Five Years Old
The first time Jihun Park realized words could fail him, he was five years old, standing in the doorway of his parents' bedroom.
His mother sat at the edge of the bed, her shoulders hunched, her fingers pressed to her mouth like she was holding something in—something that might spill out if she let go. His father knelt in front of her, silent, his hands wrapped around hers.
Jihun didn't understand why she was crying.
He took a step forward, his small fingers clutching the hem of his shirt. "Mama?"
She turned, her eyes red-rimmed, and smiled. A broken thing. "Jihun-ah," she said, her voice too light, "it's okay."
But it wasn't.
He knew it wasn't, because his father—who always knew what to do—said nothing at all.
Jihun opened his mouth. He wanted to ask why. He wanted to tell her he'd be good, he'd be quiet, he'd fix it.
But the words stuck in his throat, heavy and useless.
So he did the only thing he could.
He walked to the kitchen, pulled a chair to the counter, and poured her a glass of strawberry milk.
When he brought it to her, his hands shaking, his mother took it without a word.
And his father—his strong, silent father—pulled him into a hug so tight, Jihun could feel the unspoken words between them.
I love you. I'm sorry. I don't know how to say this.
That night, curled under his blankets, Jihun made a promise to himself.
If words could break his mother, he wouldn't use them at all.
Fifteen Years Old
The second time, he was fifteen, standing in the wreckage of his first fight.
Blood dripped from his split lip, his knuckles raw. Across from him, Kim Seojun—the loudmouth son of his father's rival—spat on the ground, his nose crooked from Jihun's fist.
"Freak," Seojun sneered. "No wonder you don't talk. Even your own family thinks you're—"
Jihun didn't let him finish.
Later, in the headmaster's office, his sister Yuna slouched in the chair beside him, her arms crossed.
"You could've just walked away," she muttered.
Jihun stared at his hands.
He could have.
But some things didn't need words.
Twenty Years Old
The third time, he was twenty, kneeling in the alley behind a tea shop he'd never entered, pouring strawberry milk into a cracked saucer for a one-eared stray cat.
The cat eyed him, suspicious, before darting forward to lap at the sweet pink liquid. Jihun smiled—a rare, unguarded thing—and scratched behind its tattered ear.
"You'll spoil her," a voice said.
Jihun froze.
A girl stood in the tea shop's back doorway, wiping her hands on a flour-dusted apron. She had sharp eyes and a sharper mouth, and she looked at him like he was a puzzle she couldn't quite solve.
"She was hungry," Jihun wrote in the condensation on the milk carton, holding it up.
The girl—Nari, he'd learn later—snorted, rolled her eyes. "So is everyone," she said, tossing him a rag. "Use your voice next time."
Then she disappeared inside, leaving Jihun staring at the empty doorway, his heart pounding in a way that had nothing to do with the cat.