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Chapter 79: Leo's Story

The school hallways were a minefield of whispers. Leo had learned to navigate them with his head down, his noise-canceling headphones serving as a shield against the world. But you couldn’t block out the screens. Everywhere he looked, there was his father’s face. On a laptop in the library, a group of kids were watching the "Big Joke" speech, laughing. In the lunch line, a girl was scrolling through a news article with the headline “SYSTEM CORBIN SURGES.” His dad wasn’t his dad anymore. He was a meme. He was a topic. He was a walking, talking political science project, and Leo was a footnote.

It was Kevin Matthews who made it a contact sport. Kevin was a loud, beefy kid on the lacrosse team, a human embodiment of unearned confidence. He’d started small, with drive-by insults in the hallway. “Hey Corbin, did your dad calculate the optimal trajectory for your lunch today?”

Leo ignored him. He was good at ignoring people.

But today, in the loud, clattering chaos of the cafeteria, Kevin decided to escalate. He and his friends cornered Leo at his table.

“Heard your dad’s a robot,” Kevin said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Makes sense. That’s why your mom left him, right? Couldn’t handle the boring.” He smirked. “My dad says he’s a traitor to his class and a freak.”

Something inside Leo, a wire that had been stretched taut for months, finally snapped. He didn’t think. He just moved. He stood up, and he threw a punch. It was not a good punch. It was a clumsy, angry, fifteen-year-old’s punch. But it landed, squarely on Kevin Matthews’s smug, smirking mouth.

The next hour was a blur. The principal’s office. The phone call to his dad. And then, the worst part: the silent, fifteen-minute drive. He sat in the passenger seat of his father’s unnervingly quiet car, staring out the window, a storm of shame and anger and a strange, hot pride churning in his gut. He was bracing for the lecture. The disappointed, logical, soul-crushing analysis of his poor decision-making.

And then, in front of his mom’s house, the lecture never came. Instead, his father apologized.

“I am so sorry that my choices are making your life this difficult.”

The words were a system shock. They were a piece of code he had never encountered before. Apologies were not a part of his father’s operating system. His dad solved problems. He optimized. He explained. He did not apologize.

And then it got worse. His dad’s voice cracked. He watched, with a kind of horrified fascination, as the mask of the calm, logical billionaire fell away, and for a second, he just saw… his dad. A man who looked lost, and sad, and broken. A man who was asking him, his fifteen-year-old screw-up of a son, for permission.

“Do you want me to stop?”

The question was the heaviest thing Leo had ever felt in his life. The weight of it was suffocating. He could say yes. He could end it all. No more whispers in the hallway. No more Kevin Matthews. No more seeing his family’s private pain turned into a talking point on the news. He could have his dad back.

But which dad would he get back? The one who used to show up at his soccer games and spend the whole time on his phone, solving some other, more important problem? The distant, analytical ghost who lived in the big, empty mansion?

He thought about the other dad. The one he’d been seeing on TV. The one who had calmly and patiently explained the national debt in a way that, to Leo’s secret shock, he had actually understood. The one who had told that weird, sad story about the strawberry farm, a story so strange and so logical that it had actually stuck in his head. The man who had made that union guy on stage look not stupid, but just… wrong.

He realized, in that moment, that he didn’t want the old dad back. The old dad was a ghost. This new dad, this strange, awkward, and brilliant man who was trying to fix the whole damn country, was the most real and alive he had ever been.

He looked at his father, at the raw vulnerability in his eyes, and he made a choice. He was not just a kid anymore. He was a stakeholder.

“No,” he said. The word felt small, but solid. “Don’t stop.” He took a breath. “That kid was a jerk anyway. What you’re doing… it’s… important.”

He got out of the car before his dad could see the strange, hot stinging in his own eyes. He walked into the house, past his worried mother, and went straight to his room.

He closed the door. He sat on his bed, the silence of the room a welcome relief. He pulled out his phone and, ignoring the texts from his friends, he opened the browser. He found the clip of his dad’s “megaphone” speech from the gate. He watched it, and then he watched it again. For the first time, he wasn’t just looking at his father. He was listening.

The Discourse, 79; The Son's Mandate

Section 79.1: The Power of a Perspective Shift

The events are presented from the direct, internal perspective of the protagonist's son, Leo. This shift in point-of-view provides a new and crucial layer of information. It allows for a direct experience of the "blowback" of Julian Corbin's campaign, moving it from an abstract concept to a visceral, personal, and painful reality. The whispers in the hallway, the taunts from the bully—these events, seen through Leo's eyes, carry a profound emotional weight and demonstrate the real-world, human cost of the political conflict. This perspective also provides a powerful, external validation of Julian's character; when Leo, the person with the most reason to be resentful, concludes that his father's mission is "important," the conclusion feels deeply earned and credible.

Section 79.2: The "Burdensome" Nature of a Public Parent

The events explore the complex and often burdensome nature of being the child of a famous or powerful parent. Leo’s experience in the hallway and the cafeteria is a microcosm of this. He is no longer seen by his peers as an individual; he is seen as a reflection, a "footnote" to his father's story. His personal identity is being erased by his father's public one.

His decision to punch the bully is not just an act of anger; it is a desperate, adolescent attempt to reclaim his own agency. It is an act of defending not just his father, but his own connection to his father. The fight is his clumsy way of stating, "He is not just a 'topic' on the news; he is my dad." It is a violent and misguided, but ultimately very human, attempt to assert his own reality against the overwhelming force of the public narrative.

Section 79.3: The Moment of Inversion and Maturation

The climax of the events, the conversation in the car, represents a moment of profound inversion in the father-son dynamic. Throughout his life, Leo has been the child, and Julian has been the powerful, all-knowing, and often emotionally distant father. Julian’s apology and his final, vulnerable question—"Do you want me to stop?"—completely inverts this power structure.

In that moment, Julian is no longer the powerful father; he is the one who is lost and asking for help. And Leo is no longer the child; he is being asked to make an adult decision with profound moral weight. This is the moment he is forced to see his father not as a parental authority figure, but as a flawed, vulnerable human being.

His decision to support his father is, therefore, not an act of childish obedience. It is his first, true act as an adult. He is consciously choosing to accept the personal burden of his father's mission because he has come to believe in the importance of the mission itself. It is a profound and powerful coming-of-age moment, forged in the crucible of personal and political conflict.