"Hey, can I come in?” Wooseok asked as he peeked through the door of his son’s room, sought his permission to enter. The younger lad was on his bed, legs crossed, laptop on his lap and only turned to look up from the screen when he noticed the door slightly ajar. Guan Lin nodded his head. “Everything going alright, bud?” “I’m fine, dad,” Guan Lin said when he closed his laptop and placed it by his bedside table, scooted towards the headboard to give the older man some space.
“You don’t seem like it.” Wooseok sat by the edge of the younger’s bed, just across him. “Yuto’s noticed you talking less at dinner.”
Guan Lin had his brows furrowed, nose scrunched questioningly at his father. “Is it strange? I rarely talk-”
“That’s the point,” the older pointed out. “But it’s different now. So I bet that something’s going on that you’re not telling us.”
Guan Lin did not answer immediately; he was staring at Wooseok intently instead, observing him or whatnot. Wooseok waited for a few seconds more before he finally got a reaction. The younger was hard to read in most days. He was very placid and stoic. But when the older saw the younger sigh deeply and cast his head downward, embarrassed or ashamed, it made Wooseok frown. Even though he would try his hardest to brush it off, Guan Lin was very introverted; he preferred keeping everything to himself and rarely talked to anyone at all. He was so unlike his two fathers. And it made Wooseok worry on the younger’s behalf. Wooseok and Yuto were adventurous souls in their youth. They travelled around the world after they graduated from college. A few years later, they mutually decided that it was about time they got a kid. Wooseok was excited about the idea, he always wanted one after all. They were at Taiwan when they first met Guan Lin at a run down and local orphanage. When Yuto first saw the younger boy by himself at the yard, watching the other kids play, he knew right then and there that Guan Lin was the one. “He reminds me of you,” Yuto reasoned when Wooseok asked him why he chose the quiet boy out of all the other kids they could choose from. “He could easily pass as your kid.”
Wooseok wasn’t so certain on what aspect he and Guan Lin were alike in his husband’s eyes but he took Yuto’s word for it and signed the adoption papers without further protest.
“So, would you tell me, buddy? Or do you want me to call Yuto so you and your father could talk over it instead?” Wooseok offered, trying to be as gentle as possible.
In contradiction to Yuto’s previous words, Guan Lin was more comfortable with Yuto than with Wooseok. The kid both loved his parents just the same— Wooseok knew that— but Yuto was less intimidating and Guan Lin was more open to him, telling him practically everything he wanted to know if the older just asked. But Wooseok was trying, too. He really was.
“I-It’s just…” Guan Lin trailed off, slightly hesitant about voicing out his hidden thoughts. Wooseok nodded his head, urging the younger to continue. He didn’t rush him; he waited until the other was ready to spill. Yuto was so much better at handling stuff like these than him. “I’ve been feeling strange lately.”
“Are you alright? Do you want me to accompany you to the hospital to get you checked up or something?”
“It’s not like that, dad.”
“Then what?”
“It’s ….” Guan Lin bit his lower lip anxiously after running his tongue around the seam. Wooseok raised a questioning brow at the gesture. It was the first time Guan Lin acted like that for the older to see. It wasn’t strange, though, just foreign. “You know Seonho, right?”
The familiar name perked Wooseok’s interest. “Jinho-hyung and Hongseok-hyung’s kid? Well yeah, why?”
Jinho and Hongseok were their next door neighbours. Although both were slightly older than they were, Wooseok, Yuto and the mentioned couple used to be in the same group of friends with 6 other guys in their glorious days back in college. They haven’t seen each other in years; after graduation, all of them went their separate ways, to pursue their respective careers. So when Wooseok and his family moved back to Korea after Wooseok’s job transfer, they were surprised to find the two living just beside their newly bought house at a residential area within Seoul; the move served as a way for them to reconnect again with their old friends. And just like them, Jinho and Hongseok had gotten a child of their own. Seonho, they introduced. He was a jolly kid, a year younger than Guan Lin and went to the same school as their son.
“Well….” Guanlin said under his breath and seemed r