"happy birthday mingi! welcome to the thirteen year old club!" san yelled, causing the others to laugh. wooyoung groaned angrily, mad that he was still not 13 yet.
mingi started dancing around, as seonghwa walked into the room.
"happy birthday hon, but boys, don't forget you have your first day of school today. go get dressed, and get your backpacks. dad is waiting in the car to bring all of you to school." he said.
yeosang waved eagerly when he saw beomseok sitting alone at the basketball court.
"hey, yeosang." beomseok said sadly, making yeosang slow down from his previous running, do his usual confused head tilt, and come up and sit down next to his friend, wrapping his arm around the older.
"yeosang, there's some bad news. you're in eighth grade, now, right?" beomseok looked up, seeing yeosang nodding slowly.
"well, that means that i'm in ninth grade, which means i'm in high school, which means that.. we have lunch at different times. and so we can't sit together anymore." he said sadly.
yeosang quickly pulled his arm away from the older and began signing something.
'it's okay, we can still talk in between classes and stuff. don't you have friends in your grade that you can sit with?' yeosang asked. beomseok shrugged. "sort of, but i don't think they want to talk to me anymore since i kind of maybe left their group so that i could sit with and talk to you.." he sighed. "i don't know what to do."
'well.." yeosang took a moment to think. '..i think that, since i'm in special ed classes that are more flexible than regular ones, i could maybe get my lunchtime moved to be during yours.'
"really? you can do that—and you would do that, for me?" beomseok asked eagerly.
'i'm pretty sure.. i can ask my parents later.' yeosang smiled, unconsciously grabbing the older's hand to comfort him. beomseok looked down at their hands, then held yeosang's hand in both of his.
(a few weeks later; also slight tw :/ )
"mingi? are you in there? i need to talk to you about something." seonghwa knocked on the door, getting no response from the other side.
he decided to try to open the door, only to find that it was locked, which made him worried.
"mingi? hello? please answer me, i know you're in there.. if you need to talk to me about anything i'm all ears, just please unlock the door.." he started to get a little softer and kinder with his words.
hongjoong overheard seonghwa, and walked into the hallway to see what was wrong.
seonghwa started to knock loudly, when he then heard some muffled cries start to become clearer and clearer, and from a familiar voice. it sounded like mingi was rushing to do something, with his cries getting more audible as time passed.
"mingi, please let me in, i'm gonna have to break down the door if you don't unlock this door right now! please, mingi, talk to me!" "no!" the child then cried out.
san and yunho came running into the hallway out of worry, and so hongjoong gathered up all the kids and told them to stay in the parents' room until the problem was resolved.
at this point, seonghwa was yelling pleads for mingi to leave his room. they could hear mingi weeping.
yeosang and san had started to cry out loud out of pure fear, while jongho sat calmly on the bed, wooyoung comforted his crying brothers, and yunho paced around the room, worried sick about mingi.
see, with yunho, he wasn't good at expressing emotions. he never really liked to hug his brothers or anything.
hongjoong and seonghwa were worried that yunho's lack of showing that he cares meant that he actually didn't care and would split away from his brothers, but deep down, he was different.
deep down, yunho cared so much about his brothers.
he would constantly ask them after school if they'd eaten well, he was the first of all of the siblings to learn sign language for yeosang, he started to apologize almost every day over the one incident he had with san and shiber years ago, he would go into mingi's room on a daily schedule and make sure he was doing alright, he still went with wooyoung to dance class despite not having a lot of motivation for it, and he would help jongho just about every night with his homework.
during the school day, he wouldn't be able to stop thinking about if his brothers were okay or not.
he was always the first to stand up for his brothers when any of them got picked on, because he hated the idea of anyone hurting any of them.
he could do all these things, yet he didn't really know how to give them proper hugs or tell them "i love you."
anyways, back to the current situation.
hongjoong rushed to find something that could pick a lock while seonghwa continued to beg and plead. eventually, hongjoong found an actual lock picker, and so he came running in, shoving it into the keyhole and frantically moving it around to open the door.
and finally, the lock clicked, and they threw open the door. mingi was curled in the corner, sobbing and pretty violently hitting his head on the wall.
seonghwa dashed inside and immediately protected mingi's head from any more hits, and managed to stay there for a bit, despite mingi's attempts to hit and scratch the father away from him.
hongjoong followed, trying to hold mingi's arms down and doing his best to pull him into a strong hug.
once he pulled him away from the wall, the child simply fell into hongjoong's arms and continued to cry loudly. hongjoong rocked him back and forth, until he finally got mingi to stop his loud sobbing and start to just sniffle a few times continuously.
once mingi's cries has quieted, the crying coming from the others in the parents' room became clear.
"take him. i'll go talk to them." hongjoong whispered, then handing the limp, crying child to seonghwa before standing up and walking out.
seonghwa cradled mingi in his arms, rocking him and beginning to sing "the truth untold" by bts.
meanwhile, hongjoong went in and tried to reassure yeosang and san, who were crying the hardest. once they calmed down, hongjoong decided to take them one at a time to come in and give their brother a big hug.
san went first. he ran down the hallway and swung himself into the room before he stopped when he saw the condition mingi was in.
seonghwa lifted him up, and mingi held out his arms for san to basically pick him up.
mingi cried into san's shirt as the older stroked his hair and muttered quiet "shhhh's" before giving him back to seonghwa. hongjoong then took san back to the room and took yeosang in.
eventually, they all got through, with jongho refusing to hug mingi because he wasn't good at hugging and he figured mingi didn't want to hug him, anyways.
i'm sorry for all the timeskips i'm sort of done with them,,, kind of. also y'all gonna love the next chapter that's all i'm gonna say also thank you for nearly 20k reads i don't deserve this at all
