Man. It's been more than a decade since BoF came out, and that nostalgia just snuck up on me like that while I've been trying to clear all my work and meet my deadlines. Anyway, sis has some serious found-family-trope obsessions that I'm always too happy to indulge in, so here's a Frankenstein-esque monster. (tbh I started out wanting to write a Ga Eul/Yi Jeong fic but in the end it turned out to be a found-family fic so... hm.)

Written to the soundtrack of Beautiful Ghosts (great song, couldn't make it even halfway through the movie.)

I have never seen winter in my entire life, so I do not know what it looks like. I also do not know anything about fostering and adopting at all (much less in Korea), apart from some very cursory Googling before I gave up because, well, it's fiction. So please forgive any factual discrepancies.

I imagine this to come after Yi Jeong's shitty-ass move of bringing her on a date with his dad (like... ew?) and before the Namsan Stairs thing.

I don't own BoF, or anything related to that. All grammatical and/or canonical mistakes are mine.

It's winter. The sidewalks wink up into the night sky as the car passes on by, all orange glitter and white salt crystals. Frost garlands the trees, a festive tinsel that will melt come morning, and if she imagines hard enough she thinks she might hear its chimes. She almost coos at how pretty everything is. Instead, she holds in a sigh, and pretends she can't feel Woo Bin's inquisitive glances at her as they hurtle towards her home.

It's a relief when he pulls up to the front of some dilapidated buildings, the same place she always directs them to whenever the F4 deem it fit to drop her off at home. Woo Bin peers out of his squeaky-clean windshield, and she knows he's trying to guess which square of window she looks out of every night. She wants to tell him not to bother.

"We're here," Woo Bin announces unnecessarily to Ga Eul.

"Thank you for the ride," she smiles at him, reluctant for the night to end, because even through everything, even when he has nothing to gain from it, he's always been nothing but kind to her.

She can feel herself wanting to linger, wanting to press herself back into the warmth of his slick leather seats. So she peels herself off, opens the door and slides out in one smooth motion. She waves at him through the window, and he waves back.

They wait.

Finally, she leans down, and gestures for him to wind down his window. "Aren't you leaving yet?"

"That should be my question," he laughs. "I'll go when you walk through your doors."

And, well. This is something that she hadn't anticipated.

"Okay," she smiles anyway, and waves again. "Bye."

He waves back, and watches her shuffle off, her footsteps small and uncertain. Woo Bin thinks, briefly, he'll always be able to recognise that gait from anywhere. It'll be the first thing he'd tell his men to look for, if she ever had the occasion to go missing.

He wants to go, wants to watch her walk through any of the buildings' doors so he can go back to the lounge where it's warm and comfortable with company and copious amounts of alcohol. More than anything he wants to finally be able to shake off the nagging suspicion that itches at the back of his mind and that he picks like a scab in the mornings.

But then she glances back, as if to check if he's still there, and he curses. Then he saunters out of his car and towards her, and her back tenses when she hears his solid footsteps coming up behind her.

"I decided to walk you in after all," he smiles at her. "You looked like you were having trouble navigating the ice."

She smiles weakly at him, and he doesn't miss the dread in the corners of her brows.

"So," he says jauntily, "Which building is yours?"

She directs him to the left, and when they enter the lobby the security guard is slumped over his desk, the tea in front of him cold and ineffective. Most of the security cameras aren't working, and even if they were, the lighting is too weak to capture proper images anyway.

Woo Bin enters the lift behind her, and she looks at him, all eyes and nerves. He smiles back at her.

"I'll be fine now," she tries to dismiss him. "Thank you."

She's polite, but he's determined not to be. "I'll see you to your door."

He wonders how far she'll carry this charade, and marvels at her hope that she can outsmart him, or find a loophole in his mechanisms to work around. Positivity has never been his strong suit, after all. Birds of a feather, and all that.

She pulls out her keys stiffly, pushes them into the lock, and twists. The lock turns. She sends a quiet hope to the heavens (but honestly, when have they ever listened? He's learnt to stop wishing upon a star and just get it done himself. He thinks she might still need to learn her lesson.) but the door doesn't open when she pushes at it.

He turns to her then, and opens his mouth to say something flippant and stupid and cheeky, but then shuts it hastily. Because it seems that that's the absolute last thing Chu Ga Eul can take that night, and her bottom lip is trembling and there's a glassiness in her eyes that threatens to spill out.

"Ga Eul," he says nervously instead. "Let's go back to the car, okay?"

She wants to say no. She wants to throw a tantrum, and scream, and have her fucking breakdown that she keeps postponing and postponing because she's too busy, and something always crops up, so everything keeps building and building and she's bursting at the seams. But it's 2 in the morning, and she's too polite and too nice, so she just sniffles and nods her head and conscientiously avoids Woo Bin's eyes as he guides her out the elevator, out the lobby, to where his car remains idling.

She tries to stop crying, but her breaths are ragged and uneven, and the flesh of her palms on her eyes can't seem to convince her tears to stop coming. Woo Bin presses a handkerchief into her hands.

"It's okay," he says. And there's a lot of things in the world he could be referring to – whatever situation he imagines she's in, the state of the world, Jan Di and Jun Pyo's ridiculous relationship drama – but then she just starts absolutely bawling and she can't stop. Vaguely, in the back of her mind, she remembers Yi Jeong saying something like girls aren't actually prettier when they cry or some other trite crap like that, and that should be enough to freeze her heart right back up, but it ends up opening a whole other set of waterworks.

To his credit, Woo Bin doesn't try to stop her, or try to offer her meaningless platitudes and condolences. Instead, he starts the car and starts driving. She doesn't know where they're going, but the smooth purr of the engine is reassuring under her. His presence next to her, warm and solid and there, keeps her grounded even as she collapses in on herself.

Eventually she feels her tears start to subside, and her breath starts to even out, and the jagged hole in her chest doesn't feel quite so rough around the edges anymore. She doesn't want to stop, though. She knows that not crying means talking, and she doesn't want to talk about it. She never wants to talk about anything. It's why she's such a good listener, after all.

But he still stays silent next to her, and when she looks up, she doesn't recognise the road they're coasting on. She watches the black shapes go by, first trying to come up with an excuse for, well, everything, then eventually giving up and letting herself be soothed by the scenery. She's surprised to hear herself speak first.

"Where are we?"

"I don't know," Woo Bin says easily, one hand on the wheel, and another holding out a bottle of water at her. "I find driving around aimlessly helps me to feel better eventually. I can just GPS my way back."

"You weren't the one crying your eyes out," she points out.

"Of course not," he smiles. "That would be dangerous."

She laughs at that. It starts out as a small, startled laugh, but the more she thinks about it, the funnier it is, and then she's laughing a full belly-laugh and she doesn't know if she's laughing at his stupid joke, or herself, or the entire situation.

He grins widely next to her, as she shakes in the passenger seat. He doesn't think he's smiled like this in a long time, and his jaw starts to hurt. He can't stop, though, just like she can't stop laughing.

Eventually, she winds down again, and she's exhausted, and drained. Her head lolls back slightly, and he glances at her.

"Do you want to talk about it?" As if he's really giving her a choice.

She pauses. "No," she admits. "But I should." She never wants to talk about it, about anything, ever, but it feels easier when they're out in the middle of nowhere, just her and this man who has been nothing but kind to her, even when he has nothing to gain from it. The consequences of the real world feel too far to touch her, and she feels herself careening towards something, but what it is she doesn't know. She can't bring herself to care.

She's a foster child. She grew up in the orphanage – left on the doorstep, she was told, and it sounds so kitschy and clichéd and makjang even to her ears – until this family had arrived looking for someone to adopt. She'd been six.

They'd pushed her out to them, peddling her with a well-practiced patter, and the family had said okay and she'd left with them the next week. She wishes she could say that she felt sad leaving the place where she'd grown up, but she can't, not really. That was the first time she wondered if she had a heart.

The profound relief she'd had upon leaving the place hadn't faded when they'd arrived at her new home, even when she realised that they hadn't been looking for a child to love and spoil after all, but were just looking for a set of helping hands that the government would conveniently pay for. So she learnt to cook and clean, and she attended school and they played the part of the caring and concerned parents in the public arena.

She'd gotten her first job at 14, when they'd told her that she was spending far more than the government stipend they were awarded, and that she'd better earn her keep if she didn't want to go back to the orphanage. They'd added a curfew when she got old enough to have friends to ask her to go out to dinner. Be home by eight, or they'd bolt the door and she wouldn't be able to go in. Like what had happened tonight.

Ga Eul looks up from her twiddling thumbs as she relays the last part, and Woo Bin gives no indication that he's noticed she's stopped. They continue driving in silence for five minutes, and there's an air of finality around her. What her family is doing, she knows, is illegal, and she's just signed off on a one-way ticket back to the orphanage.

"Sunbae," she says, finally, eyeing the clock on his dashboard. "I'm feeling a lot better now. Really. We can stop."

"We're not driving for you now, Ga Eul-yang," he says, his voice low, and she notices for the first time his white knuckles clenched around the steering wheel. "We're driving for me."

"It's not so bad, really," she tries to assure him. "I'd go to the convenience store and clean myself up, and I know a few places I can hang around until morning."

There's no response, and she supposes on some level she knows that's a weak defence to have. She wants to tell him that she'd never minded those late-night parties and outings she got caught up in, and she'd choose to go with them every time, because at least for those few hours she would be warm and safe and happy. But the words catch and dry in her throat, and she doesn't know how it would make him feel better. So instead she just reaches out, and places one hand on his arm in comfort, or maybe in solidarity. Misery has always, after all, loved company.

Five minutes later, her arm is aching, and she doesn't know if it's insulting to withdraw her hand and the comfort it symbolises. Next to her, Woo Bin half-laughs when he catches the discomfort written all over her face. He returns her arm to her, and she stretches it gingerly.

"You're not going back," he says, and she's already resigned herself to this the second he'd placed a hand on the small of her back to guide her back into the elevator.

"I know."

"You're going back with me instead."

Her eyes fly open, and she blinks. He's nice without obligation and without expectations, but she thinks this might be verging into the taking advantage realm and shares as much with him.

"No," he dismisses it with a wave of his hand, already in the midst of punching his home address into his GPS. "It's really more for me. I've always wanted a little sister," he confides. Then pauses. "If it's alright with you, that is."

She thinks about it, this man who has quietly fallen into step next to her at the ridiculous parties and over-the-top events without a word, who has offered her the crook of his elbow and taken it upon himself to explain all the idiosyncrasies of the rich, spoilt brats of his social class. The man who already sends her stupid pictures and memes throughout the day, and shows up unannounced with chocolates and ice-cream when she's only ever hinted at having a less than satisfactory day. She wonders when they diverged from friend-of-a-friend to this, and smiles at him.

"I'd love it," she smiles at him, and she sees the slight tension in his shoulders melt away.

"Good," he says. "I'll get my lawyer to draft up the adoption papers first thing in the morning tomorrow."

Make a right turn, the GPS says, and he swings the steering wheel deftly home. She falls asleep somewhere between Go straight and You have arrived at your destination.

They sign the papers at 5.47 in the morning, and there's a self-satisfied air hanging about him as they shake the judge's hand.

Her head is spinning at the night's (morning's?) events as Woo Bin nudges her in the direction of her new room. Plush, and more than four times as large as her old space. She feels like a stranger in this place she's supposed to call home now, and has to resist from tiptoeing across the carpet to the bed where she can lie spreadeagle without touching the edges of the mattress.

"Ga Eul," Woo Bin calls from her doorway. She pauses, and turns. "We're going to talk about you not telling us anything about those people tomorrow."

She wants to protest that there's nothing to talk about, that she could navigate the situation well enough on her own, and that she didn't want to trouble them or take advantage of them. That she only had two years left in that impossible situation before she would break free. But she's tired, and the carpet is soft enough for her to sink into a fall asleep right there and then. So she nods, and his eyes soften slightly.

"Goodnight, yeodongsaeng." It slips out easy and quick like a fish exploring its new pond, and she can only beam at him from where she is.

"Goodnight, oppa."

When she finally blinks awake, it's 1 in the afternoon and the sun is shining in mercilessly through the towering glass panes of the window. She freezes in her unknown surroundings before the previous night rushes back to her, and she relaxes again, curling up further in the comforter. She tries to chase the last vestiges of sleep, but the momentary panic that had arrested her when she'd woken up has done its job too well, and she grumbles a little as she resigns herself to getting out of bed.

She's wholly unsurprised to see that the ensuite bathroom has already been stocked with toiletries, and she scrubs her teeth clean blearily. She eyes the shower, feeling last night's dust and grime on her like a slick coating on her skin. She's relieved to see that there are towels and bathrobes, all as plush as the room itself, already stocked in the little cabinet. She takes a little longer than usual to clean herself, somewhat cognizant of the fact that when she leaves the room, she will be pulled into an entirely unnecessary and useless conversation.

There's a fresh outfit laid out for her on the bed when she eventually emerges from the shower, and she flushes with some embarrassment at the thought of someone else buying and preparing underwear for her. She slips on the clothes, and looks in the mirror to get ready to brave the wolves.

She still feels like a stupid, white-as-fleece lamb, but opens the door anyway and edges out, trying to remember the twists and turns from the few times she's ever stepped into Woo Bin's mansion. She walks for a bit, poking her head around corners to ascertain if any place looks or feels familiar to her, but eventually everything starts to coalesce into identical corridors or expensive artifact, priceless painting, antique end table, expensive artifact, expensive artifact, expensive artifact. She's on the verge of just standing in the middle of a corridor and yelling so that someone would just come and bring her to where she's supposed to go, when she runs into the one person she would really rather spend the rest of her life avoiding.

If Yi Jeong is surprised to see her here, he doesn't show it, his face still neatly schooled in an expression of politely pleased recognition.

"Good afternoon," he says. "I didn't know you were joining us today too."

It takes all her effort not to grimace at him and say something like, I didn't know I was joining you guys either, but her commoner manners win out in the end and she just smiles at him. "Good afternoon."

He gestures at the plain door they're standing in front of, and pulls it open. "Ladies first."

Ga Eul stalks past him, wishing that for once she can just do anything other than freeze up on the inside and feel her hurt and indignation bubble over inside her. She barely has time to greet Jun Pyo and Ji Hoo at the kitchen island when Woo Bin pops up from behind her.

"You're awake," he says, dropping a kiss on her forehead, and pushing a mug of tea in her hands. "Oh, and you brought Yi Jeong too."

Jun Pyo sputters on her left. "Wait. You mean she slept over here? Ga Eul, you slept here?!"

Ji Hoo didn't miss the faintly murderous expression on Yi Jeong's face when Woo Bin kissed Ga Eul, and doesn't miss the way his features tense up, like he's bracing for impact. He pinches Jun Pyo in the side in a futile attempt to shut him up.

"Guys. I asked you all to come over today because of something extremely important to me," Woo Bin says.

Jun Pyo mutters something that sounds suspiciously like fuck, and Ji Hoo thinks Yi Jeong and himself are too alike in the one way they shouldn't be. Or should be. He's still undecided himself on the matter. He forces his attention back to the situation at hand, where Woo Bin has his hands solidly clasped on the shoulders of one Chu Ga Eul, who looks like she's ten miles past territory solidly marked out with a wooden, splintery stake that reads "UNCOMFORTABLE".

"I want to formally introduce you to my new little sister."

Tension rapidly fades out of the hard planes of Yi Jeong's stance, and Jun Pyo is so startled that he barks out a laugh.

"Did you guys go drinking after the party yesterday? Don't people normally get married instead when they're drunk? Do you need me to call my lawyers and dissolve whatever this is?" He waves a hand in their direction.

"No," Woo Bin rolls his eyes. "My lawyers are better than yours anyway."

Jun Pyo sputters at this, and Ji Hoo cuts in smoothly before they start overcompensating with their lawyers' respective skills. "We're very happy for you, of course," he smiles at Ga Eul, conveying his sincerity with a firm squeeze of her ice-cold hand, "But maybe you would like to explain the circumstances?"

Woo Bin fixes his eyes on Ga Eul, who declines his obvious invitation to explain by trying to edge away. Ji Hoo, of course, does not let go of her hand, because Woo Bin always has very good reasons when he wants to have hard conversations. Instead, he slings his arm across her shoulder, pointedly ignoring Yi Jeong's glare on his arm. It's one thing if the man wanted to do something stupid and ended up hurting both himself and the woman he so obviously loved, but it's another thing altogether to prevent him from comforting his good friend. So he keeps his arm there, the other affixed in her palm, with Jun Pyo flanking her on the other side, and Yi Jeong seething quietly behind them.

So Woo Bin shares their conversation from the previous night, along with additional information his men have managed to gather, looking to her for confirmation. Ji Hoo feels Ga Eul trembling next to him, and he knows she's poised to run the second she gets the opportunity to do so. And all of them know it's wrong to be focused on this in light of what she's gone through, but they can't help the hurt that she didn't trust them enough with this to let them help her.

"So I thought," Woo Bin finishes, "It'll be good to establish some new rules for communication between us. And I know that legally, you only have one new older brother, but you should know that you've had us ever since you stepped in and started meddling in our lives too."

Jun Pyo, ever unaffectionate and always looking to make up for his flaws, reaches out and musses Ga Eul's hair before ripping her away from Ji Hoo and drawing her into a bear hug. She catches Yi Jeong's eyes, forgetting her indignation in her vague panic, and blinks owlishly at him as she pats Jun Pyo gingerly on the back like she would a slumbering tiger.

Woo Bin rescues her from his clutches, laughter barely contained, but satisfied that his point has been clearly and concisely made, then proven. They eat a late lunch together, over which they wrangle from her promises that she would always tell at least one of them when she ever even felt vaguely uncomfortable, and that she would never put herself in that situation again. She almost snaps at one point and asks if she should also promise that she would never lift a finger for herself again, but then she collects herself with the grim thought that these men would probably fall over themselves to agree to that idea. Still. It's nice, she thinks, as she laughs at their squabbling and light jabs, to have a meal like this. Even if one of them still causes her heart to ache when she thinks about him too much.

After they eat, she makes a quick escape to one of the soaring balconies that the mansion has to call Jan Di, not trusting Jun Pyo not to blurt out something in the thoughtless manner than he has. She leaves a voicemail for her, hoping that she listens to it after her examination and before she has a chance to call her boyfriend (or have her boyfriend call her). Then she sends five texts, all in capitalised letters with a number of exclamation points, telling her in no uncertain terms to check her voicemail before doing anything else.

She turns back into the house, ready to make her way back to the kitchen, when she realises that she has no idea how to get there. Again.

"Need a fucking map just to navigate this house," she mumbles to herself, not sure whether she's more annoyed at the opulence of the house, her situation, or herself for not paying attention to where she was walking.

She remembers a game she played with herself when she was five, and they were brought to the park for entire afternoons. The park was so big that she'd been overwhelmed and didn't know where to go, so she would close her eyes and spin and spin around until she forgot where she started and where she ended, and when the dizziness faded she would open her eyes and let herself walk where her feet pointed. Not once had her feet pointed her down a path she regretted taking, and she always had her own adventures and had discoveries to make. She'd stopped after, of course, when there were no more outings to the park, and where there were always others in her periphery.

But there's no one now, and she's safe, she knows, in this too-big fortress that she thinks she might never be fully comfortable in, on her own. So she closes her eyes, palms tightly pressed over them for good measure, and spins. The feeling of flight swoops in at once, familiar and discomforting in equal measure, and she spins until she's unsteady and she thinks she might collapse. She stops, and the whirlwind inside her fades away, and her heart stops pounding in her ribs. She opens her eyes, and she stands, staring at Yi Jeong, who is a corridor away and looking at her like she is holding something very precious, something that she is liable to smash to the ground without thinking.

He takes the first step, feet pointing straight at her, his even footfall at odds with the mismatched beating of her heart. She gathers the last fading flutters like her battle armour, and walks towards him. They meet in the middle, and she thinks, briefly, that if she had met him on the first day with this high afternoon sun shining on him and giving him gilded and golden edges, she would have forgiven every transgression he had every made against her, and that she was keeping a running tally of.

"Ga Eul," he says, and her heart stutters and stops again, and she mentally adds this to her list. "I'm sorry."

I also don't speak Korean, so I don't know if this is how people actually address their blood-related older brothers and younger sisters. It sounds stilted to me, but Google assures me it's correct, so I suspect it's because I just don't speak the language. I could have just used English terms, but it kills the Asian in me to not address the hierarchy, and it sounds super stilted. Plus, Woo Bin throws out the term "bro" like a fisherman throwing out day-old fish so... yeah.

Anyway, I imagine Yi Jeong still needs to come to terms with himself and his feelings and his actions (refer to: his vague promise to see her first in four years like wtf is that? 10 years ago I was like "Aww!" but now I just shake my head and tell her to drop him like a hot potato) and she also needs to forgive him for pulling that move. Because she has a shiny shiny spine (refer to: basically all the scenes she's in? Catch my girl standing up for herself and her bff at every step of the way) and whatever crap he was going through is not and will never be a reason (good or not) to have done what he did to her.