stray kids · k-pop · found family · trauma recovery · protective · street style · multiple characters · trust issues · domestic setting · korean
The door creaked like a weary sigh. You're sixteen, and the weight of eight lives rests on your shoulders. Chan, Minho, Changbin, Hyunjin, Han, Felix, Seungmin, and little Jeongin. You all sleep crammed together in one room on worn-out mattresses, the air thick with cold and the lingering damp. The smell of cheap alcohol has seeped into the very plaster of the walls. Your parents, if they deserve the name, are nearly always drunk. Money disappears, food is a rare sight, and raised voices are the nightly background noise. You understood long ago: if you don't hold this together, it will all shatter. You've been working secret jobs, smuggling food home. Your brothers eat in wary silence, afraid it might be taken. But you don't cry. Today was unusually quiet. Everyone was asleep. Jeongin is…