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Chapter Text

i risk it all for this life

in which yebin gets hurt and no one knows how to deal with it

When it happens, the timing is perfect. No one is watching.

Half the performers have just left to get lunch and the theater is quiet. They’ve got almost eight hours until the show starts, but Yebin is already running through her routine, dangling over ten feet in the air from one of her aerial hoops, high above everyone’s heads. Minkyung has watched her do the same routine a million times, both in the show and in her spare time. She practices like her life depends on it, and Minkyung thinks that she has never met someone more devoted to bettering herself than Yebin is. It’s endearing, even if Minkyung does wish that Yebin spent half the time she spends up in the air with Minkyung.

Minkyung had been watching her, but her attention is diverted when Kyungwon calls her over to help with the animals. She and Kyla had been struggling with them for several minutes, to no avail. Minkyung isn’t too sure what they’re trying to do – the animal acts are always the highlight of the show for most of the audience, and it almost always works perfectly.

But Kyungwon and Kyla know more about their act than Minkyung does. She just has to announce them and get the crowd riled up. So she doesn’t question them now, following orders as they’re given to her, making sure to stay safely away from the lions, even if they are in cages. Kyla doesn’t seem to have the same reservations. She walks right up to their cages and motions to them like she isn’t afraid. And they follow her every move.

Nayoung has just disappeared into the back, promising to be back in a minute, and Minkyung knows she’s tired. She’s hardly slept the last several nights – Minkyung had heard her wandering around the house at night, and the bags under her eyes betrayed her, even though she protested the opposite. Minkyung knows running the show must be stressful for her, and she wants to help – she’s the second Ringleader, anyway. But she couldn’t very well do anything if Nayoung refuses to include her in anything.

So Minkyung lets her go, focused on helping Kyungwon with the horses they are currently getting ready to go back in their stalls in the stable out back. She loves the horses. They are so cooperative most of the time, and Minkyung had always thought they are so pretty. Her mother never let her near them when she was a kid, and she had always wanted to ride one. But Kyungwon is strict about the animals, so Minkyung just pets the horse gently as she pulls on its reins and leads it out of the ring.

Her back is to Yebin when it happens, and she doesn’t see it. Kyla is facing the lions. Kyungwon is tending to the horses she’s leading. Nayoung is in one of the back rooms.

No one is watching the bird in the air above the ring, and no one sees when her grip slips and she falls gracelessly to the ground.

Minkyung hears her shriek of surprise and the awful sound she makes colliding with the dirt on the floor of the ring, but by the time she turns around, the action is over. The hoop is swinging side to side in the air, and Yebin is in a heap on the ground. Minkyung’s heart stutters in her chest.

There’s a second of silence in the theater as the other girls stare in shock. Even the animals stop complaining. Minkyung moves first, handing the reins she’s holding to Kyungwon and running to the center of the ring where the aerialist fell, her body moving on autopilot.

Yebin is in the process of sitting up when Minkyung reaches her, groaning quietly in pain with every movement. She’s still awake and she’s moving, and that is enough to keep Minkyung from having a heart attack, barely. Minkyung drops to her knees beside her, her eyes running over her quickly, looking for any sign of injury.

“Yebin?” she asks, noticing the awful angle her ankle was bent at.

Yebin tries to sit up further, using her arms to push herself up, but immediately hisses in pain and retracts as soon as she puts any weight on her one wrist. “Ow, fuck,” she mutters, pulling her arm to her chest.

Minkyung bites her lip, feeling horrible. She can’t even stand the idea of the younger girl in pain, and she really doesn’t like the look of her ankle. She had seen her lose her grip before, but she had never actually fallen from the air. She never seemed like she was able to, like she could just stretch her arms out and fly if she wanted. Minkyung immediately thanks any god listening that this didn’t happen during a show when she is even higher up and has a crowd watching.

“Kyla,” she says suddenly, turning to the young lion tamer. She and Kyungwon are still frozen in place, watching them. “Go get Nayoung.”

Kyla nods and rushes off, and Kyungwon seems to snap out of it and immediately starts moving to put the horses away like she was trying to before Yebin fell.

“My head hurts,” Yebin complains, sounding like she was close to tears, before closing her eyes and letting her head fall on Minkyung’s shoulder. “Everything hurts.”

Minkyung doesn’t know what to say, so she carefully wraps her arms around the other girl and runs her fingers through her hair comfortingly, staying quiet.

“Three months?” Yebin asks, sounding scandalized, as she stares wide-eyed at the doctor. Minkyung sits on the edge of the bed, resisting the urge to pull her uninjured hand into her own, at least while the doctor is there.

“At least, yes,” the doctor confirms, and Minkyung can tell Yebin is about to combust. “Any attempt to perform before then will likely only make your injuries worse and undo any healing that had started.”

“I can’t—I can’t wait three months!” Yebin insists. “I’m a circus performer, they need me! Can’t you just—fix me now and get it over with?” Minkyung reaches out now, resting a hand on the girl’s thigh to calm her down.

“Please forgive my friend,” Nayoung takes over smoothly, pulling the doctor’s attention away from Yebin’s meltdown. “She’s in shock.”

Yebin splutters in protest, but Nayoung has it in hand now. “Can you explain to me again the treatment you were telling us about for her head injury?” The doctor nods and starts explaining something, leading Nayoung out of the room. She shoots them a quick glance over her shoulder before focusing her attention back to his words.

As soon as Nayoung and the doctor have left, Minkyung reaches for Yebin’s uninjured hand and intertwines their fingers. They’re supposed to be discreet about their relationship in public, and Minkyung knows it’s necessary, even if it is annoying. The circus doesn’t need bad publicity because of them. But she figures this is a special situation, so she really can’t care less.

“Three months?” Yebin complains again, turning to Minkyung. “What am I supposed to do for three months?”

“You can sit with me backstage,” Minkyung offers. “Or you can actually watch the show for once. It’s a lot different when you see it from the audience.”

Yebin almost smiles, the corners of her lips quirking upwards for a split second before she goes back to pouting. “But the show… Eunwoo can’t do our part alone. You can’t do a trapeze act with only one trapeze artist.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Minkyung promises, rubbing circles into the back of Yebin’s hand with her thumb. “Maybe it’ll be good publicity when you’re better. We can do a huge event for your first show back.”

“That’s so far away. Wouldn’t it be even more impressive if I can do my act with a broken ankle? That could be good publicity.”

“No. Absolutely not,” Minkyung replies immediately, shaking her head. “You are not performing again until you are one hundred percent better. I don’t need you dying on me anytime soon.”

Yebin deflates, but she doesn’t look like she’s going to argue any further. Minkyung frowns, scooting around on the bed to sit next to her, closer than they were. She understands why the shorter girl is so upset. Yebin loves performing. She spends every free minute she has in the air, and Minkyung knows being kept on the ground for three months must sound awful.

“We’ll figure it out,” she repeats, squeezing her hand. “But trying to perform before you’re better just puts you at more risk. You were lucky this time, Yebs. If you had been higher up--”

“I know,” Yebin says, and Minkyung knows she’s been thinking about it too.

Minkyung hesitates a second before continuing. “You scared me half to death.”

Yebin rests her head on Minkyung’s shoulder, turning her face into her skin. “Sorry,” she says quietly, and Minkyung turns her head to press a chaste kiss to her hair.

“Yebin!” someone yells, and Yebin and Minkyung both look up to see the other girls all stampeding into the room. They’re loud, and Minkyung gets the feeling the people in the beds all around them are probably about to get really aggravated.

But she really doesn’t care, because within seconds everyone is gathered around Yebin’s bed, equal looks of worry and relief on their faces. They’re all talking at once, but Minkyung knows they all care so much it’s overwhelming. Minkyung can’t imagine not being around when it happened, having to find out through someone else and not knowing if Yebin was okay or not.

“Kyungwon said you fell! What happened?”

“What’s wrong with your wrist?”

“You’re okay, right?”

“Three months?” Eunwoo repeats, and Yebin nods.

She’s pouting again, but something is different now. Her family is all gathered around her, and she seems more at ease. Minkyung feels a rush of fondness for all of them. She stays quiet, her fingers still locked tightly around Yebin’s, and lets them all get the shock out of their systems, despite the scene they were making in the hospital wing. They are loud and chaotic, and they put themselves in danger just about every night, but they’re a family.

And Minkyung never felt like she belonged anywhere more.

Chapter Text

i am brave, i am bruised

kang yebin never had much, but she always had family. ( part 1 )

When Yebin was little, her mother used to say that she belonged to the jungle. As soon as she could walk, she was climbing. The fire escape outside their tiny, second-floor apartment was her favorite playground.

Once, when she was eight ( almost nine ), she had been swinging from the ladder attached to the fire escape when she lost her grip and fell to the asphalt a story below. Her parents rushed her to the doctor and she had to wear a cast on her foot for two months. That night, and several nights after, Yebin noticed her parents skipping dinner. When she asked them about it, they told her they weren’t hungry. But Yebin knew better.

They thought she didn’t hear them, late at night after they had checked on her and decided she was asleep. But she had only been pretending and she sat in bed and listened to them talk in the other room.

They were a month behind on rent.

They had to pay the hospital for Yebin’s visit.

They had to choose between paying the rent and buying food for the week.

Yebin knew it was all her fault. They had never had tons of money – she had had to live without things she knew many kids her age usually had, but they had always made it work. If she hadn’t broken her foot playing on the fire escape, they would have been able to pay the rent. Her parents weren’t skipping meals because they weren’t hungry. They didn’t have enough food for all of them and were prioritizing Yebin over themselves. She felt awful – and utterly hopeless. There had to be something she could do, even though she was only eight years old.

Mrs. Choi offered the solution.

Everyone said Mrs. Choi was crazy. She lived in an apartment building across the street from Yebin’s family’s, and her windows were level with their own. She had never married and had no children, and she only ever left her apartment to sell flowers on the street below. They were all wilted and sad-looking ( not unlike Mrs. Choi herself ) and Yebin had never seen her sell a single one. Her windows were lit by light from inside even during the darkest hours of the night. The only people she ever really spoke to were the neighborhood children, but they were often mean to her.

Everyone told her Mrs. Choi was probably insane ( what else could you call an old spinster? ) but she had always been kind to Yebin. Sometimes while her parents were away at work, Yebin would sit with Mrs. Choi and her flowers and tell her what they had learned at school that day. She was a little odd, sure, but Yebin never thought she was crazy.

When she told her about her family’s issues, Mrs. Choi offered Yebin a job. Yebin got the feeling she was just looking for an excuse to give Yebin the money, but she gladly accepted the job anyway. Once or twice a week, she snuck out after her parents fell asleep and ran across the street to Mrs. Choi’s apartment. She sorted the bookshelves or swept the kitchen, and Mrs. Choi would pay her at the end of every task. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

Yebin knew she couldn’t give her parents the money. They would force her to give up her job, tell her they could handle it on their own and that Yebin shouldn’t be worrying about those things. Not to mention how upset they would be that she had been sneaking out in the middle of the night. Instead, she slipped the bills in her mother’s purse as soon as she got home and crept back into bed.

She heard them discussing it a few days later. They chalked it up to an error in their budget and dismissed it. The next night, they all ate dinner together as a family.

No one ever questioned why Yebin kept falling asleep in school the days after.

She could remember the smoke more than the fire.

Yebin had been dusting the bookshelves at Mrs. Choi’s when she began to smell it. At first she thought it might just be the dust and the old books Mrs. Choi kept lying around. But then she glanced out the nearest window and saw the plumes of black smoke cascading from the building across the street. It was coming from the windows directly across from the one she was looking through.

It took her a minute to process what that meant, but when it hit her, Yebin’s heart stopped. Her family’s windows were right across from Mrs. Choi’s.

The city seemed to realize it the same time Yebin did because just as she dropped her feather duster, she heard the sirens. The city was suddenly alive, but all Yebin could see was the smoke. She tried to orient herself against her own apartment, count the windows and figure out which room was which. The fifth from the right was Yebin’s bedroom – she had spent countless hours staring out that one. Which meant the one two down from her room had to be her parents’ bedroom. Yebin’s stomach dropped at the thick smoke pouring out that window.

Yebin was frozen in place, her eyes wide in horror as she stared at the burning building. She could see the flames peeking through doorways, licking up walls. Everything was up in smoke.

When she found her bearings, Yebin tore away from the window and out of Mrs. Choi’s apartment. She took the stairs two at a time, but the firemen still beat her to the scene. The neighbors were on the street, looking haggard and tired but staring at the building in a strange mix of horror and awe. Some of them were covered in ash, and a spark of hope lit inside Yebin. She surged forward, but one of the firemen caught her around the waist and held her back.

“Let me go!” Yebin wailed at her captor, kicking her legs at him. “That’s my house! My family is in there!”

But the man held fast, and Yebin could do nothing but watch as her entire life burnt to ash in front of her eyes.

The little girl in the bed next to Yebin’s was crying. Yebin had never spoken to her, didn’t even know her name, but she was much younger and had hardly stopped crying since she arrived. The girls around them had been complaining all day. One of them had thrown things at her to try and make her stop.

Yebin hadn’t cried at all.

It had been a week and a half since the fire. It had taken almost the entire night to stop the burning and the building was left little more than a husk. Of all the families inside, only a handful of people had made it out unharmed. A few more were hospitalized, and the rest were assumed dead until their bones showed up in the wreckage.

Yebin had begged Mrs. Choi to take her in, but Mrs. Choi had refused and she was moved to the nearest orphanage the same day. The entire process was very efficient – within two days of the fire, it had been like she had lived in the orphanage her entire life.

“Be quiet!” someone yelled, the room shifting in the darkness. Yebin stared at the ceiling, unblinking, as the girl continued to cry.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something fly over and hit her. In the minutes following, she was silent.

Yebin held her breath, trying to make herself as small and unnoticeable as possible. She could hear her pursuers around the corner, making a lot of noise even though it was past curfew and they were sure to get in trouble if any of the adults found them. She pulled her knees to her chest, making sure the tablecloth fell in an even line around her and kept her hidden. The children weren’t allowed in the kitchen even during the day, and Yebin was hoping they knew that and assumed she went elsewhere. Then she could sneak out and back to her bunk without them noticing.

Of course she wasn’t that lucky. She heard the pounding footsteps getting closer before the door to the kitchen banged open and slammed against the wall. Yebin jumped, startled, but quickly tried to compose herself.

Breathing as quietly as humanly possible, Yebin listened as they walked around the room, making a ruckus and clattering equipment wherever they went. Then, finally, it was quiet. Yebin closed her eyes, hoping for the best, when suddenly the tablecloth was violently ripped away and she was face-to-face with her attackers.

“There you are, you little brat,” one of them snarled, a boy slightly older than Yebin.

There were four of them, and they seemed to exist just to make Yebin’s life a living hell. She had spent the first year at the orphanage trying her hardest to remain invisible, and for a while it had worked. Until it didn’t. For months now they had cornered her after classes and picked on her in front of all the children. It was humiliating and no one seemed willing to help her. The adults never seemed to care about the bruises she showed up to meals with. They were bigger than her and stronger than her, and Yebin felt hopeless.

“Thought you could hide?” one of the girls sneered, grabbing her by the hair and hauling her to her feet. Yebin cried out in pain, but they just laughed. It felt like her scalp was on fire and she was relieved when the girl let go, but she knew it was only the beginning.

“What did we tell you last time?” the first boy asked, stepping close to Yebin. She was short for her age and he towered over her, so she lowered her eyes to the ground and refused to look up. “I asked you a question, bitch. What did we tell you?”

“Don’t make it hard for you,” Yebin whispered, feeling small.

“Don’t make it hard for you,” the other girl repeated, putting on a thick accent to mock her. Yebin had never noticed her accent until they pointed it out – she spoke the way everyone in her city spoke. But now that she was aware of it, she spent a lot of time thinking over her words before she said them, trying to keep her accent out of her voice.

“And what did you do?” the first girl said, her voice sweet. Yebin kept her eyes on the ground. “You ran from us.”

“What are we going to do about that?”

Yebin could tell where this was going, and her heart sped up in fear. There was no way she could run from them now – they were all taller than her, and they were too close for her to get past them. She was trapped.

One of the boys grabbed her arm, his fingers tight as iron around her skin. She wanted to cry already, but she knew it was just the beginning. He had only grabbed her to make sure she wouldn’t slip away.

Yebin was too focused on the impending violence sure to be waged against her, so she didn’t hear the door open. But she saw one of the girls turn around quickly, her posture straightening. And she heard someone clear their throat, before the rest of her tormentors stepped away from her and turned to face their headmistress. The boy holding her arm let go quickly, and Yebin resisted the urge to rub the spot where his hand had been.

“What are you doing out of bed?” the headmistress asked, her voice harsh. Yebin looked up now, blinking her unshed tears away, and found the woman’s eyes trained solely on her.

“Madam Bak, thank god you’re here!” one of the girls exclaimed. “Yebin said she was going to steal the desserts for tomorrow’s Visitor’s Dinner! She threatened us to make us go along with her!”

She wasn’t a great liar. Yebin wouldn’t believe her even if she didn’t know the real story, but she had learned a while ago not to trust the headmistress’s judgment. Madam Bak had a soft spot for a select few of the children, it seemed, and it just happened that those children were the nastiest and worst in the entire orphanage. They could do no wrong in her eyes.

“Kang Yebin, what did we talk about?” she asked, her steely eyes narrowing as she looked at Yebin. Yebin glanced at the girl who had spoken. The corners of her lips were lifted in a tiny proud smile, and she looked at Yebin with smug eyes.

“One more warning and there would be consequences,” Yebin muttered. Madam Bak nodded gravely.

“Children, straight to bed. Don’t let me find you awake at this hour again,” she said, but Yebin knew she wasn’t talking to her. The other four children nodded and fled the room. The girl glanced over her shoulder and stuck her tongue out at Yebin behind Madam Bak’s back before leaving. The door shut behind them, and Yebin was alone with the headmistress.

“Kang Yebin, how long have you been here?” Madam Bak asked, her voice surprisingly civil. Yebin kept her eyes trained on the floor, refusing to meet hers.

“Two years,” she mumbled.

“You’ve been here for two years, but you still don’t know the rules? What are we going to do with you?”

Yebin could have argued. She could have pleaded her case, told Madam Bak all about the things the other kids said to her, the things they did. She could have showed her some of the leftover bruises from the last time that still lingered on her skin. But it was no use. She knew it wouldn’t make a difference anyway, so she kept her eyes down and her mouth shut.

“Children like you are vermin,” Madam Bak said sourly. Yebin flinched. “Look at me while I am speaking to you, you ungrateful child.” Yebin didn’t look up.

When Madam Bak slapped her, the sound was like a clap of thunder, a red hot mark marring the side of her face, but Yebin felt nothing.

Yebin gasped awake and sat up in the darkness, her mind replaying the sound of her tormentors’ laughter, the smell of smoke in her lungs. She had been a permanent resident of the orphanage for three years, but she still awoke in the middle of the night with nightmares more often than not.

The children around her were still sleeping. A few of them snored, but there was no one awake to complain at this hour. From her bunk, she could see faint light coming from the few windows lining the walls of the room, a hint of the impending sunrise. Yebin blinked away the fire behind her eyelids and slid out of bed.

Leaning against the windowsill, she could see down the valley to the town the orphanage lay just outside of. Most of the buildings were dark, though a couple had candles lit in the windows. One of the larger mansions on the outskirts of town was lit from the inside. Yebin figured sleep was irrelevant when you were rich enough to not have to work all day.

The sun was peeking over the horizon, casting golden rays down on the town. Yebin had lived here for three years, but she’d never been allowed to go into town. Some of the older kids ran errands for the adults, but Yebin wasn’t trusted outside the walls – perks of a reputation stitched together by bullies that threw her under the bus at any opportunity.

With her back to the kids in the orphanage, and her eyes on the city below them, Yebin could almost imagine a life out there. She didn’t know where she’d go if she could escape – her hometown was several miles up the road, too far to walk, and she didn’t know anyone in the town below. But anywhere was better than the orphanage, she thought. She had seen homeless people in her hometown, little kids and elderly people sitting on the sidewalk begging for money. Some did tricks or performed to persuade people to buy them a meal. Yebin didn’t have any talents, but she admired their freedom.

She stared out the window until the sun rose about the treetops, and the children behind her stirred. At last the doors to their quarters were opened and one of the adults shouted at them to wake up. Turning her back to the world outside, Yebin faced her actual life.

As she got dressed for the day, children sneered at her on their way to breakfast. One of her tormentors shoved her shoulder as she passed, knocking Yebin off her balance to the floor.

She was the last one out of the room for breakfast that day. As she shut the door behind her, she glanced back out of the window at the far end, the sun rising over a town that was barely awake. She had never been on those streets, but it already felt more like a home than this place did.