A Way Home

His Story Part I

The unfortunate was left on the building's uneven doorstep with not a letter attached. If lucky, they'd have a blanket for security.

It was a month before he turned 18, he'd been notified by the head administrator if no one came for him, he would have to leave. He had reached the max age. At 18 years old he would no longer be qualified a minor and require no more assistance. Sehun would have to step out into the world on his own. Carrying on his back no experience of the real world. No guidance offered.

That was as good as telling him to walk off a cliff into a drop-off.

The head administrator was gentle with the news, but Sehun really heard, "Goodbye. You were never needed."

He was fraught with indescribable fear every night. How to survive by himself. Everyone he ever knew was here at Angel. They did not feel like his family but they were also his family. His entire life spent here was a mix of complications, but that was all he'd ever lived with. The anxiety made his heart jump from one spot to another inside his chest.

Those days he never really slept. Tossing, turning watching the wiry branches outside his window sway back and forth taunting him.

Then one day when he was wiping dust off the church mantel, they came. A woman ultra-permed hair curling around her head. Next to her a bigger boy in heavy jeans and jacket slung over a thin white wifebeater shirt. One glance and Sehun could tell they were not from the city. He could smell dust and dirt on them. A foreign scent that lingered around farm animals.

Hunched awkwardly, the woman scurried toward the nearest administrator she could find. "Hello," her lips curled around gold and yellow teeth, "I called earlier."

"I'm so glad you made it," the administrator welcomed in her stiff blue uniform. "He's right over there. Let me call him for you." Twisting back, she waved an arm for him to join them, "Sehun, come here."

When he reached her side, she wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Introducing, "This is Oh Sehun. He is seventeen years old. Thank so much for responding to our ad."

"Yes, yes," the permed hair lady kept her uncomfortable smile plastered on while the meaty tan boy next to her gruffly roved eyes over him. No word exchanged between them.

"Would you like to sit and chat?" the administrator offered.

That sealed his fate. The next day he packed up what little of his belongings into a cardboard box, courteous of the orphanage, and walked out of Angel for good. The white pickup truck that drove him away was old and smelly. Rust wormed around the ceiling and whatever of the frame of the window. The black leather seats flat as his orphanage pillow, the stuffing inside struggling free in white fluffs.

Sehun's ass hurt the entire way to the farmhouse. The city highway thinned into pictures of golden fields surrounding him on both sides. Wheat and corn mixed with wild green stalks. The green woods thickened and all he saw were gaping holes of blackness in between each growth. The cool city air transitioning humidly slamming his nostrils with cow dung. Sehun pinched his nose.

"Smell good, ya bro?" the brother that he'd met yesterday called out. Ko Songman. Seventeen like him.

Ko Ahjin, his new mom who he couldn't call mom, thrust her hand out. Smacking her son's fleshy arm, "Get my smoke out, Manny, and shut up back there. I have a headache."

Pulling a dry looking black purse onto his lap from the floor, Songman dug around for a white roll. Leaning over his mother opened her mouth for the cigarette. The smell of tobacco infiltrated the vehicle after Songman flicked the lighter off.