"To everyone else, he was something terrifying. But once, he was just a little boy who loved to smile."
Kim Hajin was born smiling.
Not the dreamy, sleepy smile of a baby, but a real one — eyes wide, lips curving with an impossible warmth, like the very first rays of sun after a long, dark night. The nurses in the delivery room were stunned.
"Have you ever seen a baby smile like that?" one whispered, her voice hushed in wonder.
His mother, drenched in exhaustion and tears, only held him close. "He's just... happy, I guess."
And he was.
From the very beginning, Hajin was a cheerful baby. He didn't cry much — not because he didn't feel discomfort, but because he was quick to find comfort in his mother's voice or his father's hand. He laughed at peek-a-boo, grinned when his parents kissed his cheeks, and kicked his little feet whenever someone sang to him.
"He's such a good boy," the neighbors would say.
His mother would beam. "I think he's special."
That feeling grew stronger as months passed.
At six months old, Hajin spoke his first word: "Mama."
It wasn't a fluke. A week later, he said "papa." Then "light." Then "cat."
His voice was still soft and babbling, like all babies — but the words came clearly, one after another, as though he was absorbing the world at an impossible pace.
His father joked, "I think we've got a little genius here."
Hajin clapped at that word. "Geniush!"
They laughed and hugged him tight.
He was their world. And they were his.
When Hajin turned one, he began solving puzzles meant for toddlers twice his age. His hands were small and clumsy, but his eyes scanned the pieces with unusual focus. He could sit for hours just matching shapes or flipping through picture books.
He loved music, especially lullabies. He'd hum them in his baby voice while swinging his feet, waiting for his mom to return from the kitchen.
He loved warmth. Blankets, hugs, naps in the sun.
He loved his parents.
And more than anything — he loved seeing them smile back.
When Hajin was two, his father bought him a simple children's building block set. Bright, colorful squares and rectangles. Most toddlers would stack them haphazardly, perhaps knock them over with glee. Hajin didn't.
He sat on the rug, eyes focused, and systematically sorted them by color, then by size. Then he began to arrange them, not into towers or cars, but into complex, geometric patterns that mirrored diagrams his father had once seen in an architecture magazine. When his father knelt beside him, pointing at a particularly intricate arrangement, Hajin simply looked up and said, "It's a tessellation, Papa."
His father blinked. "A... what now?"
"Tessellation," Hajin repeated patiently, his tiny finger tracing the interlocking shapes. "They fit without gaps."
A beat of stunned silence, followed by his parents exchanging a look of bewildered pride. "Well, I'll be," his father murmured, a wide smile spreading across his face. "Our boy truly is a wonder."
---
His mother loved to watch nature documentaries, particularly those about the cosmos. One afternoon, while a narrator described the vast distances between galaxies, Hajin, then three, was meticulously arranging his alphabet magnets on the refrigerator. He wasn't spelling words, but arranging them in long, complex sequences. His mother, half-listening to the TV, glanced over.
"What are you doing, sweetie?" she asked, amused.
Hajin pointed to a string of letters.
"It's... it's the sequence of prime numbers, Mama," he said, sounding a little frustrated that she didn't grasp it instantly. "Up to the 20th prime. It goes on and on, infinite."
The spoon clattered from his mother's hand. The TV's murmur about light-years faded. She knelt, her gaze sweeping from the perfectly ordered magnets to her son's earnest, expecting face. "Hajin," she whispered, her voice barely audible. It was the first time she looked at him with something more than just adoration—a sliver of an expression she couldn't quite name.
But then, something changed.
It happened on his fourth birthday week — during a family gathering at his uncle's house. The adults were downstairs, talking and laughing. Hajin wandered into his cousin's room, chasing a cat toy she had lying around. His eyes landed on a bookshelf.
Thick books. Complicated diagrams. Equations he didn't fully understand — but enough to spark something in his mind.
He picked one up. Then another.
One hour later, he was scribbling in a notebook with a crayon.
His cousin walked in and screamed.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
Hajin blinked, startled.
"I—I'm just drawing..." he mumbled.
She snatched the notebook. Her hands trembled.
"These are formulas! This is high school calculus! You— You're four!"
She ran from the room. A minute later, footsteps stormed upstairs.
His parents appeared in the doorway. Confused. Curious. Calm — at first.
Until they saw the paper.
His father crouched beside him.
"Hajin," he said slowly. "Did you copy this from somewhere?"
"No... I just look book," Hajin answered. "It make sense. I try."
His mother didn't speak. Her eyes were fixed on the scribbled equations, then on Hajin, a new, unsettling glint in their depths.
His father turned to her, his voice low. "It's not normal. This isn't just memorizing things. He's... processing."
Later that night, the house was silent save for the quiet murmur from his parents' bedroom. Hajin, hidden near their half-open door, strained to listen.
"I told you he was special," his mother whispered, her voice tight. "But this... this is too much. He's only four. Are we... are we doing something wrong?"
"Of course not," his father replied, though his tone lacked conviction. "He's just... advanced. A prodigy."
"It's not charming anymore, is it? It's... unsettling," she insisted. "Did you see his face? So calm, so... understanding. It's like he knew exactly what he was doing, like he's not really a child."
"Don't say that," his father snapped, a hint of fear in his own voice. "He's our son. He's just exceptionally gifted. We should be proud."
"Proud?" she scoffed. "And what happens when he starts doing things we can't understand at all? What happens when he stops being our child and becomes... something else?"
A heavy silence descended. No bedtime stories. No goodnight kiss. Just the lingering chill of their words.
And the next day, the whispers began.
"He's not like a child... it's like an adult pretending."
"Maybe he's a reincarnation or something."
"It's creepy. Kids shouldn't talk like that."
At first, Hajin didn't understand.
He still smiled when his parents came home. Still hugged them when they passed by. But little by little... their smiles faded. Their touches grew cold.
They stopped leaving toys for him. They started locking their bedroom door.
One night, Hajin stood outside their room with a drawing he made — a happy picture of all three of them under a sun.
He knocked softly.
"Mommy? Daddy? I made this for you."
Silence.
Then a quiet voice from inside.
"He's like a wolf in sheep's clothing. Looks like a child, but... he's not."
Hajin stared at the door for a long time. His small hand, still clutching the crumpled drawing, slowly fell to his side. Then he dropped the picture and walked away.
That was the night his light began to flicker.
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