Jinki stared at the plethora of papers dotting his desk with a withheld sigh. There seemed to be pages everywhere; important documents stuck between black diaries, opened yet not explored envelopes hanging from the edges of the table like tongues, even torn and crumpled files, illegible now after facing the wrath of his frustration.

His home office was a disorganized mess, and he knew it.

Gingerly, Jinki took a step towards the oak desk and lifted the cover of one of his leather bound diaries, the book almost tearing as it fell into his hands. It was flimsy, weak, scrawled over in a manner indecipherable to anybody but Jinki. He flicked through the pages lazily, eyes drifting over the dates, until he found the date for the following day – August 31st, 2016. He had a meeting with new, potential clientele - people who wanted more than they sought and required Jinki's assistance in getting it. He dropped the diary back on his unorganized desk, the soft ‘thwump’ causing a tremor in his conscience, almost as if an almighty footstep atop his scalp. Gently, he began to massage his temples, glancing at the clock opposite him. It was already past eight, the night drawing in rapidly, despite it still being the summer months.

From outside the closed door to his tiny, claustrophobic office, a childish laughter sounded, bringing the ghost of a smile to Jinki’s lips. The smile faded quickly, however, as the laughter ceased and the only sound was once again the irritating racket of another children’s cartoon. Jinki had heard the theme tunes so many times he practically sang them in his sleep, perpetual jingles about cats befriending dogs and the seven colours of the rainbow.

He had to stop working, he had to, but he felt compelled to do more. His office was a chaotic maelstrom, a mere reflection of his disorganized mind, but it didn’t matter – all that mattered was earning enough to put some food on the table, some clothes on his back and to pay off his house’s extortionate mortgage rate. Jinki supposed he was floating, having enough to spend somewhat freely, but his savings were drying out, and it was making him irretrievably anxious.

“Appa!” cried a soft voice, and Jinki stiffened, finally succumbing to his weariness. His work could wait, his son mattered more.

Gazing around the curtained office one last time, Jinki ambled to the light switch and flicked it off, shading the room in a complete darkness as he left. Clicking the door behind him, so that his son couldn’t easily enter, Jinki was almost shocked by the sheer volume of the show Yoogeun had been watching.

From upstairs, he gazed over the glass banister at his son, who playfully clapped his hands in time with the beat of the nonsensical program that emanated boldly from their television. Jinki’s house was modern, stylish, all glass edges and white walls, with large windows in the ceiling and a minimalistic interior, vaguely interrupted by the oddities he'd collected over the years – abstract paintings, personal souvenirs, and a whole host of Yoogeun’s many toys. The small, yet sophisticated, house was childproofed, the stairs shielded by a small gate that Jinki had been ensured no two year old could pass through, and the white kitchen’s drawers too high up for Yoogeun to reach the cutlery. Unfortunately, it did mean that the kitchen was often stained in Yoogeun’s grubby fingerprints, much to Jinki’s despair. He wished he'd bought a house with the kitchen separated off from the living area – at least that way, he could have locked the door.

As Jinki reached the bottom of the stairs, stumbling awkwardly from the gate and shutting it behind himself firmly, he raised an eyebrow at his son, who was immersed in a collection of vibrant pillows on the floor, head resting on the back of the black sofa as he gurgled playfully with the bright television. Various incomplete puzzles surrounded him, and his little hand clenched onto an ancient, worn blanket, eyes laughing.

“Yoogeun,” Jinki cooed, knowing well the tantrum that was about to ensue, “it's time for bed. Come on.”

And a tantrum it was.

It took Jinki a miraculous forty-three minutes to get Yoogeun into his cot, the toddler (or menace, as Jinki often preferred) howling and crying in protest. He folded his arms when Jinki had tried to persuade him to wear his new, fluffy, pirate-printed pyjamas, and had even thumped his father’s stiff back as he'd carried him up the stairs. Brushing teeth resulted in a spray of water around the bathroom and the bedtime story was nothing more than Yoogeun impatiently wailing, before finally quietening down. He dozed off peacefully, Jinki checking the child monitor and watching his son for a minute, exasperated yet unable to describe the unconditional love that blossomed through him, as he watched his son breathe, slowly and heavily, lost in the aether of sleep.

Once Jinki had finally switched off the television and collapsed atop the sofa, he almost groaned as his mobile vibrated in his pocket. He let it buzz for a minute, his house warm, yet a chill still tickling his spine, contemplating whether it would be a waste of his time to answer. He blinked, eyes latched to the bright light installations above him, before fishing out his phone and answering the call, almost scowling at the name that flashed on the screen.

“Yes?” Jinki asked, tone dead. His voice was oddly quiet in the house, the feeling of the living area almost empty. Jinki wasn't a paranoid man, but he still often felt uneasy at night, once he lay alone after putting Yoogeun to bed. Shadows flitted in his peripheral and the rustling of the back garden played inadequately.

“Well, good evening to you too,” replied the mildly aggravated voice of Jinki’s not-by-blood-brother, Choi Minho.

“Sorry,” Jinki muttered, shifting his position so that his legs curled up slightly on the couch, and his free hand drummed restlessly on his knee. “Just... Just tired. What's up?”

“You free tomorrow?” Minho asked. From his end of the receiver, Jinki could make out the faint hum of traffic and the bustle of street-life in Seoul, Minho’s hastened breathing tell-tale that he was walking through the city.

“No,” Jinki groaned, reminding himself of the clients he had to visit the next day. “I've people to see about work.”

“Damn,” Minho sighed, “Jinki, you really need to slow down. Seriously, hyung, I didn’t think commissioned painting was a stressful career until I saw you, why don’t you loosen up tomorrow, come out and relax?”

“Minho-“

“Kibum and I are heading to this nearby friend’s place tomorrow night, a party to celebrate a birthday or something, and I was thinking-“

“Minho-“

“-maybe you could get Yoogeun a baby sitter and come along. It's been years since you were at something like this, it'll be fun.”

Jinki sighed heavily.

“Minho, I'm too old, parties... They really aren’t my scene, not anymore.”

“Hyung, you're twenty-five. You're young, single, and I hate seeing you lonely. Any girl would be desperate to-“

“I have a son, Minho.”

“Yeah, well, girls love that .”

Jinki rolled his eyes, before returning to address the situation.

“Look, thanks Minho, but really, just take Kibum. It's too short-notice for a babysitter and I've things to do. I can't live like I used to, these aren’t my university years. I've work, I've a kid, I've responsibilities, Min.”

“My mum would gladly babysit,” Minho suggested. "She practically sees Yoogeun as a grandson, what with how she regards you as her ‘long lost child.’”

Jinki laughed distantly, as if a thought caught in an anomaly. It was true – ever since Minho had first invited Jinki over from school that fateful day almost fifteen years ago, Minho’s mother had immediately began to treat Jinki as if her own son, feeding him, offering him clothes and even helping him with his school work. At times, she'd felt like a third parent.

“Nah,” Jinki dismissed, “just go without me. Tell me all about it afterwards, though.”

“Aww, come on,” Minho whined, “for me?”

Jinki chuckled and playfully scolded, “No!” before rubbing his eyes.

“I'm going to head to sleep, Minho,” he murmured, preparing to disconnect the call, “but thanks, anyway. You're still coming over on Monday, right?”

“Yeah, of course, I can't wait to see my little fighter,” he joked, referring playfully to Yoogeun, who seemed to worship Minho with an absolutely detestable passion. Jinki supposed it was because, out of the two of them, Minho was the most easily admirable; a tall, strong, handsome basketball player, who'd represented the country on many occasions, and was only getting better. Jinki, on the other hand, was old, grumpy, tired, and refused to change the same brunette hair dye he'd worn for the past eight years, too scared to test the adventurous waters of something new.

“Great,” Jinki nodded, “I'll see you then.”

“See you then, then,” Minho replied reluctantly. “Night, hyung.”

“Night,” Jinki murmured, before hanging up.

•••

Yoogeun made the noises of a revving car engine as he sat in the front of the trolley, hands excitedly clutching the sides as Jinki pushed it further down the isle, searching for various bargains he could use to satisfy Yoogeun’s tastes that he was almost certain were too fussy for a two year old. As Yoogeun growled lowly, the shop’s jingle reminded him that it was three hours until closing, the large store open to midnight over the Autumn months.

Yoogeun gurgled something nonsensical as Jinki threw some cut-price products into the trolley, which clattered nosily against it as he continued to move. Though the trolley was near-empty but for some unripened fruit and Yoogeun’s food, Yoogeun himself forced Jinki into doubling his effort, as they passed another night shopper, a young woman filling her basket with baby milk. She shot Jinki a warm smile in greeting, and he nodded his head in return, politely.

The shop seemed ethereally blue, given the large electric beams strung from the ceiling that lit every corner, and the polished floor itself being an off-white shade. Only the branded products on sale added colour to the vapid isles, that honed the scent of bleach beautifully and were pathetically cold. Jinki paused, wrapped his black coat further around himself, and continued to the next isle.

Jinki didn’t notice Yoogeun cease his incessant garbling, as he bent down to pick up a bag of brown, organic pasta, but he certainly noticed the light, “Woah...” that left his son’s lips a second later, startling Jinki, given the lateness of the evening. Were he more refreshed, he knew he would have instantaneously laughed, but, instead of partying with his friends, he was gently trawling through a grocery shop, with his toddler who really should have been in bed.

Jinki hesitantly dropped the pasta in the trolley and silently followed his son’s gaze, almost becoming embarrassed when he realised just what – or rather, who – his son was gawping at.

A young man scratched his head thoughtfully, eyes dusting over various brands of instant ramen on display. He was small – not incredibly so, but with a narrow frame drowned by a large orange hoodie and ripped denim jeans that gave him an offish sense of vulnerability, something Jinki had rarely seen in a man of his age. His cheekbones were high and his lips full, skin tanned beneath the humming lights, but Jinki knew the true reason Yoogeun was staring, and he would have been lying if he'd said it didn’t make him do a double-take himself. The man’s hair was coloured a candy-floss shade of pale pink.

He was oblivious to Yoogeun and Jinki as they both blinked – the perfect father and son mirror of each other – and instead reached up over his head, on his tip-toes, attempting to lift something. Unsurprisingly, given his height, his fingers merely skimmed the boxes, and he bit his bottom lip, frustrated.

And then, it seemed, Yoogeun couldn’t handle his curiosity anymore, and, much to the embarrassment of his father, he asked in awe, “Are you a superhero?”

Jinki widened his eyes, preparing an apology as soon as the man acknowledged he was being addressed. Admittedly, it did take him a second, until he realised the isle was all but empty for him and the two others who were gazing at him curiously, a father and son duo with matching dark coats. But, when he did catch on, he turned and grinned, and Jinki could have sworn he'd caught a trail of blush on the man’s cheeks. The man smiled, showing white teeth and an expression akin to that of a puppy, and answered, “Why, yes, of course.” Even his voice held a goofy innocence that went unprecedented in the eyes of the single-father.

Pushing the trolley further up the isle, subsequently closer to the young adult, Jinki smiled apologetically as Yoogeun continued.

“You’ hair is a weird colour,” he goggled, words slurring given his unsophisticated level of speech, “has it a’ways been pink?”

“Yoogeun,” Jinki scolded mildly.

The pink-haired man laughed, and faced Yoogeun as their trolley approached.

“I was born with it,” he joked kindly, “because I've magic powers!” He shot out his hands playfully, provoking a giggle from Yoogeun. Jinki smiled, almost finding himself endeared by the kind nature of the stranger, as he made a cute noise to imitate the sounds of powers heard on silly animes or found in childish video games.

“Pew, pew!” Yoogeun shouted suddenly, raising his hands as a gun to the stranger and shooting him twice. Jinki grinned, distracted from surveying the shelves to watch the pink-haired stranger clutch his heart and stagger away comically, his earlier embarrassment all but dissipated.

“No...” he gasped jokingly, reaching out to Yoogeun, who smiled wildly.

“That's enough,” Jinki calmed Yoogeun, shaking his head at his son, “let's leave this nice man alone.”

Yoogeun harrumphed in protest, folding his arms as the stranger gave him a light wave, before Jinki remembered something. As if to almost thank the man for his graciousness towards his son, Jinki stopped the trolley and approached the tiny stranger, who was again contemplating the instant ramen, chewing on his bottom lip. The closer Jinki got, the more he could inhale the scent of the man, like strawberries, perfectly in line with his hair.

“Here,” Jinki offered, reaching up as the man took a step away, startled by Jinki’s sudden reappearance. Amiably, Jinki lifted the ramen the stranger had been trying to reach before Yoogeun’s interruption, and passed it down to him. The stranger’s embarrassment had returned in the form of flushed cheeks, probably timid given the fact his height hadn’t even allowed him to reach the top shelf in the clustered store.

For a second, Jinki held the packet of instant ramen out to the man, but the man instead locked his gaze with Jinki. The stranger’s eyes were deep and round, an alluring hazel flecked with tiny sheets of gold, lined with long eyelashes that accentuated his sharp features. The contact was a fracture in the night, something that inexplicably created its own world between Jinki and the stranger, a world that seemed unaffected even by Yoogeun’s babyish gurgling, or the jingle of the shop. Time passed slowly, until the stranger looked away, noticeably awkward, and nodded in thanks, taking the ramen from a mildly stunned Jinki with a light smile.

“Have a nice evening,” the stranger bowed, giving Yoogeun a final grin and Jinki a final glimpse as he turned, weaving his way towards the tills at the opposite end of the shop. Jinki’s eyes followed the stranger until he became concealed by another isle, following every footstep he took. Part of him felt regretful that he wouldn’t likely see this man again, but he couldn't quite pinpoint why. Was it the stranger’s care towards Yoogeun, or something else entirely? Regardless, Jinki was unsure, but as he turned back to face his son, his features were laced with a frown.

“Tha’ man was nice, appa,” Yoogeun smiled, mispronouncing his words, as usual. Jinki nodded, and supplied a simple, “Yeah,” before returning to his shopping, the stranger lingering in his thoughts.

•••

Jinki lay awake.

He didn’t sleep much – an adequate amount, he assumed, but it did mean his fatigue was somewhat chronic, and by the afternoon he usually lacked the energy to even play with his son – though had usually drifted off by 2AM. It was past three now, and he couldn’t tell why he was still awake.

It had used to be worse, that much was a given. Sleep had rarely embraced him – a few hours every couple of nights – until his insomnia jarred him so much that the thought of Yoogeun forced him into reconstructing his mental ability, brick by brick. He couldn’t raise his son if he were too tired to stand, and so he'd used all the cement he could find to patch himself back together. It was painstaking work, and his palms had suffered from many calluses, but he'd made it.

Yet here he was, for the first night in months, unable to sleep. He wondered why, as his eyes squinted in the murky darkness of the room. It wasn’t because he was too warm; the thick duvet was a blessing in the autumn months, and he wore light pyjamas to add to his comfort.

He figured it could’ve been that he was thinking about the inevitable perils faced by his friends, who were more-than-likely still partying. By this stage of the night, Kibum would be intoxicated highly, women flinging themselves at him to face a rather shocking decline, and Minho, being the ever-mature man he was, would be protecting his friend from harm’s way subtly, removing the highly alcoholic drinks and replacing them with drinks of a lesser danger. Although Minho drank himself, he was the type who knew when to say no, the type that valued his dignity over getting ‘wasted’, whereas Kibum was almost the complete opposite. Jinki had often joked it was Minho’s athletic-mind-set, keeping him from rigorous drinking, but Minho had rolled his eyes, and always replied that drinking to get drunk is pointless. Kibum, on the other hand, availed of every opportunity to get drunk, his party lifestyle not wearing down as he progressed through the years of his early twenties. He was only twenty-three, but even Minho – the younger by a few months – was convincing him that soon he'd have to settle down, that he was a graduated student now and had to work his off to keep that dull as hell office job.

Jinki, on the other hand, was twenty-five. Past the party years, he figured.

As a smile threatened his firm lips illusively, he remembered various famous party incidents he'd somehow straggled through with Kibum and Minho. It'd been a long, long time since he'd accompanied them, however, and the last had been before Yoogeun’s birth, nearly three years ago.

Jinki rolled onto his side, about to speak, and then stopped. His heart clanged emptily.

It'd happened again.

She wasn't there.

Slowly, silently, Jinki screwed his eyes shut and clenched his fists, moving his hand to press it against the empty space on the double bed he lay in. He didn’t cry. He didn’t move. He just inhaled the scent of a floral perfume that no longer existed, and heard the light breathing he'd never truly hear again. When he opened his eyes, the illusion shattered, with the fragments piercing his skin coldly.

She wasn’t there.

Jinki turned away, eyes dry. He wasn't going to cry, he'd expended all his tears years ago. Instead, he distracted himself by glancing at the digital clock beside him, then at the silk curtains that hung, terribly daunting, across the windows. They seemed to breathe, a respiratory hive catching onto anything to remain conscious. Jinki figured the lack of light was confusing his vision.

He blinked, to see two eyes staring into his, and then he remembered. The man from the store that evening resonated amidst his thoughts like an intruder, and Jinki couldn't quite tell what he was doing there. His gratitude and kindness towards Yoogeun had remained a strange sensation in a world where passers-by mostly dwelled in ignorance. But Jinki knew that wasn’t it, there was something else there, he just didn’t know what.

It troubled him.

He exhaled loudly, ruffling his hair and closing his eyes. He had to sleep, otherwise he'd be too tired in the morning to so much as dress Yoogeun. Annoyance quelled any contentment in his gut however, as his mind travelled back to the declination from his potential clients earlier that day – they'd found someone else, willing to do the job for less. But Jinki couldn’t afford to lower his prices, otherwise he'd slip on paying the bills, again, and he couldn’t let that happen.

The man from the store popped into his mind once more, with an innocent smile and a curt wave.

Jinki frowned, and screwed his eyes shut. He was over-tired, beyond exhaustion, and knew his mind was beginning to become irrational, as was what often happened when he stayed up later than planned. He dug his nails into his palms and bit his lower lip. Suddenly, a strange feeling overwhelmed him, so foreign at first he couldn’t quite decipher it, for he hadn’t felt it in months. Since her he hadn’t even looked at anyone else, hadn’t considered becoming involved with another and had never exchanged any more than words. But now, as he realised all he needed to say and all that perplexed him, he felt it.

Jinki was lonely.

•••

“So, anyway,” Minho continued, perching on the sleek stool by Jinki’s surprisingly spotless breakfast bar. His elbow rested on the black granite counter, using his right hand to annunciate his speech, and his left hand rested on his knee as he sat. Jinki awaited the rest of the story, cradling the warm cup of tea that was making his palms sticky.

“Kibum totally freaked. Like, this girl was all over him, and you know how weird he is, hates that with a burning passion, so he flipped at her, told her to-“

Minho glanced across to the living area, where Yoogeun sat obliviously, scribbling over some pages with his large set of crayons, creating a colourful miasma.

Minho leant in closer to Jinki and lowered his voice.

“He told her to the hell off so she threw her drink over him.”

Jinki smirked, sipping his tea as he sat opposite Minho, who was oddly cheery for a Monday. On Mondays, Minho normally was aggravated, after having nursed a hung-over Kibum throughout the weekend (they were, unfortunately, housemates) or having been brutally exhausted by another intense basketball match, but today his handsome smile flourished and he looked quite pleasant, in his loose denim shirt and grey jeans. If it were any other man, Jinki would have been jealous of his perfect physique, but it was Minho, his ‘brother’, and therefore he thought little of it.

“Was he hung-over?” Jinki asked, raising an eyebrow.

Minho shrugged a shoulder.

“Don't know, he fell asleep at the house and got the bus home the next day.”

Jinki laughed and Minho grinned, opening his mouth to continue, though interrupted by a knee-high child tugging on the leg of jeans and shouting, “Minnie! Minnie!”

“Uh-uh,” Jinki scolded merrily, “that’s not how we address an adult, is it?”

Yoogeun let out a melodramatic sigh of exasperation, stubby fingers gripping a page as he murmured, “Minho hyung! Look wha’ I drew you!”

Jinki rolled his eyes and Minho simply laughed, his hearty voice filling the chilled room. He reached down and lightly removed the scrawled-over page from Yoogeun’s excitable grasp, grinning endearingly. Minho shared many similarities with Yoogeun: the wide, glittering eyes, the large smile and rounded cheeks... On many occasions, Yoogeun had been mistaken for Minho’s son, not Jinki’s, and it had often almost worried Jinki, until he realised all the similarities he himself shared with his son. Nowadays, people mostly mistook Minho and Jinki as some new, modern couple, raising their son in a misconstrued homoual hell.

As Minho scanned the page, his eyes lit up.

“Is this me?” he questioned brightly, pointing a long finger at what Jinki could just about make out to be a scribbled figure in the black and orange basketball kit they'd so often seen Minho sport. Beside him, a smaller figure held the ball, also dressed in a matching kit. Though the figure had no face and was obscured by some abstract green scrawls, it was clearly intended to be Yoogeun. There also seemed to be a third character drawn, but from the way Minho held the page, Jinki couldn't tell who it was.

“Yea!” Yoogeun cheered, cheeks flushing in happiness as Minho recognised the characters. Jinki himself was terrible at deciphering Yoogeun’s drawings, which often led to the toddler feeling dejected, however Minho’s acceptance only spurred his happiness. Jinki was jealous, at times, of how well Minho interacted with his son, but, for the most part, he didn’t mind. Yoogeun was surrounded by his father on an irreversible constant, after all.

“Wow,” Minho breathed, ruffling Yoogeun’s hair, “you're really good! It looks just like me, doesn’t it?”

He turned the drawing to Jinki, who nodded enthusiastically, and muttered, “An artist, just like his father.”

“I think Yoogeun might have more talent though, what do you think?” Minho joked, steering the question towards the beaming toddler, who merely giggled in response

“Aish,” Jinki sighed, shaking his head, “he's definitely better!”

Yoogeun smiled and mimicked an air punch he'd adopted from one of his many cartoons, before waddling back to his position by the couch, leaving Minho with the drawing. Minho observed it again, amused, before setting it on the counter and finishing his tea.

“Did you think any more about next Friday?” he asked Jinki, as Jinki politely took his own cup and Minho’s, turning and setting them into the sink to wash later, before facing his curious dongsaeng and leaning against the kitchen units, arms folded across his chest as the light from the windows framed him.

“Yeah,” Jinki admitted, “but, like... I don’t know, it's just-“

“Just what?”

Jinki peered over at Yoogeun and Minho got the message immediately – deep down, he'd already known, given that it was always Jinki’s go-to excuse.

“I've already said my mum is fine with having him all night,” Minho clarified, patient, yet firm, “and Jinki, come on, you need this. And, either way, if it's not for you, please come for Kibum, he'd love it if you were there.”

“Kibum will be too drunk to notice,” Jinki joked, albeit in a downbeat manner. “And I can wish him happy birthday some other way.”

“Come on,” Minho almost whined, “I'm inviting some of Kibum’s arty friends from university, and I know you’ve always had a thing for arty girls, so-“

“Minho.”

Minho stopped in his tracks and lowered his head at Jinki’s tone.

“Hyung,” Minho finally addressed, composing himself and managing to look Jinki in the eye, “you know yourself that you're lonely.”

“What? Minho, don’t give me this-“ Jinki lowered his voice- “bull again. I'm not lonely.”

“She wouldn’t have wanted this for you.”

“She wouldn’t have wanted anything, I doubt it crossed her mind,” Jinki responded curtly, the joyous tone dissolving between the friends in an instant. In that second, Jinki appeared much older than twenty-five, and Minho much younger than twenty-three.

“Jinki, I'm sick of seeing you so lonely, so honed in,” Minho continued. His close nature to Jinki meant he was confident in such exchanges with him, despite knowing he was jarring the lines of their bond somewhat. “Every day I see you it's like a part of you is missing, and you need to get it back. You need to be with someone, I don't care if you think otherwise, but – but men need women, it's how the world goes around, after all. You need a girlfriend.”

“Men don’t need women,” Jinki dismissed, “and women don't need men, it's not as easy as that, Minho.”

“It is, hyung, it just- it is.”

“Gay men don’t need women,” Jinki uttered, as if to prove a point, but instantly regretted doing so as Minho frowned at him.

“I'm not gay, Minho, I'm just saying,” Jinki sighed, beginning to become infuriated by Minho’s pestering.

“Whatever,” Minho shook off, “but I hate seeing you lonely. And think of Yoogeun, he's still young, if you met someone now she could be like a mother to him and he'd love her like one, you know it.”

“Christ, Minho!” Jinki quietly exclaimed. “I haven’t even met her yet and you're marrying me off to her? Besides, Yoogeun already has a mother. Nobody can or will replace that to him, that’s not how it works. Just because he never knew her, doesn’t mean he won't feel for her.”

Jinki shocked himself at his own words and had to cast his gaze to the floor for a second, the mention of his son’s precarious future causing his muscles to tense. He wanted nothing more than for Yoogeun to grow up with his mother, to learn with her and experience the world with her, but that was impossible. Nothing could change that - Yoogeun just didn’t know it yet.

Minho fell silent, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth and finding a nice spot on the shining black refrigerator to study. He felt guilty for mentioning Jinki’s relationships, both past and future, but knew it had to be done – he couldn’t bare to see Jinki alone, they were so close that it hurt him. There was a certain comfort only romance could provide, and Minho’s brotherhood couldn't substantiate for that.

“Just think about it,” Minho begged, “please. Kibum would love to see you there.”

“Kibum would love to see my money there for him to get plastered,” Jinki joked, cracking a slight smile to show Minho that it was okay, that he forgave him for bringing up issues that he'd no real right to dwell in – at least, not from Jinki’s perspective.

“You, your money, it's all synonymous,” Minho nodded, shoulders relaxing once again. “Oh, hey, did I tell you who's coming?”

“No?”

“Well,” Minho murmured, “I called up a couple of Kibum’s friends, some you might know like... Uh... Let me think... Oh! Taemin’s coming!”

“Really?” Jinki grinned, the mention of his close, yet residentially distant, friend working to convince him to attend. He hadn’t seen Taemin in months.

“Yeah, he's coming, blonde hair and all, and also this musician guy, Kim Jonghyun, do you know him?”

Jinki frowned in thought and shook his head, before saying, “Doesn't ring a bell.”

“Oh, I think you'll get on with him,” Minho shrugged, as if Jinki was definitely going. “He's kinda odd, but really nice, the innocent type, y’know? Also, his hair is... Well, it's... Different.”

“Different?” Jinki asked, but before he was answered, a loud shriek came from the sofa.

“Minnie! Minnie! It's your favourite show!"

Jinki raised an eyebrow at Minho as the opening credits to a kid’s show that seemed to be all about the life of obscenely vibrant puppets started jangling. Minho slipped off of the stool and gasped loudly at Yoogeun, before replying, “No way! Are you serious? I love that show!”

Jinki couldn’t even detect a hyperbolic sarcasm in his voice. It seemed that Minho was being deadly serious.

“Gotta' dash,” Minho apologised, before rushing over to the sofa and grabbing Yoogeun on his way past, plunking the toddler down beside him so that they could both view the show in complete adoration.

Jinki blinked.

Yoogeun grinned.

Minho hummed the theme tune, completely absorbed.

Ignoring the insanity of what had just unfolded, Jinki took a second to exhale. What Minho had said had caught him off-guard; he didn’t like his hyung knowing his feelings so thoroughly, because, even though at times it was a blessing, it was also often a curse. He could read Jinki like a book, cover to cover, scanning between the lines as he did so.

Reaching down, Jinki lifted Yoogeun’s chaotic drawing and studied it carefully. His son drew a lot – and not just on pages, much to Jinki’s dismay – but took extra care in the drawings he created for Minho, so that they were more than just colourful loops and lines. The drawing meant to represent Minho was tall, brunette and had strong arms, and the figure of Yoogeun was tiny, sweet, with a mess of dark hair. Jinki smiled unknowingly, before casting his eyes on the third figure. His movements halted.

A small man – taller than Yoogeun, yet much shorter and narrower than Minho – was drawn amidst a blue scrawl. He wore a red cape and an orange hoodie, with a wide smile and large eyes. Atop his head lay a dash of pink hair, his cheeks a rosy red and shoes disproportionately large.

It was the superhero, the kind man from the store, the man that had plagued Jinki’s thoughts for the majority of Friday night, and even into the remnants of Saturday morning.

Jinki set down the drawing, clearly startled. Despite his thoughts on Friday and Saturday, he really hadn’t thought about the man since, but those irrational feelings were now returning to him, those foreign feelings he just didn’t understand. He glanced over at his son. The toddler leant forward, like Minho, lips slightly parted, like Minho, and Jinki knew that, in another world, they would have made the perfect brothers.

“So, what are you watching?” Jinki asked, leaving the drawing behind, forgetting the stranger, and attempting to join his friend and son in the normalcy of watching TV.