Banished Divinity: Learning to be Human

Minjae (POV)

The Boy Who Learned Not to Cry

When Minjae was ten years old, he was fat.

Not the kind of fat that made him jolly. Not the kind that made him the funny friend or the one who gave good hugs. The kind of fat that made other kids whisper. The kind that made teachers look at him with something that wasn't quite pity but wasn't quite anything else either.

He was also a crybaby.

Everything made him cry. A sad commercial about a dog. A bird with a broken wing. The way the sun hit the dust motes in the classroom when the afternoon light came through the windows—that one got him at least twice a week. He cried at movies, at songs, at the sound of his own mother's voice when she wasn't drunk enough to be mean yet and was just... tired. Just hollow. Just a woman who had once been someone's daughter and was now no one's anything.

But school was different.

School was his sanctuary.

The fluorescent lights hummed a song that made sense. The desks were arranged in neat rows that he could count on. The chalkboard smelled like dust and possibility. He loved the way the morning announcements crackled over the intercom. He loved the bell that marked the beginning and end of things, because beginnings and endings meant order, and order meant no one was screaming.

He had great friends. The kind who didn't care that he cried when the class hamster died. The kind who saved him a seat at lunch even though he ate too much and took too long and sometimes cried into his rice because the texture reminded him of the rice his grandmother used to make before she died in a car accident when he was eight.

Both grandparents.

Same accident.

One moment, he had two people in the world who loved him without conditions. The next, he had none.

He helped the teachers carry books to the staff room. He stayed after class to erase the chalkboard even when it wasn't his turn. He raised his hand with answers that were always right because he studied harder than anyone—not because he was smart, but because studying meant he didn't have to go home.

When his friends were sad, he put on the best smile.

It was the only thing he was good at, really. Making other people feel better. Because when other people were sad, it made him feel helpless—and helpless was the thing he felt every single day when he walked through the front door of the apartment that was never a home.

---

The apartment was small.

One bedroom, which belonged to his mother. A living room that doubled as a bedroom for whoever happened to be staying the night. A kitchen that smelled like spoiled milk and regret. A bathroom with a lock that didn't work, so he had learned to hold his body still and quiet when he heard footsteps in the hallway.

His mother drank.

His father drank.

His mother had boyfriends. X, Y, Z. He stopped learning their names after the third one. They were all the same anyway—loud, demanding, their hands too heavy on his shoulders when they wanted him to go buy them more alcohol from the convenience store three blocks away.

"Get moving, fat boy."

"You deaf or just stupid?"

"Run faster."

He ran.

He always ran.

His father had girlfriends, too. X, Y, Z. Different faces, same vacant eyes. They came and went like seasons, some of them kind in the way that strangers are kind to stray cats, others cruel in the way that cruel people are cruel to things they know cannot fight back.

His father treated him like a servant or a jester—depending on the night, depending on how much he'd had to drink, depending on whether the girlfriends were laughing at Minjae or with him. Minjae learned to tell the difference. The laughter that came with him was rare. The laughter that came at him was the air he breathed.

"Dance, fat boy."

"Sing something."

"Make us laugh."

He danced. He sang. He made them laugh.

And then he went to his corner of the living room—the corner with the thin mattress and the blanket that smelled like other people's smoke—and he pressed his face into the pillow so no one would hear him cry.

Because his father beat him when he cried.

"Stop sniveling. You're not a baby anymore. Act like a man."

He was eight when his grandparents died. He was eight when "act like a man" became the only instruction anyone ever gave him.

He was twelve when he learned that men don't cry at all.

---

He wondered sometimes—on the good nights, when both parents were passed out and the apartment was quiet and he could hear the traffic outside like a lullaby—what it would be like to live somewhere else.

Somewhere with clean sheets.

Somewhere with a door that locked from the inside.

Somewhere with a mother who made breakfast and a father who asked about his day and maybe, maybe, a sibling who stole his food and made him laugh.

He wondered what it would be like to be normal.

He wondered if other kids lay in bed at night and mapped out the quickest route to the door in case they needed to run.

He wondered if other kids knew which windows could be opened from the outside.

He wondered if other kids had a bag packed.

(He had a bag packed. An old backpack with two changes of clothes, a bag of chips that was probably stale, and a photo of his grandparents. He kept it under his mattress. He had never used it. He didn't know why he kept it. Hope, maybe. Or stupidity.)

The first time he heard "The Older I Get," he was eleven.

It was playing on the convenience store radio while he waited in line to buy the cheapest ramen he could find. The singer's voice was soft. Sad. The kind of sad that didn't scream or cry but just... existed. Like a bruise that had faded to yellow but still ached when you pressed on it.

The older I get, the more I see

My parents aren’t hero, they’re just me

He stood there in the fluorescent glare of the convenience store, holding his ramen and his change, and something inside him broke.

Not the way things usually broke in his life—with violence, with screaming, with the sound of glass shattering. This was different. This was quiet. This was the sound of a boy realizing that the songs on the radio were about him.

I used to be mad, but now I know

Sometimes its better, to let someone go.

Just hadn’t hit me yet, the older I get.

He cried.

Right there in the convenience store. In front of the cashier who was too tired to care. In front of the other customers who looked away because it was easier than asking what was wrong.

He cried because the song was sad.

But more than that—he cried because it was relatable.

Because he was ten years old and already he understood what it meant to feel like time was slipping through his fingers. Because he was ten years old and already he knew that the people who were supposed to love him never would. Because he was ten years old and already he was tired.

So tired.

When he got home that night, his father was there—which was rare, which was bad, which meant something was about to happen.

"Why are your eyes red?" his father demanded. "Have you been crying?"

"No," Minjae said. "Allergies."

"Don't lie to me."

"I'm not—"

His father's hand connected with his cheek.

"I can smell it on you," his father said. "The weakness. You've been crying like a little girl."

Minjae said nothing. He had learned that silence was sometimes safer than the truth.

"You want something to cry about? I'll give you something to cry about."

The beating lasted until his father got tired.

Minjae didn't cry.

Not because he was strong. Because he had learned.

He learned to cry in his sleep after that. Silent tears that soaked his pillow and disappeared by morning. Cries that made no sound, that required no breath, that left no evidence for his father to find.

He became an expert at crying without crying.

He became an expert at surviving.