Chapter Text
Changbin loved the sunlight.
His earliest memories were filled with days in the sun; days where his parents were screaming at each other or simply had no time for him, so he’d make his escape and run around for hours in his seemingly endless backyard. Beyond the edge of the lawn, there were a dozen paths with a dozen destinations deep in the woods past the garden. The garden itself was lush, with tall bushes and an endless sea of colorful, sweet-smelling flowers. But Changbin was not allowed in the garden. If he got close enough to admire even a single pastel-pink rose, he was quickly ushered away by a member of the extensive outdoor staff. He didn’t mind too much. He’d simply run off into the wide-open field of evenly-cut grass and bask in the warmth of the sun, the light covering his face and arms in the sort of encompassing comfort he longed for, or find shelter in a low-hanging branch of a tree, high enough to feel like the ground was far away, but not high enough to scrape his knees if he fell (Mother hated scraped knees).
Changbin hated school.
At exactly 7:30 every morning since he was 6, he was driven by a chauffeur to a large, dull brick building with columns at the main entrance. He would enter the double doors, propped open by various homeroom teachers, and step onto glossy, slippery floors. His classrooms were full of windows, but still somehow lacked brightness. Any light that fell past the limits of the glass transformed into a lifeless glare to be blocked out, as if the building had sucked the joy from it. He felt his spirit drained by the off-white walls, the half-hearted lectures, and the constant scratching of pencils. He barely knew his classmates, despite what he told his father. A lifelong politician and champion of the upper class, Changbin’s father expected his son to be a natural when it came to networking, but there was something about most of these his fellow students that Changbin found off-putting. He cared very little about what his classmates had to say and rarely understood everything they were talking about. It’s like he could feel his mind wilting with every second he spent indoors. At lunch and break times, he rushed to the nearest exit; to the sunlight.
For his 17th birthday, Changbin’s parents took a trip to the United States capital. Without him. He spent two weeks in unusual bliss. He certainly felt left behind, but there was a relief to the quiet around the house. It was never empty, as there was a house staff member practically around every corner, but there were no expectations for him whatsoever. As long as he was back before dark, the staff allowed him to do as he pleased. He biked around the neighborhood, laid in windowsills, and hid under tables, just for the sake of his own enjoyment. But mostly, he was outdoors. By this time, Changbin had memorized every inch of his own backyard, but he never seemed to be sick of it. Halfway through his own two-week vacation, he took a morning stroll down his favorite path in the deep woods to his favorite part of the stream (this part always had the most tadpoles in spring). It had never occurred to him before today, but there were more woods on the other side of the stream. His new, fledgling sort of freedom had opened his eyes to many small things, seemingly invisible to him before, and his mind raced to catch up. He leaped and landed in the mud, defying his parents' strict need for cleanliness at all times, relishing in the streaks of muck now marring his pristine shoes and pleated pant cuffs. There was no path to be found here, and Changbin found that a comfort. He would make the path himself, something new, something that was his alone. He skipped and jumped and cheered himself deeper and deeper into the woods, caught up by this wild, newfound spirit of freedom. Before long, as if he willed it into existence, he came upon an old greenhouse. Not fearing the snakes or poison ivy that could have made its home within the glass walls, Changbin swung open the doors without hesitation. He was greeted with the sight of rows of brown and dried plants, all left to wither alone. Disappointed to find only death and rot within, he knelt on the ground and mournfully laid a gentle hand at the base of an unknown stem. He felt overwhelmingly sad, as if he was too late as if he could tell this stem had no more life to give. Surprised by his own sentimental reaction, he withdrew his hand, the feeling lingering on his fingertips and his heart like the warmth of rich soil.
The stem twitched.
He wandered a bit within the foggy interior, among this leafy graveyard. Changbin’s world was quite small, he knew, confined to his home and his school. He had never known loss nor grief, but standing in this abandoned paradise made him feel a deep hopelessness. Was he like this greenhouse, destined to wilt away under poor supervision? He felt a tear roll down his cheek at the sight of so much death. He had to fix this. Are not these little lives worth something too? Frantic, yet full of an excited frail sort of hope, he began running between the rows of tables, scouring for any sign of green, any glimpse of life left to save. In a shaded corner, he found a small pot with only a shriveled leaf attached to a wilted stem. This time, less gentle and with more desperation, he clutched the potted plant to his chest and pleaded for it to live. With a life-long tightness just beginning to loosen in his chest, Changbin wept in joy and confusion as the leaves obeyed his wishes.
His parents returned almost in secret. It was early, maybe 4 am, when Changbin heard muffled voices and the sound of a box being scraped across the floor. He knew better than to make his presence known, so he cautiously opened his bedroom door and tiptoed to the blindspot between the hall and the staircase landing. His father followed some men into the Western wing of the house, where the doors were always locked, and his mother assumed her natural position of ordering the staff about here and there. The men with his father were pushing a large wooden crate, with not much difficulty and even less care. They closed the doors behind them, and Changbin returned to bed. When he inquired about the box at breakfast, he was dismissed and reminded that if he could not follow instructions (such as staying out of where he didn’t belong), he would be sent to a boarding school overseas. Changbin thought of his greenhouse, now much more green and thriving than a week ago, his own hidden miracle deep in the woods, and decided it was in his best interest to leave the matter alone. He needed those plants, and they needed him, so whenever he heard shouting and the clanging of metal over the next few weeks from the forbidden Western wing, he simply went outside and forgot it. The sunlight would wash it all away.
Six months went by. School had started again after the summer holiday and, after a season of consistent light and warmth, Changbin found himself more uneasy than ever before at being shut inside all day. His body almost rejected the indoors, his skin tight around his bones, his hands always moving since his feet could not. He couldn’t focus, and no amount of lecturing from his father could fix his ever-declining grades. Around winter break, his class president even threatened him not to keep bringing down the class average, lest he tell his father he’d been skipping the period after lunch, just to catch the desperate rays of the wintry midday sun. Now, it was spring, and his unrest only worsened. All the new life rushing up from the earth, all the heady smells hanging on the air, only filled his body with an ache to be out, to be surrounded by the sun’s warmth and all it gave life to. He couldn’t help but fight back when he was denied his freedoms, his lifelong complacency suddenly an affront to his own happiness. He talked back to both his parents, toeing the line drawn his whole life, testing limits he had never dared to test before. Changbin knew he was one snarky comment away from being shipped off to Japan to spend his last year in school studying in a rainy, dreary city devoid of sunlight. When he wasn’t at school or being lectured, he spent every waking moment at the greenhouse. In six short months, he’d brought it back to life, and he himself was given new life through it. He’d found purpose and peace in a life that was meaningless and lonely, expanded by the simple rows of earth and the soft curling pleasure of a growing thing. Only a few steps beyond the stream, his world had been expanded by miles.
Rain. Endless rain. The first week of summer, after dragging himself through end-of-year exams and scraping by with the lowest possible grade his father would accept, it rains. Changbin found himself sleeping most of the day, or softly pacing between the rooms of the house, discovering new friends among his mother’s lilies or the leafy giants in the foyer. They, too, were wilting at the lack of sunlight, and Changbin used whatever energy he could muster to perk them up a little, running his fingers along the leaves as he passed. Within three days, he was practically nocturnal and had taken a liking to the quiet atmosphere of the large house past midnight. He jumped at the occasional creaky floorboard or swaying curtain, chuckling to himself when he did. On the fifth day of cloudy skies, Changbin wandered the halls again, determined to journey further than the previous nights. As he made his way closer to the Western wing, he heard that all too familiar shouting and clanging of metal, accompanied this time by an indiscernible rustling noise. He urged himself further, clinging to shadows on the walls as if they provided him some protection. Loud and angry footsteps made their way in his direction, so he crouched behind a monstera with whom he’d become quite friendly. His father burst through the perpetually locked doors and stormed through the center of the house, no doubt waking the staff in a cold sweat. Changbin’s eyes followed his father’s silhouette until he disappeared into the dark, then turned back to see the doors hanging open, a faint light shining through the entrance. He felt his breath catch in his lungs, the barest tendril of an unknown feeling beginning to unfurl in his chest like a new fern. Something more than childish curiosity and defiance coaxed him towards those forbidden doors. From his crouched position, he fell onto his hands and knees, breathless and with eyes wide. He dared to stand, the slight shake in his legs an afterthought, eyes, and heart glued to the bare inches of the open door, and felt the leaves of the monstera on his arm. They were reaching, softly yet surely growing towards the same place where Changbin’s full attention lay; but for what?
He didn’t have the chance to find out before one of the housekeepers grabbed him by the arm, startling him away from the light, and practically threw him up the stairs, warning him to “mind his own.” He sprinted back to bed and collapsed into the sheets, drained and on edge from whatever secret he was about to uncover. By the time Changbin woke up the next morning, his dreams had all slipped away, save for the same ache in his chest and the feeling of warm light falling from the crack of an open door.
For the first time, Changbin felt real conflict in his heart. The sunny days of summer had finally begun again, but every moment in the safety of the outdoors was coupled with a curiosity that drew him back towards the house. That house. The one he’d spent his whole life running from, that never felt like home, that was only cold reminders of his own lonely childhood. Suddenly it contained a conundrum to be solved. What in that house could capture him so intensely? What could his father possibly be hiding behind those doors to make him so curious—no—desperate to discover more? The ache that had begun to grow in his chest that night he had first seen the light, the light he dreamed of almost every night since only drew him back again and again. And yet, Changbin clung even more desperately to his greenhouse. The sunlight and growing things helped the ache, soothing it for small periods of time, but it always came back again, as if urging him to do something. His parents’ patience was thinner and their tempers shorter than ever, but his plants grew taller and stronger along with his confidence. It must be a miracle, he thought, to have such a gift as caring for another living thing.
At long last, he had someone, or something, to talk to about whatever was on his mind. He poured his heart out to the geraniums and petunias about feeling lonely; chatted to the rosemary and mustard seed about wanting to practice growing trees next; rambled on and on to the corner of fruits about all the places he was going to visit when he was older, making sure to thank the strawberry plants for the midday snack. Sometimes his chatting would turn into a nervous habit, his own stubbornness trying to keep him from thinking of that ache again, that pull back to the house he had worked so hard to pull himself away from. His conflict confused him to no end: he has always wanted to leave, why, now that he had finally found something that was his, was he drawn back there again? He just wanted to escape. He wondered, every so often, if he grew a good variety of fruits and vegetables if he could live here in the woods forever. Or, at least, long enough to age out of school and be independent. Perhaps he could run off to the countryside and find work on a farm, or anywhere he didn’t need good grades or his father’s connections in order to succeed. He could shake off the expectations that followed him like dark shadows, shake off even his family name, and simply live for himself. Here within his glass walls, he plotted a dozen plans of escape. One more year, and he would be free. In the face of his own growing, blooming dreams, his parents’ plans for him were much too small now. University, boardroom meetings, and marriage to an heiress were never very appealing to Changbin, but at least now he had his own plans. He couldn’t wait for the day to come when he would bid farewell to his cold parents, to that cold house, and to the perfect garden, he wasn’t allowed to touch. He only hoped his greenhouse would forgive his abandonment.
It had been a long time since his parents threw a party. At 8 pm, as if he was five years old again, the head housekeeper told him to stay quiet and occupy himself with a 78book, then shut the door behind her and locked it from the outside. Changbin was tempted to ask the ivy outside his window to climb a little higher so he could crawl out into the night air, but he was content to go to sleep early in the hopes of rising with the sun. If this was his last summer in this house, he was going to savor as much of it as he could. He could go to sleep, ask no questions, just this once.
He laid on his stomach and put a pillow over his head to drown out the noise downstairs. From what he had pieced together over the years, these parties involved lots of alcohol, a noisy 8-piece orchestra, and at least a hundred people. In the past, they were a political campaign tactic, but since his father’s place in office was secure, he couldn’t imagine what a hundred people could possibly be here to do for several hours. Perhaps adults were lonely too and needed any excuse to be around each other, even as a tactic; even just for show. He drifted off to sleep, thinking once again about the captivating light that shone through the crack in the door that fateful night.
Changbin awoke with a start to shouts of fear and outrage. He rushed to the door and attempted to turn the handle, but it remained locked. He put his ear to the door and listened closely, barely making out his father’s voice above the commotion and his own startled heartbeat thundering in his chest. The crowd suddenly went eerily silent, followed by a vaguely familiar rustling noise, and then a storm of gasps and cheers. He took a deep breath. It must have been some kind of campaign speech gone wrong. Perhaps his father misspoke and startled the crowd. He shuffled back to bed and tried to sleep again, noticing the clock on his wall read 1 am. To his frustration, sleep did not come. He tried to take his housekeeper’s advice and committed himself to a book on botany he borrowed from the school library. No one had ever checked it out before, so the librarian told him he could keep it for the summer. After only a few lines, he found it hard to focus, his attention was beyond his bedroom door on the noises downstairs. By 2 am, there was a noticeably quieter, and likely, smaller, crowd. Around 3 am, he could hear metal trays clanking together as the staff cleared glasses from tables. At 4 am, Changbin heard the lock on his door turn, followed by footsteps walking away down the hall. The sun would be up in a couple of hours, so there was no point in sleeping now. He waited about twenty minutes before slipping on a pair of socks to mask his footsteps and venturing out into the night. His parents will have passed out as soon as the last guest departed, so he only had to dodge any remaining staff cleaning up from the evening. His cover story was searching for leftovers. Food got him out of almost any trouble with the house staff, who could deny a growing boy a late-night snack?
The house was much less eerie at this time of night with clear signs of life all around. Usually spotless and next to empty, there were now scatterings of white folding chairs and high-top tables in the ballroom. The occasional abandoned evening wrap or compact mirror could be found in the windowsills of the tall glass panes surrounding the open room. There was a single piece of sheet music on the floor, left behind no doubt by some tired violinist grumbling about their too-low hourly rate. It was strange to Changbin to witness all these signs, the signs of a full house, of the noise that had filled it, the glamors people had chosen to represent themselves, but only after the life had left the space. The faint light of the moon showed Changbin that even though there were signs of life around him, he was alone; nothing moved in the house around him. Silence hung heavily in the halls that had always been so strange to him, so full of strangers.
He first made a stop in the kitchen, if not to only cover his tracks then to also satisfy his empty stomach from a long night of unproductive reading. He found a dozen trays of untouched assorted pastries and piled a few onto a small glass plate. He balanced the plate on his fingertips as he continued to wander through the house. He found open doors that were previously closed, such as the second-floor art gallery or the first-floor lounge. Rooms like those he usually only entered when invited, such as when his parents were entertaining an important guest. He wandered leisurely and nibbled on his desserts, careful not to leave any traces of crumbs. He sneered and laughed softly with disgust when he found a pair of heels and a lonely necktie sitting together in the lounge, left behind as if in a hurry. The intention behind their hasty abandonment was clear, Changbin exited quickly and vowed to never sit on the furniture in that room again. More and more he was reminded how different he was from this place, these people he had been raised to become, walking the halls of his own house yet feeling more like the stranger there.
He made his way closer to the opposite end of the house, crossing the foyer slowly, checking on his monsteras as he passed. They were unharmed by the presence of so many people and Changbin was glad that it seems they went as unnoticed as he did. His pride in growing and tending his greenhouse was indefinable in size, that small space of his own existing as his self-built paradise for months, but these plants, the ones that stayed inside, were his rebellion as well. Seeing them thrive inside the house that had drained Changbin for so long, thriving under his care alone, was hope as much as his secret paradise in the woods. As he reached out to inspect a slightly drooping leaf, he jumped and recoiled his hand at the smallest of sounds:
A sob.