Work Text:
Kim Rok Soo looks at the kid, because he's a kid, because he's only fourteen and hasn't lived a quarter of what he has, so he's a kid. He thinks about how unfair the world is, he thinks about how Cale is clearly a kid and even has a family but yet he's already lost everything, already let it all go.
It's so, so unfair.
Because he knows what this life will do to a mere child who has nothing because he can't keep, even if it never gets to be as cruel as it was to him.
So he thinks and thinks and thinks, as he watches the kid sitting obediently on the floor, constantly ruining the brushwork by leaning into the touch and then suddenly walking away as if reminding himself that he shouldn't act like that but doing it again and again and again.
He thinks and thinks and thinks, until his head hurts and his hands shake but he still keeps combing, because this child is so clearly starving for affection and affection is all Kim Rok Soo has to give.
He thinks and thinks and thinks, as he watches the sleeping child clinging to one of his hands with a fear that shouldn't be there in the first place, that the world is cruel and unfair but at least this time it let him get there before the damage was irreparable.