Their son was an adorable mystery, to Yifan anyways. Every day, without the usual assistance that most kids his age needed, he’d get up, get dressed and wait patiently at the breakfast table way before Yixing would even begin to think about getting out of bed to make him any.

He’d spend that free time reading. It concerned Yixing that the book he was currently chewing through was none other than the questionable-enough-for-kids The Bondmaid by Catherine Lim but their son always had an answer, and it was always quite a reasonable one too, so with a little persuasion and soft pats on the shoulders by Yifan, Yixing relented and allowed him to read the near R-rated fiction.

Another concern, if you could call it that, was that he was incessantly clean. His room was almost as spotless as a military dormitory, with his few action figures and many books organized by height and alphabetically, respectively. It was never a joy of Yifan’s to be stared at pointedly by his son as he set a beer can on the coffee table without a coaster, blinking passively until the adult yielded but gave no indication it was his son’s doing as he stretched and casually slid the beer mat beneath the can, but it made him think his son was marvelously unique.

This wasn’t to say that their son was entirely strange; he had his nine year old boy moments. He hated lizards, he enjoyed skateboarding quite a bit although he was admittedly not very good at it, he was quite popular among the kids at his school and he had a steadily growing collection of Ninja Turtles paraphernalia, but the rest of his habits were what really set him out as a distinctive little thing to Yixing and Yifan.

He had a teenaged nanny that Yixing often invited over when he was busy at the restaurant and Yifan was caught up in court documents. She was average-looking, thin like many other girls her age, with a book bag full of homework to finish as she watched their son. He had a slight crush on her, which slightly amused Yifan at how someone as smart and as brilliant as their son could be caught up in such a clichéd drama-like situation. It was possibly because most of things he indulged in were closer to her age group’s preferred activities, but that was just a guess; it could’ve just been because she was a female who he saw every day.

One day, Yixing and Yifan had a rare dual day off which they spent on the couch watching a movie their son had picked out at the movie rental place, recommending it as ‘engaging’ and ‘thought-provoking’. What kind of nine-year-old talks like that? Yixing whispered worriedly; he had always been afraid of his song being picked on for being so dissimilar from other children. It was a futile thing to fret over, he had a better-than-average amount of friends and Yifan reassured his small husband of this with a pat on the back.

Yixing let his head fall over Yifan’s shoulder as he pulled the blanket tighter around him, watching the female lead, played by Angelina Jolie, look pretty even as she cried. His head perked up, however, when he noticed his son wasn’t paying attention to the movie. In fact, he was seating on the single couch with a book in his hands, A UFO in Her Eyes by Xiaolu Guo.

“Honey?” Yixing said tenderly. His son looked up at him with inquisitive eyes. “You don’t like the movie?”

His son blinked twice before answering. “Baba, I picked this movie out for you two.” He said, scratching his head of an itch. “I don’t like movies that much, but I thought you guys would like seeing this one on your day off; are you angry at me?”

Yifan knew Yixing could never answer that question with a yes. He could barely keep his heart from melting at the sight of the kid getting cereal grains all over his cheeks when he ate breakfast.  Yixing whimpered at the adorable sight as Yifan knew he would, so he took over before his incoherent spouse started blubbering nonsense and confusing his son even further. “What’ve you got there, kid?” he asked casually, motioning towards the book in his hands.

“I borrowed it from BiBi,”-the nanny-“It’s about the crumbling of culture in society to make room for modernism from the eyes of villagers that don’t want their simple lives to be influenced by the innovations being made.”

Yixing squeaked, grabbing on to Yifan’s hand on the covers. The latter rolled his eyes. “That’s super, son. Continue.”

Yixing sputtered trying to form a sentence but Yifan nudged him with a look that made the smaller keep quiet, but with a disoriented look on his face. Their son innocently went back to reading a book that Yifan would assume was the nanny’s reading assignment for some Economics course but he dropped it.

Yifan jolted out of bed at the sound of a horrified screech; Yixing. He’d assumed he cut himself and that was enough to get the tall male hurdling towards the kitchen, never forgetting his husband’s hemophilia. But as he scarpered down the hallway he noticed Yixing, fine and dandy, even fresh-faced with a mess of wet hair from a shower, staring at the kitchen with a look that said nothing short of terror.

Yifan held his breath and looked into their kitchen, expecting a murder scene but instead seeing it spotless. Literally, the canary yellow tiles beamed and the expensive cutlery could’ve been used as mirrors. There was an elegant bouquet in the middle of the round table, with a note attached and an iced cake with green frosting shaped into letters that spelled, ‘Happy Anniversary’ in the loveliest character that most definitely did not belong to Yifan, for damn sure.

Yifan shakily took the card as Yixing’s breath got caught in his throat; he clutched the front of his lilac robe. The taller scanned the words written on the small piece of stationery.

Dear parents,

Today is your anniversary and I’m sorry that I have to be at school for it but I got up early to frost the cake I prepared yesterday and set up the flowers I ordered (I hope you don’t mind, Baba Fan, but I used some of the emergency money you gave me). I have a school trip today so I’ll be late coming back but I hope you guys like the surprise.

Baba Xing please don’t angry.

P.S. I cleaned the kitchen

Yifan showed Yixing the card feeling a fluttery sense of accomplishment in his chest; that feeling you get when you finally solve a difficult math question. The I did this right, goddammit sort of sensation that has your grin stretching far in delight.

“God in Heaven,” Yixing gasped after reading the note.

When their son came home later from school that day they each attacked him with kisses on his soft cheeks, earning a flustered smile from the young boy. “Did you eat the cake? I made sure to use almond milk because Baba Xing hates regu-“

Yifan shushed him with a long, slender finger to his plump little lips. “We wanted to wait for you to get home.”

“Baba Xing, are you sick?”

Yixing’s eyes had been red and puffy for hours from the incessant sobbing fit he had melting down from the kitchen fiasco. “Our son is too grown up,” he wretched, “He doesn’t need us anymore.” To which Yifan, as usual, patted his small spouse’s back silently, awaiting an end to his dramatic breakdown.

“I’m fine, sweetheart.” Yixing said, voice nasally and hoarse as he rubbed an eye.

“There’s some Panadol Night in the cabinet.” The young one suggested, but Yifan shook his head.

“Come on,” he said, ruffling his son’s hair. “Let’s eat some cake.”

“I’d much rather have some ginseng tea,” the younger replied, stoic, as he worked his schoolbag off his shoulders as if returning from a long day at the office. “It’s unprocessed, better than cake, but then, you already know that don’t you?”

Yifan shushed Yixing before the smaller could retaliate in a mess of screeches questioning reality. His son was an adorably strange kid, a mystery among mysteries to Yifan even after nine years of raising him. But he didn’t complain at all about his son’s unconventional behavior; you get what you are given and Yifan felt like what he was given made him about the luckiest father in the world.

“Baba Xing, please, stop hugging me so tightly; you’re creasing my school blazer.”