Zhiyu

Three weeks later, Sehun fully recovered. The first thing he does a day after getting discharged was pick up his son from school. While waiting for his big boy to greet him at the gate, the older man noticed that his son’s isolation from the rest of the kids was becoming more perceivable.  Yixing was right; even though Zhiyu was only a child, the kid seemed to have been deeply affected by his family’s issues, which was all over the news about a month ago. Almost everybody knew about Airin getting arrested for stealing a child, who was apparently Zhiyu; but what they still didn’t know was the identity of Zhiyu’s real birth mother. 

Some kids at school was already calling him an orphan. They laughed at him for having a broken family and a criminal ‘fake’ mother. What more if they knew his real mother was a man?

When Zhiyu looked up at his father, he didn’t even smile. He didn’t look mad either nor was he sad. He just stared blankly and approached his father in silence, without taking his eyes off of him. Zhiyu was only hoping his father could read minds. He wanted to ask him a lot of things. For instance, why was he the only child without a mother? Why was he told that both of his parents were men? Why was he the only one with gay parents? 

Doesn’t that make me a freak? 

In his school, Zhiyu is considered to be the smartest kid. At his age, he was already proficient in drawing and reading. Zhiyu also knows a little bit of Spanish and Chinese. He was great at building legos by himself. He was used to being alone; hence, he became somewhat more independent around other kids. His only friend was Haowen, but even Haowen was now treating him like a freak after finding out his real mom was a man. He was lucky Haowen didn’t tell the whole school about it, or else Zhiyu would face some serious bullying problem. 

Male pregnancy was not very common. People believe it’s a fantasy. None of Zhiyu’s classmates had male mothers. If he’d heard anything about gay people, it was all negative feedbacks. Whenever he hears about gay people, the words and phrases like , freak, disgusting, ‘no homo’, and dyke are some of the most common attacks that pop out of a person’s dirty mouth. 

Zhiyu didn’t like it. He felt different. These words that he wouldn’t want his parents to hear, words he didn’t want to hear about them are the same words that kept on haunting him at night. 

Despite feeling all kinds of mixed emotions, Zhiyu took his father’s hand in a steady and slow motion, and then they walked home together. 

“How was school?” Sehun was the first to break the silence. 

“Good,” Zhiyu lied. 

“It was good, right?” Sehun smiled, observing Zhiyu’s reactions. “But what happened to Haowen? Aren’t you two getting along?” 

“He doesn’t wanna be my friend anymore,” Zhiyu replied, frowning and surprising the elder. “But