When they hear the knock on the door, Kibum assumes that Minho’s forgotten his keys once again. Thirty minutes seems pretty late to remember and come back for his keys and the lack of shouting makes Jinki doubtful. When Kibum opens the door, it’s not quite Minho standing before him but the resemblance is uncanny.

“Hello. Does Choi Minho live here?” the man asks. His suit and professional demeanor make Kibum nervous.

“Yes he does, but he’s not in at the moment.”

“How long before he’ll be back?”

Kibum pauses, unsure of how much to reveal. Jinki comes up behind him.

“What’s your business with Minho?” he asks. He’s put his important professional voice on and it only adds to Kibum’s nerves.

“I’m Choi Minhyuk, Minho’s brother. I want to speak with him, it's a personal matter. Something I wanted to talk about in person. I don’t mind waiting but I also don’t want to intrude.”

Kibum takes a breath to tell him off, but Jinki puts a hand on his arm to stop him.

“Minho should be home in a little over an hour. You can come in if you like, but please be aware that if at anytime we feel that you’ve come with the intent to hurt or upset him I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

“I would expect nothing less of the two of you.”

Jinki pulls Kibum out of the door so Minhyuk can enter. Once inside, Kibum shuts the door.

“Would you care for a drink, Minhyuk?” Jinki asks.

“Just a water will be fine, thank you. You're Jinki correct? And you Kibum?" he asks, turning to each.

They nod and Minhyuk looks relieved. When Jinki comes back with a water for Minhyuk and soda for Kibum, they all sit down, Jinki and Kibum on the couch and Minhyuk on the armchair closest to the door.

“So...how many years are between you and Minho?” Kibum asks, attempting to be polite.

“Nine. I’m the eldest of us. Minwoo is second and Minseok is third, they’re seven and five years older than Minho, respectively.”

“Why such a big gap between Minho and Minseok? Jinki and I have asked about you guys but he always finds a way to change the topic.”

Minhyuk sighs and puts down his water.  “He wasn’t exactly part of our parents’ plan.”

“So what do you do for a living, Minhyuk? I assume you’re part of the company.” Jinki asks before Kibum can go further.

“Yes, I am. I’m set to take over my father’s responsibilities as CEO in June at the end of the quarter.”

“As expected. My father was telling me about it the other day when we had lunch. He said that the board of trustees are looking forward to it; they feel your father has had the role too long and is losing his touch, that some new blood will help give the company a boost.”

“I’m glad that’s the feeling, I’ve been working hard with the board to ensure that we’re both reaching for the same goals. But I’m sure you’re very familiar with the pressures of being the heir.”

Jinki nods with a smile. Because of his carefree ways and almost simple personality, Kibum often forgets that he’s dating one of the most powerful sons in the country. His parents own Lee Family Corporation, which has been one of the top ten highest grossing companies since Jinki’s father came into the position of CEO.

“If you don’t mind me asking, Minhyuk, how did you know where to find us? Minho said that your parents didn’t even ask him where he was going when he said he was moving in with us?” Kibum asks.

“Who do you think sends the money every month? Surely not our parents. I may not be close to my brother by any means but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about him or don’t keep tabs on him.”

Kibum and Jinki look at each other.

“Oh. We had always assumed it was from them.” Kibum explains.

Minhyuk laughs bitterly. “When Minho said he was going to college, that he wasn’t interested in the pity position in the company that father was willing to offer him, they cut him off. Minseok happened to be home when that discussion took place and he called me to let me know. I didn’t think it seemed right that they make him forfeit his allowance just to follow what makes him happy. They don’t know that I send it. I hope you didn’t think it was improper of me or that it was pity money. I didn’t quite know who he was dating when you guys first got together and I didn’t want you to be in any sort of financial straits.” 

“We appreciate it, Minhyuk. We’ve been putting most of it in a savings account for him, in case anything happened, since Jinki’s got us covered as of now.” Kibum explains. Though he was initially angry at his coming, the more time passes, the more he tries to be nice.

“How is he doing? I hardly ever hear of him from the family and though I have kept track of him, I’d feel awful just having someone following him around, so it’s only the lightest of surveillance, just to make sure he’s still alive and not in any trouble.”

“He’s doing well. Or at least he was until your father’s birthday. He’s gotten his GPA up to a 3.0 now that he’s done with math classes, though he’s still a semester or two behind where he should be. He was a bit rough when he came to us but he’s settling nicely. He’s finally putting weight on after being on my cooking for almost two years. At this rate he’ll be of a healthy weight by the time he’s thirty. He likes to nap and be babied.” Jinki explains.

Minhyuk looks relieved at the news though still concerned at the birthday mention.

“Did he go to see father? I’ve been overseas for the last two months and haven’t heard much.”

“He went to see him and was told he was an embarrassment and shouldn’t have gone.” Kibum snaps, anger getting the best of him.

Minhyuk puts his head in his hands and sighs. “I told Eunji at the front desk to try and keep him away. He doesn’t deserve the way they treat him.”

“Minhyuk, can I ask you about something? About a habit of Minho's?” Kibum says, unsure of himself.

“Of course. Just know that I might not be able to answer. I unfortunately haven’t been able to be as there for my brother as much as I would’ve liked or he needed.”

“It’s just that sometimes he does this thing...” Kibum trails off, unsure of how to ask without revealing too much, on the offchance that Minhyuk doesn't know.

“The scrubbing?”

Kibum nods.

“Is it still bad? What sets him off?”

“It's gotten better over time. When he’s stressed, if he feels he’s disappointed someone, if he gets more than slightly dirty, even rain can set him off. Anytime we go anywhere, we take a extra change of clothes and babywipes just in case.”

“When did you first see it? Have you been able to get him to work on it at all? I tried to, years ago when he started, but I never got very far.”

Kibum tilts his head, trying to think of how long it’s been.

“Jinki was the first one to notice his skin, but I was the first one to come home to him actively doing it. He’s finally starting to open up to me about it. I had a lot of special bath scrubs and that kind of thing from before we dated. When we found out about it, we put them all in a lockbox. It worked fine for a few months.”

“What happened after that?”

“I came home after a long day, he’d broken the box open.” Jinki explains, taking over before Kibum makes himself cry. “We had to take him to the doctor it was so bad. Kibum ended up throwing all of his stuff away so the temptation wasn’t there.”

Minhyuk sighs and runs a hand through his hair.

“How long has he been doing that? What started it?” Kibum asks. 

“How much has he told you about before he met you two?”

“Not much. Just that he’s the youngest of four and that his parents don’t love him. He didn’t even tell us about the company, I found out about that through my dad.” Jinki answers.

“How long before he gets home? There’s some stuff I’d have to explain before that and I don’t think he’d like to come home to that conversation.”

Jinki looks at his watch. “About 45 minutes. He’ll text us when he’s on his way home so we’ll have about a ten minute warning.”

“That should be good,” Minhyuk says with a nod. He takes a drink of water before starting his explanation.

“When our parents decided to have children, they wanted three sons. One to take over the CEO position, one to take the COO position, and one to take the CFO position. Luckily for them, that’s what happened. I’m set to become CEO, Minwoo has been acting as Assistant Chief of Operations for two years now and will take over when Mr. Kim retires, and Minseok has been acting as Chief Financial Officer for a little over a year now. They didn’t want anymore after us. And then five years later, Minho came along. When mother got pregnant, even though they were already disappointed in the pregnancy, they were hoping they’d be lucky again and have a daughter that they could use as basically a bartering tool. Someone they could use to help with a merger. They were completely disinterested in Minho from the moment that the doctor said ‘it’s a boy.’”

He pauses for more water and in the pause, Kibum reaches for Jinki’s hand.

“Mother nursed him for maybe sixth months at the most and then they brought a nanny in for him. Nanny Yeongja. While it’s in the basic description that a nanny cares for and raises a child, she really treated him as her own. Mother and father wouldn’t hardly look at him unless they had to but she would praise his every move when allowed. She and Hodong, our butler of sorts, were really the only reliable affection he had growing up. They're probably the only reason he made it out of childhood alive. The three of us would try to play with him, but he was always so little and we’d get in trouble for wasting our time on him. I never really understood why our parents were so cruel to him; he was always the most wonderful child. Sure, he could make a fuss, but if I were ignored like that I’d make one too. It’s such a shame that such a sweet thing was born into this family, he deserved and deserves so much better. Anyways, back to the scrubbing thing, every year we have this big company picnic where our family and the families of the trustees and all the other higher ups would get together. I think he was about twelve at this particular picnic. Anyways, he was allowed to go play with some of the other children; he’d always been so small, he looked more like an eight year old. I wasn’t actually at the picnic, but apparently some of the older boys got a little too rough with him and knocked him into this terrible mudflat. He was completely soaked in the stuff. To make it worse, they just left him there. Minseok was at the picnic too and went looking for him and according to him it’s a miracle he didn’t die. By the time he was able to get him out and back to the our parents, the mud was practically dried solid. Mother and father were so furious that he’d ruined his clothes and ‘embarrassed’ the other families by being a victim that they told Yeongja and Hodong to take him home. He was to get all the mud out of his clothes and off of himself without help from her or Hodong. They said that if they got caught helping him, they’d be fired without any sort of severance. When they got home, Hodong called me. I came home as fast as I could. Yeongja had him locked in the bathroom and I could hear her weeping from the time I got in the front door. When she gave me the key to get in, he was in the bath trying to clean himself. His clothes were somewhat cleaned though obviously not anywhere near pristine. He was scrubbing so hard that there were full patches of skin missing to the point the bathwater was turning pink with blood. I’ll never forget the way he screamed. I got him out and did my best to bandage the skin. There was so much hardened mud in his hair that I had no choice but to cut it all off. I did as much as I could and had Yeongja take him to put to bed.”

Minhyuk pauses, obviously shaken from the story.

“How could they do that to him?” Kibum asks incredulously. Minhyuk shakes his head. After a few breaths, he continues.

“When father got home I tried to confront him about it, said that he was being unusually cruel when Minho’s only crime against him was being born. He told me that it was none of my business what went on with him and that if I intervened again, he would throw me out. I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to tell him to screw off, to leave and take Minho with me, but I knew I couldn’t. Father knows enough people that I’d be ruined and then where would we be. So I gritted my teeth and kept going, if just to be able to keep watching Minho. I had to leave again that afternoon, and when I came back three days later, it wasn’t much better. His skin wasn’t healing and they hadn’t even gone in to check on him once. When I asked them if they were planning on taking him to the doctor they said no, that they didn’t want a big fuss being made about it. Yeongja said that he was complaining about his ankle and that it was swollen pretty badly, so I got Hodong and we took him to this friend of mine who’s a doctor. Hodong went back to the picnic site while we were at the appointment. His ankle was broken, so he set it and put a cast and gave us a prescription for a special soap and some medicated cream to treat his skin with. When Hodong came back, he said that the mudflat had dried solid; he’d asked someone from the property about it and they said that there was at least one bag’s worth of concrete mix in that mud due to some bizarre accident. That’s why it was so hard to clean him up. When we got home, I told father about it. He said it was too bad ‘but at least it happened to the spare.’ He started overloading me with work so that I couldn’t come home often and make sure Minho was okay after that. When Minho was fourteen, Yeongja was diagnosed with cancer and passed away. I took him to live with me for a while after that, so that he’d have a place to mourn properly. It was only six months but he made such progress in that time. Then dad came and took him again and ruined it all. During that time that Minho was with me, it was made clear that Hodong was no longer welcome in our household, after he made a stand against my father. I’ve been looking for him for three years now and every time I almost have him, he disappears again.”

There’s a lull for a moment. All three have teary eyes, not sure of what to say. Minhyuk sips at his water.

“I don’t know what you two think of me,” he says, voice more fragile than before, “but I honestly do care about my brother. I know there’s so much more I could’ve done and should’ve done but I was just doing the best I thought I could. If he’s happy and healthy with the two of you, then that’s more than I ever hoped for him.”

There’s the sound of keys outside the door and when it finally opens, all three stand. Minho’s picking up his keys off the ground as it swings open, but he drops them and his backpack when he looks up.

“Min...minhyuk?” he asks, voice thick with disbelief.

Minhyuk nods but seems unable to move, as does Kibum. Jinki walks to the door, picks up Minho’s things before closing it.

“Minho, baby, your brother came. He wants to talk to you.” he whispers, taking Minho’s hand. Minho looks at Jinki, then at Kibum, and then at Jinki again, before looking at Minhyuk.

“You...you came to see me?” he asks, voice on the verge of breaking.

Minhyuk nods again; he’s doing his best not to cry, but tears are still breaking loose as he smiles fondly at Minho. He reaches his hands out and takes a step towards Minho. Jinki gives Minho a pat, urging him forward. Minhyuk takes Minho’s face in his hands, examining him. After a moment of hesitation, the two brothers embrace. Minhyuk starts apologizing and soon both are fully crying. Jinki retreats to the kitchen and Kibum soon follows. Minho and Minhyuk sit on the couch after a while, though they remain quiet. Jinki walks over to the couch, puts a hand on Minho’s shoulder.

“Kibum and I are going to go sit in our room so you guys can talk in peace, okay? If you need us, just yell, okay?”

Minho nods with a smile, kissing Jinki’s hand.

*

Once they’re in their room and the door shuts, Kibum immediately makes his way into Jinki’s arms and starts crying.

“That explains a lot about our baby, doesn’t it, sweetpea?” Jinki says softly.

Kibum nods but continues to cry.

“Shush now, sweetpea,” he coos, rubbing Kibum’s back in a bid to calm him down. “We don’t want baby to hear this, now do we?”

Kibum takes a few deep breaths and gets his crying under control. Jinki pulls his shirt up to wipe Kibum’s tear soaked cheeks.

“It’s just....my parents didn’t have the capability to take care of me but at the end of the day they still cared. How could you treat your own child like that?”

Jinki shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know, sweetpea. But there’s not much we can do about that now, except be more mindful of baby.”

Kibum nods and sighs. They sit on their bed, Jinki pulling up a movie on his laptop to watch to pass the time. He’s doing his best to eavesdrop on the conversation in the living room, but between the movie and Kibum’s continued sniffles, he can’t make much out.

*
After a little over two hours, Minho knocks and then pops his head into their room.

“Everything okay, baby?” Jinki asks.

Minho nods before coming in. “Minhyuk just left.” he explains, before crawling onto their bed and snuggling up between them.

“What did he want to talk about, baby?” Kibum asks. He’s mostly calmed down now but it’s still clear that he’s cried.

“Well, first we talked about how things have been since we last saw each other. I haven’t seen him since I graduated high school.” Minho pauses and takes a deep breath before continuing. “He’s getting married in May, before he takes over as CEO. He wants to introduce me to his fiance and provided we get along, they want me to go to the wedding.”

“That’s wonderful, baby!” Jinki says, giving him a kiss on the cheek.

“Did you two set up a time?” Kibum asks.

“He said that all three of us are welcome to come over on Saturday night. We’re supposed to bring wine and a dessert. He’s explained us to his fiance so she already knows and we don’t have to pretend that we're just friendly or anything. Apparently she’s excited to meet me.”

“Everyone should be excited to meet you, baby, and anyone would be lucky to.” Jinki says. Minho blushes and buries his head in Jinki’s neck. Kibum gets up and heads out into the kitchen to give Minho and Jinki a few minutes alone.

“What were you three talking about when I came home?” Minho asks after a minute.

“Minhyuk was telling us a little bit about you when you were younger.”

“Good things?”

Jinki kisses his cheek again. “Good things about you and bad things that happened to you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what, babylove?”

“That you had to listen to that.”

Jinki takes Minho’s hand in his own.

“Don’t be sorry, baby. We asked him. We wanted to know more about you when you were little so we can learn to love you better now.”

Minho looks down at their intertwined hands, refusing to make eye contact.

“Are you upset with us for asking that, love?” 

Minho shakes his head.

“Are you upset with Minhyuk for telling us?”

Minho shakes his head again, finally looking up at Jinki.

“I’m...I’m sorry I didn’t tell you myself.”

“It’s okay, baby. I wouldn’t want to talk about those things either, if I were you.”

Silence falls between them for a minute.

“Minhyuk said that he’s ok with it, the three of us being together. That he’s happy for us.”

“He told us that too.”

“Dad doesn’t want me to go to the wedding, but Minhyuk really wants me there. He said that it might be better if just one of you come as my plus one, so that dad can’t make as big of a scene.”

“That makes sense, baby. Are you wanting to go? No one will be mad if you don’t want to.”

“I...I want to go.” Minho pauses, cuddling up closer to Jinki again. “Would you go with me? I love sweetpea and I want him to go but I know that he’s going to be uncomfortable with how fancy it is and I don’t want him to be upset.”

“Of course, love, I’d be honored to be your plus one. Maybe I’ll get my papa to come over and he can give us some pointers to out class your dad. How does that sound?”

Minho softly laughs. “I’m scared, honey.”

“I’m sure you are, baby. Let’s just focus on getting through this week and Saturday’s dinner, okay? Baby steps.”