Guilty Parties [ NoRenMin ] | ✓

- Fourteen -

Jeno started panicking from there.

What? 

The woman seemed to soften even more in her chair, if that was even possible, and started to speak again in an even softer tone.

"Jeno, we know. So if you do deny it, we still all know the truth."

Those words, even though they were meant no harm and were completely soft, they intimidated Jeno. The silent man beside her didn't help Jeno's stiffness.

He felt pressured, the tenseness filling his body, and starting a storm in his head.

Both of the boys meant something to him, whether he meant anything to them or not. Thinking like this, he remembered the rejection from Jaemin last week. The sudden heaviness made his heart hurt, and his features to turn down. But he still liked the boy, and Renjun too. 

Jeno liked taking care of the older boy, even if Jeno was younger.

He liked the feeling of calmness when he knew the boys were O.K.

His boys. 

The thought of them not being with him at this moment made Jeno's gaze to become watery.

Anything could be happening to them, he thought, very gloomy now.

The woman seemed to shift the darker shift of Jeno's emotions, seeing the turmoil in the boy's face.

"They are fine," she tried to reassure the boy, not wanting to cause a fit.

Jeno was silent, still shocked to find that his upmost kept secret was general information with the Capital. Surely they would have put him into the Outside already, but he also knew why they hadn't yet.

Jeno was a special case.

He was only half a Defect. 

His biological father had been a half Defect as well, with slightly sharper than average features that seemed almost a bit too strange. Cheek bones that seemed too high, but a kind smile and boyish laugh that could've made anyone melt then and there. It was too easy.

His biological mother was from the Outside and was also half a Defect. She was too had slightly different visuals than normal. In her case, she was almost too round. Round face, that seemed too friendly, and round cheeks that gave her the most perfect eyesmile. But she herself in size, was not round at all, just a slightly rounder than normal face, and round cheeks. She was beautiful.

They had met each other on the Border, a strong almost glass-like surface that separated the Outside from the Inside. Jeno's father had gotten too curious, living his life on the Inside, and decided to go to the Border.

And Jeno's mother, too, had become curious at the crystal-like dome sheltering people inside.

When they saw each other, it was love at first sight.

They had started to meet in person, Jeno's mother sneaking into the Inside because it wasn't as dangerous for her than his father going into the familiar Outside.

Then Jeno happened.

The Capital had rushed in when they found the couple and what they had been up to. They had dodged the system, and was living on the Inside as quiet as possible.

Jeno's dad continued to go to work, supporting his new family, while his mother hid in the shadows of his home so that the neighbors couldn't rat them out.

Jeno, since he was a small child, was supposed to be at a daycare center and by the age of three, taken from his father.

But his father didn't write down Jeno's birth record, in safe keeping if Jeno were to ever be caught.