"The government doesn't care. Why can't I just ban those bastards from my restaurant?"

Choi Soobin sat on the couch in his living room, quietly sipping a smoothie he'd made and wishing he were anywhere else.

"That's illegal, honey," Soobin's mom spoke from her armchair, where she sat nursing a glass of red wine.

Her husband paced back and forth, an anger emanating even from his steps. "I just don't get it! We all hate the bastards, no one wants them here in the first place. I don't see why it's illegal to make it safer for humans!" he ranted, gesturing as to portray his frustration.

"Segregation has been illegal for a while, dad," Soobin quietly reminded from the couch. He wasn't one to fight, but the temptation had been too strong.

"Oh shut up, Soobin. It's not segregation," the dad chided. "It's just one restaurant."

"If you say so," Soobin grumbled as he took a sip of his smoothie.

"I understand you're angry, but it's the law. What can we do?" the mother protested, just wanting to end the discussion immediately.

"The law needs to change then! If they think I'm going to sit here and let demons mix in with my patrons—" the father paused upon hearing Soobin hold back a short laugh.

"You think this is fucking funny, Soobin?" the man turned, causing Soobin to freeze on the spot.

"Honey," the mother warned as she saw her husband's angry expression.

"No... it's just, they look the same as us," Soobin tried to spit out an excuse, "What are you gonna do, go up and ask them 'Oh hey are you a demon?'"

"You can tell by appearance," the father scoffed, as if in disbelief of his son's absence of knowledge on the subject.

"Is that so? Do enlighten me as to how, exactly?" Soobin retorted. The tone came off a bit more aggressive than intended, as shown in how his father's eyes narrowed at him.

"Are you talking back to me?" the man said, a dangerous energy in his voice.

"You two, calm down," the mother demanded as she set her wine glass on the table next to her.

The father let out a large sigh as he wandered over towards his wife's arm chair, picking up her glass and taking a swig of her wine.

"Sometimes I just wish they would've gotten rid of all of those shits already," he said, swirling the wine around in the glass.

"I bet they would say the same about you," Soobin commented quietly. His father heard, and gave him a stern look.

"They don't feel things like that, Soobin. You wouldn't understand," he explained.

"What do I not understand?" he said, in an annoyingly innocent and questioning tone.

"They don't feel anything. They're artificial, they may look like you and me, but their brains don't work that way," the man spoke as if giving a thorough lesson on the subject.

"If they feel nothing then why would they want to bother the people in your restaurant?"

Soobin's words stopped his father right in his tracks. Trying to form a sentence and failing, he only grew visibly agitated.

"You're too young to know... just, go to your room, dammit!" the father demanded, flustered.

Soobin stood, holding his hands up in a mock surrender as he gladly turned around and walked out of the room.

Soobin ignored the sound of his mother's voice loudly responding as he walked down the hallway. He guessed she was probably yelling at her husband for making their son leave. It definitely wasn't the first time.

He found himself entering his room and plopping down at his desk, opening his laptop with numerous questions in mind.

He almost felt tempted to Google his dad's claims. He typed out a few letters in the search bar, just for kicks.

Can you identify a demon by app...

He stopped typing. It was a stupid question, and Googling it would probably only turn up a load of biased search results written by people like his father.

An article on the side of his screen grabbed his attention. The headline displayed news about a certain girl group, with an update on the scandal of their leader's ancestry.

Thoughts of his first period class that day jolted into Soobin's mind. The memory songs playing as he frantically did the worksheet surfaced, alongside the memory of the new boy in his class.

Yeonjun. Something about him made Soobin extremely curious. With every thing he'd shown himself to be so far, Soobin couldn't help but feel as if he seemed a bit different from the rest of his classmates.
A big part of him hoped Yeonjun held the same views as he did.

Soobin didn't like to consider himself as a nosy person, but he already knew he was going to do everything in his power to figure out what Yeonjun thought. There was no way he'd be satisfied without knowing for sure.

Soobin found himself opening up Instagram and typing in a certain name, just out of curiosity.

He clicked on a few profiles aimlessly, not locating the right face... until he stumbled upon one followed by a mutual of his.
Soobin, hesitantly clicked on the profile.

A picture immediately caught his eye; it contained two boys, one of which was his mutual, a boy named Beomgyu, and the other...
Choi Yeonjun. He'd found the correct profile.

He tapped to open the post, surprised that the two knew each other.

_

_

Soobin found himself smiling at the photo for some reason, yet stopped as a thought finished loading in his brain.

He knew Beomgyu well, having met the boy a few years back on a forum. Although he lived a city over, the two had met up a couple of times to eat or see a movie.

The forum they'd met on now took hold in Soobin's thoughts. On it, Beomgyu ran an information page...
as a human protesting for demon rights.

This fact made Soobin incredibly excited. If Yeonjun was close friends with Beomgyu, it brought Soobin's hopes up a lot more that he would be a kindred spirit.

Soobin whipped around at the sound of a glass shattering in the distant hallway. He cringed at the thought of another wine glass broken.
His parents arguments tended to get rather destructive.

Soobin put in an earbud and played a random song to drown out the shouting.

Pleasant memories of doing the same earlier that day accompanied him as he laid his head on his desk, drifting off into daydreams.