Reflected In the Mirror, I'm A Maze

I'm In Front of You, You're Looking At Me

"No, please!" No matter the unfortunate circumstances, the mere thought of sending the familiar back genuinely pained the freckled boy. "Please, Minho. I know- I know it's not ideal but please- please don't banish him."

"Felix, you can't keep a familiar as powerful as this one under control. If it starts causing havoc, you won't be able to stop it. Plus, I'm the one who technically summoned it, so I get to decide, and I'm deciding we need to send it back," he insisted, frowning.

"Minho, please!"

This cat was now his familiar, no matter the reason how or why, and Felix was genuinely distressed at the thought of losing him. The beautiful demon cat felt like a soothing balm over his aching heart, as if he'd just found another piece of himself, and the mere thought of being separated was painful enough to make him cry.

The sight of Felix's teary eyes finally made Minho avert his eyes, gritting his teeth.

"Just... get out of my sight," finally ordered Minho. "Get out!"

With a small sob, Felix rushed out of the classroom. The moment he closed the door behind him, a muffled shout of anger echoed from inside, and he burrowed his face in the cat's silky fur to muffle another sob. He never meant to be such a hindrance to Minho, but it was too late to turn back, now.

Felix had a familiar – he was going to need to do some serious reading on those.

.

Thankfully enough, hiding a familiar wasn't exactly difficult. Though they couldn't communicate in the proper sense, his cat – now named Silver – easily understood that he needed to stay hidden if he didn't want to get banished, so he turned into a cute hairpiece in the shape of a paw that Felix now wore every day.

Minho was mad at him too, now – and, with his deadline quickly coming up (Christmas) he barely spent any time with them anymore. Neither of them told the others what happened, but he was obviously growing stressed out by his lack of success and, though Felix felt genuinely sorry for accidentally interfering, there was nothing he could do to help, so he simply stayed out of his way.

Hyunjin was still angry, too, and Felix felt too hurt to confront him. He was terrified Hyunjin might have meant what he said that day and, most importantly, he didn't want to upset Hyunjin further. Plus, the older was almost always with his little clique, now – constantly surrounded by numerous students who seemingly enjoyed basking in the afterglow of his popularity.

It made Felix sick to the stomach, but Hyunjin didn't seem to mind – in fact, he seemed to absolutely relish in all the attention, and he made a point of always laughing even louder at whatever one of his dutiful followers said whenever Felix was close enough to hear. It pained him, but he supposed he only had himself to blame for it – he was the one who'd accused Hyunjin of not being committed enough.

(There was a little voice in the back of his head, however, that kept on telling him that he was right – that Hyunjin was spending less and less time in the infirmary, and that his dedication to what once passioned him was dwindling by the day for the sake of his newfound popularity.)

And now, as if all that wasn't enough, he was also having some issues with Changbin.

"It's not fair! You said you were going to help me, but all that's happened so far is me doing your homework for you while you go out to have fun with your friends!"

"It's not like that, Lix," huffed Changbin, exasperated. "Look, I really need your help with this, okay? I'm in the middle of a bigger project with the others, that's why I've been spending so much time with them. We have to make a super-difficult potion as a group project, and it's been stressing me out."