my mind's awake all night daydreaming
Jeonghan was born on a cold October day, but it's not the cold his mother remembers - she'll tell him when he's older, but still small enough to fit snug curled up against her. It's the bright orange of the leaves the whole drive to the hospital that stuck with, the way the sun shined through them and the whole world seemed engulfed by a halo, ready for their little angel. What he remembers of those first early years was that they were all comfortable, that he was happy and never wanted for anything. His two sisters were always there to play with, even if at times their teasing games went too far or simply didn't include him. It was normal, everything about them was. His mother would work at a salon every other day and his father wore a suit and smart shoes and worked diligently all day and sometimes through the night. On weekends they would go on picnics, camping, on trips and excursions. They were a happy family.
And happy they were certain to say. All until soon after his 9th birthday when Jeonghan went on a class expedition to a mountain trail. Geography was one of his favorite subjects and he had spent all week talking about it to anyone that would hear. He knew the name of every rock, mineral, plant and animal they were likely to encounter on the way and was excited about the possibility of adding on to his ever growing collection. There had been a lot of rain leading up to the field trip, enough that it was nearly cancelled but the weather cleared up the day before they were meant to go. What they hadn't realized was how muddy the trail would be, a rocky terrain made suddenly too dangerous to explore at length. Most of the kids did not mind, they were here more to not be in class than any kind of interest for the mountains around them.
But it simply wouldn't do for Jeonghan. There was so much left to find, so much left to see. So at lunch time when the teachers weren't looking, Jeonghan slipped away telling his friends he was going to go find a bathroom and went off to find something special to bring home to show to his family. He went deep into the woods like that, looking up at trees that looked higher up than the sky itself, hunting for finds far and wide instead of at each step taken before him.
Whatever thought he had about returning before anyone caught on that he was missing was quickly forgotten. His pockets and backpack grew heavy with twigs and leaves and rocks, little treasures to properly document on his kitchen table later tonight. Jeonghan was already picturing it, how maybe his father would help, how his mother definitely would. The smile on his face grows bigger when he's faced with a clearing, a breath taking sight from the top of a ledge. He looks down at a mud slicked path where something glimmers under the wet sun and in the humid air. It's only a few steps away, and he's already quiet muddy, so there's no harm in trying to get it, right? It could be something special, worth the best spot in his collection.
Jeonghan started making his way down, reaching to get it when the earth slips out from underneath him. There's the blue of the sky one the moment, then nothing but the pull of the ground all around him, enveloping him whole and dragging him further down and down, in and in, until there was no trace of him left to find. His teachers tried until the twilight started to claim the forest in an absolute darkness, the town nearby tried every day after that, soon joined by his parents and later - the entire country. The rain returned, it turned to snow and everyone started to lose hope that the young boy was still out there, somehow, safe, somehow.
His parents never once lost hope, even when the news reports turned from daily to weekly to scattered to days when there was not much else to say but that he was still gone, and his family was still begging for people to join them in looking. There was no reason for them to hold on like they did, believe so surely their son was out there somewhere but they did, praying and begging that he was being taken care of. And he was. Spring broke and the snow melted, sun clearing the mud beneath to dirt prime for growing. A hiker was walking off the trail of the mountain when he found a large fairy ring at the base of a slope. The centre of it was not a graying dead but an overgrowth so tall, green and dense he knew something strange must lay underneath.
He gathered a few more men who in turn called the police - all of them with the same thing in mind: Jeonghan's angelic face that had spread through the news cycle so much that no one could forget him. They all got to digging, careful and scared and expecting many things but not what they found. It wasn't Jeonghan they saw buried there, at least not the little boy they thought they would. A flower bulb laid beneath the soil, so similar to the ones laid in gardens all over the world but the size of a small child curled up, snug and safe. It was a soft pink in color, smooth and wrapped up tight unto itself until one man dared to kneel down and touch the pale surface of it.
All it took was the one human touch to pull him out of a winter long hibernation. The bulb began to stretch out, petals flourishing out in lazy awakening until Jeonghan's sleeping form was revealed underneath, blinking back to life with a long yawn as if no time at all had passed. His hair was long and skin pale, clothes gone and replaced instead by still growing flowers, vines that wrapped around him slow and winding. No one knew what to say - had there been some poison in the ground? A collective insanity over finding a boy they were so sure laid dead beneath. Jeonghan stared as they stared back, stared at how the green slipped from him and started to cover the ground, started to grow from him like petalled wings and halo.
They ran, ran scared and nearly driven insane by it. Left the small scared child by himself once more, but this time so painfully aware of it. How much time had passed? It wasn't fall anymore, the day was hot and he could see how alive the forest was around him - no, much more than see, he could feel it. It was that feeling that prevented him from breaking down completely into the tragedy of a slow realization that he was lost, he had been left alone and his family... oh, his family. Jeonghan did not feel alone, hardly felt himself as he looked down at green, at reds and pinks, at the blurred lines of grass and self. The forest was a chorus of hushed whispers, all chiming in together to lull him into comfort - they'd protect him, he was loved, he'd always be loved.
He waited like that for hours, crying softly as the world shaped itself into a lullaby for him. Jeonghan's parents showed up as the sun started to set, not alone but with a small group of men that looked much different from those who had rescued him. The reunion was a tearful one, parents running to embrace him, arms full of flower and child alike and they never once blinked an eye to it, too grateful that their child was alive to question how that had been possible. It's the men that explain that to them in the ride back to Seoul. Jeonghan is more special than they'd ever thought or realized, they said. He had a gift.
The happy, normal life he had left behind had changed. It's not that it was unhappy, simply difficult, the kind of difficult nothing could've prepared him for. Everyone who saw him now knew who Jeonghan was. They knew that he had gone missing, that he had been through something much greater that he had yet grasped. Everything that had been so normal no longer was. He was not the talkative child he had once been - the world did not look or sound as it once had. Getting him to speak at all was a challenge at first, most things were. His parents were with him more than they were at work - taking him to schools that could be accommodating, going with him with to the Safe Haven to make sure he never felt alone. It quickly proved to be too much, for them and him. Phone calls made, plans laid out and the whole family was on a plane to London.
London offered them a much needed relief to him and his whole family. It still wasn't easy - to be new, to learn a new language, learn his new gift in a foreign land and see his family struggle with the same plight themselves in a way he could not begin to help them with. Some comforts were found, family still close and full of love even somewhere that never got the feel like home. Jeonghan eventually made some friends as the language started to come as naturally as his own, powers supressed enough that normalcy was in grasp - almost, always an almost.
By the time they returned to Korea, no one recognized Jeonghan as the little boy that had been in every tv across the nation. They kept him in private English institutes for the rest of his education - always afraid someone would recognize them, that the dark shadow that stretched long over their past would be dragged into the light. He had grown and learnt to cope as best as he could with all that had happened. There were still moments it crept up on him, when he felt alone again, vulnerable, about to break - with nothing but himself and suddenly wishing that the earth would swallow him to sleep once more. But even that was something to learn to control, to quiet and manipulate. His parents supported him the best they could but it's not until Jeonghan meets Chungha one fateful day in middle school that he finds ways to truly cope. Together they start going through magazines, fascinated by a world as full of flourish as his own.
Jeonghan started to blog at the suggestion of his best friend, which offers him an escape at her side, something else he could see grow alongside him. The blog opens the doors for his journalism degree and eventually an internship with Vogue Korea. The name he had made for himself gets him traction during the year working there, more than he had ever imagined. His weekly escape - a make up stream with only a couple of dozen viewers suddenly triples. It then grows into the hundreds, the thousands, the hundreds of thousands when he realizes he has a platform here. By now, growth is second nature in his life, an existence marked by a wild, overwhelming teeming life.
As his channel grows Jeonghan becomes more involved about speaking about topics such as animal cruelty and testing in the fashion industry, as well as being enviornmentally conscious. He makes a career of his escape, quitting his internship a year in to share with anyone who would watch the very things that had once helped him be able to steady the ground beneath his feet. There are times he touches on more sensitive subjects - expectations, apperances, defying how the world sees you, anxiety, pressure - so much there, at the tip of his tongue he bites because this great thing he has built, he has very little control over it.
And happy they were certain to say. All until soon after his 9th birthday when Jeonghan went on a class expedition to a mountain trail. Geography was one of his favorite subjects and he had spent all week talking about it to anyone that would hear. He knew the name of every rock, mineral, plant and animal they were likely to encounter on the way and was excited about the possibility of adding on to his ever growing collection. There had been a lot of rain leading up to the field trip, enough that it was nearly cancelled but the weather cleared up the day before they were meant to go. What they hadn't realized was how muddy the trail would be, a rocky terrain made suddenly too dangerous to explore at length. Most of the kids did not mind, they were here more to not be in class than any kind of interest for the mountains around them.
But it simply wouldn't do for Jeonghan. There was so much left to find, so much left to see. So at lunch time when the teachers weren't looking, Jeonghan slipped away telling his friends he was going to go find a bathroom and went off to find something special to bring home to show to his family. He went deep into the woods like that, looking up at trees that looked higher up than the sky itself, hunting for finds far and wide instead of at each step taken before him.
Whatever thought he had about returning before anyone caught on that he was missing was quickly forgotten. His pockets and backpack grew heavy with twigs and leaves and rocks, little treasures to properly document on his kitchen table later tonight. Jeonghan was already picturing it, how maybe his father would help, how his mother definitely would. The smile on his face grows bigger when he's faced with a clearing, a breath taking sight from the top of a ledge. He looks down at a mud slicked path where something glimmers under the wet sun and in the humid air. It's only a few steps away, and he's already quiet muddy, so there's no harm in trying to get it, right? It could be something special, worth the best spot in his collection.
Jeonghan started making his way down, reaching to get it when the earth slips out from underneath him. There's the blue of the sky one the moment, then nothing but the pull of the ground all around him, enveloping him whole and dragging him further down and down, in and in, until there was no trace of him left to find. His teachers tried until the twilight started to claim the forest in an absolute darkness, the town nearby tried every day after that, soon joined by his parents and later - the entire country. The rain returned, it turned to snow and everyone started to lose hope that the young boy was still out there, somehow, safe, somehow.
His parents never once lost hope, even when the news reports turned from daily to weekly to scattered to days when there was not much else to say but that he was still gone, and his family was still begging for people to join them in looking. There was no reason for them to hold on like they did, believe so surely their son was out there somewhere but they did, praying and begging that he was being taken care of. And he was. Spring broke and the snow melted, sun clearing the mud beneath to dirt prime for growing. A hiker was walking off the trail of the mountain when he found a large fairy ring at the base of a slope. The centre of it was not a graying dead but an overgrowth so tall, green and dense he knew something strange must lay underneath.
He gathered a few more men who in turn called the police - all of them with the same thing in mind: Jeonghan's angelic face that had spread through the news cycle so much that no one could forget him. They all got to digging, careful and scared and expecting many things but not what they found. It wasn't Jeonghan they saw buried there, at least not the little boy they thought they would. A flower bulb laid beneath the soil, so similar to the ones laid in gardens all over the world but the size of a small child curled up, snug and safe. It was a soft pink in color, smooth and wrapped up tight unto itself until one man dared to kneel down and touch the pale surface of it.
All it took was the one human touch to pull him out of a winter long hibernation. The bulb began to stretch out, petals flourishing out in lazy awakening until Jeonghan's sleeping form was revealed underneath, blinking back to life with a long yawn as if no time at all had passed. His hair was long and skin pale, clothes gone and replaced instead by still growing flowers, vines that wrapped around him slow and winding. No one knew what to say - had there been some poison in the ground? A collective insanity over finding a boy they were so sure laid dead beneath. Jeonghan stared as they stared back, stared at how the green slipped from him and started to cover the ground, started to grow from him like petalled wings and halo.
They ran, ran scared and nearly driven insane by it. Left the small scared child by himself once more, but this time so painfully aware of it. How much time had passed? It wasn't fall anymore, the day was hot and he could see how alive the forest was around him - no, much more than see, he could feel it. It was that feeling that prevented him from breaking down completely into the tragedy of a slow realization that he was lost, he had been left alone and his family... oh, his family. Jeonghan did not feel alone, hardly felt himself as he looked down at green, at reds and pinks, at the blurred lines of grass and self. The forest was a chorus of hushed whispers, all chiming in together to lull him into comfort - they'd protect him, he was loved, he'd always be loved.
He waited like that for hours, crying softly as the world shaped itself into a lullaby for him. Jeonghan's parents showed up as the sun started to set, not alone but with a small group of men that looked much different from those who had rescued him. The reunion was a tearful one, parents running to embrace him, arms full of flower and child alike and they never once blinked an eye to it, too grateful that their child was alive to question how that had been possible. It's the men that explain that to them in the ride back to Seoul. Jeonghan is more special than they'd ever thought or realized, they said. He had a gift.
The happy, normal life he had left behind had changed. It's not that it was unhappy, simply difficult, the kind of difficult nothing could've prepared him for. Everyone who saw him now knew who Jeonghan was. They knew that he had gone missing, that he had been through something much greater that he had yet grasped. Everything that had been so normal no longer was. He was not the talkative child he had once been - the world did not look or sound as it once had. Getting him to speak at all was a challenge at first, most things were. His parents were with him more than they were at work - taking him to schools that could be accommodating, going with him with to the Safe Haven to make sure he never felt alone. It quickly proved to be too much, for them and him. Phone calls made, plans laid out and the whole family was on a plane to London.
London offered them a much needed relief to him and his whole family. It still wasn't easy - to be new, to learn a new language, learn his new gift in a foreign land and see his family struggle with the same plight themselves in a way he could not begin to help them with. Some comforts were found, family still close and full of love even somewhere that never got the feel like home. Jeonghan eventually made some friends as the language started to come as naturally as his own, powers supressed enough that normalcy was in grasp - almost, always an almost.
By the time they returned to Korea, no one recognized Jeonghan as the little boy that had been in every tv across the nation. They kept him in private English institutes for the rest of his education - always afraid someone would recognize them, that the dark shadow that stretched long over their past would be dragged into the light. He had grown and learnt to cope as best as he could with all that had happened. There were still moments it crept up on him, when he felt alone again, vulnerable, about to break - with nothing but himself and suddenly wishing that the earth would swallow him to sleep once more. But even that was something to learn to control, to quiet and manipulate. His parents supported him the best they could but it's not until Jeonghan meets Chungha one fateful day in middle school that he finds ways to truly cope. Together they start going through magazines, fascinated by a world as full of flourish as his own.
Jeonghan started to blog at the suggestion of his best friend, which offers him an escape at her side, something else he could see grow alongside him. The blog opens the doors for his journalism degree and eventually an internship with Vogue Korea. The name he had made for himself gets him traction during the year working there, more than he had ever imagined. His weekly escape - a make up stream with only a couple of dozen viewers suddenly triples. It then grows into the hundreds, the thousands, the hundreds of thousands when he realizes he has a platform here. By now, growth is second nature in his life, an existence marked by a wild, overwhelming teeming life.
As his channel grows Jeonghan becomes more involved about speaking about topics such as animal cruelty and testing in the fashion industry, as well as being enviornmentally conscious. He makes a career of his escape, quitting his internship a year in to share with anyone who would watch the very things that had once helped him be able to steady the ground beneath his feet. There are times he touches on more sensitive subjects - expectations, apperances, defying how the world sees you, anxiety, pressure - so much there, at the tip of his tongue he bites because this great thing he has built, he has very little control over it.
