Not Broken. Jaehyun Mafia Au

Prelude

"Wait really?!"

"Really! I swear it's true! When Louis died, none of us had the heart to tell him, so we just adopted a new cat and told Jaehyun that Louis had a rare condition that made his fur change color."

I guess that's why when Taeyong offered to get me a cat, he told me not to name it Louis.

"Wait so did he ever figure it out?"

Jessi took another swig from the Jack bottle before bursting into laughter.

"That's the thing. The first time we did it, Jaehyun was 9 years old," She revealed.

"The first time?" I gawked, unable to keep myself from laughing.

"Louis number two got into a scrap with a stray dog and lost. Damn, I shouldn't be laughing. That's not the funny part, the funny part was that after three days after Louis went missing, Jaehyun came rushing into the kitchen shouting 'I found Louis, his fur changed color again!' The boy was 13!"

The two of us toppled over one another as we drowned in our own laughter. As the conversation went on and the liquor bottle became lighter, Jessi and I found ourselves entangled in each other on the floor. I didn't know what I was expecting, but I never expected meeting my future mother-in-law to go like this.

"So, what happened then?" I asked, pleading for her to go on.

"We kept the cat for a week before missing cat posters starting poppin up all over the neighborhood. Ji-eun and I considered buying a new cat and just telling him that his fur changed again, but Sooman decided that it was time for Jaehyun to grow up. That poor boy, he was always a sensitive one, but you could tell he was holding back in front of his father."

"Sensitive? Jaehyun? Please, there isn't a sensitive bone in-"

I stopped myself, worried about what possible reaction she could have to me badmouthing her son, the man I was to marry. When I looked at her though, she had a soft smile on her face.

"I know that Jaehyun can be a hardass sometimes, but would you believe me if I told you he wasn't always like this?"

I watched silently as she stood up from the floor, leaving the bottle behind. She walked over to the nightstand and picked up a small picture frame.

"I'm sure you're aware of this, but from the moment we signed the adoption papers, Jaehyun's fate was sealed. He was to be the future of NCT. Although Sooman was already thirty-four at that point, I was only twenty-four years old, not much older than you. I tried to give him as much love as a mother could give, but Sooman was focused more on being his mentor than his father. Sometimes Ji-eun seemed to be more suited to the role of his successor than he was, but you see the Mobb world is one ruled by outdated values," She explained switching back to formal Korean.

She handed me the frame.

"This was before Jisung and Chenle joined our family."

It was a simple family portrait, the picture itself was no bigger than a postcard. There were four people in the photo. I recognized one of the subjects to be Sooman based on the few pictures of him I came across within the estate. Nothing about him particularly stood out to me, he just looked like a normal middle-aged Korean man. His hair wasn't dyed an unnatural color like his son's was, nor did he have the most handsome features either. Also, in the picture was a younger looking Jessi and a much younger looking Jaehyun holding what I assumed to be Louis number two in his arms. I took notice of the small divots that centered his cheeks. His face was much chubbier than it was now and his body much less developed. From what I could tell he must have been around thirteen years old at the time the photo was taken. Standing next to him was a young girl much taller than he but seemed to be only a few years older.