Yuen ignored the pang of guilt that shot through him the moment the words left his mouth.

He didn’t say anything that wasn’t technically true, but bad feelings flooded him from head to toe for saying it.

His friends put up their hands, shook their heads, and dismissed it. It wasn’t the first time they’d heard such a proclamation from Yuen and at this point, they didn’t think anything of it aside from him being his usual amount of stubborn.

Casey was still somewhat concerned, but he knew when to leave Yuen alone, and today was one of those days when the blonde wasn’t having anything.

While they all let the issue go, Yuen didn’t, even though he tried.

He sat on the couch with his friends and listened to them do what they normally do, playing games, talking, or getting their homework out of the way now so they didn’t have to do it later (and while they could get help from those with better grades), and the longer he sat there, the worse he felt.

The pit in Yuen’s stomach grew like a tumor, feeding on his guilt and dumping regret into his heart by the bucket full.

It wasn’t just because of what he had said, but also because he hadn’t been this mean to Iahn in a while. It hadn’t been that long, but his own attitude now felt foreign, and the only consolation was that Iahn had gone upstairs before he said it.

It’s true he wasn’t as bothered by Iahn as he was by his mother, and when the witch wasn’t around, Iahn wasn’t that bad.

He couldn’t stop thinking about what happened.

If Iahn just fell, like he said he did and was fine, then what was with that blank look on his face?

Was he wrong to take the kid at his word?

Yuen chased his thoughts in circles for a while before something his friends said finally came to mind.

Was Iahn getting picked on? No, he couldn’t call it that, that bruise was a little more than “being picked on”, but if that’s the case then the school would have called their parents to come in and since their parents are out of town, Yuen’s uncle or even Yuen himself would have been called.

There’s no way that Iahn was hurt like that on purpose and the teachers just let it slide — especially not Iahn’s teacher. Yuen remembers how strict that teacher is, they have no tolerance for fighting whatsoever. Even students arguing will get snapped at.

With a bruise like that, on his face of all places. If it wasn’t an accident, there’s no way the teacher would have let it go.

Yuen rubbed his eyes and sank into the couch, finally tuning into his friends. It’s time to stop thinking about this before he goes down a rabbit hole.

---

The next morning, Iahn laid in bed under the covers. His eyes were open and staring at the sheets next to him, but he didn’t feel awake.

Even the warm cocoon of his blankets had failed to make him feel better after he crawled down from the attic.

His favorite soft pajamas failed. His favorite sweatshirt, his sketchbook full of drawings of his friends, the memes his friends were exchanging in the group chat, the sunlight that was neither warm nor cold streaming through the break in one of his window’s curtains.

He wanted to cry again but his eyes were as dry as they were red. His throat begged for a drink, but it wasn’t going to get one any time soon because he didn’t want to move. He couldn’t make himself.

All he wanted was to crawl deeper under the black sheets and disappear into the darkness, where nothing and no one could find him.

He wanted to go back into the attic but couldn’t find the strength within himself to leave his blankets.

He hadn’t thought he would sleep last night but crying was exhausting and when he laid down it just happened.

His face was in pain, and it was the worst where his cheek pressed against his pillow, but even so, he couldn’t bring himself to care until the ache spread to the roots of his teeth and he was forced to roll over, facing the emptiness of his too-big room.

He stared at the bare walls that still made him itch to cover them in something every time he looked at them. He stared at the beige carpet floor and the little things that were left sitting around, including some of his sketch pencils and an eraser.

He stared at his backpack near the door, and only now realized that’s where he had dropped it yesterday. And finally, his eyes returned to the ceiling, where there should have been glow stars and a wonky mural of a galaxy that his bedroom roof had always had, but this wasn’t his bedroom, and there was no mural wonky or otherwise to stare at; only a textured white ceiling, that was the definition of colorless and boring.

No matter how much he wanted to stay in bed, you could only get away with that for so long. Eventually, he had to go back to school, with a bandage on his face and a scowl in his eyes.

He didn’t say a word to a single soul. Not April when she asked what happened to his face before the teacher told the class to quiet down and began teaching. Not when April asked again at lunch. Not a word to Shi of Parker after school when they asked.

He wasn’t upset. He wasn’t angry. After sitting in class for ten minutes he couldn’t even muster up the energy to scowl anymore.

It was a strange feeling, having your mind so full that it felt empty. A thousand thoughts running in every direction, but not even one graspable.

It was an odd and uncomfortable feeling, but he didn't know what to do about it. He couldn't handle it even when he tried and after a while, all he could think was that he needed to talk to someone else, ask around the people he knew, and trusted if anyone knew what was happening. But the more he thought about who to ask, he could only come up with three people to ask: two of his best friends, and his grandpa.

He wanted to ask them in that order, but when he picked up his phone to do it, he became anxious.

He didn’t want to do this over the phone, but he also doesn't want to do it face to face. He wouldn't be able to get the words out if he did it face to face. Just the thought of having to look at someone while he talked about this — even if it was his most trusted people in the world — made him want to crawl into a hole and never come out. The embarrassment alone would put an end to him.

Iahn went on like this for two whole days; only doing what he had to and spending the rest of his time staring into nothing with either too many thoughts, or none at all.

Jordan and Lee glared at him harder and were even more vicious than ever but with a big bandage on his face and an unconvincing lie that he had walked into a pole, April and even the two kids who sat behind Iahn in class, had been hovering around him during school.

Iahn didn’t mind the company or even that it was blatantly obvious that the main reason they were hanging around him was they wanted to know what happened and until he told them, they would continue to hang around him.

He chose to ignore the feeling that they were getting a very wrong idea about how he got this bruise as their “subtle” questions began to veer towards his home life. But that wasn’t great either for a different reason, so he didn’t bother correcting them and as a result, his reaction of wanting to avoid the subject served as false confirmation for whatever wild theories the three had come up with on their own.

April was understandable, but Iahn could not — for the life of him — figure out how these two who sat behind them just jumped into April’s boat of declaring themselves friends of Iahn’s and diving right into his personal business with her.

If he had felt like caring about anything these days, it would have annoyed him, and he would have thrown up some sort of defense, but he didn’t care. They could speculate all they wanted, he didn’t care to confirm or deny. He wasn’t even annoyed. 

---

Fourteen days after their departure, the newlyweds would return, but Yuen and Iahn would be at school when they got back. Which unfortunately meant that today was Yuen’s last day of peace.

When he gets home today, his dad will be home again and he’ll be happy to see him, but that woman will also be back, and the amount of stress that gave him was beyond reasonable.

Don’t get him wrong, he had nothing against his dad wanting to remarry and finding another partner, but if Yuen had known his taste in women was utter garbage, he would have tried to help him find someone nice.

At the very least he wouldn’t have let him get together with a vain gold-digger!

What does he even see in a woman like that? Did he pity her life story or something?

Was he just caught up in the fact that his icy expression that usually screams “keep your distance,” didn’t work on this gold-digger?

Do you want to know why it didn’t work? Cause she’s a gold-digger! If she gave up so easily, how would she earn the title and the keys to the kingdom?

He would bet his car that the woman didn’t mean to have Iahn and probably tried to get rid of him when she found out she was pregnant. He feels sorry for the kid that she didn’t.

It would have been fine if she chose to get rid of the baby she didn’t want, it’s her body and her right to choose, but she didn’t. She brought the kid into this world and Yuen has no doubt that she’s done nothing but dump him on other people ever since.

Her self-centeredness is honestly astonishing.

Yuen would lose his breath and die on the spot if she ever did something for somebody else that wasn’t good for her as well. And now he’s the latest in — what’s probably — a long line of people who have had to take care of her kid because she won’t.

Yuen’s not a parent, he’s a teenager, and yet he’s the one who has been taking care of Iahn more than his own mother has.

It’s not his job to take care of the kid when they’re around!

When they’re gone, that’s understandable and he’s not as upset about it, but when they’re here, it should be their job, not his! But he knows that when they get back, he’ll still be the one taking Iahn to and from school and neither one of them will pay any sort of attention to the kid, and even the housekeeper will be the one who makes sure he’s fed.

Yuen has done more than enough to take care of a kid that he wasn’t supposed to be responsible for. Would it kill them to lift a single goddamn finger to do the same?!

Yuen frowned and glared his way all through the morning, but as angry as he was and as much as he was dreading the adults’ return, Iahn couldn’t even be bothered to remember that they were coming back today. He had his own worries and they extended far beyond any notion of comfort.

It had been so long since he wasted his thoughts on a pipe dream. So long since he had felt comfortable that he had adjusted to it without any more fuss.

He was even beginning to forget what being comfortable felt like and had just accepted that feeling this way was just how it was going to be.

Whether it was the house or school, the only place he felt any semblance of comfort was the attic above his room, and even then, it was more or less just a shelter from his storms.

He spent more time than ever in that attic, more time than ever in his room, and if it weren’t for the fact that he had to leave the house almost every day for school, then it would be too easy to start thinking the outside world was just as bad as the inside of this house.

Sometimes Iahn felt like sitting in the backyard, but there were so many windows that faced the back, and every time he thought about going out there, he felt like he was being watched before he even stepped out the door, so he stayed inside.

He knew he was limiting himself with that mindset. That if he was going to be uncomfortable anyway, he could do what he wants and just get used to it, but he didn’t want to.

He had to “get used to” so many uncomfortable things that his life had become nothing but discomfort, and he wasn’t in the mood to be bold and add more to his daily pile of worries.

There were some things he couldn’t think about because they made him so upset and tired that he couldn’t drag himself to sit up, much less get out of bed and go to school. So, he had been avoiding them, moving through his daily life like a wooden puppet.

Just like he was doing now. He got up, mechanically got dressed, debated about putting in the effort to brush his teeth before he did it, staring at his eyebags in the mirror. He had been sleeping more than ever but those bags paid it no mind and continued to get deeper and darker.

He felt exhausted going down the stairs and didn’t look at Yuen when they got in the car. He leaned against the window and stared outside, feeling only a tiny bit of relief as the sunlight was a little warmer on his face before they parted ways at school and he went to class. Not a word or sound passed between them.

At least class was a little better.

Having these three at school hanging around him the last few days, took his mind off things.

He would lay his head on his desk and listen to them talk, chatting as they had started doing since they had all started speculating about what happened to his face. Iahn didn’t understand why they latched onto the topic so hard, but it had become the catalyst for their friendship so at least something good had come out of it.

It was relaxing to listen without having to speak, and despite not taking part in the conversation, it still felt like he was part of the conversation and wasn’t being excluded.

They seemed content to ask questions and speculate the answers among themselves, not needing his input even though the question was technically directed at him.

The boy behind April could even do it as a one-man show; asking questions and concluding answers by himself that were almost always wrong, though sometimes they were scarily accurate, and it always seemed to be the obscure questions with more complicated answers that he got right, but the simple ones flew right over his head.

It was… odd, but not in a bad way.

He’d never met someone who could keep up a conversation by themselves like this, and the other two didn’t seem to think it was all that strange or impressive. Maybe because they were used to it? They have all been going to the same school and rising through the grades together.

They often talk about other people in different classes of the grade, and there’s quite a bit of mingling between classes during break.

Iahn wasn’t as bothered by their presence as he thought he would be. It was kind of nice to be in this position; familiar. Having the three of them involved with each other so that no one’s attention was 100% on him like April’s had been before. It took some of the pressure of socializing off.

He never did like to draw attention to himself.

It was his lifetime’s fortune to have it happen right when he needed it too. He wouldn’t count on having such luck again any time soon, but it was to enjoy this.

They were so distracted that he could even do some absent drawing while he listened to them and they wouldn’t bother him, but still included him.

As nice and welcome as the distraction was, and all the good it did for him to be distracted for a good chunk of every day, it only worked while they were there.

It didn’t make him any less depressed the moment the final bell rang, and it didn’t do anything for after school when he was curled up in his room, wasting the time away.

If he was lucky, he would be able to sleep and if he wasn’t, he would either stare at nothing for hours and barely move; he would try distracting himself by checking his phone, continuing his doodles from class — which had been taking darker and darker turns; or… he would just sit with a slack face in whatever closed-in spot he could make himself get to before letting the tears run their course until he was tired and thirsty and could sleep.

The only thing he could stomach to do anymore without having to ramp himself up to it, was conjure up ideas about how to go back to grandpa’s house, and that’s precisely what he was doing in class today, before Jordan and Lee’s patience ran out and the two decided that being subtle about their bad blood with Iahn was overrated.

Since the accidental fistfight in the bathroom, their dislike of each other had gone far beyond Jordan’s crush and turned into genuine hatred for one another.

They were starting to resemble two feuding kingdoms, and now they had become so angry with Iahn, they would even risk being caught by the teacher and punished by the school, just to get one over on him.

With those three hanging around Iahn, there hadn’t been any opportunity, but today during break, April was with her female friends in the upper corner of the classroom, and the two boys had gone to another class to see the other third of their trio that had unfortunately been sorted into a different class this year.

Iahn had his head down on the desk facing the wall, all by himself for the first time in days. It was the perfect opportunity.

---

 

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