[Neo Zone] Population: 23 Kids

The Paper

Haechan had spent so much of his time dedicated to one singular assignment in school that Jeno had to ask if he was feeling okay. Just for YangYang to turn around five minutes later and ask the same thing.

His teacher had once again left his class in Hendery's room and put on a movie, this time Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, leaving them for the day so the two teachers could be gay for each other somewhere else. Except this time they couldn't just enjoy the movie, they had to write a paper on it.

They're seven and eight.

However, the paper was on what the students thought happened after the movie had finished. How the characters went on, lived, their lives and all that good stuff. It wasn't meant to be long, and the majority of the responses were "she lived happily ever with her prince in the castle and had lots of babies."

Which was great seeing as that's what the two teachers had expected. Because, you know, they're kids. When does anything not end happy?

Haechan took a different turn. He wrote practically an entire essay on how Snow White would have no idea the apple wasn't a wishing apple (she wished for a prince and woke up with one eating her face, as he phrased it) so he wrote about how afterwards she ate an abundance of apples because she thought they made wishes come true.

The dwarfs then had a whole story on how after standing by her coffin for days just to have some prince sweep her away, they went almost insane. No one was ever let into the house again. Happy started drinking because he couldn't be truly happy without alcohol. Apples were banished, and every time they heard a bird chirp they frantically looked around to see if they were getting their attention to go save her again.

It was an amazing take on the classic story, one that took him a couple of days to write out. He even had help from all the older kids in the middle school, and ignored all other assignments so he could focus on the task completely.

Just to get the paper back with "Unacceptable. I need to meet with your parents" written at the top in bright, red marker.

"Haechan, sunshine, light of my life..." Mrs. Suh sighed, setting down the paper she was just handed. "I think we both know this wasn't intended for me."

He kept his head down as he stared at the kitchen table, sunglasses on. As soon as school had released him, he ran straight to the cafe without waiting for the others. Mrs. Suh had taken him upstairs when she saw how upset he was, so he had an untouched cookie on a napkin in front of him.

"Can't you just pretend? Please?"

"Explain to me why this happened, then we'll see."

Haechan let out a shaky breath, glad he had his sunglasses on so she couldn't see his teary eyes.

"I called the prince a pedophile because Snow White's fourteen and he's eighteen. And I made Happy an alcoholic. My teacher said I shouldn't be using those words and there's no way I wrote this on my own without cheating."

"Snow White? Why were you doing something with Snow White?" Mrs. Suh had seen him working on the assignment, they all had, but she didn't know what it was about. Her husband had even given Haechan a candy bar for working so hard on it.

"My teacher's gay for Hendery's teacher, so they put on a movie for us to watch while they left the room. Last time it was Hamilton, this time it was Snow White and we had to write a-"

"Hold up. They left you kids unattended in a classroom?"

"Yeah-"

Mrs. Suh stood up and grabbed the red marked paper, already reaching for her purse. "What's your surname? Lee? I'm having a talk with your teacher. Come on." 

She held out her hand for Haechan to take, and he did, following behind her like a small shadow.

"Hun, I'm being Haechan's Mom for a bit, I'll be back in a couple minutes." She called out to her husband who instantly stopped what he was doing to stop her.

"You know you probably can't legally do that. How about we talk this out, maybe call his parents-"

"If this was a situation with one of Jaehyun's teachers, would you not let me go? Would you call his Mom?"

"We're legal guardians of Jaehyun right now."

Mrs. Suh paused, remembering he in fact wasn't her kid and was actually her nephew.

"Well if Mark-"

"Still legal guardian."

She was at a loss of words for a second, opening and closing her mouth as she worked out what to say in her mind. Her husband waited patiently for her to come up with something, not caring that he was supposed to be running the coffee machine.

"My name is Mrs. Lee. I don't know what you're talking about." 

And she walked out of the cafe with Haechan, marched straight into his classroom, and tried to have a civil conversation with his teacher. She almost snapped when the lady told Haechan to take off his sunglasses, but she told him he could keep them on if he wanted to.

In the end she had been called homophobic twice, went on a rant about how she isn't and is just trying to get her son the best education that he could, and then threatened to bring this to the school board. That shut down his teacher, who said she would "consider revising his work, but plagiarism and cheating was not allowed."

When they walked out of the school, Haechan was still holding her hand, but now he had a perfect score on his paper that got hung up on the cafe refrigerator for all the customers to see.