoughts progressed further like his slowing, fatigued footsteps, breaking through a medium of age and toddler mentality, snowflakes started to hook onto his tousled, raven locks.

Jihoon felt the ice melt at the contact with his body temperature, and his legs buckled.

He cried.

Cold water sliding off his face carefreely carefully masked his tears from the prying eyes of the public, as if that was the only thing Mother Nature could do to give Jihoon some of his dignity back.

Everything seemed to crash down heavily on his exhausted, fragile shoulders and tear him apart, like it always did.

Jihoon was done. Done with shouldering his family's burdens at his age. Done with seeing his mother's heart ache for him at night. Done with Jieun's nightly wails of hunger.

He was even more done, with the situation that fate had so cruelly written for him.

It was never supposed to be. A young boy, flourishing in the spring like a freshly, sprightly young blossom-dancing in the wind like a dandelion and chasing the dogs in the park with a feisty, youthful spirit.

He didn't stay for long.

Poverty had painted on the bags of his eyes smoky grey tints, and the turmoil of time carved out his bitter, pained smiles.

Just like that-the boy from before was chained up, beaten and scorned by the grown up mentality of Jihoon's, which had gone through the test of time with much difficulty. He was tied away, to the deepest, darkest crevices of Jihoon's heart.

What was more horrifying, was that he would stay a memory, a memory that had previously lasted for no more than a year.

Jihoon doesn't know what he wants from himself anymore.

He doesn't even know who he is.

However, in the whirlpool of anxiety that he wallowed in and allowed to grab hold of his emotions, there was a small, insignificant, yet present, sliver of hope.

In his confusion of the migraine surfacing over his sickly, pounding forehead Jihoon hung by a thread. With the last flecks of willpower that he posessed, he listened carefully.

Maybe fate had decided to pick him back up again.

Maybe.

Drifting into his ears, shutting down the berating voices in his head, was no more than a simple, gentle serenade to a broken boy, sung by a low, accentuated undertone.