you first {minsung} DISCONTINUED

sixty-five.

Jisung carefully picked himself up off the floor, determined not to cry. He didn't want his makeup to run. He had sacrificed this much to be at least a little bit himself in public, and he wasn't turning back now. 

But most of all, he wanted his mom to know that he didn't fucking care anymore. He was who he was and she couldn't dictate his entire life just because his dad was a jackass who happened to be gay.

For some reason, once Jisung got the tears to stop attempting to fall, he realized he didn't even really want to cry anymore. His sadness was very quickly fading away and turning into something much darker - an uncontrollable shadow of anger that was suddenly coursing through every vein of his body and clouding his vision with red. 

Jisung had never been so angry in his entire life. He had never ever wanted to hurt someone, but in this moment, he so desperately wanted to grab his sad excuse of a mother and oh how badly he wanted to hit her back.

His mom was already headed back into the kitchen, her back turned to her son. Jisung made a face at her, sticking out his tongue and blowing out his cheeks grumpily. He reached his hand up, wiping the blood off of his cheek.

Han Jisung was fucking done. He was done hiding himself. He was done being terrified of coming home every day, scared out of his mind to even get out of bed because he didn't want to be yelled at or screamed at or pushed or hurt any more than he was already hurting.

Jisung took one more look at his mom, then turned and ran up the stairs, taking them two steps at a time. He knew that this was all a big adrenaline rush of anger and sadness and pain, and that after school he would regret every second of it, but he decided to just accept the sudden rush of courage and roll with it.

He threw open his bedroom door and stomped over to his bed, tossing aside his blanket. He grabbed his rainbow beanie and gingerly put it back on his head, glancing at himself in the mirror.

For once in his life, he was proud of who he was in this moment.

Jisung sighed, leaving his bedroom again and closing the door behind him. He could feel his phone buzzing in his pocket, no doubt Felix calling him to tell him to come outside. Jisung pulled his phone out of his pocket and accepted the call, lifting his phone up to his ear as he walked calmly down the stairs.

"Hey, are you coming? I've called you, like, eleven and a half times. We're gonna be late for school, man," Felix immediately asked.

Jisung turned to glance into the kitchen as he came to the main floor of his house, seeing his mom standing at the counter with a bottle of alcohol in her hand and an already emptied one next to her. Her head was resting against the surface of the counter.

"Sorry," Jisung answered, not bothering to be quiet. "I'm coming right now."

"Alright. I'll see you in a second."

Jisung nodded even though Felix couldn't see him, turning away from his drunk mom and heading towards the front door. "Oh, and I hope you've got bandaids in your car," he added impulsively, reaching up to feel his cheek, which hadn't stopped bleeding. "Some bitch decided to overstep her boundaries and now I'm fucking bleeding."

He could hear his mom's head immediately snap up as she screamed something at him, but he blocked out her voice, turning only once to see her raise her empty alcohol bottle before he stepped out of the house and slammed the front door behind him. The glass that she threw shattered against the door, but Jisung was already past the front yard and approaching Felix's car, too full of adrenaline and rage to even look back. 

He aggressively opened the passenger-side door of Felix's car, practically throwing himself inside before angrily shutting the door behind him. 

"Dayummmmm," Felix said, eyeing Jisung's outfit up and down. "You look fuckin' sexy, man." 

But then Jisung turned to face him, and Felix's expression immediately dropped as he noticed the blood dripping down Jisung's face and the harsh red handprint that was already forming into a bruise. 

"WHAT HAPPENED?!" he yelled, grabbing the sides of Jisung's face and pulling him closer to inspect him. 

Jisung's eyes stayed glued to his lap. His anger and adrenaline was slowly fading, leaving him shaky, sad and absolutely terrified. "N-Nothing," he muttered, his voice breaking. 

"Han Jisung. You're moving in with me," Felix said insistently. "That woman isn't a mother, and she doesn't deserve you." As he spoke, he let go of Jisung's face and turned to grab the wheel of the car. "Please. You need to get out of there." 

Jisung sighed, fiddling with his fingers. He didn't say anything. 

Felix pulled into the road, heading towards the school. "You know people are gonna start asking questions, right? You can't just show up to school with an injury like that and expect people to ignore it." 

Jisung nodded, still not saying anything. 

He suddenly felt terrible. It was only eight in the morning, and the truckload of emotions he had already gone through was too much for him to handle. He rested his head in his hands on his lap, all of the sudden getting the urge to cry for the millionth time that day. 

"I'm scared," he whispered. "I can't leave her, Felix. I'm n-not my dad. She's . . . s-she's really hurt, and maybe she doesn't handle her pain like how she should, but if I want her to ever accept me for who I am, I h-have to prove to her that I'm not my dad. And I d-don't want to be my dad." 

Felix sighed, running his fingers through his hair before placing his hands back on the wheel again. "Why are you even looking for her approval?" he asked, concerned. "You don't need to live for her. You need to live for yourself. Why do you care what she thinks?" 

Jisung peeked up at Felix, his eyes shiny with tears. "B-Because she's my mom," he said quietly, almost an echo of a whisper. "She's all I've ever had, the only one who's s-stayed with me the whole time. And even though she might not be all that I need her to be all the time, I k-know that she's hurting just the same as I am, and she needs me to be the strong one sometimes. I can't j-just leave." 

Jisung glanced at Felix to find that tears were running down the Australian boy's cheeks. 

"You're amazing," Felix said quietly. "But you really need to put yourself over the priority of other people sometimes." 

Jisung didn't know what to say to that, so he didn't answer. Instead, he rested his head back in his lap and closed his eyes, focusing on not letting tears fall as Felix drove him to school.