“Hey, Kibum.”

Kibum turned around, looking up at his teacher as she had herself hovered over him, looking at the paper on his desk. His teacher asked the class to draw the family they lived with, and he did just that.

  “Yes?”

She extended her hand to the paper and took it from his desk, masking her face from the boy’s view. She took a few long seconds staring at his drawing.

He patiently waited, staring at the array of crayons around his desk, trying to figure out what one to color the wall of his house in. Maybe he could just leave it white. That’s what they really looked like, but Kibum wanted to put some imagination into it.

  “Hey, Kibum,” the teacher called to him, “Come sit with me at my desk, real quick, yeah?”

The boy nodded hastily, hoping whatever she had to say wasn’t bad. He knew he wasn’t the best drawer, let alone greatest at math, but surely he could make up for it. Just please don’t say the drawing’s bad, he could literally die from hearing it.

She sat down in her chair and he sat in the tall student chair that brought him above the desk’s height.

He looked up at his teacher and she smiled, yet the softness didn’t exactly match the rest of her tense face; Kibum could sense that much.

  “Who’s that?” she pointed to the shortest person in the picture, wearing a red shirt, blue pants, brown hair, and a line for lips.

  “That’s me!” Kibum nodded.

She smiled at him with and okay, and pointed at the taller being in a blue shirt, black pants, black hair, and a small smile on his face, holding Kibum’s hand, “Who’s that?”

Kibum pointed along with her, a big smile on his face, “My brother, Jonghyun.”

  “He holds hands with you, huh?” she asked nicely.

Kibum nodded, “We’re together all the time. He holds my hand when we cross the street and when he takes me home.”

  “He does? Sounds like a good brother. Okay, who’s this?”

Her pointer finger slowly, dramatically crossed a large distance to the other side of the paper, where two tall figures faced each other, mad looks on their faces, mouths in an open frown, and circles as hands. They were colored darkly, compared to the other two.

  “My parents,” Kibum lowered his excited tone.

The teacher leaned forward a little, circling both of his parents’ heads, “What’s going on here, Kibum?”

Kibum clenched his jaw, debating if he should really say anything at all. He knew he wouldn’t be in any kind of trouble, but he knew he was a kid, and sometimes, his truths turn into childish rants that turn everything worse than it really is. Something could slip out, like a lie that his parents beat him.

  “Kibum?”

Kibum choked back on words, only producing an ‘um . . .’, trying to figure out how to say what he wanted. He truly wanted to tell her, because he doubted she’d judge him at all. But it was still difficult to share something like this.

  “Um . . . they yell a lot,” Kibum quietly let out, his finger sliding across the desk over and over, “They yell at each other all the time. They never have smiles on their faces. This nothingness here,” he pointed at the large gap of wall in between them, “Jonghyun always takes me away from it. We’re always in his room or outside away from it. We’re on two different sides of the paper,” Kibum used both of his hands, one on the left of the paper with Jonghyun and Kibum, the other on the right with his parents, “It’s like we’re on different sides of the world. . .”

To Kibum, that came out a lot better than he expected. He kept himself in check, trying to say as little as possible, but get what he meant across clearly.

The teacher’s hand settled on Kibum’s back, giving him a little time before she spoke again, “Kibum, what’s this on the ground?”

She pointed at the black specks on the ground scattered in a little area. Kibum wiped his nose, blinking twice, “We had a black vase. It made a crash and now that’s what it looks like. Daddy threw it at a wall on accident.”

  “On accident?”

  “That’s what Jonghyun told me. He said it slipped out of Daddy’s hands.”

She pursed her lips for a moment, brows furrowing as she pointed to the next thing on the ground, by his parents’ feet.

  “The TV fell a week ago.”

  “Oh?”

  “Jonghyun said they were moving around too much and the TV wasn’t supported.”

She nodded, smiling again for Kibum as she rubbed his small back, “There’s this last thing here—but I see you’ve only drawn it in pencil lightly. What’s that supposed to be?”

She referred to the thing above Jonghyun’s head and Kibum sniffed, grabby enough to take the teacher’s pen off the desk and draw it, grabbing a yellow highlighter and coloring it in.

  “That’s a star.”

She retracted her arm and took her pen off her desk, writing on her own paper, “Why is there a star above your brother’s head?”

Kibum smiled again, barely taking note that the recess bell rang and the children were being lead off by their student teacher outside.

  “Jonghyun is my star. There are stars in the sky, and my Mom says that each one of them is a different person watching over me. But I’ve never seen a real star in the sky. It’s . . . it’s always been holding my hand. So, I made Jonghyun my star in the starless sky. . . Does that sound weird?”

She stopped writing abruptly, a tight smile on her lips as she put down the pen, folding her hands together and shaking her head, “No, Kibum. Making Jonghyun a star is a perfectly special thing for you to do.”

Kibum nodded, smiling again as he wiped his itchy and aching eyes, his dry lips in attempt to calm himself down, “Ma’am?”

  “Yeah, Kibum?”

  “When people have miscommunications, what happens in the end?”

She leaned back a little, startled by the use of a word a bit larger than his vocabulary and stuttered for a second, only for a second, holding her pen again and writing as she stared at Kibum, “No one knows, Kibum. It’s different among different people.”

  “So, if me and Jonghyun can’t communicate good all the time, does that mean we won’t always forgive each other?” Kibum asked, urgency in his voice, grabbing on to his shirt.

  “No, Kibum, no, no,” she assured him, dropping her pen and holding him by the shoulders, “I think you and Jonghyun will forgive each other all the time. But let me tell you, if you both can’t agree on something, both of you should let it go. Save it for a long time in the future. Then you two can work it out, okay?”

Kibum nodded, a small smile on his face as he hopped down from the tall chair, “Can I go to the bathroom before I go outside?”

The teacher nodded, patting him on the back as he started leaving the room.

The teacher sighed, fingers massaging her temples as she swiveled in her chair, bringing up her email to the counselor.

  “I hate parents all the time,” she sighed in aggravation, “If you can’t be a parent and stop fighting, why would you have children, just to scar them.”

 She started typing out her ‘Dear Ms . . .’ email, requesting the counselor’s presence in her room to examine Kibum’s picture, and discuss what she’d written from Kibum’s little story.

  “Those boys deserve better . . .”

Because especially at the age these boys were at, a misfortune like this was going to be hard to recover from. It was going to take a large deal of time to try and heal from this the moment it could be stopped, but as long as it could be stopped and the willingness to heal up was there, the future looked brighter for the boys.

And maybe the kids would be on the same side of the earth with their parents again.

---Note~---

Hallo.

It's been a long... while. Oops, it won't happen again!

I wanted another chapter before we head back to the Onho/Ontae side and here's Kibum, spilling the beans, especially about a star.

I realized when I wanted to begin writing this little series, I always wanted to end a chapter with some sort of quote I managed to make up to hopefully inspire. I realized I hadn't really done that, but I think I'm going to start. It'll either come before the chapter or after the chapter according to events.

So yeah, things starting to look up for Jongkey? Maybe. Just maybe. Maybe not.

It's all the start and it takes a very long, and even agonizing time. So bear with it just as jongkey/onho/ontae would bear with it in reality.

//////Barely edited//////

Love to all views, comments, and subs. <3

~FlaMinhoe