It was a great relief, Saehyun thought to herself at the top of the morning at the fact that she apologised last night. Saehyun didn’t like to live in an awkward atmosphere and she knew everybody else would feel the same, including Baekhyun. At least, she could endure her life in this house in tranquillity starting this wonderful day or, she wouldn’t think to ever get up if her ego was bigger than her senses.

She got up from bed on 7 in the morning sharp and proceeded to wash her face and brush her teeth like her any other daily routine. Hyemi and Yuhan were still in their dreamlands but Saehyun couldn’t let Hyemi ditch her school today so, she woke her up. When Hyemi was at least, half and a quarter awoke (from Saehyun’s point of view), the lady then moved Yuhan from the bed to his cradle in the room next to Hyemi’s.

“Hyemi, I’ll cook breakfast now, you go shower okay?” Saehyun said as she walked by Hyemi’s room to go downstairs. She checked through the half opened door and heard a soft ‘Yes, Mommy’ before she caught a sight of Hyemi walking slowly towards the bathroom with barely opened eyes like a zombie.

Drowsiness still lingered around Hyemi profoundly and even with heavy heart plus guiltiness (because she was the one who brought the children home late last night), Saehyun couldn’t sustain her laughter at the scene bestowed upon her. The little girl almost knocked herself on the bathroom door and she kept mumbling nonsenses ridiculously along the way.

Before Saehyun stepped upon the stairs to go down, she turned to look at Baekhyun’s door. She doubted either to check whether he was up or not, or to just to leave him alone and she ended up chose the latter. She wasn’t trying to act as his wife or anything initially so she shouldn’t bother.

Due to the tremendous condition of the filthy stove, it blocked her from cooking anything nice for breakfast (it wasn’t like there was any raw material to be cooked anyway), Saehyun initiated to toast some bread and made them simple jammed toasted bread, two cups of coffee for Baekhyun and her, also a glass of warm milk for Hyemi for their energy to start up their day. She also put a great effort to clean the kitchen island as well. Both Hyemi and her father dressed in clean attires appeared in the kitchen exactly after Saehyun done the task.

Baekhyun seemed startled with what Saehyun had done for the morning while Hyemi looked very happy and eager to eat the simple foods Saehyun had prepared. “Thank you,” Baekhyun stated as he took a seat near the kitchen island after he helped Hyemi to sit on the tall stool next to him. He observed that the kitchen island itself was in a rather immaculate state, with nothing but their breakfast and a very shining surface.

“Yeay! Mama Saehyun made me breakfast! Thank you, Mama.” Hyemi smiled adoringly with her puffy pinkish cheeks. Saehyun ruffled her hair tenderly to show her gratefulness at the little girl’s appreciation and urged her to eat slowly.

Baekhyun took a sip of his coffee as he looked at Saehyun and she was completely aware of it. When he swallowed down the hot liquid down his throat, he still didn’t break the eye contact. “Saehyun-ah, I didn’t get Yuhan ready for day care…you don’t have any-anything to do today, right?”

“Oh yes! I was about to tell you that you don’t have to send Yuhan to day care today and tomorrow. My job interview is the day after tomorrow. I’ll take care of him. You don’t have to ask for it,” Saehyun explained genuinely and the man only beamed at her in return. 

After the breakfast, Saehyun walked both of them to the door and before saying her farewell, she managed to do a quick groom on Hyemi’s uniform. She pinched her cheek slightly in adoration and complimented her for being matured enough to get ready for school on her own. However, before Baekhyun and Hyemi ought to walk out of their house, Saehyun stopped them once again.

Baekhyun’s heart palpitated as Saehyun approached him. The wonderful lady then gradually raised her hands into his chest level and began to fix his necktie. The scene was too familiar for him and Baekhyun didn’t know how to react properly. To say thank you or just a nod of thanks? He usually kissed Saerom on her forehead every time she fixed his necktie but Saehyun? His mind was blank especially when her face was in close proximity to his.

“Are you like, five? You tied your necktie like you don’t have any hands,” Saehyun said once she finished. Hyemi giggled at his side. “And, can I ask you for some money? I mean, I think I want to buy more groceries for this house and some cleaning tools. This house is worse than a garbage dump,” she added. The way she talked to him was rude if it was considered generally but he found it amusing. He chuckled and dug for his wallet in his back pocket and handed Saehyun a few notes.

“Is it enough, Saerom?” Saehyun stared at him and winked in replace of a ‘yes’. Baekhyun didn’t realise he slipped in his talk by calling her, Saerom but the lady shrugged it off. While Baekhyun, the only thought on his head was that how he preferred Saehyun to say ‘yes’ instead of a wink because he felt like a dagger just stabbed right into his weak heart.

 ∆

The weather was being sensible towards Saehyun as she observed through the window. Clouds were all sullied with grey and a bit of sunshine rays tried to peep through them made people doubting whether it would going to rain or vice versa. But, Saehyun was convinced by her majestic conscience that this area would stay dry and sunny (not really).

She slouched on the dark blue couch for the second time on the said day, and delicately placed Yuhan on her lap. The baby boy was in his good mood too just like the weather as he didn’t seem to shed any tears today and the only sound came out from his mouth was giggles and more giggles. Saehyun let her beloved nephew to hold his bottle milk on his own while she was writing the list of groceries and stuffs she should get for the house on a piece of paper against her knee. Bread, rice, meat, chicken and the list went on until the items counted were twenty-one and Yuhan on her lap, had finished his milk.

“Okay baby let’s go shopping shall we?” Saehyun remarked as she held Yuhan to her chest level and snuggled his nose tenderly. Yuhan replied back with adorable giggles and then they were both up to get ready to go out.

 Dressed in casual clothing— t-shirts, cardigan, a pair of jeans and sandals, Saehyun went out of the house with Yuhan in his stroller (it would be easier to bring him and the goods when they came back), she struggled to recall back the directions Hyemi showed her yesterday. As long as she remembered there was a mart nearby the food stalls so she insisted to go there to look for goods instead of taking the subway train to go to the city. Besides, she needed to save time to clean the house which only God knew how long it would take.

∆

The meeting had just ended, shrinking the space in the hallway with people rushing out to get to their respective working cubicles. Since Baekhyun and Chanyeol were the earliest to exit the meeting room, they reached their cubicles first and making themselves safe from the jam.

Baekhyun leaned against his chair and let out a very loud relieving sighs.  “You look happy today Baek. You even did well in the meeting earlier,” Chanyeol said as he peeked through the small divider from his cubicle next to Baekhyun’s with furrow eyebrows. The latter grinned cheekily as he turned to look at his colleague. “Really?”

“Gee, shockingly yeah. Hey, do you have anything you keep from me?” his friend scooted closer towards him with his office chair. Baekhyun shook his head but his smile never left his face. Chanyeol sensed something off with his friend’s sudden change of behaviour and he insisted to know the truth. “Tell me~ Tell me~,” he enlarged his eyes to the maximum size he could and whined loudly at Baekhyun.

The noise interrupted everyone in the office from their respective works and made them all turned to the source. Baekhyun shooed Chanyeol’s face away from him and told him to ‘shut the hell up ’ in repetition. However, Chanyeol didn’t seem to be cooperated. “No there’s nothing. I swear. Just shut up. You’re embarrassing us, ,” and with that, Chanyeol eventually in his silent mode.

“Okay, okay. Stop calling me , .” The wheels of Chanyeol’s office chair screeched as he moved back to his own working cubicle. “Tch who are you calling me , huh? I was married and have two kids. You didn’t even have a girlfriend,” Baekhyun snickered as he looked at Chanyeol’s retreating figure.

“Rude,” was what Chanyeol said in return. “Oh yeah, talking about girlfriends…I found someone that probably fits your liking.” Baekhyun felt intrigued with the mention of that. He knew that Chanyeol wanted to find him a girl, but he had no idea that his pal would be that serious.

“Serious?”

“Of course I’m serious. I’ve set a date for you guys to meet up already.” Chanyeol stapled pieces of papers as he talked.

“What?”

“You heard me right.”

“No man, you can’t just arrange things for me without asking me first.”

“I thought I’ve told you about this.”

“Yeah but you told me you’ll just look for girls. Not setting up a sudden date like this.”

“Oh you don’t have to worry about your kids. You’re not going to have a night date. I’ve set up your date to be today, to be exact. Uh, during lunchtime so it is not burdensome for both sides.”

“You what?”

“Oh, she will be waiting at the sushi restaurant in your neighbourhood, lunch hour.”

“I’m not going.”

“You will be going because I’ve promised her.”

“Don’t care.”

“You should care because if you’re not, your daughter will see one of your embarrassing pictures when we’re in college.”

“This is blackmail.”

“I prefer ‘friendly urge from a nice and handsome friend for the sake of your family’s future’ rather than blackmail to be honest.”

Baekhyun massaged his temple and face-palming himself for the whole two minutes as Chanyeol guffawed loudly in his seat. “Give it a try,” his fiend colleague said with his deep voice and Baekhyun refrained hardly from throwing Chanyeol out of their fourth floor office building.

∆

“Thank you, please come again.”

Saehyun left the mart with bags of groceries and small cleaning tools—such as the brushes, sponges and tiny buckets, that weren’t available in Baekhyun’s house. She stuffed half of the bags at the bottom of Yuhan’s stroller and held the other half in her hands. Yuhan had been a very good boy as he didn’t cry and just lied silently in his stroller which made Saehyun felt grateful and hoping that the day would last perfectly fine unlike the previous day.

As they reached the junction to Baekhyun’s house, Saehyun heard someone faintly shouting ‘miss’ from her behind and when she turned to scan the area, she gasped as she saw Kris, who jogged rapidly towards her direction with waving hands from afar.

Oh my God, red alert! Red alert! Retreat! Pretend like you don’t see him! Retreat! The lady cussed under her breath and took the opposite way from Baekhyun’s house to just distance herself from Kris. What did he do here anyway? She pushed the stroller faster than ordinary and tried to keep her gaze away from what was there behind her. Saehyun entered any junctions she found and walked through the roads she never encountered before. The lady only prayed to God that she wouldn’t lose tracks back to the house.

After approximately ten minutes wandering around the unfamiliar area, she got the guts to check her back and breathed in relief to see no tall scowl-face Kris coming towards her. With her head still observing her behind, she swiftly turned into another junction in between a café and a boutique but a hand halted the stroller from the front out of the blue. Rows of cuss words escaped her lips in the lowest volume she could ever sustain and begrudgingly looking what awaited her in front.

“Are you running away from me?”

∆

 The steps Baekhyun took inside the sushi restaurant were heavy and filled with regrets. Chanyeol absentmindedly pushed him into the restaurant and left within nanoseconds after he roughly pointed at a brunette woman who was wearing a red dress sitting alone at the table for four. Fixing his necktie and tried to breathe right, Baekhyun sighed and walked through the entrance to confront the lady Chanyeol found for him.

“Excuse me. Are you, perhaps, Miss Kwon?” He greeted the woman politely and smiled with the most genuine puppy smile he always wore. The lady stood up— also smiling, and proceeded to shake her hands with Baekhyun’s. “Yes, I am. And you’re Mr. Byun right?”

The date went out pretty well for Baekhyun’s liking and he learned a lot about the Kwon lady who insisted to be called Yuri. She was older than Baekhyun by two or three years, single (of course) and currently working as a dance instructor at a talent agency. She was lovely and beautiful, Baekhyun told himself but she wasn’t just fit to be Saerom’s replacement. They ended the lunch and didn’t exchange phone numbers because Baekhyun didn’t think he wanted to get their relationship any serious so he waved her off politely with a ‘thank you for your time’. He thought of apologising for Chanyeol’s behalf (he didn’t know why he should do that) but he cancelled the thought at the last minute.

Yuri probably understood that Baekhyun would want their relationship to be not more than friends, and she excused herself first after they finished eating and thanked him for the lunch, saying that she had class afterwards. Baekhyun stayed for a while in the restaurant watching the retreating figure of Yuri. He still felt hungry and ought to order another set of sushi before getting back to the office but a sight stopped him from doing that. He hid himself slightly behind the table as he saw Saehyun entered the restaurant with Yuhan and, a man.  

Saehyun carried an armful of bags and there were still bags at the bottom of Yuhan’s stroller and the man shockingly carried half of the bags too as if they were shopping together. They picked a seat for four and chatting rather happily from Baekhyun’s position.

Baekhyun’s hunger abruptly wore off and he dashed out of the restaurant on instant without looking twice at Saehyun. Saehyun on the other side, didn’t acknowledge Baekhyun’s presence as she was busy talking with Kris about his sudden appearance in Korea.