FAMILY. Which type of bond proves to be thicker than blood? Is it the one that you form with those who are legitimate flesh and bone? Or rather one that has proven that you could lend your last dying breath only to be pulled back into the living with just a moment to spare? For Minho, that question could change depending when it was asked.

Stares could be seen as rude or abrasive to others, yet for Minho, it was a sign that someone was interested in something. Or at least that's what his mother taught him at a young age. Never being cut short of the knowledge that surrounded his mothers ‘job’, he was no stranger to stares from the other children on the playground due to their parents warning them not to talk to him. That or the perplexed looks of his mom's coworkers crowding the living room at 3am on a Monday night who reeked of the silver smell of death as a little boy in his cat onesie rubbed his eyes to make sense of what was going on. Very early on Minho watched as his mother, a capo of his subsection of Seouls local mafia, trafficked a variety of arson between different gangs left and right. For as risky of a job she took on, she did her best as a single widowed mother to raise her son. With dreams and aspirations of her rather quiet and sweet son becoming more than what she was, she was sadly mistaken when he took a liking to her subordinate men's roles.

The second he would arrive at base after school, all Minho could do was stare at the way his mothers men would manipulate their lineup of weaponry, grinding out repetitive motions of practice in aiming and essentially using each metal body on a blank board or test dummy. By the time he was 12 years old his mothers second in command, a young 20’s something year old man from Japan named Kotoro, gifted him his first pair of Shuriken. Engraved on the inner most part was the name ‘Neko’ — a name fondly given to him due to his light footwork and his undeniable ability to bounce back from the dead after every mishandling accident during training that would almost cost him an arm or a leg.

Honing his close up combat skills day by day, Minho had an optimistic look towards his somewhat dark drawn out future. That is until the fatal day he arrived down the block from his family's base just like any other school day to the sounds of shots being fired in the near distance. Quickly picking up his pace, he climbed his way up to the second floor balcony through the attached fire escape stairs from the outside. From up above, he knew he was too little too late to help out his family. Every single inch of the warehouse was in shambles with shelving units knocked over and lifeless bodies sprawled out of men who stood by Minho's side just days before teaching him how to use their newest shipment of foreign glocks that had just arrived. Once he saw the last man escape the warehouse, he took those shaky steps down to the one place he feared to see the most. The main post that held his mothers office already had its door ajar. Inside was the breathless corpse of his beautiful mother sitting in her chair. Slumped back, Minho could feel his mothers stare the second he stepped in. Yet… there was no interest in her eyes.

 

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Le coucher du soleil remplissait tout le ciel de la couleur profonde des rubis , embrasant les nuages. Les vagues se sont écrasées et ont dansé le long du rivage, se déplaçant de haut en bas dans un rythme gracieux et doux, comme elles dansaient. La peinture était un champ de fleurs, avec des bleus et des jaunes profonds et riches sur des tiges vertes vibrantes qui semblaient vous inviter à entrer et à les ramasser.

Le coucher du soleil remplissait tout le ciel de la couleur profonde des rubis , embrasant les nuages. Les vagues se sont écrasées et ont dansé le long du rivage, se déplaçant de haut en bas dans un rythme gracieux et doux, comme elles dansaient. La peinture était un champ de fleurs, avec des bleus et des jaunes profonds et riches sur des tiges vertes vibrantes qui semblaient vous inviter à entrer et à les ramasser.

Le coucher du soleil remplissait tout le ciel de la couleur profonde des rubis , embrasant les nuages. Les vagues se sont écrasées et ont dansé le long du rivage, se déplaçant de haut en bas dans un rythme gracieux et doux, comme elles dansaient. La peinture était un champ de fleurs, avec des bleus et des jaunes profonds et riches sur des tiges vertes vibrantes qui semblaient vous inviter à entrer et à les ramasser.

Le coucher du soleil remplissait tout le ciel de la couleur profonde des rubis , embrasant les nuages. Les vagues se sont écrasées et ont dansé le long du rivage, se déplaçant de haut en bas dans un rythme gracieux et doux, comme elles dansaient. La peinture était un champ de fleurs, avec des bleus et des jaunes profonds et riches sur des tiges vertes vibrantes qui semblaient vous inviter à entrer et à les ramasser.