Waiting Game | pjm ✓

029. Origins

- fourteen years ago -

The man shifted on the uncomfortable outworn couch, tapping his foot impatiently. Even though he had just arrived, he was already eager to leave. This oppressive atmosphere he had sunk in was doing nothing else except depress him.

Lee Jiho didn’t like to be kept waiting. It was usually the other way around.

He let his eyes wander the room, pictures of children smiling were sprawled on each wall, depicting what seemed to be happy, carefree moments. The letters written under each frame, however, made his gut tie in anxious knots.

First Light Orphanage

“Are you entirely positive that he’s here?” he stretched his arms above his head lazily, glancing over at the older lady leaning against the window frame. She stood tall and slim, radiating a certain air of authority, full dark eyes observing the children running around the playground.

Her gaze dropped to the dull gray carpet covering the floor before shifting blindly to Jiho. “I already told you. This is where the Light took me. He has to be in here somewhere.”

Jiho’s eyes narrowed to thin slits as he gazed at the woman suspiciously. He knew better than to question his mother’s extrasensory perception, Lee Adara was the Clairvoyant after all.

Still, he wasn’t entirely convinced that this god-forsaken hellhole for abandoned children would be where they’d find the Protector.

“How are we even going to know that it’s him?” he questioned, folding his arms against his chest, his voice colored with uneasiness. “There are at least eighty, or ninety kids here. All we know is that we’re searching for a boy, so at least that cuts the number in half, but still. It could be any one of them.”

Jiho was starting to grow anxious. If his mother’s vision turned out to be wrong, they would have gone all the way there in vain. For the first time in years, they had a lead on the Protector’s identity. Just when they were starting to think they’d never find him.

Adara’s chest deflated in a long sigh, the morning light reflecting off her wrinkled but still beautiful face. “He’s supposed to be around the same age as her, perhaps a year or two older. And I’ll be able to sense his aura when I see him.”

“But how?” Jiho was still doubtful, throwing a glance at the underfed, frail children playing in the yard. “He’s just a little boy now.”

He wondered how did one even become a Protector. Was he born this way, like Jiho himself was born with his abilities?

Would this mysterious boy grow into the man that Fate had chosen him to be? Would he possess the power and strength to keep Aera safe? To risk his life for her?

To be willing to die for her?

Adara shuffled to the desk in the middle of the room, head hanging low and fingers pinching the root of her nose, the many rings wrapped around each of them glowing under the sunlight. Pressing her lips in a thin line, she paused for a while and furrowed her brows, as if she was debating internally whether to say something or not.