city of stars

XXXIX

The classrooms are all empty as Jeongin shows them around. He tugs on Felix’s hand, racing from one place to another, pointing from one thing to the next.

“This is my desk!” He points. “My deskmate is mean, though, I don’t like her.” She’s a girl with pigtails and a frown on her face, showing her mother the perfectly aligned pencils in her pencil case.

“This is my cubby. I put my things here! Look, that’s my lunchbox.” A metal tin box, with store-bought food that Eunji must’ve shoved there that morning.  “Appa used to make me homemade lunch, but eomma’s food is okay too.”

“That’s my place in assembly.”

“That’s—”

There’s so many things to see, but all Felix can think about is how bleak they all look. How void of anything. Of everything. After knowing what he did about Jeongin and Hyunjin, the school was a sorry excuse for a learning place. Hell, the old abandoned studio they found was better suited for a classroom than the white walls of this prison.

“That was my teacher. We have to go to see projects now.”

He’s aware of their eyes on him. It’s become such a common factor of his existence, that he doesn’t think much of it anymore. No matter where he goes, there will always be eyes on him, always people watching, judging.

Today, they’re judging Eunji. Judging the family she built. And as much as he disliked the woman, Felix was not going to have her found lacking. Was not going to have Hyunjin’s family found lacking.

So he stood up straighter, held his head higher, and remembered all those things he had been drilled through when he first underwent training for his job. How to make people like you. How to look first class among non-City citizens. How to stand out and carry on the legacy of the organization he works for.

How to be enviable.

And he was just that.

The whispers that followed them were not harsh, or mocking, but rather praising. Against the perfect backdrop of Eunji and her life, Felix was yet another accomplishment, another addition made to make her look better. To boost her in society.

Her pretend-husband. How god awful this entire situation was.

After being appreciated for being himself with Hyunjin, being valued only for his looks by these people was an ugly pill to swallow.

He made it work. He had to.

For Jeongin.

Looking down, he squeezed the boy’s hand once more, for courage.

He feels out of place.

It’s a strange enough experience, playing a parent in Jeongin’s school, but it’s all the stranger now. Because Jeongin’s project was just unveiled, and he and Eunji sucked in the same sharp breath, let out the same surprised gasp.

Felix can feel eyes on him, other parents and teachers, and even Eunji, but he cannot move. In front of him, Jeongin is coming closer, coming over with a hesitant smile and small mincing footsteps.

“Do you like it, appa?” He asks, biting his lip nervously. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”

“Well, it’s certainly that.” Minho murmured, his breath ghosting the shell of Felix’s ear. For once, it seemed like this was not something he’d predicted.

“Innie…” He didn’t know what to say, how to make the situation better. Truth be told, the breath had been knocked out of him the very moment the cloth was lifted off, the canvas revealed. Amidst the plain boring diagrams of his classmates, Jeongin’s project stood out almost as much as he did.

Eunji was not moving, seeming to have malfunctioned out of pure shock.

Before that shock could turn to outrage, Felix picks the young boy up, kissing his cheek and ruffling his hair. “It’s beautiful, In-ah. Just like your father’s pictures.”

And as he watched the boy’s face transform with a smile, he had to ignore the painful squeezing in his chest, his own shock and discomfort.

Even as he closed his eyes to steady himself, even as he walked out of the classroom hours later, Jeongin’s hand in his, Felix could still see that poster burned into his retinas. It was all he could think of.

‘My family ’ the poster read, like so many other kids’. ‘Appa’ ‘eomma’ ‘me’.

‘Felix-appa’.

No matter how many times he tried to get the image out of his mind, it came back to haunt him. As he said goodbyes to the young boy, waved and got into Minho’s car, as he relaxed in the backseat and let himself drop the pretenses of being alright, even as Minho took the road back to the City, all Felix could think of was that poster.

For a six year old, Jeongin’s art skills were on par with what you’d expect. Stick figures with lovingly long bodies and lopsided heads. Letters traced out with painstaking effort in shaky crayon.

Hyunjin, with outgrown dark hair and darker eyes, in a large tee holding a mug. Jeongin, right next to him, with his toy fox and a giant smile on his face. He even drew the small sprout of hair he has sticking up, unable to be tamed.

Some distance away, small and near the other side of the page was an unsmiling woman in a short white dress, with long smooth hair that ran down her back and a phone-screen covering her face. The hand holding the phone had a manicure.

But on Hyunjin’s other side, big and bold and smiling, was a figure labeled “Felix-appa”. He was in a big sweater, holding a flower and looking over at Hyunjin, his hand in Hyunjin’s free one.

Jeongin drew them holding hands.

For his family project.

He labeled them. He drew his mother faceless.

Through the shock and initial sense of wrongness, Felix felt a sliver of pride, and gratitude.

And love. Because pretend or not, Jeongin was definitely his family.

And maybe that was love.