rewrite the stars - jaywon

chapter 1: prelude

It started with a seemingly innocuous conversation, late Saturday morning.

"Wonie! Just the boy I needed to see. I need your help."

Jungwon sighed, resigned. He supposed his hopes of just creeping in and out of the kitchen without having to undergo unnecessary interaction with the parents had been unrealistic. His father was grinning up at him from the kitchen table, a tablet in one hand and a half-eaten croissant in the other.

Jungwon walked over to him.

"What's up, dad?"

"Take a look at this, will you?" his father tilted the tablet screen in his direction.

Jungwon hadn't known what he'd expected— maybe another news article about the progress being made on bringing back honeybees. For some reason, his father got a real kick out of those.

Instead, it looked like his father was looking through some online yearbook. There were rows and rows of headshot pictures of boys and girls who looked to be about Jungwon's age, give or take a few years. They all had on the same starched white uniforms and the same blank expression. Maybe the looks on all their faces— or the lack thereof— was what Jungwon's father had wanted him to see.

"Creepy," Jungwon said, with an exaggerated shiver for effect.

Jungwon's father frowned down at the yearbook page, at the vague faces looking back at him, "Hm. I suppose they are, a bit."

"Is that all you wanted me to see? 'Cause, like, I told my friends I'd be at the mall before noon."

Without waiting for an answer, Jungwon started backing away. Instead of making himself a bagel like he'd planned, he'd grab one of those croissants for the road, to make up for lost time.

"Bup-bup-bup, kiddo! I just need your input on one quick thing. Then, you can scram."

Impatiently, Jungwon took the tablet as his father proffered it. He shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably, glancing down at the blank-faced boys and girls on the screen.

"Tell me," his father said, "which one of these faces you think you'd never get sick of seeing."

"That's a weird question," Jungwon said, even as he looked down at the rows of pictures and started sorting through them. He could immediately dismiss a few right off the bat.

That boy's blank expression came off cold, sinister. That girl towered over everyone else, even when framed the exact same way. Jungwon wouldn't want a crook in his neck from looking up at someone like that. That girl had beautifully, perfectly spiraled curls which had probably taken hours to perfect. Jungwon wasn't sure about her either.

"Indulge me," Jungwon's father's voice was elevated, lifted by restrained laughter.

Frowning, and worried that his friends would become impatient if he kept them waiting (again, for the third week in a row), Jungwon picked one almost at random. Jabbing his finger at the boy who at least wasn't part of the group Jungwon had eliminated, Jungwon said,

"This guy."

Jungwon's father took the tablet from him and clicked on the headshot, blowing it up. The boy's picture overtook half the screen. Jungwon was struck by his eyes— sharp, and alluring. He hadn't noticed them before, when the picture had been scarcely bigger than a bottle cap.

The boy had black hair, undercut— a cool style. His hair served to further accentuate what seemed to be an inherent attractiveness in his features, the charming expression created by his sharp eyes and his curved brows. He also had a perfect pointed nose, and a defined jawline. Jungwon was disappointed in himself, in his choice— this boy was exactly the sort he'd have an ill-fated crush on. It'd be one of those that would last a semester of pining and staring from afar only to be forgotten when they changed classes.

"Definitely better than Jenson's rustbucket," Jungwon's father muttered, under his breath, drawing Jungwon out of his imagined crush on this strange boy he didn't even know.

"Huh?"

Jungwon's father cleared his throat, "I mean. What about it's— his hair? Do you think he'd look better with something understated, or something more flashy?"

Jungwon looked at his father with raised brows. His father was generally accepting of the fact that Jungwon liked boys, and had been ever since Jungwon came home from kindergarten gushing about Sunghoon and how cool he was and how nice he was. But his father had never initiated conversations about boys with him before.

Is that what they were doing now, talking about boys? It'd explain why his father was acting so strange— Jungwon considered the possibility that he was simply unsure of what to say, and how to say it.

Jungwon looked back down at the boy's picture. If his father was making a sincere effort to try and talk about boys with him, no matter how strange his approach, he'd try to extend the same courtesy.

"I think the black hair suits him. He looks... charismatic."

Jungwon's father clicked his tongue, "But— c'mon, Wonie, I could see him in blue. Or— oh! a dark red."

Maybe Jungwon's father wasn't trying to talk boys with him after all. Maybe his midlife crisis was going to involve dying his hair, and he was just looking through the pictures for inspiration. Jungwon gave up.

"Maybe blond or platinum blond would suit him too?"

"Oh! Like brown? Chestnut brown?" Jungwon's father's eyes lit up as he looked down at the poor boy, probably envisioning this random stranger with a blond head of hair.

"No! Jesus, Dad. Regular blond. You're acting so weird," Jungwon whined.

Mercifully, Ni-ki chose that precise moment to text Jungwon. Never had he been so relieved to be pestered about running late.

"Okay, I really gotta go. The guys are gonna be pissed if I'm late. Again."

"Language," Jungwon's father said, absentmindedly. Jungwon could see him typing something in on the tablet. He thought it best not to dwell on his father's eccentricities or to ask questions.

"The guys are gonna be extremely bothered if I'm late again," he corrected himself, half-jogging towards the door. He snatched a croissant on his way out, "Adios, dad!"

"Bye, Wonie! Thank you— you've been a big help!"

Jungwon didn't see how he could have been. He stuck the croissant in his mouth as he jumped into his car and turned on the radio. By the time he'd gotten to the mall, he'd already pushed the strange conversation with his dad to the back of his mind, putting it down to just another one of his family's quirks that would never be explained.

The conversation lay, all but forgotten, in the part of his mind that was slightly hazy, not easy to dredge up. It rested in between dates he'd had to memorize for history and phone numbers for everyone but Domino's.

— the end of chapter 1 ♡