There’s something about biographies today. Namjoon’s fingers trail across their spines, bumping up and down the rows. They feel alive. The Agony and the Ecstasy, The Liar’s Club, and Yakuza Moon almost vibrate on the shelves, begging to be read, to let their lives unfold one more time. Tempted, but wary, Namjoon slowly shelves the new additions, squeezing Ishmael Beah and Alexandra Fuller in between reluctant neighbors. He wonders what lies behind such cryptic titles. What cases the agony, and which ecstasy soothes it?

Leaning the side of his head against the shelf, tentative fingers the discolored spine once, twice, before snagging the top.

“Namjoon.”

The siren call is interrupted by Donghae, encased in a tragic green sweater and sporting disheveled bedhead. The man’s eyes twinkle and his mouth is crooked in a serene smile.

Namjoon’s fingers slip from the book’s smooth, rounded edge and he slowly straightens. The panic response triggered every time Donghae seeks him out has faded over time, so he simply raises an eyebrow in question.

“There’s someone for you on the phone,” Donghae says.

For him?

Dread.

It overtakes him, closes his throat while he tries to remember who knows where he works. Surely – no. No, it can’t be them. Chills sweep from head to toe, forcing goosebumps up his arms and across the back of his neck.

“Namjoon.”

His name is firm, kind but unwavering and it draws his attention back to Donghae. He in a stuttering breath, hand white-knuckled on the shelf behind him.

Donghae’s smile returns, reminiscent of a soothing bundle of moss in that terrible, terrible, sweater. “Everything’s alright. I promise,” he says.

Namjoon breathes out long and slow and nods once, decisively. There’s no arguing that Donghae is strange, often sounding like he’s seeing into the fourth dimension and emanating a stone-like patience. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Namjoon trusts him. Donghae hasn’t done him wrong yet, and if he did, it would cut deep. Deeper than he thought anything could, anymore. The trust, the faith that he won’t is surprisingly solid.

Slipping away from the bookshelf, Namjoon follows Donghae to confront the shop’s only phone, a corded beige beast taking up a full square foot of counter space. He takes several steadying breaths and closes his eyes. He is in control. He will handle this and return to the shelves. Namjoon snatches the receiver and switches the line off hold, momentum carrying him through.

“You’ve reached the Pied Piper, this is –”

“Namjoon!” a breathless voice interrupts, “Thank goodness I caught you! Can you do me a favor? I’ll owe you until the end of time, I swear to god, anything you want, it’s yours.”

Eyebrows pinched, Namjoon pulls the phone away from his ear and studies it, bewildered. “Uh…Hoseok? Is that you?” His park buddy isn’t the last person he’s expecting, but it’s close.

“Yeah, sorry. I’m at work and –” the words are drowned out by shouting, followed by several loud crashes like something heavy fell from a great height.

“Are you okay?” Namjoon barks, clutching the phone. The receiver cuts into his ear, as if pressing it closer will somehow physically transport him to Hoseok’s location.

“Fine, peachy, one hundred percent!” Hoseok shouts breathlessly. “Could you please, please look after the twins for a few hours? They get out of school at three. Their Gramps and G-ma are out of town, so I was supposed to pick them up, but there’s –” crash “no way I’m going to make it.”

“I –”

“I’ll even make it easy for you,” Hoseok barrels on. “I’ll text Sumi and tell them to come to the Pied Piper. I’m sure Donghae wouldn’t mind, plus they can do their homework and read a book. They’re super easy and well behaved and they love you Namjoon. You’re perfect for the job.”

Namjoon’s mind blanks. His spirit must escape his body because “Uh…yes?” slips from his mouth before he knows what’s happening. He only realizes what he’s done when Hoseok yells in triumph.

“They walk home from school, but don’t worry, you’re not much out of the way. If you don’t see them by twenty after, start worrying. You’re the best Namjoon, love you, bye.” Click.

Namjoon stands there, phone in hand, for a solid minute. It takes about that long for the reality of what just happened to sink in. A numb hand somehow hangs up the phone while the other scrabbles to pull a chair beneath his sinking body.

“What.”

Hands braced on knees, he stares at the scarred countertop.

“What.”

The twins. Coming here. Under his supervision. He’s going to be responsible for them. Their well-being and happiness are on him. On him.

“Are we expecting visitors?”

Donghae has snuck up on him again. Namjoon’s hands wrench up, but drop again uselessly. “Yeah,” he breathes, like the air is being pulled directly from his lungs. “Misun and Sumi. Are coming here after school. I’m…babysitting.”

--

It’s already 1:30 so there’s an hour and a half of agonizing eternity, no, two hours ahead of him. Namjoon is struck by the urge to clean something. Donghae’s disappeared again. With a rag in hand, he makes restless circuits through the store.

Where are they going to sit and do their homework, he wonders, running the cloth over thrice-dusted shelves. What if they get bored? Or hungry? What if he traumatizes them and they refuse to see him again? What if he passes out before they even get here, hits his head on a bookshelf, and slips into a coma? Honestly, that’s the most appealing scenario, which probably says nothing complimentary about his state of mind.

After his eighth lap around the shop, but before he’s worked into a full-blown panic, a spate of customers appear all at once, forcing Namjoon to field inane questions and mind the register. When he eventually squirms away to tackle the next box of to-be-shelved volumes, only an hour has slipped by. Namjoon finds himself obsessively rearranging the continually-expanding true crime shelf, batting away the rising terror only to have it float back like a balloon tied to his wrist. Time drips like honey and Namjoon’s going insane. Are the books on the “French True Crime” shelf in French or written by the French? Or do they take place in France?

Clutching Marcel & Me: A Memoir of Love, Lust, and Illusion, Namjoon slowly rests his forehead on the creased cover: it’s a romance novel about a real French mime, in French, and shelved on the French True Crime shelf. He could weep. The absurdity. His life. Instead, he walks the mime a over to the foreign language romance shelf and shoves it in between the lesbian Baba Yaga trilogy and a thick book with a dripping octopus on the cover.

He has his sights set on the memoirs next, but a single shaft of afternoon sunlight breaks through the awning just right and shines on the adjacent shelf like a spotlight.

There’s something about the biographies today.

Crouching, his hands itch to pull every book from the shelf and stack them on the floor, to rearrange them by color or maybe by most worn spine to least. Or maybe he should go from books he’s most likely to read to least likely. Customers are always trying to pry recommendations from his reluctant lips.

His fingertips just kiss the velvet-soft, yellowed pages when bell above the door jingles. Namjoon twitches so violently that he loses balance and topples over. Voices fill the shop, but the octave is wrong. The timing is wrong too, it’s still too early…but maybe not so early? They should be here soon, right? What if they’re late? What if someone kidnapped them or they got lost? Hit by a car?

Surging to his feet, he’s already searching for Donghae, the words rehearsed and rehashed in his head. I’ll be right back – no, do you mind if I go look – I’m worried – the twins – excuse me for a second – but Donghae is frustratingly elusive. Namjoon’s palms are sweating.

If anything’s happened to them, he’ll rip apart the person responsible. There’ll be nothing left.

He heaves a choked breath, rubs a hand across his face, but recoils. His palms are grimy, dirty and he can’t stand it. He scrubs them on his jeans until they tingle.

When his previous thought sinks in, he grabs the nearest shelf for support and viciously pinches his leg in admonishment. He’s not going there. He can’t. And then he pictures squirming, shrieking Misun and Sumi grabbed off the street and thrown into the back of a van by some thug and he thinks.

I could. I would.

The bell over the door rings and the excited voices of children, wonderful in their familiarity, float over the reggaeton beat thumping through the store’s speakers. Namjoon bolts to the front desk. The girls. Here. The girls are here.

--

Misun shrieks and barrels into Namjoon like she’s a puppy let off the leash. Sumi follows behind, a smidge more restrained but nowhere near stoic. She’s beaming in the way that she does, lips pinched together but the corners of turned up so hard her cheeks dimple.

Namjoon is helpless.

He scoops Misun up into his arms and drops the squirming girl onto the front counter in time to grab Sumi, who wants to be picked up too even if she won’t come out and say it.

“You’re so strong, Namjoon!” Misun cackles. She’s clambering to her feet on the counter, chin up like a queen, already at home.

Sumi latches onto Namjoon’s neck and wraps her gangly legs around his middle like a monkey. “How did you get so tall?” she giggles. “You always looked so short from down there!”

Namjoon gasps in mock offense, holding Sumi secure while carefully sweeping Misun onto his broad shoulders. She shrieks again and clings to his head, accidentally sticking her fingers in his ear. “Let me down!” She’s laughing and Namjoon wishes he had a swimming pool to thrown them all into. Instead, he shuffles into the tiny break room stacked with, surprise, more books.

In a practiced move he slips Misun onto her feet before she even knows what’s happening and detaches Sumi with a quick pat to her grasping hands. The pressure around his neck gets to him sometimes, too tight and choking, and Sumi understands as best she can. She’s a girl who knows what it is to be sad, to feel the weight of things you can’t change.

“I’m so happy to see you girls,” he confesses, and he is. The anxiety doesn’t melt away but they’re both so bright and loud and consuming that it’s dimmed to near invisible greyness, outshone.

Misun is already digging through her backpack for god knows what. It’s a mess of crumpled papers, loose pencils, and headbands in a rainbow of colors. “We never got to visit your work before,” she accuses, clearly on the search for something.

Sumi is looking around the break room, dark eyes roaming the photos taped to the walls and the stacks of books surrounding them like precarious staircases to nowhere. Het attention flicks back to Namjoon and she says seriously, “Uncle Hobi told us you’re helping with homework today. Can you do math?”

Math he can do, even if he’s useless at everything else. Numbers come easy to him, speak to him like a language. If he can’t help with an eight-year-old’s math homework, he’ll…probably cry, to be honest. Determined, he nods and Sumi nods back gravely.

Misun shrieks, “Aha!” She’s clutching a slightly rumpled piece of paper and waves it in his face.

“For me?” Namjoon asks, startled, and she nods so hard he’s worried for her neck. He gently takes the page and the lump in his throat is unexpected, the tears beading in the corners of his eyes even more so. Four figures look back at him, disproportionate and neon-colored but each line made with painstaking care. Two nearly identical figures are obviously Misun and Sumi and a third person only a head taller stands in the middle with a big grin. Off to the side is a man either lying down or dead, his mouth a round “o.” A somewhat lopsided soccer ball sits by his feet.

Namjoon drops into a crouch and Misun immediately nestles into his arms, her back to his chest as he pores over the drawing.

“Wow, this is us!” he chokes out, grateful his voice stays level. “You’re such an amazing artist!” To be honest, he’s not quite sure if he’s the standing guy or the dead guy, but either way it’s the sweetest thing he’s ever seen.

Misun clutches his arm, her tiny fingers pinching his wrist in a death grip. “This is me,” she explains gleefully, jabbing at the figure with a gigantic bow the size of her head.

“That’s Sumi.” Sumi has a big heart drawn across her chest.

“That’s you,” she points at the short person in the middle.

“And that’s Uncle Hobi!” She indicates the person laying on the ground. “He’s really bad at soccer so the ball hit him and he fainted.” She giggles helplessly at her own joke and Namjoon can’t help but join her.

Sumi peers over the drawing from the other side, her bowed head nearly touching Misun’s. After a silent moment, she looks up and meets Namjoon’s eyes. “She was supposed to draw her best friend.”

Namjoon loses the fight with his welling eyes and ducks down to wipe them on his shirt. Misun disappears, leaving the drawing clutched in his shaking hand. Sumi slowly ducks down and steps into the circle of his arms, and Namjoon hasn’t received such genuine, heartfelt, and uncomplicated love in so long that something deep inside him cracks. Sumi stands there, doesn’t hug him, but bumps her arm against his bicep and smiles. She bumps him again before retreating and then she’s gone, quiet footsteps following her sister’s stomps out into the main store.

He knows he should follow them, but Namjoon tips over onto his for the second time that day with that picture in his hand and feels like he’s floating.

--

It turns out he can still do second-grade math and no, he doesn’t know that lemurs are some of the only animals that have blue eyes. Namjoon wonders why second graders have homework, and homework about lemurs, but gamely answers everything he can. Ducking down to peer over a delicate shoulder and sound out vocabulary words is surreal – he feels like he’s torn down, rolled up, and made off with someone else’s domesticity like a painting in an art heist. But he’s not giving it back.

Donghae drops by in the middle of homework with a tin of cookies of indecipherable national origin that are crisp, gingery, and delicious. Misun spews crumbs across the front counter and pushes buttons on the old mechanical cash register, giving invisible customers invisible change. She finished her homework a little too quickly, but Namjoon isn’t going to bother her about it when she’s unwittingly practicing math. Sumi is on to reading that isn’t homework at all, but he’s now deeply invested in the disturbing creature described in The Teacher from the Black Lagoon…green skin, a tail, claws, and breathes fire. Relatable.

It’s not until the sun is in that perfect spot where it dips below the front awning and blinds everyone the front desk that Namjoon realizes it’s almost five o’clock. In the absence of any emergencies, which is debatable based on that phone call, Hoseok gets off work at five and shouldn’t be over later than 5:30. Traffic in the shop usually picks up after four, but Namjoon hasn’t even noticed, having spent the afternoon with the twins oddly uninterrupted. He’s shocked things have gone so well, that he hasn’t crashed and burned and put someone in the hospital or had a meltdown. It makes his panic earlier feel foolish, a little, like maybe he was underestimating himself. But overestimating himself has consequences he’s not willing to accept.

And maybe the bulk of the credit goes to the twins, who have been rambunctious, and loving, and hard-working, and curious, and perfect. Namjoon can’t even love himself, but when Sumi wishes her teacher could actually breathe fire and Misun plasters her face up against the front window, chanting, “Dog! Dog! Dog!” when a golden retriever walks by, he finally admits that he loves them.

He loves them.

The revelation feels like a secret Namjoon isn’t supposed to discover. A hand to his chest feels his heart beating and he wonders if it’s been beating the whole time. Love is burning in his chest like a sun, like another soul that’s filling up the empty, echoing spaces inside. Namjoon could drown in it, let it consume him but he claws the feeling back, shoves it down where it boils like lava.

There’s something about the biographies today.

Namjoon thinks of his own. It would be thick, full to bursting with black pages drenched in horror and cruelty that bleeds into numb apathy. But maybe it doesn’t end there. Maybe there’s another chapter, another part, another volume where the pages are aren’t so dark. And maybe he’s writing it every day at the Pied Piper, with the neighbor, and Hoseok, and Misun and Sumi.

Love, hot and burning, is seeping out, oozing from between his clenched fists. It burns so badly but this must be that good hurt that he’s heard so much about and can’t remember feeling. Agony and ecstasy, all mashed up together. Is that what it is to live? To love?

It’s about time he finds out.