Hi!!! Love your writing!!! Can you make a story in which inho is suspecting junho I'd doing drugs and messes around with some shady kids bcs he's moody and not eating well but in reality he's feeling sick from the kidney disease (idk how it's called, sorry)
Hiiii! Thank you so much! In-ho is a worrying mess in this one 🥺
(warnings: kidney failure, symptoms of kidney failure, mentions of drugs)
❛ ━━━━━━･❪ ○△□ ❫ ･━━━━━━ ❜
Something wasn’t right with Jun-ho.
At first, In-ho told himself he was imagining it. That it was just one of those teenage things – stress, exams, hormones, whatever. He was allowed to be moody. God knew In-ho had gone through his own eye-rolling, door-slamming phase and come out the other side only mildly traumatized. So he didn’t overreact when Jun-ho skipped breakfast one morning. Just watched him half-heartedly nibble the corner of a granola bar and shove the rest into his backpack on the way out the door.
But then it happened again.
Then again.
Dinner untouched. Lunch uneaten. Plates pushed around like the food was offensive. At first, Jun-ho said he wasn’t hungry. Then he said his stomach hurt. Then he stopped giving reasons entirely and just shrugged, eyes on the floor, lips pressed tight.
In-ho noticed, of course. He noticed everything.
The way Jun-ho moved slower now, like something was weighing him down. The way he kept pulling at the sleeves of his hoodie like he was trying to disappear into it. He noticed how pale he was getting. Not just tired pale – sick pale. His skin looked too thin, almost waxy in certain light. There were smudges under his eyes that no amount of sleep could fix.
He’d caught Jun-ho at the sink one night, cupping water into his mouth, and he’d flinched – like even swallowing burned. The sound he made had been so small, so soft, In-ho almost missed it. But he heard it. That sharp, involuntary little breath that only escaped when something hurt.
He asked.
Jun-ho shrugged.
In-ho tried again. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Fine.”
“You’re not eating.”
“Not hungry.”
“You look –”
“I said I’m fine, hyung.” The words came out flat. Distant. Sharp enough to cut. Then Jun-ho had turned and walked away, hoodie drawn up like armor, steps uneven.
And In-ho – trying not to push, trying to give him space – had let him.
But it didn’t stop there.
The late nights started next. At first it was once, maybe twice a week. Jun-ho coming home late, claiming he’d stayed back for a group project or missed the bus or stopped by the convenience store for snacks he never actually brought home. Then it became more frequent. Closer to midnight. Sometimes he’d forget to text. Sometimes he’d ignore calls entirely.
When In-ho asked where he’d been, Jun-ho would stiffen. “Out.”
With who?
“Just… friends.”
Which friends?
“Don’t worry about it.”
And that was when the lying started. The obvious, clumsy kind that left a bitter taste in In-ho’s mouth. Excuses that didn’t add up. Shifty eyes. Hands shoved deep in his pockets. Jumpy reactions when touched. A constant tension in his jaw, like he was holding something back.
The first time In-ho saw him near the bus stop with a group of kids he didn’t recognize – kids who didn’t look like classmates, didn’t act like classmates – his stomach clenched. One of them handed something off to another. A wallet? A phone? A cigarette? He couldn’t see. But the way Jun-ho was lingering on the edge of them, hoodie up, shoulders hunched like he didn’t want to be seen…
It didn’t look good.
In-ho didn’t say anything that day. Just filed it away. Tucked it into the growing drawer of things that didn’t feel right.
And then he found the lighter.
Wedged in the pocket of Jun-ho’s hoodie while doing laundry. Not one from the kitchen. Not something they’d used to light candles or incense. It smelled faintly like cologne and sweat and something chemical, something that didn’t belong.
In-ho sat with it in his palm for a long time.
A dull, red plastic thing. Half-used. Smudged with someone else’s fingerprints.
He didn’t say anything that night. He just lay awake, staring at the ceiling, brain racing in spirals he couldn’t stop. The sickening logic of it all: the missed meals, the mood swings, the shady crowd, the long nights, the unexplained pain. The lighter. The look in Jun-ho’s eyes that wasn’t quite guilt, but wasn’t innocence either.
The next morning, Jun-ho flinched when he got out of bed. Not in a sleepy way – in a hurt way. Like his body was trying to fold in on itself. He stood slowly, one hand pressed to his lower back, breathing shallow.
And something in In-ho snapped.
He followed him into the hallway before he could vanish into the bathroom, caught him by the elbow – gently, but firmly.
“Okay,” he said, voice tight. “That’s it. What’s going on?”
Jun-ho blinked at him, half-asleep. “Wha?”
“You’ve been skipping meals. You look like a ghost. You’re shaking. You flinch every time someone touches you. And I found a lighter in your hoodie.”
Jun-ho froze.
In-ho’s heart dropped. “Are you doing something? Are you using something?”
For a second, the silence between them was so loud it rang.
Jun-ho stared at him, confused. Then he looked hurt. Then he looked furious.
“You think I’m doing drugs?” he whispered.
“I don’t know what to think!”
“You think I’m that stupid?”
“I think something’s wrong and you won’t tell me what it is! You’ve been lying to me for weeks, Jun-ho!”
“Because I didn’t wanna worry you!” he yelled, and his voice cracked in the middle, like it hurt to raise it. “I didn’t wanna make a big deal out of it, okay? I thought it would just… go away.”
“What would go away?”
Jun-ho wobbled a little on his feet, grabbed the doorframe. “My stomach. My side. My pee’s been weird. I’m cold all the time. I’m tired. I can’t eat. It just – doesn’t stop.”
In-ho felt the floor tilt under him. “Jun-ho…”
“I thought it was just a virus or something. Something small. I didn’t wanna scare you. But it’s not getting better, and –” He swallowed. “And sometimes I see blood.”
The air left In-ho’s lungs.
Blood.
Jun-ho was saying it like it was just another thing. Like it wasn’t a sledgehammer to the chest.
“When?” In-ho managed.
Jun-ho shook his head. “Last week. Again yesterday. I was gonna… I was gonna go to the doctor, but –”
In-ho stepped forward and pulled him in before the rest of the sentence could finish. Held him so tightly Jun-ho made a soft sound of surprise and then sagged against him like he was too tired to resist.
“You idiot,” In-ho whispered into his hair. “You absolute idiot. You’re allowed to be sick. You’re supposed to tell me. That’s what I’m for.”
Jun-ho didn’t answer right away. His breath stuttered against In-ho’s chest.
“I didn’t want you to think I was weak,” he mumbled. “Or stupid. Or –” He sniffed. “Or like I was making it up.”
In-ho felt his throat close. “You’re not. I just – I thought I was losing you. I thought you were slipping away and I didn’t know how to stop it.”
Not when Jun-ho’s knees gave a little. Not when he finally admitted he hadn’t slept properly in days. Not when he whispered that everything had started hurting weeks ago and he’d just… hoped it would go away.
And later – later would come the hospital, the tests… and the silence in the waiting room that made In-ho want to crawl out of his own skin – a doctor came in. Clipboard. Calm voice. Serious eyes.
Kidney failure.
Jun-ho needed dialysis.
He needed to be stabilized.
He needed a transplant.
The words hit like a punch to the throat.
In-ho sat there with his hands between his knees, knuckles white, nodding even though his brain had gone blank.
The nausea. The weight loss. The fatigue. The cold hands. The shakiness. The pain.
All the signs were there. All of them. And he’d gone and assumed the worst – thought Jun-ho was sneaking off to drink, to smoke, to fall in with the wrong crowd – when the truth was a million times worse.
His brother hadn’t been self-destructing.
He’d been dying.
In-ho scrubbed a hand over his face in the fluorescent glare of the hospital corridor, heart hammering like it was trying to outrun time itself.
And when they finally let him in to see Jun-ho – hooked up to IVs, pale and weak, eyelids fluttering as he stirred in the bed – something cracked wide open inside him.
He took the seat beside him slowly, hands trembling.
Jun-ho blinked blearily. “Hyung…?”
“I’m here,” In-ho whispered, and immediately hated how his voice sounded. “I’m right here.”
He pulled Jun-ho in as gently as he could, careful of the tubes, the monitors, the smallness of the body in his arms.
He didn’t say what he was already planning – the appointments he’d make. The tests he’d take. The fact that if there was any chance he was a match, he’d do it without blinking.
Because Jun-ho needed a kidney.
It wouldn’t be easy. There’d be surgery. Recovery. Months of medication. Risks. Pain.
But none of that mattered.
Because this time, In-ho had a chance to do what he hadn’t been able to do before.
He could save him.
And nothing – not fear, not pain, not even the hole it would leave in his own body – would stop him from doing it.
Because Jun-ho was his.
And if giving up a kidney meant getting his brother back whole and alive?
Anon... are you okay?! WHY DO YOU WANT JUN-HO TO EXPLODE??
This starts with Captain Park's pov and ends with In-ho’s... why do we always hurt Jun-ho to make In-ho suffer? 👀
(warnings: major character death, severed limbs, gore, blood, talk about said severed limb)
❛ ━━━━━━･❪ ○△□ ❫ ･━━━━━━ ❜
They shouldn’t have let Jun-ho go first.
Park had known it the moment the kid stepped forward, too fast, too confident, crouching beside the hatch with that familiar intensity in his eyes – the same one that had gotten him into trouble more times than Park could count. The others had hung back, waiting for orders. But Jun-ho had already moved. He always did.
The clearing was quiet. Almost too quiet. A hush settled over the trees like something holding its breath. Even the wind seemed to falter. Park’s gut twisted – but he said nothing. Just watched.
Then the hatch groaned.
The sound of rust against rust. Metal straining.
Park took a half-step forward.
And then the world detonated.
It wasn’t just an explosion. It was a rupture, a violent tearing of air and light and sound that slammed into the forest like a god’s fist. For a moment, there was no color – only white. And then orange fire bloomed in the center of the clearing, swallowing everything in its path.
Jun-ho vanished in an instant.
There was no cry. No stumble. No time to react.
He was there – and then he wasn’t.
A concussive wave tore through the trees, sending dirt and debris into the air. Park felt it hit him like a wall, heat blasting across his face, branches cracking, the sky shuddering. His ears rang. His balance faltered. He dropped to a knee instinctively, one hand braced against the ground.
But his eyes never left the place where Jun-ho had been.
There was a crater now, jagged and smoking, filled with shredded foliage and blackened earth. Fire licked at the trees. Ash rained down like snow. The clearing was unrecognizable.
Park didn’t move. He couldn’t move.
All the air had gone out of his lungs.
The ringing in his ears was deafening, but it wasn’t the worst part.
The worst part was the silence that followed – the absence. No coughing. No groaning. No voice calling back to say I’m okay. Just fire. And the stench of burning cloth and flesh.
His thoughts spiraled, scattered by the blast. Not from fear. From memory.
The Front Man’s voice. Calm. Commanding. Unmistakable. “Make sure he doesn’t die.”
It had been an order. Not a plea. Not a hope. A command. And Park had nodded like a soldier and said yes, and now Jun-ho was gone. Not just hurt – not bleeding or unconscious – but obliterated. Taken in a burst of fire and steel.
Something hit him hard in the shoulder. He stumbled backward, instinctively catching it before it hit the ground – and immediately wished he hadn’t.
It wasn’t debris.
It was an arm.
Park’s hands froze around it.
Clean at the shoulder. Jagged at the end, where bone and tendon were torn instead of cut. Still clothed in black tactical fabric, the sleeve torn halfway down. The skin was blistered, half of it charred black, the other half streaked with ash and blood. Strands of tissue exposed like wire frayed from a circuit. The fingers were curled, blood-soaked, still twitching from the last electrical echoes of the blast.
His breath stopped.
He couldn’t make sense of it at first. Couldn’t comprehend the shape. The weight. The smell.
And on the wrist – tight against the burned skin, smudged with soot – was a watch.
Black band. Scuffed face. Second hand frozen mid-tick.
Park had seen that watch a hundred times. On the deck. In briefings. On Jun-ho’s wrist while he drank coffee and cracked some sarcastic comment, half-smiling over the rim of the cup.
He’d seen it this morning.
Park stared at it now like it was a ghost. It was the watch on the wrist what shattered him.
The world around him narrowed. The sounds of shouting, boots crunching through brush, the smoke still rising – it all fell away. Just him. The arm. The dirt. The blood.
Park’s stomach dropped. His knees nearly buckled.
“No…” he whispered, like saying it could undo it. Like denial could turn the world backward.
He lowered the arm slowly, gently, as if afraid to break it further. As if it wasn’t already broken beyond all recognition. The blood on his gloves smeared darker across the skin. The hand – god, it was so pale now – tilted slightly to the side, wrist loose, the knuckles turned outward as if reaching for something that wasn’t there.
Park backed away, breath sharp in his throat. A noise tore loose from his chest – part breath, part sound, part something he couldn’t name. His vision blurred at the edges. The sky swam.
He bent over and retched into the dirt.
When he finally straightened, his face was soaked in sweat, hands shaking so badly he couldn’t reclip his holster. He stared at the arm lying in the grass like it was some cursed relic dredged up from hell.
One of the soldiers moved toward it, unsure, horrified.
Park lifted a hand sharply. “Don’t touch it.”
His voice was hoarse. His throat felt flayed raw. His vision jumped from the blood, to the twisted wrist, to the crater where Jun-ho had been.
He wanted to scream. But he couldn’t even breathe.
His hands hovered over the limb – trembling, hesitant – like he was afraid it would vanish. Or worse, move. His fingers twitched toward the watch, not to take it, not to check the time, but as if touching it might rewind the seconds. Might undo the blast. Might bring the rest of Jun-ho back with it.
But there was no pulse under that wrist.
There was no rest of Jun-ho in sight.
Park’s breath hitched. He blinked hard, and for a moment, his vision split – he saw the crater, the wreckage, the smoke curling up into the trees – and then he saw the man who’d trusted him. The man in the mask. Cold. Controlled. Deadly.
The Front Man had told him once – “You’re good at cleaning up messes, Captain. That’s why I picked you.”
And now the worst mess of all had landed in his arms, literal and severed and bleeding down his front.
What the hell was he supposed to say now? He couldn’t even begin to think of how to explain this.
How do you explain carrying back a piece of someone? How do you say he’s gone, when all you’ve got is his arm? And worse – what if you’re wrong? What if the rest of him was still out there, mangled, alive, waiting to die slowly?
The silence around him filled with smoke and flies. And for one wild second, Park thought he saw the hand twitch again. Not from nerves. Not from death.
But from spite.
Like Jun-ho wasn’t just dead – but furious about it. Like some part of him still refused to be finished.
Park shivered, stepping back again. The heat of the explosion clung to his skin. But he’d never felt colder in his life.
Around him, the others had begun moving. Kim was shouting. Someone was calling for evac. Another medic was already running forward. But Park stayed where he was, crouched in the dirt, the heat of the explosion still radiating through the clearing.
The weight of the moment settled on him like a stone.
The Front Man had given him one job.
And he had failed it in the worst possible way.
He wasn’t afraid of dying – not really. But he was afraid of that voice. Of what it would sound like when he had to press the radio to his lips and say the words.
There was an explosion. He was the closest. Jun-ho’s gone. I failed. I found his arm.
Park’s jaw clenched. His throat burned.
It wasn’t just fear. It was guilt. Deep, acidic guilt that clawed its way through his chest. He had known Jun-ho. Had watched him change, seen the fight in him, the stubborn drive that wouldn’t quit even when it should have. He’d kept him alive before – once, when no one else could. When In-ho had sent him to the water to recover a body and bring back a miracle.
But miracles didn’t repeat themselves.
Not twice.
Not for men like them.
Park’s gaze dropped to the wreckage again. To the twisted metal, the scorched branches, the blood spattered across the tree trunks. The arm.
There wasn’t even enough left of Jun-ho to mourn properly.
And still – somewhere in the back of his mind, a flicker of denial whispered that maybe, somehow, the kid had survived. That he’d come crawling out of the crater like he always did, bloodied and pissed off, yelling at Park for letting someone else open the door first.
But Park knew better.
He had seen enough death to recognize when the earth had swallowed someone whole.
Still, when he reached for the radio – hand trembling, throat tight – he couldn’t bring himself to speak.
Not yet.
Because for one terrible second, he thought: If he’s really gone… the Front Man will kill me.
And worse than that – he might not even raise his voice.
He’d just go quiet.
And that would be enough to make Park wish he’d been the one closest to the hatch.
❛ ━━━━━━･❪ ○△□ ❫ ･━━━━━━ ❜
The elevator let out a soft chime as it arrived at the top level.
Park stepped out slowly.
He looked like hell.
Blood dried black in the creases of his gloves. Dirt streaked the side of his jaw. His eyes were sunken – not from exhaustion, but from something deeper, like something inside had collapsed and hadn’t been replaced.
In one hand, he carried a sealed containment bag. He didn’t ask for permission. Just entered.
In-ho stood at the head of the table, perfectly still. Mask on. Posture rigid. The room behind him was dim, the blinds drawn. It was always dark, now.
Park walked to the table. Every step felt like it echoed.
Then he set the bag down.
No words. Not yet.
In-ho didn’t speak either. He only looked at it – at the thick plastic, sealed, the way the bag fogged slightly with residual heat.
“…What is that,” he asked, flatly. He already knew.
Park swallowed. His voice scraped out dry. “It’s his arm.”
The silence that followed was leaden. It didn’t stretch – it pressed.
Park kept his gaze fixed on the bag. He couldn’t meet the mask.
“It was… closest to me. When it happened,” he said, and his voice barely held shape. “I thought you might want to… have it. For burial. Or confirmation.”
In-ho didn’t move. He didn’t speak. His gaze slid to the plastic. It was smeared, but translucent enough that the shape inside was unmistakable. Black tactical fabric, twisted and scorched. A sleeve, half-burned, threadbare at the seams. A wrist bent at the wrong angle.
Fingers.
Familiar.
Still curled like they were reaching for something.
Still trying.
His heart dropped. Not fast. Not like a fall. Like it had been pulled out of his chest by force, muscle by muscle.
Jun-ho’s arm.
His brother’s.
But it wasn’t him.
Not the kid who used to trail after him in the rain with untied shoelaces and pockets full of rocks. Not the young officer who smiled too little and thought too much and never knew when to give up. Not the man who had survived everything – the fall, the bullet, the sea – only to be taken by something as stupid and brutal as a bomb buried in moss.
This wasn’t a person.
It was a leftover.
A piece.
A mockery.
In-ho felt something fracture. A crack through the middle of his chest. Clean and fast, but deep enough to echo.
The arm looked too real. Too human.
Too Jun-ho.
He took one step forward.
And froze.
That’s when the smell hit him.
Blood. Burnt cloth. Skin. It clung to the plastic like the air had been thickened with iron and ash. It curled into his lungs. It turned his stomach. And still he couldn’t look away.
The arm was pale beneath the soot. Discolored. Charred in places. But In-ho knew it. Knew the slope of that wrist, the faint scatter of freckles near the thumb – the scar at the base of the palm from when Jun-ho fell off his bike at ten and refused stitches.
He remembered that day.
The way Jun-ho had blinked up at him, lip trembling, hands bloodied and small, whispering through gritted teeth: “Don’t tell eomma.”
And In-ho hadn’t. He’d carried him home. Wrapped the cut himself. Stayed up that night to make sure the kid didn’t run a fever.
Now he was staring at that same hand – split from the rest of his body – sealed in a bag like evidence.
In-ho’s mask tilted slightly, as if he were looking not just at the arm, but through it – at every mistake, every betrayal, every choice that led to this moment.
Then, slowly, he raised his eyes to Park. There was no question in them. Only quiet devastation.
“You brought me his arm,” he said at last, and the voice that came out didn’t sound like it belonged to him. Not behind the modulator. Not behind the mask.
Just… hollow.
Park stood frozen. Not defiant. Not pleading. Just… quiet. Like he’d already accepted whatever came next.
In-ho lifted a gloved hand to his mask. He took it off slowly, as if the weight of it had tripled. His face was pale beneath it – paler than it should have been. His jaw clenched so tight the bones ached. His eyes never left the arm.
It didn’t look real. That was the worst part.
It looked like something preserved. Like something stolen from a morgue tray and sealed in plastic.
He stepped forward once. Just close enough to see the skin more clearly. The burns. The blood. The final shape of those fingers – still trying.
Still reaching. Always reaching. For the truth. For justice. For In-ho.
And that’s when it happened.
He flinched. Hard. Like someone had shoved something straight through his ribs. Because he remembered what that hand looked like alive. He remembered Jun-ho reaching for him on the cliff – fingers outstretched, mouth open, voice lost in wind.
He remembered pulling the trigger anyway.
This wasn’t justice. This wasn’t peace. This was punishment.
And not for Jun-ho.
For him.
A choked breath escaped before he could stop it. Not a sob. Not yet. Just the sound of a man being gutted from the inside.
In-ho didn’t say anything. He didn’t ask what happened to the rest. He didn’t ask if Park had tried to find it.
He already knew.
There wasn’t enough left to bury.
And yet somehow, this… thing – this arm – was worse than a body. Because it meant Jun-ho had been real. Had existed. Had been close enough to save. And had still been lost.
He didn’t look at Park. He couldn’t. His focus was fixed on the plastic, the twisted fabric, the pale curve of wrist half-hidden by soot. It felt obscene. Like staring at a corpse with no face.
But he couldn’t look away.
He remembered Jun-ho’s hands. How they used to fidget when he was nervous. How he rubbed at the base of his thumb when he lied. How he carried everything like he didn’t realize his own weight – all that stubbornness, all that purpose.
Now that same hand lay slack and severed in a bag, and In-ho couldn’t stop thinking: He should’ve stayed down. He should’ve let the fall be the end. He should’ve let the sea take him. He should’ve stopped reaching.
Because what kind of universe saves someone just to end them like this?
He just stood there, frozen in place, as something deep inside him went terribly still – like a flame that had burned too long on too little fuel, flickering out in the quiet.
“You think this means anything?” In-ho said. His voice was shaking now. No modulator to hide it. “You think I wanted a limb? A piece? A fucking fragment?”
Park stayed silent.
“I wanted him back.”
His hand slammed down on the table, inches from the bag. The impact echoed, sharp and hollow.
“I wanted his voice. His anger. His idiotic stubbornness. Alive. I wanted him to slam through that door and scream at me again. I wanted him to look at me – with hate! Call me a monster! Anything… Not –“
He couldn’t finish the sentence. His eyes locked on the bag.
The room didn’t breathe.
The images came fast now. Too fast to stop.
Jun-ho, six years old, falling asleep on the floor of their old apartment during a blackout, curled under In-ho’s jacket like it was armor.
Jun-ho, seventeen, arguing about his university application – voice sharp, eyes burning with the same stupid fire that got him killed.
Jun-ho, standing on that cliff with a bullet in his shoulder, asking why.
Jun-ho, now: reduced to a severed limb in a bag.
“I wanted a second chance.” His voice cracked.
He lifted the arm – bag and all – and for a second Park thought he might throw it. Smash it. Tear it apart like it was the thing that had done this.
But In-ho didn’t.
He just held it. Arms trembling. Looking down at it like it might start moving again. Like the fingers might twitch and curl around his own.
But they didn’t. They never would.
His knees nearly buckled under the weight of it.
A memory surged forward – Jun-ho as a child, skinning his knees, reaching up without crying. Just holding his hand out, wordless, waiting for comfort.
That same hand was in his grip now.
Lifeless.
Charred.
Gone.
He reached out and touched the edge of his mask.
It had been so easy once. To hide behind it. To play the role. To let the mask carry the guilt.
But now, it felt like a grave marker.
He slid it back on.
Not to forget.
But to survive.
Because without it – without the armor, the distance, the script – he didn’t know who he was anymore.
Only this: a man holding a piece of his brother. And nothing else.
No forgiveness.
No second chance.
Just silence.
And a severed hand that would never reach for him again.
I should be mad about this ask 'cause I thought about some cute little scenario with teen!parent Jun-ho... and then I watched s3 AND IT JUST MADE SENSE
I am petty though, so you'll get teen!parent Jun-ho being freaking out.
(Yes, this has been in my drafts for a while 😭)
❛ ━━━━━━･❪ ○△□ ❫ ･━━━━━━ ❜
It did not feel real at first.
The room smelled like antiseptic. White everywhere, walls, sheets, the nurse’s gloves. Too clean, too bright. The kind of light that did not let anyone hide. Jun-ho stood just inside the doorway, still half in his school uniform, the collar of his shirt wrinkled under a borrowed gown. His hair was messy from running. His bag was slumped against the chair, one strap snapped. Inside it, his history book lay folded open to a page about constitutional law. He was supposed to have had a quiz that morning. His life was supposed to be smaller than this, predictable, easy to explain.
He could not remember how he had got there. Just fragments. A phone call, a taxi ride, a nurse congratulating him. His mind kept circling the same thought. This was not supposed to happen. Not to him. Not like this.
The nurse said his name twice before he realized she was talking to him.
“Hwang Jun-ho?”
He blinked. “Yeah. That’s me.”
She gestured toward the bed. “The baby’s doing well. You can see her.”
He hesitated. Every muscle in his body wanted to step back out into the hallway, to pretend he had walked into the wrong room. But his feet moved anyway. The bassinet was smaller than he had imagined. The baby inside looked more like a question than an answer. A face too new for the world, mouth twitching in her sleep as if she were already dreaming of somewhere safer.
She wasn’t crying. The silence was somehow worse. He stared at her chest until he caught the faint rise and fall of breath. It didn’t calm him. His stomach kept twisting, his palms clammy. He felt like he should say something, anything, but his throat would not open.
He thought about the night he had told his mother.
How he had sat on the edge of the couch with shaking hands, unable to look at her. How her face had stayed still, the same expression she used when fixing a broken glass or listening to the evening news. Serious eyes, tired mouth, but steady. She had not yelled. She had not even sighed. She had just looked at him for a long time before saying softly, “We’ll figure it out. It’s going to be fine.”
And he had believed her. He had wanted to. She had always sounded so sure.
But seeing his daughter now, that calm felt like a memory from another life.
The air felt too thin. His chest too tight. His heartbeat a hammer in his throat. Nothing about this felt fine. He wanted to cry but the tears would not come, caught somewhere behind his ribs.
“Would you like to hold her?” the nurse asked.
He shook his head fast. “No. I might drop her.”
“She’s sturdier than she looks,” the nurse said, amused. She folded back the blanket anyway and placed the bundle in his arms.
The weight shocked him. He had expected less, like a kitten maybe. Instead she was heavy in the way that meant real. Warm, alive, frighteningly dependent. He stiffened, arms locked, afraid to move or even breathe too deep. His mind went blank. He could not think of what to do with his hands, how to stand, what a father was supposed to look like.
Her face scrunched. A whimper, soft and broken, escaped her lips.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” His voice was all wrong, cracking like it had been left out in the cold too long. “You’re fine. Don’t…” He stopped because he did not know what came next. He had never spoken to someone this small before. She flailed one hand, fingers brushing his wrist. He went still again.
The nurse adjusted the blanket and checked a monitor. “You’ll need to sign the discharge papers before you go.”
He heard the words but did not understand them until the clipboard was in his hands. The page looked too official. The space labeled Father Name stared back at him.
He could not look away from the blank line. His name did not belong there. He was supposed to be a student, not a father. His fingers tightened around the pen until the plastic bent. Somewhere in the back of his mind he saw his classmates laughing during lunch, talking about exams, and the image felt so far away it almost hurt. He thought of the girl, of how quiet she had been the last time he saw her, of the way she had not met his eyes. He should have been angry but he was too tired for that. Anger felt like a luxury.
His name did not look right when he wrote it.
Hwang Jun-ho. Sixteen years old. Father.
He could feel his heartbeat echo through his fingers as he handed the clipboard back.
“Where’s the mother?” the nurse asked quietly, almost kindly.
He stared down at the baby. Her eyes were still closed.
“She… left,” he said finally. The words tasted like metal.
The nurse’s lips parted like she wanted to ask more, but she just nodded. “We’ll prepare her things for you.”
When she left, the silence was too large for the room.
He looked at the baby again. She had fallen asleep, her cheek pressed against his chest. He could feel her breathing through the thin fabric of the gown. His brain kept circling the same thought. She was his. This was his fault. She was his.
He tried to count the seconds between her breaths just to make sure she kept taking them. He told himself he would only stay like that for a minute. The minute stretched into something else. The world felt like it had shrunk around her heartbeat.
He lowered himself onto the edge of the bed, awkward and trembling. The baby stirred but did not cry. One small hand curled around the front of his shirt, holding on with ridiculous strength.
Jun-ho stared down at her, unsure what to feel. Terror mostly. And a strange, fragile awe that felt like grief wearing a disguise. His head was full of questions that had no answers. What if he could not do this? What if he hurt her by accident? What if she got sick? What if she cried and he could not make her stop? What if he failed before he even began?
Her fingernails were translucent, perfect little half-moons. Her skin smelled faintly of soap and something sweeter underneath, whatever newness babies carried before the world rubbed it off. He felt dizzy. Sixteen years old and he had never been responsible for anything that could not charge its own phone, and now he was holding a life.
The door opened again. The nurse brought in a small bag, pink and plastic, stuffed with donated clothes and a folded blanket. “She’ll need feeding every few hours,” she said. “Do you have someone at home to help you?”
Jun-ho opened his mouth. The answer was there by habit. He almost said ‘my dad.’ The word rose before he could stop it, shaped by years of watching his brother fill that space, fixing what their real father had broken. But the sound caught in his throat. In-ho was not his dad. He had never tried to be. He was his brother, and that somehow made it worse.
He swallowed and started again. “My brother will help,” he said slowly. “He’s… older.”
He hesitated before adding, “His wife too. And my mum.”
The nurse nodded with a small smile. “Good. That’ll help.”
Jun-ho nodded even though he did not believe her. The nurse stepped out again, and the quiet folded over him once more.
He sat there until the light outside the window began to fade, holding her because he did not know what else to do. His legs had gone numb, his back ached, and the clock above the bed ticked too loudly. He thought about going home, about walking through the streets with a baby in his arms, about what the neighbors would say. He could not imagine it. He could not imagine anything beyond that room.
When he finally whispered, his voice sounded small, not like his own.
“Hey,” he said to her. “I don’t know how to be somebody’s appa.”
She made a sound, something between a sigh and a hiccup, and kept sleeping.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “Me neither.”
He adjusted the blanket around her, fingers clumsy but careful. Somewhere down the hall, another baby started crying, and for a second he felt a strange comfort in the sound. At least it meant she was not the only one. Maybe he wasn’t either. Maybe somewhere, another boy his age was just as scared. The thought did not make him feel better, but it made him feel less alone.
When the nurse returned to check on him, she found him still there. The baby asleep against his chest, Jun-ho’s head bowed like he was guarding something sacred. The pen he had used to sign the papers lay forgotten on the bed beside him.
She was gripping his finger again.
And that time, he did not pull away.
❛ ━━━━━━･❪ ○△□ ❫ ･━━━━━━ ❜
The baby’s things had already begun to blend into the apartment as if they had always been there. Bottles lined up beside the rice cooker. A folded blanket on the couch. A pacifier half-hidden under the TV stand. The apartment smelled faintly of formula now, and laundry detergent, and the must of sleepless nights.
Jun-ho stood in the middle of it all, shoulders heavy with the kind of exhaustion that felt older than he was.
School had been brutal. Whispers in the hallways, laughter behind his back. Someone had asked if the baby was even his, and when he did not answer they had laughed harder. The teachers had looked at him like he was a tragedy. He had stared at the blackboard until the letters blurred.
By the time he got home, he was running on nerves and caffeine. His mother had met him at the door with a tired smile and a quick kiss on the cheek.
“I’ll be back late, okay? There’s food in the fridge,” she had said, smoothing his hair with one hand like she used to when he was little.
He had nodded, pretending that was enough.
Then she had gone, and the apartment door had clicked shut behind her.
Now it was just him and the baby.
At first, she slept. The quiet felt like mercy. He changed out of his uniform, kicked off his shoes, and sat at the table staring at the mess of bottles and wipes. His mind refused to settle. Every creak in the walls sounded like a warning. Every shadow looked like something forgotten.
Then she started crying.
Not softly. Not like in the movies. A full-body, desperate wail that rattled straight through him.
He froze. The sound went on, raw and loud and endless.
“Hey, hey, no, no, no. You’re fine,” he said, his voice shaking. “You’re okay, right? You’re just… hungry? Tired? Something?”
He picked her up, awkward and unsure, bouncing her the way he had seen his mother do, but nothing helped. The crying only grew louder, echoing off the walls. He checked the diaper. Clean. He tried the bottle. She turned her head away.
He could feel the panic starting in his chest, sharp and fast. He paced the room with her, murmuring nonsense words, trying not to cry himself. His eyes stung. His throat felt too tight.
“Please,” he whispered. “Please, I’m trying.”
The baby’s face was red, her tiny fists clenched. He had no idea what she wanted. He felt useless, like a child holding something too fragile to fix.
When the knock at the door came, he almost dropped her.
He opened it to find In-ho standing there, still in his work clothes, hair flattened from the wind. Behind him was Yuna, carrying a small bag that smelled like baby lotion. Jun-ho blinked at them, dazed. The baby kept crying.
In-ho’s mouth opened, but Jun-ho beat him to it.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he blurted out. His voice cracked halfway through the sentence. “She won’t stop. I tried everything. I can’t…”
He stopped. His breath caught. He was just sixteen. He was not the version who had signed the papers at the hospital, not the one who had told everyone it would be fine. Just a boy who wanted someone older to make it stop.
Yuna didn’t hesitate. She stepped forward, arms out. “Give her to me.”
He handed the baby over, too relieved to argue. She settled the little girl against her shoulder, rocking her with a rhythm that seemed instinctive. Her voice softened into a coo. “There, there, sweetheart. You’re just tired, huh? Too much excitement today?”
The crying quieted almost instantly. Yuna glanced over her shoulder, eyebrows drawn, and said in a low, sharp voice, “You – Jun-ho.”
In-ho looked torn for a second, then crossed the room. Jun-ho tried to step back, to swallow everything down, but his chest was shaking and his eyes were already wet. He pressed a hand against his face, embarrassed. “I can’t even do this right,” he said. “She’s crying, and I can’t fix it. I’m supposed to –”
In-ho didn’t let him finish. He pulled him into a hug, firm and steady, one hand resting against the back of his neck.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “You’re doing fine.”
Jun-ho’s breath caught on a sob. He hated how small it sounded. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Hyung. I just –”
He wanted to say ‘Appa.’ The word came to mind before he could stop it, the way it always had when he was scared. But his father had never come, never stayed. And somewhere along the line, that word had started to mean someone else. It had started to mean In-ho.
The thought hit him like a pulse beneath his ribs. In-ho had been sixteen when Jun-ho was born. The same age Jun-ho was now. His brother had known this fear – the helplessness, the pressure, the way the world suddenly felt too heavy for one pair of hands – and he had carried it anyway.
In-ho’s grip tightened, grounding him. “You’ve got me,” he said softly. “You’ve always had me.” He gave a quiet laugh, warm and a little unsteady. “When you were born, I had no idea what I was doing either. I thought I’d break you every time I picked you up. But we figured it out, didn’t we?”
Jun-ho nodded, the tears finally spilling.
“You’ve got me and Yuna and Eomma,” In-ho said. “You’re not alone in this. We love her already, all of us. And we’ll figure it out together. Just like before.”
Jun-ho’s shoulders trembled once more, the sound that left him halfway between laughter and crying. For the first time that day, he let himself believe it might be true. The room felt warmer somehow, the sound of the baby’s quiet breathing filling the silence.
When he finally pulled back, Yuna was sitting on the armchair with the baby asleep in her arms, smiling softly. She looked up at them and said, “See? She just needed a little attention. Kind of like someone else I know.”
For the first time all day, Jun-ho laughed, small and shaky but real.
He sat beside them, watching the tiny rise and fall of his daughter’s chest, and for a moment the panic faded. Maybe this was what his mother had meant when she said it would be fine. Not that it would be easy. Just that he would not have to do it alone.
❛ ━━━━━━･❪ ○△□ ❫ ･━━━━━━ ❜
Poor Jun-ho 😭
This was probably not what you had in mind when you sent the ask but hey at least it's our Hwang brothers doing their best!
ufff that's a heavy one... honestly, i just don’t think Jun-ho could ever do it. Not for a second! His whole arc is finding In-ho, asking why, trying to get him back. Killing him would go against everything that makes him who he is. He’d never be the one to pull the trigger. Never.
In-ho basically raised him, donated his kidney, paid their debts, protected him like a father. That kind of love doesn’t just go away... it defines Jun-ho... the way he sees justice, family, everything
And during the island storyline, every reaction he has (the hesitation, the disbelief, the grief) it’s always about saving his brother, not hurting him. Even after the betrayal, he wants In-ho to face what he’s done, not die for it. He’s the detective who exposes the truth, not the executioner...
If an AU ever had him kill In-ho, it’d have to be either accidental (like a gun going off while they’re grappling or In-ho is shoved into the path of the bullet from someone else), the 'hug' being this awful moment of trying to stop him, not end him
Or mercy-driven, where In-ho’s already dying and Jun-ho does it out of love 😭
“The role of ‘older brother’ blurred into something bigger, heavier, he wasn’t just a brother anymore. He was something else. Something more.”
Before he was the Front Man, Hwang In-ho was just a brother. A glimpse into the life he left behind - the bond he shared with Jun-ho, the sacrifices he made, the choices that led him to the games. From childhood memories to ruthless survival, this is the story of how a devoted older brother became the masked main overseer of the games.
tags: family dynamics, good sibling Hwang In-ho, mention of sickness, weight loss due to sickness, kidney disease, surgical scars, medical debt, acute cirrhosis, pregnancy, mentions of termination, squid game typical violence, character death
tags will be updated
“The role of ‘older brother’ blurred into something bigger, heavier, he wasn’t just a brother anymore. He was something else. Something more.”
❛ ━━━━━━･❪ ○△□ ❫ ･━━━━━━ ❜
Part 1: In-ho meeting his baby brother
Part 2: In-ho and his stepmother
Part 3: Jun-ho's first steps
Part 4: In-ho becoming a police officer
Part 5: In-ho meeting his wife
Part 5.1: February 14th, normal day, right?
Part 5.2: White Day
Part 5.3: Jun-ho, Yuna, and the vegetables
Part 6: Jun-ho wants to become a police detective like his brother
Part 7: Jun-ho thinks about the true meaning of ‘hyung’
Part 8: Something is wrong with Jun-ho
Part 9: The kidney disease
Part 10: In-ho and Jun-ho share a scar
Part 11: In-ho shoulders a lot of responsibility
Part 12: In-ho and Jun-ho working together at the same precinct
“Debt didn’t care. It didn’t care that he had spent his entire life protecting his family. It didn’t care that he had given up a part of himself to save them. Debt didn’t care why it existed. It only cared that it did.”
❛ ━━━━━━･❪ ○△□ ❫ ･━━━━━━ ❜
Part 13: a cruel déjà-vu
Part 14: In-ho can't be the solution
Part 15: In-ho doesn't leave his wife's side
Part 16: In-ho can't hide the truth from his wife
Part 17: In-ho was never a gambler
Part 18: They have to make a decision
Part 19: Midnight calls, morning fears
Part 20: In-ho borrows money
Part 21: In-ho tries to keep the secret
Part 22: Jun-ho blames himself
“The moment came when the rules changed, when they were no longer playing against the system, but against each other. It was either him or someone else.”
❛ ━━━━━━･❪ ○△□ ❫ ･━━━━━━ ❜
Part 23: In-ho plays a childhood game
Part 24: In-ho calls the number...
Part 25: Red Light, Green Light
Part 26: Biseokchigi
Part 27: Forming an alliance, a team
Part 28: Names they shouldn't say
Part 29: Tuho
Part 30: Jun-ho realizes that something is wrong
Part 31: Breaking the news
Part 32: In-ho lets Young-il ramble
Part 33: Zero One
Part 34: Shifting tides
Part 35: Lights out
Part 36: In-ho notices the rules changing
Part 37: They have to pick a partner
Part 38: Sabangchigi
Part 39: In-ho has nightmares
next part coming soon
❛ ━━━━━━･❪ ○△□ ❫ ･━━━━━━ ❜
English is not my first language!
I wanted to organize the scenes chronologically cause I might write and post them very randomly. I'm sorry in advance! So far, I am following a red thread, but you never know...
Jun-ho was In-ho’s little brother first. But when In-ho becomes ‘Appa’ to someone else, Jun-ho starts to feel like there’s no space left for him – quieter visits, missed glances, and a name that doesn’t belong to him. Jun-ho tries to be good. To understand. Until he can’t. And all that hurt spills out in one breathless moment: “I wish you were my appa.”
Jun-ho had never met anyone like Yuna.
She was funny. Not the kind of funny adults usually were – weird or loud or trying too hard – but actually funny.
She made up voices for cartoon characters and never told him he was being too much. She listened when he talked, even when it was about stuff like what would happen if jelly beans were currency or whether ghosts got bored.
She was cool, too. Not in a cold way, but in the warm, hoodie-sharing, lets-you-stay-up-an-extra-hour way. She didn’t make fun of the way he still liked picture books sometimes. She just smiled and said, “Show me your favorite page.”
So when In-ho brought her around more, Jun-ho didn’t mind. Not even when she started sleeping over. Not even when Eomma raised her eyebrows and said something about “closing the door” and “setting an example.”
Jun-ho liked Yuna.
He loved her, maybe. The same way he loved his favorite pen and his brother’s laugh when he wasn’t pretending to be grumpy.
So when In-ho sat him down one day, all serious and slow, and said, “Yuna’s going to have a baby,” Jun-ho’s first reaction wasn’t confusion.
It was awe.
“A baby?”
In-ho smiled – kind of nervous, kind of not. “Yeah. You’re gonna be an uncle.”
Jun-ho’s eyes went huge. “Me?”
“Yeah. You.”
“Will it be weird?”
“Maybe a little.”
“But cool?”
In-ho nodded. “Yeah. Definitely cool.”
Jun-ho thought so too.
He got to hold his nephew in the hospital. The baby smelled like lotion and newness and something kind of milky and warm. His nose was small, like a little bean. His fingers curled around Jun-ho’s pinky without even trying.
In-ho smoothed back the tiny hat on the baby’s head. “His name’s Seo-jun. We picked it because we wanted part of your name in his.”
“You named him after me,” Jun-ho said, stunned.
Jun-ho looked at the baby again. He was so small. Wrinkly. Kind of red. But he had little fingers that still curled around Jun-ho’s pinky like a sleepy cat and a nose that scrunched up like he was trying to sneeze and forget it at the same time.
Jun-ho grinned so hard it made his face warm. “Does this mean I get to teach him stuff?”
Yuna smiled from the hospital bed, her eyes soft with sleep. “When he’s bigger, yeah. All the stuff you know.”
“I know a lot,” Jun-ho said proudly. “Like how to draw on eggs without cracking them.”
In-ho ruffled his hair. “That’ll come in handy.”
And in that moment, it felt good. Safe. Like nothing had changed except there was more love now. More people to share things with.
But things did change.
Slowly. Quietly. Like a leak in a balloon.
It wasn’t anything obvious at first.
Just that his hyung wasn’t home as much.
He’d gotten a new apartment with Yuna, one that was “too far to walk” and “not quite ready for sleepovers yet.” Eomma smiled when she said it, but Jun-ho could tell she missed him too.
They visited, sometimes.
Jun-ho sat on the bus and stared out the window, stomach flipping with something that wasn’t nerves but wasn’t not-nerves either. The apartment was nice. It smelled like warm laundry and baby powder and soft things. But it wasn’t home. It didn’t sound like it. Didn’t feel like it.
And everything was quiet – except when it wasn’t. When Seo-jun cried, it was like the whole apartment got smaller.
Sometimes Jun-ho talked, and no one answered right away. Sometimes he showed them a drawing and In-ho said “That’s great, bud,” without looking up from the bottle he was shaking or the baby he was bouncing.
It didn’t feel bad, exactly.
Just… different.
Everything was about the baby.
Which made sense. Babies needed a lot of things. Bottles. Wipes. Cuddles. Rocking. But Jun-ho wasn’t used to being in the background. He didn’t know how to shrink that way.
In-ho bounced Seo-jun while Yuna sat on the floor with a pillow in her lap. Eomma offered to help with laundry. Jun-ho stood in the doorway, holding the coloring book he’d brought in his backpack.
No one asked to see it.
They weren’t being mean. They were just... busy.
“Jun-ho, can you hand me that blanket?” Yuna asked, smiling but not really looking at him.
He passed it over and nodded, then sat on the floor and started coloring by himself. When he finished the page, he didn’t show it to anyone.
And then one day, it happened.
He was sitting on the rug again, watching the baby blink up at the ceiling fan. He’d brought his favorite car to roll along the coffee table edge. It made a tiny click each time it hit the seam between wood panels. Click. Click. Click.
And Yuna leaned over the baby and said gently, “Look, Seo-jun. Appa’s getting your bottle.”
Jun-ho froze.
His fingers clenched around the little car, wheels spinning in his palm.
Appa.
She’d said Appa.
His stomach twisted. His ears buzzed. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t what she was supposed to say.
That was Hyung.
Hyung, who let him ride on his shoulders and carried him home when he fell asleep on the bus and once helped him build a volcano for science class even though it exploded too early.
Hyung, who used to check his homework and make his rice just right and let him cry into his hoodie when he got too overwhelmed at school.
Now he was Appa.
For someone else.
And for the first time, Jun-ho didn’t want to be there. He didn’t want to see the baby. He didn’t want to play or draw or sit on the couch with a blanket while they cooed over someone who wasn’t him.
He just wanted to go home.
He didn’t say anything. Not right away.
But when they asked him if he wanted to hold Seo-jun again, he shook his head.
He didn’t want to.
Not anymore.
He didn’t say anything on the bus ride home.
He just stared out the window again, the world rolling past like it didn’t notice him.
When Eomma asked if he had fun, he nodded. Said “Yeah.”
But inside, it felt like something had shifted. Just a little.
Like there was less space for him now, even if no one had said so out loud.
Jun-ho still smiled sometimes when he saw In-ho. Still let Yuna ruffle his hair. Still packed his backpack with crayons and stickers in case the baby needed entertainment.
But more and more, he started holding back.
He spoke less. Stayed close to Eomma when they visited. Pretended to be tired, or full, or busy when they asked if he wanted to hold the baby. When In-ho passed him the bottle one afternoon and said, “Want to help feed him?” Jun-ho just shook his head and said, “I’ll spill it.”
He stopped bringing his drawings.
He started sitting by the door instead of the couch.
And whenever In-ho laughed – the big kind of laugh, the real kind – and it was because of something Seo-jun did, Jun-ho’s stomach tightened.
Jealousy wasn’t something he could name yet. He didn’t know that was what it was. He only knew it made his chest feel too small, like the inside of him was curled up tight and couldn’t stretch out.
He didn’t want to feel that way. He loved In-ho. He even liked the baby, sometimes, when he wasn’t crying. But it was like... everything was getting smaller. And he didn’t know how to ask for space that didn’t exist anymore.
One weekend, In-ho picked him up from school early. That part was exciting. He was leaning against the car, waving, already smiling in that relaxed way that meant something good was coming.
“We’re having a hyung-and-Jun-ho day,” he said as Jun-ho climbed into the front seat. “Just you and me. Yuna says we deserve it.”
Jun-ho had beamed. His cheeks hurt from grinning. They were going to the museum. The one with the big dinosaur bones and the blinking planetarium. He’d even packed his sketchpad.
But halfway there, In-ho’s phone buzzed. His brow furrowed when he checked it.
Jun-ho watched the muscles in his brother’s jaw shift as he read the message.
Then In-ho sighed.
“I’m sorry, bud,” he said gently. “Yuna’s not feeling great. The baby’s being fussy. She asked if I could keep him for a few hours so she can rest.”
“Oh,” Jun-ho said. “Okay.”
“It’ll still be fun,” In-ho promised. “We’ll just bring him along.”
But when Jun-ho saw the stroller in the backseat – when he saw the car seat already clipped in – it hit harder than he expected. The day hadn’t even started, and it already felt like it was slipping away from him.
At home, Eomma was waiting by the door when they pulled up. She greeted them both and leaned in to take Seo-jun, who had just started to stir. In-ho climbed out, unbuckled the baby, and handed him over with the kind of practiced ease Jun-ho had never known before.
“There you go,” he murmured. “Appa’s right here.”
Jun-ho flinched.
His feet froze on the sidewalk, hands curling into fists at his sides.
Jun-ho shrugged. Didn’t look up. His ears were hot.
“Jun-ho,” In-ho said again, stepping closer. He crouched down slowly until they were eye level. “Talk to me. Please.”
Jun-ho’s lips wobbled.
“I’m fine,” he mumbled.
“You’re not.”
Jun-ho blinked fast. Too fast. He could feel the burn already building in the corners of his eyes, and he didn’t want to cry. Not now. Not in front of everyone.
But In-ho didn’t stop. Didn’t let him retreat.
And Jun-ho broke.
“I said I’m fine –” he tried again, but it cracked in the middle. A sharp, shaky breath followed. His arms folded tight over his chest, shoulders rising.
“It’s not fair,” he whispered.
In-ho tilted his head. “What’s not?”
And then the words came. Quiet at first. Then louder. Looser. Like a storm that had been building for days.
“It’s not fair that he gets you.”
In-ho blinked. “What?”
“He gets you all the time!” Jun-ho cried. “You’re his appa. You live with him. You feed him. You carry him everywhere. But I was first! I was your brother first!”
His chest heaved with every word now, his voice cracking like ice under weight.
“I know you’re not my appa… but you used to be mine! And now he gets you and I get... I don’t know what I get. It’s like you left and no one told me.”
He scrubbed angrily at his cheeks, but the tears kept coming.
“I don’t want him to go away. I just want – I just want you back.”
In-ho didn’t speak.
He didn’t say ‘Don’t cry’ or ‘That’s not true’ or ‘You’ll understand someday.’
He just reached out and pulled Jun-ho into his arms.
And Jun-ho collapsed against him, face buried in his jacket, sobs quiet and hiccupping.
“I miss you,” he whispered. “I miss you all the time.”
“I know,” In-ho said, his own voice tight now. “I know, bud.”
His hand rubbed gently up and down Jun-ho’s back, slow and steady. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel that way.”
“You said it wouldn’t change,” Jun-ho mumbled.
“It shouldn’t have,” In-ho said softly. “You’re right. You were my little brother first.”
Jun-ho sniffled.
In-ho didn’t say anything for a long time.
He just held Jun-ho close, crouched on the sidewalk like the rest of the world could wait. Jun-ho’s breathing started to slow again, each inhale a little steadier than the one before. His fingers clung to the fabric of In-ho’s jacket like he didn’t trust it to stay.
“I’m sorry,” In-ho murmured again. “For not noticing sooner.”
Jun-ho nodded against his chest.
“You still are my little brother,” In-ho said. “That hasn’t changed. It never will.”
Jun-ho didn’t answer right away. His head stayed tucked under In-ho’s chin, his voice barely more than the hush of wind through leaves when he finally whispered –
“I wish you were my appa.”
In-ho froze.
The words were so quiet, so careful, he almost thought he imagined them.
But Jun-ho meant them. Every syllable.
Not because he didn’t love Eomma. Not because he didn’t know the difference.
But because Hyung was the one who showed up. Who packed his lunches and helped with homework. Who chased monsters from closets and sat beside him at school plays. Who knew all his weird thoughts and liked them anyway.
He didn’t look up after saying it.
He just stayed there. Still. Waiting.
In-ho’s heart cracked wide open.
He lowered his head, pressing a hand gently to the back of Jun-ho’s head.
“I’ll be whatever you need,” he said softly. “For as long as you need me.”
And Jun-ho leaned in again – just a little – and let himself believe it.
