Chapter Text
“Make sure to behave for your teachers, yes?”
“Mmh.”
“You’ll write to us every second week. You can write more, but I’ll not have less, you hear me?”
“Mmh.”
“And you’ve read the book of conduct, haven’t you?”
Felix nods absently, eyes fixed on the blur of trees by the roadside. There is a hint of fog curling around them in wisps and curls, betraying the chill of early-morning dew; even inside the car, he can feel the chill of the glass against the tip of his nose. A bump in the road jostles the bag crammed into the space by his feet, making him wince as something digs into his shin. The glass fogs up in time with his breath. Still, he stares out of the window, trying to catch a glimpse of… something.
His mother sighs as she turns to face him in the passenger seat. “Are you even listening to me?”
He jolts out of his reverie, meeting her eyes with a twinge of guilt. “I am.” Now. “Sorry, Mom.”
His father tsks, then falls silent again, his hands steady on the steering wheel. His mother doesn’t pay him any mind.
“This is important, Felix”, she says, seriously. “You know how important it is to us that you have a stable home, even if it’s not with us all the time.”
“I know”, Felix says softly.
“Your father and I love you so much, you know. So while we’re getting set up, we just want you to have the best start possible.”
“I know”, he repeats.
“Think of the friends you’ll make!”, his mother says, plastering an enthusiastic smile on her face. “And the things you’ll learn — my, at your age, I would’ve killed for an opportunity like this. Just you wait, and…”
Felix feels guilty about it, but he tunes back out of his mother’s stream of encouraging words. He’s heard it a hundred times in the past weeks, and a hundred thousand times in the past months. He moves his hands to his sides and digs into the leather of the back seat with his fingertips until it hurts just a little bit.
“You shouldn’t indulge him anymore, you know”, his father says suddenly in another language, making him jolt as consonants shift and vowels slide backwards. “He isn’t going to get far with English in that school. He’ll actually have to work on his Korean for once.”
“Oh, he’ll be fine”, his mother says, also in Korean now. “Won’t you, dear?”
“Yes”, he says quietly. “And I will practice more.”
His father huffs. “You will have to.”
The rest of the ride is silent. It suits Felix just fine. He fidgets with his hands, shivers a little bit, and looks out of the window. In the distance, the forest through which they’re driving melts smoothly into a series of rolling hills. With how early it is, the hilltops still catch a hint of morning reds and pinks from the lazy sunrise. The car rounds one last bend in the road, and Felix’ breath catches in his throat. The ground slopes gently upwards for a few hundred yards, and at the peak of that hill stands an ancient estate, cloaked in brickwork and ivy, rising up out of the landscape with impossible grace. It is majestic, and dignified, and makes his heart sink in his chest with a pain like simmering water.
His father hums a single, pleased note. His mother sighs softly. Felix is quiet.
It isn’t a long drive from this point on. The street follows the treeline for a while, then makes a wide arch onto a private road leading up to the rounded driveway. There’s a few cars already idling there, some children and their parents getting in and out, loading and unloading suitcases and duffel bags, arms flung around shoulders in tearful goodbyes or cheery hellos. Felix’ chest tightens further.
“Let’s not make this harder than it has to be”, his father says as he brings the car to a halt and stops the engine. “We’ll help you get your things and then we’ll be off, Yongbok.” Felix grimaces before he realises that his father can see his face in the rearview mirror. “Oh, quit that. You’ll have to get used to it now.” And he supposes that’s true.
His mother is already crying when she steps out of the car and opens his door for him. He blushes at that. He’s not a little kid anymore, he can open his own car door. He shuffles outside, lets her straighten his tie and brush dust off his blazer. She hugs him, and he can feel her shoulders shake as he leans into the embrace, feeling oddly young for a moment. He pushes past it. “It’s fine, Mom”, he mumbles. “I’ll be okay.”
“Oh, I know”, she says, voice trembling a little as she releases him. “I’m not worried about you, dear, it’s me that’s going to have the hardest time of it. My boy. My dear.”
His father clears his throat as he sets Felix’ worn brown suitcase down on the ground next to his equally brown school bag. “That’ll be it, then”, he says stiffly. “Write us soon. Your mother’ll fret herself silly if you don’t.”
Felix smiles. It’s as much of an I’ll miss you as he’ll get from him, and he appreciates it. “I will”, he says, and hugs his father. He doesn’t expect it to be returned, but his father’s hands land lightly on his shoulders for a moment before gently pushing him away.
There’s not much more to say. They get in the car. His mother waves from the window with one hand, the other holding a handkerchief to her face as his father backs up the car. He waves back until they’re off the driveway.
Felix watches the pale little car become smaller and smaller. He takes a deep breath. “Okay”, he tells himself quietly. “Okay.” Even though he should be tuning his ears into Korean. His heart picks up its pace again, and he shifts his feet on the cobblestone uneasily.
Most of the people walking around him are in their school uniforms: dark grey trousers and blazers with blue detailing, blue ties over white shirts; the rest are parents, he assumes, or younger siblings, because the acceptance letter did say he was supposed to be wearing his uniform when arriving on the school grounds. The blazer makes his skin feel just a little itchy where it touches it. There’s no one who stands out as a teacher of any kind when he casts a searching glance around the perimeter. He sighs, then picks up his schoolbag, swinging it over his shoulder before heaving his suitcase off the ground. His shoulders ache after just a handful of steps towards the wide staircase that leads up to the main entrance. Great.
“Wait, let me help you.”
Suddenly, the majority of the weight is taken off of him. He turns, surprised, and finds another boy, older than him by the looks of it, tall and broad-shouldered and giving him a hint of a smile. “You looked like you were struggling a little bit.”
Felix huffs a smile, too glad at the relief to be offended, and the two of them make it up the stairs much more quickly than he’d expected.
“Where do you need to go?”, the boy asks once they’re at the top. He doesn’t set down the suitcase.
“Oh — I don’t know”, Felix realises suddenly. He feels himself blush. “I’m — I’m new.”
The boy nods in understanding. “Front hall, then. Come on.”
For lack of anything better to do, Felix helps him carry his luggage through the massive wooden doors and into a high-ceilinged foyer. It is much busier here than outside, people buzzing from side to side, bumping into each other, standing in groups, talking and laughing. The other boy manages to carve a path to a corner for the two of them, where they finally set down the suitcase, right in front of a sliding window through which Felix can see some sort of office space. The reception, maybe?
“Thank you”, Felix finally remembers to say, and blushes more. “Sorry, I didn’t hear your name.”
The boy smiles widely. “Don’t worry. I’m Seo Changbin, Park house, fifth grade. And you?”
Shit. Fifth grade means older, and older means honorifics. Felix can almost hear the cogs in his own mind whirring as he hastily bows. “I’m Lee Fe- Lee Yongbok”, he replies, barely managing to correct himself. “I’ll be in fourth grade. Nice to meet you, Changbin-ssi.”
Changbin snorts with surprised laughter. Felix wants to throw himself into the lake. “Oh, you don’t have to do that!”
“Sorry”, he says quietly, straightening, his eyes fixed firmly on the ground. His cheeks burn.
“Don’t worry”, the other boy — Changbin — says lightly, getting his features under control once again, though there’s still a delighted sort of smile playing around the corners of his mouth. “So you’re about thirteen then, right? You can call me hyung. Where’re you from?”
“Um”, Felix says, trying to focus on his words through the still burning heat on his face. “I’m turning fourteen in September.” That wasn’t the question. Damn it. “I moved here a month ago. I’m from Australia.”
To his surprise, Changbin’s face lights up again. “Seriously?! Oh, Chan’ll love that!”
“Sorry?”
“Ah, no worries, you’ll meet him soon. Have you been to the headmaster’s office?”
He hadn’t even known he should go there. “No.”
Changbin throws an arm around his shoulders. “Come on, I’ll take you there.”
*
Felix’ conversation with Headmaster Yoon is not a long one, but Felix is still itching to get out by the end. It’s not like he’s scared, or worried. It’s not like he’s intimidated by the man who looms over him like a boulder, and tsks like his father when he can’t recite a rule quick enough, and snaps a ruler against the desk like a warning. That last one he didn’t expect, but he’s also not surprised.
To his surprise and relief, when he steps out of the office with a small stack of papers, Changbin is waiting for him in the hallway. “How’d it go?”, he asks, reaching for the papers in Felix’ hands like they belong to him.
Felix, for lack of better knowledge, relinquishes them and lets the other boy leaf through them. There’s a few people milling around them, but Changbin pays them no mind. “It went okay, I think”, he says hesitantly. “He said I’m something called Park house. You said that too. What does it mean?” Christ, he speaks like a toddler in Korean.
“Wait, wait… oh, awesome!” Changbin looks up with a massive smile and thumps him on the back enthusiastically. Felix almost trips. “You’re in Dorm Five — we’re dorm mates!”
Even though he barely knows Changbin, Felix finds himself breathing out in relief. One person less that he has to make friends with from zero. And Changbin’s big, so maybe he’ll protect him if someone tries to bully him again. That was the one thing he was glad to escape when he left — but he shakes off that train of thought.
Changbin gestures, and they start walking back towards the staircase. “See, there’s Yang house, Lee house, and Park house. They’re named after donors or founders or something. It doesn’t mean much, but when there’s games or competitions or something, that’s how we’re split up.”
“Shouldn’t I be Lee house, then?”, Felix says, frowning slightly.
“Oh, because of your last name? It doesn’t work like that, don’t ask me why. We’ve got someone called Yang in our dorm, too, but he’s still in Park house.”
Felix nods like he understands (he does not). “So, who else is in our dorm?”, he asks instead.
Changbin chuckles. “You’ll meet them soon enough. It’s seven of us — well, eight now, with you.”
Eight? Felix gapes. He shared a room with his two sisters back in Australia, but that’s a different story altogether.
“Don’t make that sort of face”, Changbin says lightly. “At least we’re not stuck in the basement.”
Felix reigns his facial expression back in quickly. He can count his blessings when he needs to. The crowd in the front hall has gotten even busier since they’ve been away, so Felix ducks behind Changbin as the taller boy once more carves a path through the crowd. His suitcase is still where they left it. Changbin directs them outside by way of the back door, which leads out to a large grassy courtyard bisected by cobbled walkways, empty apart from a handful of trees and some benches surrounding them. It’s about a five-minute walk through the courtyard to the dorm buildings, though that’s with the added weight of the suitcase. Felix tries his hardest to memorise where he needs to go — the school grounds certainly seem large enough to get lost in at some point.
They head for one of three identical two-story buildings arranged in a rough semi-circle. As they climb the stairs up to the porch, Changbin pauses for a second, causing Felix to slam into the suitcase with his knee, and points. “So this is Park house”, he says, slightly out of breath, “that’s ours. That one is Lee, and that one’s Yang. You don’t really need to go there unless you make friends with someone from there.” Felix nods, and Changbin leads him onwards into the building. It’s a lot older-looking than the main building, all scuffed wood and grated windows, and the air tastes faintly of dust.
Felix doesn’t have time to look to his left and right, but he hears laughter, shouting, sees occasional objects flying overhead and boys running between rooms. “Every dorm”, Changbin continues, as if nothing at all was going on around them and nothing was almost pulling Felix’ arms out of their sockets, “has a leader — an older student, at least a sixth grader, to keep everyone out of trouble. Well, mostly. Ours is a bit of a —“ Felix misses a word, whether through gaps in his vocabulary or a particularly loud shout from the side, he isn’t sure. “— mind what he says.” That measure of tension that had fled him when he learned Changbin would be his roommate returns in full force. Behave for your teachers, his mother told him, which is one thing, but to get an older boy to like or at least respect him? Felix doesn’t have a great track record with that sort of thing.
By the time they’ve made it up the spiral staircase, he is gasping for breath again. “Far door to the left”, Changbin calls, jolting Felix out of his anxious thoughts. They manoeuvre the suitcase through the doorway with some difficulty, then set it down in the entryway with a huff. Changbin reaches across and closes the door. “Finally”, he says with a sigh.
The entry room is small, with white-plastered walls and the same worn wooden floors that Felix has seen throughout the house. There’s no real furniture in it, apart from a narrow shoe shelf mounted to the wall. To his right, a door leading further into the dorm has been left open just a crack.
“YAH!”, Changbin shouts suddenly, making Felix flinch into the wall with the sudden volume. Jesus Christ. “Anyone here?”
“Oh my god, stop yelling”, comes a groaning reply from the room beyond. “Just me and Minnie.”
“Where’s the rest?”, Changbin yells back, kicking off his shoes and gesturing for Felix to do the same.
A different voice replies this time, sweet and melodic. “Chan just left for the headmaster’s, Jisung is picking up Innie. Minho hasn’t been spotted.”
“Aw, he’ll miss dinner again at that rate.” Changbin grabs hold of Felix arm and gently tugs him along, pushing the door open the rest of the way with his free hand.
It opens into a small common room populated by an assortment of worn-looking furniture: a closed wooden storage cupboard in the corner, a mostly-empty bookshelf leaning against the wall, two sofas with a wild assortment of pillows on them placed haphazardly around a chipped coffee table. With a quick glance around the room, Felix spots a few more doors heading off in different directions; but he can’t make out any details before his eyes are caught by the two boys on the couch. They can’t be much older than him, which is a relief. One, with a round face and neatly parted dark hair, sits with his legs crossed and his arms folded, the other has a narrower face and is leaning precariously off the side of the sofa, his hair falling in a messy black swath as he peers towards them upside down.
“He’s new”, the acrobat comments, swiftly sitting up and nearly banging his head against a low wall-mounted shelf in the process.
Felix tries to shift backwards, but Changbin throws his arm over his shoulders again and pulls him forward. “We’ve got a new one”, he says cheerfully.
“Hello, I’m Lee Yongbok”, Felix mutters awkwardly when nothing else is forthcoming. “Nice to meet you.”
“That’s Seungmin”, Changbin says, pointing to the proper one, “and the monkey’s Hyunjin. They’re fourthies, too.”
“You’re in fourth?” Hyunjin leaps off the couch and onto his feet. “That’s cool! We’ll be in the same classes then!”
“We’ll finally have enough manpower to overtake the hyungs, first of all”, Seungmin says, so utterly deadpan that Felix is honestly not quite sure he’s heard all of the words correctly.
“Excuse me?”, he says politely.
“Don’t listen to Seungmin, he’s a menace”, Changbin says good-naturedly. “Hey, be careful with the new kid, guys. Chan’ll do introductions later.”
Felix presses his lips together. Careful with the new kid. A twinge of embarrassment takes root in his guts.
“I’ll help you put your suitcase in your room in just a second, but I want to get Chan’s sign-off first”, Changbin continues, oblivious. “You can put your books or any school supplies you have on your shelf over there later… there’s some board games on the bottom shelf… oh! there’ll be snacks in that box under the couch as soon as we can get some… and —“
He is interrupted by the sound of the front door slamming against the wall and a roar of several voices, laughing and speaking over one another, high and excited.
Felix looks over to Changbin with some alarm. Everything is moving so quickly, he can barely catch his breath. But Changbin just sighs with a smile. “There comes the cavalry.”