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Saeran is grateful for Saeyoung. He is grateful to have someone to be there with him, so that he doesn’t have to suffer alone in this hell. He is grateful for someone being there to share food with, someone who will help him bandage his wounds, someone who would risk a beating in order to go get him some medicine when he is sick. He is grateful for his brother – a healthier, luckier version of himself. He is grateful.
Three knocks at the door send Saeran running as fast as he can to open it before his mother wakes up. Outside is Saeyoung, completely soaked in the rain, shoes covered in mud, and water dripping from his scarlet hair onto his face. He’s holding bags of grocery (or rather, simply booze) that his mother sent him out for. He rushes inside before Saeran can say a word, dumps the bottles in the kitchen as quietly as he can and then grabs his brother by the hand and leads him into their room.
“Saeyoung, “ he, says, bewildered, “What’re you-“
“Shh! She might hear you.” He replies, and that shuts him up.
After making sure the door is locked, Saeyoung turns around with a glint in his golden eyes, and Saeran’s curiosity is piqued by what his brother could possibly have done. He shoves his hands inside his hoodie and takes out a small, shivering ball of fur that mewls softly.
A cat. A small calico cat, its fur dirty and slightly damp, its ribs prominent underneath, that sits, it’s emerald green eyes wildly looking about the room.
Saeran is absolutely shocked for a moment at his brother’s boldness. Saeyoung holds it proudly with the most excited grin he has ever seen on his face. “I found it on my way home, in an alley. There were no other cats around it either, so it must’ve been all alone, and when I pet it a little it started following me, so I picked it up and ran all the way back! What do we name it? I’ve been thinking all the way back…Maybe after a flower? Rose? How’s that?”
“I…” Saeran starts but lets his words trail off. He doesn’t really know how to respond or what to say about this. A cat? How could they keep a cat when there’s barely enough food for themselves? What would their mother do if she found out?
But Saeyoung’s excitement at the prospect of a pet seems to have overcome his rationality as he goes on about it. “How’s Strawberry for a name? Good? But maybe it’s a male cat so-“
“Saeyoung.” Saeran finally manages.
“Hm?”
“We can’t keep it.”
Saeyoung’s grin fades, but he doesn’t look completely struck. Maybe he knew in the back of his mind that he couldn’t. “You’re…You’re right but I couldn’t just leave it alone. So I thought maybe if we just kept it outside and fed it whatever leftovers there were maybe we could manage…S’not like she goes outside enough to check.”
He doesn’t want to say no, he really doesn’t. There’s a part of him that wants to keep the cat as badly as Saeyoung does but it’s too dangerous, too risky to consider. So he stays quiet.
Saeyoung sighs. “You’re right.” He lets the cat down, and it looks at him then starts sniffing around the room.
It walks over to Saeran, inspects him closely and then rubs its head against him. Saeran stares down at it with fascination as it purrs against him, and his heart melts for the cat.
“On second thought…”
Oh, maybe it is a stupid idea and maybe it is going to get them both in trouble, but for now it seems like the best thing in the world to do.
“How’s Hana for a name?"
Saeran has never seen his brother smile wider.
-
Of course they don’t get to forever. It’s only been two months when she finally finds out, when she sees Saeyoung out of the kitchen window, bent over with some food in his hands and the cat eating out of it. Then she loses it, and shouts at him to get inside and yells at him about how, after everything she goes through and everything she does (which is less than nothing) they are still ungrateful and that if they felt they had too much food then why not go a few days without? And they do, and the gnawing feeling in their stomach eats away at them for the next three days, where they live on whatever they had stored up in their room in case of an emergency. And by the time their punishment is over Hana is gone, no doubt probably chased away by her, but Saeran doesn’t regret it, and he’s sure his brother doesn’t either.
Saeran’s world is limited to the ends of the garden. Their house is far from the city, on the outskirts, because Mother’s incessant paranoia of their father finding them made her find a place far away from passersby. The house is old and shabby, and the garden is the edge of his world, beyond which a view of the city sprawls across. He likes sitting out there sometimes with Saeyoung, when their mother is still asleep and it’s too dangerous to go out, but still too constricting to stay inside, and they play games under the sun, watch the clouds float by, and talk, or rather, Saeyoung talks, about everything outside of Saeran’s world – Church, libraries, street food vendors, parks - and Saeran listens, feeling a strange pang of envy, gold eyes wide with wonder and hope of one day, maybe one day, going out there himself with his brother, and away from everything else.
There are good days and then there are bad days. There is no gray between the two for Saeran. And today is a really good day for Saeran, because it’s a day where their mother is drunk and out of her senses, probably close to sleep already, and they have enough money from what Saeyoung gets at Church and from his secret jobs and what they dare to pick out of their mother’s purse to go out for a good time.
This is the third time Saeran has gone out ever since the first, when Saeyoung untied him and treated him to ice cream and when they came home they sat outside and watched the clouds float by until the evening. Today Saeyoung has promised to take him to Church, and he hopes they get to meet his friends there. Saeran is glad for today and he thanks Saeyoung’s God (because he’s too confused about the world for his own) for it, because ever since Saeyoung came home with a laptop and more books than he’d ever dared to take out the library before, he’d become too busy. But that was okay, because he was still there to look after him and to be there for him when things got too bad, and because, he told him, it was going to help them get out, and it gives him hope.
The sky is a pale blue with huge fluffy clouds like the first time, except these are gray, and there is a cold wind sweeping the air, shuffling around brown and red leaves scattered on the ground. Saeran marvels at the bare trees, and then points excitedly upwards. “What are those?” He asks Saeyoung. Saeyoung’s eyes travel upwards and stare at where he was pointing, two weird shapes moving with the wind in the air.
“They’re kites,” he says. “They’re made out of paper and you attach some string to them and the wind carries them up.”
“Is that fun? They’re so pretty.”
Saeyoung shrugs, with a smile and says, “Nope, I’ve never played with them. Let’s make one when we get home!”
Saeran perks up at that thought and falls into his imagination, wondering what the best colour would be and how far the wind would carry it.
They make their way to town fast, and buy some warm snacks, because it’s too cold for ice cream now, and then they stop by a small craft store where Saeyoung hands over some money in exchange for some supplies for the kite. All the time, Saeran’s head snaps at the slightest sound, afraid that every person he sees must be working for their father, ready to kidnap them. But they manage their way in and out of town fast enough and soon they’re heading out to Church.
Saeran’s breath is lost when they go inside. It’s a beautiful building, unlike most he’s ever seen and unlike the ones in the stories he’s read. Light filters through stained glass casting coloured shadows on the floor and pews line up and down the place. Saeyoung excuses himself while Saeran is still taking in all the scenery to talk to someone and comes back, head hanging a little low.
“I wanted you to meet two people today but…they’re not here right now. I should’ve told them before coming.”
“Which people? Do you mean the girl who gave the bread?
“Yes, she’s one of them. C’mon, let’s pray and then go play with the kite we make in the park.”
-
When they arrive home, their mother is still in her room, so they tiptoe up the stairs quietly and get ready for bed.
Today, Saeran thinks, was a good day.
Saeran clings to the hope Saeyoung gives him to keep him going. He remembers the promises, the shared dreams, the Someday that they dream about is just over the horizon and he feels, then, as though what he’s going through is nothing, and that he can wait. He can wait for a hundred years so long as they get out. And Saeyoung has promised him that over and over.
At first, he comforts himself thinking maybe he just got too carried away, or maybe he wanted to pray some more at church, but by 10 pm he’s not home and his mother has noticed.
She yells at him, slurring out the most hateful insults and digging her nails into Saeran’s skin, so that he knows they’ll leave marks later, and he wishes the ground would just swallow him up right then and there.
She yells and yells, and leaves him in his room, tied up and without dinner and that’s how he stays for the next two days, hungry and thirsty, until she finally needs him to go out and get some things for her. The whole time through the worst possibilities flit through his mind – his father finally got him, and he’s next, he got into a car crash, he fell in a river – and they all haunt him till all the hope, all that keeps him going is finally drained out and replaced with the worst sort of emptiness he could never describe. But the one thing, the one thing that he doesn’t accept, because it is the absolute worst possibility, is that he was abandoned, because Saeyoung, of all people, would never do that.