Relaxation. Peace. Steady breathing. Rhythmic motion. As the cooking club's teacher walked down the row of members, ranging from the ages of 10 to 16, who were all learning proper cutting techniques, she watched critically. Slicing. Dicing. Chopping. Mincing. Their task was to perform these both safely and efficiently.

Izak felt a calm wave of emotion flow through his veins; just enough adrenaline to keep the movements fast and consist, while also allowing his heart to maintain a steady beat in his chest. Every-so-often, however, the pattern was ruined when he had to pause and push his glasses up further onto his nose. It wasn't that the glasses fit poorly; in fact, during school and other daily activities, his glasses fit perfectly.

But with cooking... It was different. With his head always bent down to focus on his work, his glasses often slipped, pulled towards the earth by gravity. Again, as his teacher passed by, he used his wrist to push his glasses up quickly, before returning to the slippery tomato that he seemed to easily keep a grip on.

"You're doing a very good job, Izak." The teacher complimented. "But you might find it easier to cook if you didn't wear your glasses. How bad are your eyes without them?" She inquired, causing the 13 year old to pause his work.

He frowned, setting down his knife and tentatively removing his glasses. When he looked back down to the cutting board, he could just barely make out the blurry shapes of a various fruits and vegetables. "Um, not, uh, not really." He stuttered out, his nerves frying as the adult not only addressed him, but asked him questions. "I have nadwzroczność, er, sorry. I can only focus on things far away, so I can't really focus on things up close, and the cutting board is too close." He admitted, becoming slightly flustered at not being able to think of the proper French word for his condition.

"Oh, I see. Well, you still do very well with the glasses, but I would suggest considering an investment in contacts; it would make life much easier." She advised, giving him a reassuring pat on the shoulder before moving on to the next student.

Izak placed his glasses back on his face, blinking as he picked up his knife, grabbing a onion and beginning a uniform chop. "Contacts..." He muttered to himself, trying to remember if he had ever heard that word, raking his brain to try and recall what that translated to in Polish.

"Dinner was excellent tonight, honey." Maciej complimented, wiping the edges of his mouth with a napkin as he sat back, satisfied and full.

"Thank you." Lola smiled, glancing at Izak, who was still picking at his gratin dauphinois with a emotionless expression. "Hey, Izak, I was thinking since I made dinner, you could make a dessert? I'm sure we could scratch up enough ingredients around the house to make a fromage blanc."

"Lola, what are 'contacts'?" He questioned, glancing up from his meal, the light from the ceiling fan reflecting off his glasses, making it hard to read the mood in his eyes.

"Contacts? Well that's random." She stated, picking up her glass and taking a sip of her Beaujolais. "Contacts are flexible little lens you wear on your eyes to help you see better. They're like glasses, but you put them on your eyes instead of in front of them. Does that make any sense?"

"Can I maybe get some?" He ventured, his fingers finding his glasses and removing them carefully. Without the glass to reflect a sheen light and keep his eyes hidden, the large pool of pale green could now be seen with honey brown streaks at the very edges of his pupils. "Mrs. Dubois said it would make cooking a lot easier..." He trailed off, his eyes searching his father's emotions, and then Lola's, trying to decipher their thoughts on the matter.

His half-sister, Lucie, giggled. "I want contacts too, momma."

While Maciej remained silent, Lola leaned forward slightly. "Well, I know how serious this cooking hobby is to you, Izak. But if you get contacts, I don't want you to get them because someone else's thinks it's what you need- do you want them?"

Even though he was only 13, Izak weighed Lola's question carefully. He thought of how he had to constantly clean smudges from his glasses, push them up onto his face while cooking, how the other boys in class would try and snatch them off his face just to get a laugh.

"Yes. I want them." He assured her, his tone earnest.

"Well then," she gave a kind smile, clapping her hands and rubbing them together eagerly, "let's take a trip to the eye doctor, shall we?"

"Trippy trip!" Lucid echoed enthusiastically.

Izak stared at his reflection. It was his face. He saw the same face everyday. But this time, it was different. His nose was bare. No glass sat between his eyes and the rest of the world. It looked strange to him. He had seen himself with his reflection before, but he had never seen it clearly without his glasses. It was always blurry unless he looked at a mirror from several feet away.

There was one difference, however, that he could detect instantly. He blinked, trying to see if maybe it was just some weird illusion from the contacts, but after a few moments, he realized he wasn't imagining things. His irises had changed from their usual pale green to a far darker hazel brown.

"I don't have brown eyes." He stated the fact that should have been obvious, but his tone fluctuated slightly, as if he was just trying to defend an opinion.

"I know, but your dad wanted to see what the color contacts looked like on you, right hon?" Lola explained, glancing to her right at Maciej.

He flashed an approving smile. "It looks great, Izak. Makes you look less like a grumpy old man."

Izak let out a small chuckle at his father's light teasing, careful not to actually laugh in a public place, where someone he knows might hear him. His smile, however, dropped quickly, and he turned, facing his father rather than simply looking at him through the mirror.

"Dad," He began, opting to speak in Polish, as to keep the question private between the two of them, "do you want me to wear these because I have mom's eyes?"

Lola glanced between the two boys, completely clueless to what Izak had said. Maciej pursed his lips, not quite sure how to ask his son's question properly. Eventually, his wife cut in. "Soooo, Izak, are these the ones? You want colored lenses?"

Izak looked back to the mirror, trying to picture how this scenario would have played out, had they been in Poland, had his mother not died. Would his father want him to wear colored contacts? Would he be able to take Izak's eyes as they were?

"Yes, I'll take the colored one." Izak's answer came out only a bit louder than a whisper.

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Sorry if there's bad grammar/punctuation/spelling. I tried to edit this while half asleep.