rewrite the stars - jaywon

chapter 44

"So let me get this straight. Park Sunghoon lied to us and claimed you and Jay were working on a school project at his house, when in reality you were...," Jungwon's father trailed off.

His reading glasses slid down the bridge of his nose as he looked in utter confusion from Jungwon to Jay. Jungwon winced, and issued a mental apology to Sunghoon. He hadn't meant to throw him under the bus.

"At BELIFT campus, getting whatever operation you had done to Jay uh," Jungwon paused, wondering what the technical term for what Soobin had done to Jay's chip was, before he conceded and settled on, "undone."

Jungwon sensed more than saw Jay twitch, to his side, a half step behind him.

"And you mentioned something about that being illegal?" Jungwon's father's glasses slipped further down his nose. Whatever he was reading on his tablet lay forgotten in front of him on the kitchen table.

"No!" Jungwon rushed to explain, raising up his hands, "No! What my friend did to Jay wasn't illegal. What you and mom had done to him, though," Jungwon paused. There was no easy way to tell his father, though, "that was."

Jungwon's father frowned, "Now, really, Wonie. You might not have liked what we did, but that doesn't make it illegal."

Jungwon's aggravation was starting to boil over. He couldn't explain this well enough, and his father wasn't attempting to understand him. He'd still take a frustratingly dense father over an angry one any day, but he felt tested.

"No, dad. The person you went to for Jay's 'problem'," he made the air quotes evident in his tone, sensed Jay shift behind him again, "they didn't work for HYBE Tech, did they?"

Jungwon's father's eye twitched.

"No, your mother found his listing online."

Jungwon felt a spark, a brief moment of elation. He was starting to get through.

"And what he did to Jay, it involved changing his code, right?"

"I don't purport to know--"

"Dad." Jungwon couldn't believe his father was feigning ignorance. God, he hoped he was just feigning it. Or maybe he didn't hope that. He didn't know what was worse-- his father knowingly seeking out illegal lobotomies, or unknowingly stumbling into one.

"...I guess it might have."

Jungwon only just held back from shouting 'gotcha'. His lip curled, his success bittersweet.

"That's illegal."

⭐

Jungwon's father still held up a semblance of skepticism at first but, as Jungwon explained with what he remembered from what Soobin had told him, and with helpful legal citations from Jay, they finally got through to him.

Jungwon's father removed his glasses and rubbed circles into his sinuses, as though his head had started to ache. Then, he got up and fetched Jungwon's mother, brought her back to the kitchen though she'd clearly already turned in for the night.

Jungwon explained, more easily the second time around, the events and revelations of the night to his mother. He watched her face shift and change, morphing into an expression of shock and shame before his eyes.

She only just pulled back a chair before falling into it, with less grace than she normally managed. Her fluffy slippers slid against the tiled floor, the only sound in the quiet kitchen.