Saturday is cleaning day. Yunho doesn’t know why; the apartment never seems that dirty to him, but it’s always been that way. Sunday is for church and fancy clothes and sitting still, and Saturday is for laundry and dusting and vacuuming.

Jihye hates the vacuum cleaner. It makes her cry every time. Yunho’s mother used to try to vacuum only when Jihye was sleeping, but it would always wake her up. Which was worse, umma said, because then after the crying about the vacuum cleaner, there was crying for the rest of the day too about being too tired. So now there’s only vacuuming when Jihye is already awake.

“It’s okay,” Yunho says, sitting on the kitchen floor with the baby between his legs. “Jihye, it’s okay. Look.” He shakes the lamb at her, trying to distract her from the noise. The toy is white with a soft body, a silky ribbon tail, and a head that’s good for chewing on. There’s something inside that makes a soft rattle noise too. It’s one of Jihye’s favorites, but not even Fuzzle (Yunho got to name it, since Jihye can’t yet) can distract her from the vacuum.

Jihye makes an angry noise and shoves the lamb away. Yunho sighs. Actually, he doesn’t like the vacuum cleaner much either. It’s loud and it’s big and even though his umma promises it can’t up people, Yunho has seen it up socks and whole boxes of spilled cereal before. One time their old vacuum cleaner even up a whole curtain. They had to get a new vacuum cleaner after that, but they also had to get a new curtain and so sometimes no matter what his mother promises, Yunho still thinks the things just want to eat the whole world, probably starting with him.

But he’s a big brother now.

Outside the kitchen door, the vacuum cleaner noise drones on, high and then low, high and then low. Stuttering a bit when it bumps into things. Jihye fusses and Yunho hugs her closer to his chest.

“It’s okay,” he says again. “I won’t let it eat you.” If the vacuum ever gets away from his mother and tries to up Jihye, it’ll have to come through him first, Yunho thinks, no matter how big and noisy it is. He tries the lamb again, but Jihye just keeps fussing.

“Ah, why don’t I take a turn?”

Yunho looks up. His father is in the kitchen too, sitting at the table with his files. Sometimes when umma is vacuuming, appa will take Yunho and Jihye for a walk, but today he has to work.

“I can do it,” Yunho says.

Appa smiles. “I’m sure you can,” he says, putting down his pen and leaning down to pick up Jihye. “But if it’s my turn for a little, then I get to take a break from work.” He winks at Yunho, then puts Jihye in his lap and makes a silly face at her.

Yunho giggles. Appa’s faces are always so funny. Jihye pauses for a moment, blinking up at him. Then the vacuum runs over something noisy and she starts fussing again. Yunho stands up and brings Fuzzle over to try and help.

“What are you working on?” he asks his father. “Do you have a case?” Yunho actually isn’t too sure what a case is, but he knows it’s what his father calls it when he has work.

Appa bounces Jihye a little. “Yes, I do.”

“What is it?” Yunho wants to know. “Is it a bad guy? Are you sending him to jail?”

“I don’t know yet.”

As the noise of the vacuum fades as umma works her way further away, Jihye quiets a little and reaches out for the lamb. Yunho holds the toy out for her.

“This is a new case,” his father tells him. “I still have a lot of things to find out before I decide what to do.”

Yunho frowns, thinking as he watches Jihye play with Fuzzle’s silky tail.

“But,” he says, “if it’s a bad guy, then don’t you just send them to jail?” That’s what you do with bad guys, right? They do bad things, and so they’re bad guys, and so you put them away as a punishment.

Appa smiles at him. “Not everyone who does something wrong is a bad guy, Yunho,” he says. “The law is for everyone.”

“How come?” That doesn’t make any sense. Isn’t it always bad guys who do the bad things and go to jail? Why would anyone who wasn’t a bad guy do something bad?

His father puts his head to one side for a moment, thinking, then says, “Are there rules for you and your classmates at school?”

Yunho nods. There are a lot of rules at school.

“And do you ever get in trouble for breaking them?” appa asks.

Yunho opens his mouth to say no, but then stops. “Sometimes,” he admits. “But I don’t mean to.” He has trouble sitting still, and sometimes he wants to talk to somebody and forgets that the teacher is talking and he should be quiet. But that’s different, isn’t it?

“Okay,” his father says, “So sometimes you do something wrong, but it’s not on purpose. It’s an accident, right?”

Yunho nods.

“So are you a bad guy?”

“No.” Yunho shakes his head hard. Bad guys do bad things because they like being bad. Yunho doesn’t like being bad, sometimes it’s just hard to sit still.

“But you still get in trouble?”

“Sometimes. But not a lot of trouble.”

Appa nods. “Well, the law is the same. Sometimes you get bad guys who need to be put in jail for a long time, but sometimes good people just make mistakes. They’re not bad guys, but they still broke the rules.” He sighs. “And I have to decide what to do about it.”

Jihye shakes the lamb and then starts chewing on one of its feet. Yunho frowns and tries to understand.

“So…sometimes jail is like timeout?”

His father nods and Yunho giggles. Sometimes grownups are naughty too! He tries to picture his appa doing something naughty, like sitting in his chair backwards or coloring on the table, and then giggles some more.

“Oh?” his father says, smiling and raising his eyebrows. “Is that funny?”

Yunho nods. “Naughty,” he says. “Naughty grownups.” He giggles even more. Naughty grownups getting scolded. Naughty grownups being in timeout and having to stand in the corner and think about what they did.

His father’s lips twitch. “Ah,” he says, “even grownup are naughty sometimes. Like me. I should be working. But playing with you and Jihye is more fun.”

He bounces Jihye some more and she squeals happily, the vacuum cleaner mercifully forgotten. Yunho smiles and leans against his father’s bouncing leg, enjoying the sensation and giggling with his sister. He likes playing with his family too.

The twins’ apartment is different from Yunho’s. It’s a little bit bigger for one thing (well, Yunho thinks it is. His umma says it’s just shaped differently, like pouring water into differently shaped glasses, but Yunho’s still not too sure about that one either, and the twin’s apartment definitely feels bigger). Junho and Junsu sleep in the same room and there’s a room at the end of the hall that’s special. Just for playing in. It’s also on the ground floor, so instead of having only one door in and out like Yunho’s apartment, it has two. One inside, like most apartments, but also another one. A glass door that slides open to let you go out into the little patch of lawn behind the building.

Junsu always says that Yunho is lucky to live somewhere so close to a public park to play at, but Yunho thinks the twins are maybe luckier to have their own lawn. They can play outside whenever they want. Yunho can only go to the park if one of his parents is free to take him. He’s not allowed to go by himself.

He does like riding the elevator, though. And the twins don’t have one of those.

Umma makes him hold her hand while they walk to the twins’ apartment. Their street is a little busier than Yunho’s and when there’s too many cars he always has to hold her hand. Yunho doesn’t like it; there’s a fence along part of the street that he likes to run his fingers over as he walks (he likes to pretend that they’re mountain climbers, or sometimes monkeys when there’s bushes for them to swing from), but it’s better than getting shouted at if he accidentally wanders into the road. He pulls away as soon as he can see the door to the apartment building though and rushes forward. The door is heavy, but his umma is carrying Jihye. He pulls it open.

“Ah, what a gentleman,” umma says, smiling at him. “Thank you.”

Yunho grins happily and leans back, bracing himself to keep the door open while she enters. He’s a gentleman, just like his appa.

By the time Yunho gets back around the door and goes inside himself, his mother has already pushed the button to let the Kims know to buzz them in. Even though Yunho’s own apartment works like that too, he still isn’t really sure how it works; how pushing a button in his apartment can magically open the door at the front of the building. But he knows it does somehow and he likes pushing the button when they have guests. Of course, it’s less fun being on this end of it; the sound the door makes when it magics open is so loud.

Once in the hall, Yunho races ahead of his mother to knock on the door to the twins apartment. He likes to make a game of it; to see if he can get there to knock before Junsu opens it. Junsu is fast though. Yunho hears his feet pounding from inside as he raises his fist to the door and no sooner has he managed to knock once, the door flies open.

“You’re here! You’re here!”

Yunho sees a flash of Junsu’s beaming face — all wide, excited eyes and a huge smile — and then a hand closes on his wrist and drags him inside.

“We’re making a rocket ship. Come on.”

“Rocket ship?” Yunho echoes, forgetting all about his mother and sister or saying hi to Mrs. Kim. He follows Junsu down the hall and up the little staircase to the playroom as fast as he can.

“Yeah,” Junsu says, feet pounding on the steps. “Appa brought us home this box. It’s huge! So we’re coloring it to make it a rocket ship and then we can all get in and fly to Jupiter and walk on the rings and—”

“That’s Saturn,” Yunho says. He likes planets and outer space so he remembers. But Junsu doesn’t care when he’s excited.

“Yeah, that one too, right, hyung?” he says as they bound into the playroom. “We can fly to Saturn and Jupiter too, right?”

Junho looks up from his place on the floor. There’s a marker in his hand and more on the rug beside him and Yunho feels his eyes go wide-wide when he sees the box Junsu was talking about. It is huge. It’s bigger than Yunho. It’s maybe bigger even than his umma.

“Whoa,” he says, dropping Junsu’s hand and staring.

“I’m doing the windows,” Junho says, then goes back to his markers. Yunho nods. Junho isn’t bossy, exactly, but if he’s doing something, sometimes he won’t want anyone else to help because then it turns out not like he wanted it, and Yunho doesn’t like to make him mad.

“What should I do?” he asks.

“Come make buttons with me!” Junsu drops to the floor and crawls inside the box, then turns around the wave at Yunho to follow him. “It’s a space ship, so it needs lots of buttons to make it go.”

Yunho peers inside; several window holes have already been cut out of the front and the sides of the box, so it’s not too dark. Junsu has a handful of crayons with him and is making buttons at the front, all different sizes and colors.

“See?” he says. “This is to make the ship turn on.” He points to a blue and orange button. “And this is for more air.” A purple button. “And that’s for flashing lights and that’s for the alarm if something catches fire!” Those two are yellow and red. Yunho grins and goes to get a crayon-handful of his own before crawling in after Junsu.

“We should have some buttons for food,” he says, selecting an orange crayon. “Space food all comes in tubes so there can be a button to make the tubes come out so we can eat while we fly.”

“Ice cream!” says Junsu. “Ice cream can come in tubes.”

“Yeah!” That’s a good idea, Yunho thinks. Ice cream is always good. “And maybe beans or sweet potato.” Those could probably get mashed up and put in a tube. He finishes his button then starts to color little circles on the ceiling of the box for the food tubes to come out of.

“And then we flew even farther than Pluto and we found a whole other place where there’s a purple sun and the rocks are blue and there’s grass the size of trees—”

Lunch is soup and rice with some pears for sharing and maybe also popsicles after if they can finish all of their soup. And Yunho is excited about popsicles and hungry after playing, but he also wants to tell Mrs. Kim all about the rocket ship and their adventures and the planet they found.

“Oh,” says Mrs. Kim, smiling at him as she eats her own lunch. “You found a whole different world?” She looks impressed and Yunho sits a little taller.

“Uh-huh,” he says. “Everything is different. You can breathe so people could maybe live there, but there’s two moons and there might be huge things living there so we have to explore to see if it’s safe.”

“That sounds dangerous. You must be very brave explorers.”

“Umma, umma! We crashed!” Junsu chimes in happily. “We were gonna fly closer to see if it looked safe and the second moon came out of nowhere and if it hit us we were gonna die so we crashed!”

“You crashed?” Mrs. Kim echoes, widening her eyes.

“It’s not my fault,” Junho says. “Yunho was supposed to be navigator.”

“I didn’t do it!” Yunho says. He doesn’t mind that they crashed; the new world will be fun to explore, but Junho was the one who was flying the ship.

“Did too!”

“Did not!”

“Did too!”

“Did not!” Yunho stands up in his chair and frowns. “You wanted to be captain so you were steering.”

“You hit all the wrong buttons!”

“You made us go schwww really fast,” Yunho says, making a quick movement with his hand. “I fell. It’s not my fault.”

“Yunho, please sit down,” Mrs. Kim says. “Junho, it doesn’t matter whose fault it was or wasn’t.”

“But umma—”

“Junho, enough. Do you want a popsicle after lunch?”

Junho goes very still and Yunho thinks he knows why. Mrs. Kim’s voice is like his mother’s is whenever he’s almost in real trouble.

“Yes.”

“Then stop yelling and eat your lunch.”

Junho glowers across the table at Yunho but he does stop. Yunho almost feels bad but it really wasn’t his fault and Junho wasn’t being any fun anyway. He wouldn’t let anyone else take a turn flying the ship. He sits back down and eats some more rice with soup, swinging his legs under the table. Junho will probably forget to mad by later.

“Yunho,” Mrs. Kim says after a few minutes, “the twins have been telling me you have a new friend in school.”

Yunho looks up and grins. “Uh-huh,” he says. “Jaejoong. He’s new.”

“He’s boring,” Junho says.

“Is not!” Yunho frowns across the table. That’s not fair. Junho doesn’t know anything about Jaejoong.

“Why do you think he’s boring?” Mrs. Kim asks quickly.

“Cause he is,” Junho says stubbornly.

“No he isn’t,” Yunho insists. He always has fun with Jaejoong. That’s not boring.

“He doesn’t play with anyone,” Junsu says. “He just sits and is quiet.”

“He hates everyone,” Junho says.

“No he doesn’t!” Yunho says loudly. “He just doesn’t know anyone. And he’s shy.”

It’s still not quite the right word for it, Yunho knows. If Jaejoong were just shy, probably Yunho could introduce him to some of the other kids and then they could all play together. But Jaejoong still watches everyone else in their class with those wide, wide eyes and he still won’t come outside or play outside the classroom and so Yunho knows that won’t work.

“Ah, it’s hard to be new,” says Mrs. Kim. “Not knowing anyone or where anything is, that can be very scary.”

Yunho frowns. “Scary?” He knows Jaejoong is quiet, and that he misses home, but scared?

Mrs. Kim nods. “Oh yes,” she says. “We were new here, once, too—”

“We were?” Junsu breaks in. “When? When were we new?”

Mrs. Kim smiles fondly and reaches out to pat Junsu’s cheek. “Before you were even born,” she says. “Your appa and I moved here shortly after we got married. It was very frightening to move away from everything I knew, and being with people who are all strangers can be scary too. But everyone here turned out to be very nice, and then we had you two,” she ruffles both twins’ hair, “and now I’m very happy.”

Yunho eats some more soup as he thinks about that. All strangers does sound kind of scary, but he’s still not sure. And what Jaejoong is like isn’t what Yunho thinks of when he thinks of being scared. He doesn’t scream or cry or run away. He just stays quiet.

“But everyone at school is nice, too,” Yunho says and Mrs. Kim smiles again.

“I’m sure they are, but your friend may not know that yet,” she says. “It may take a while for him to be sure.”

“Can we have popsicles now?” Junho asks, pushing his empty soup bowl at his mother to show her.

Mrs. Kim sighs. “Is everyone else done?”

Yunho and Junsu nod eagerly, tipping their own bowls so she can see.

“Alright,” she says, standing and going to the freezer. “And then you should go back upstairs and finish playing. Yunho’s umma will be here in a little while to pick him up again.”

“Yeah,” says Junsu, bouncing up and down as he waits for his popsicle. “We should play construction before you go. Can we? Hyung, can we?”

Construction is Junsu’s favorite game; Yunho and Junho are a construction company building new buildings and Junsu gets to be the thing that knocks down old ones to make room. Yunho likes the game too. He likes building lots of things and Junsu always laughs so much when he smashes stuff. He looks across the table at Junho.

“Yeah, can we?” he asks. Junho likes construction, too, but he might still be mad about the space ship.

But Junho just takes his popsicle from his mother and nods.

“Yeah, lets!”

“Is it scary?” Yunho asks. Playing construction and then trying the bike the twins told him about — the one that’s all red and made of plastic and can go inside — distracted him, but now he’s walking home and he wants to know.

“Is what scary?” his mother asks, shifting Jihye on her shoulder so she can look down at him.

“Being new. Is it scary?”

Yunho doesn’t remember it being scary when he first started school. He remembers missing home and his umma, but he doesn’t think it was scary.

Umma thinks for a moment, then says, “I suppose it can be.”

Yunho nods, watching his feet. The sidewalk here is cracked all over; lots and lots of cracks like an earthquake or maybe one of those places in America that Yunho has seen pictures of, the ones with crack so big and so deep that probably a whole building could fall in. Yunho’s never been to a place like that, or in an earthquake, but he likes to use the sidewalk as practice for incase he ever is.

“Mrs. Kim says being new is scary,” he says, hopping his way around cracks, “but I wasn’t scared. When I went to school I wasn’t scared.”

“You were a little scared,” his mother says, smiling fondly at him. “You may not remember, but I do.”

Yunho frowns. “But I wanted to go,” he says. “I wanted to go to school and learn.” He definitely remembers that. Because if he went to school and learned, then he could read stories with his appa. And he’d have friends to play with. And both his umma and his appa had told him how much fun they had had when they had gone to school. So Yunho had wanted to go.

“You did,” umma says. “But you were also a little scared I think. New things can be scary.”

“How come?”

“Well,” and she shifts Jihye again, bouncing her a little since she’s not asleep. “I guess when everything is new, it can be scary because you don’t know what to do. You wanted to go to school and have fun, but at first you didn’t know what the rules were, or who to play with or what they liked.”

“But that’s not scared,” Yunho argues. “Not knowing isn’t the same as scared. Right?”

“No, but sometimes they can go together,” umma explains with a sigh. “If you don’t know what to do or any of the rules then you don’t know how keep out of trouble. You might do something wrong without knowing and someone will get angry or hurt. Not knowing how to keep that from happening can be a kind of scary, I guess. Are you thinking of your friend again?”

Yunho nods. “He’s so quiet.”

“Is that bad?” umma asks and Yunho scowls and kicks at a rock.

“No, but—” But the twins think he’s boring. And Junsu thinks he hates everyone. And Yunho doesn’t know how to fix that.

“Lots of people are shy and quiet when they’re new to something,” umma says. 

“But Jaejoong is even more quieter,” Yunho says. “He won’t even talk to Miss Seung.” Yunho knows that because yesterday he kept squirming in his seat but when Yunho asked him what was wrong and Jaejoong said he had to pee, he wouldn’t raise his hand to ask to go, not even when Yunho said it was allowed (in the end, Yunho had raised his own hand and when Miss Seung came over, Jaejoong wouldn’t even look at her, holding so still and staring at the desk and so rather than let his teacher show Jaejoong where the bathroom was, Yunho had said they both had to go, and Jaejoong’s face had been blank again but his fingers were so tight in Yunho’s all the way through the halls).

“Maybe he just doesn’t have the confidence yet.”

Yunho looks up. He doesn’t know that word.

“What’s con- condi- cofdin- ?”

“Con-fi-dence,” his mother says again, slowly. She bounces Jihye some more, thinking as they walk. “Confidence is… confidence is what lets us say or do things without worrying too much about what other people will think. It can help you know that even if you do something wrong, it will still be okay, or that if you fight with a friend, you’ll make up again later. Confidence is the thing that lets you believe in yourself.”

Yunho thinks about that for a minute. Confidence sounds like good stuff.

“So how do you get more?” he asks and his mother laughs.

“Confidence isn’t something you can just give to someone,” she says. “It’s something that grows, slowly, inside each of us. The most any of us can do for someone else is to be patient. And to try not to hurt the confidence that they're building.”

Yunho sighs. “More waiting?”

Umma laughs again. “Yes, more waiting,” she says. “Waiting, and being his friend.”

“Patience is hard,” Yunho says. He likes being Jaejoong’s friend, but Jaejoong still won’t talk to anyone else or come outside to play unless they have to, and sometimes he’s still sad about moving, and Yunho wants to help make it better. He doesn’t want to wait.

“It is,” umma agrees. “But if it’s important, I think you can do it. Now come on, let’s go home and see what appa has brought us to make for dinner.”

On Monday, Mr. Choi is out walking Jadu. Yunho loves when that happens; Jadu is always so excited to see him. She barks and hops, wiggling at his feet for attention and breathing really hard so it makes a funny noise, almost like snorting. Umma never wants to stop for too long, but Yunho thinks he could play with Jadu all day.

“Ah, she’s so spoiled,” Mr. Choi says, smiling as Jadu rolls onto her back so Yunho can rub her belly. “She always likes to see you, Yunho.”

Yunho grins up at him. “Me too,” he says. “I wish we had a dog. Then they could play together.”

“Yunho,” umma says warningly, and Yunho sighs.

“I can’t have a dog,” he tells Mr. Choi. “Umma says Jihye is too little. And dogs are too much work.”

“Ah, a pet is a big responsibility,” Mr. Choi says. “It’s important to wait until you are ready to take care of one properly. And until then, you can always play with Jadu. She certainly does not mind the attention.”

Yunho nods and scratches Jadu some more. She wiggles happily, wagging her tail and hitting Yunho’s sneaker.

“Yunho,” his mother says. “Come on, let Mr. Choi and Jadu finish their walk. It’s time for school.” And she gives him a stern look and holds out her hand.

Yunho stands. He doesn’t want to stop petting Jadu, but he knows if he makes his mother have to tell him again, she’ll get mad and then he’ll be in trouble. He doesn’t want that either.

“Okay,” he says.

“Ah,” Mr. Choi says as Yunho goes to take his mother’s hand, “in a little while, there might be a surprise.”

“A surprise?” Yunho stops and looks back. “What? What?”

Mr. Choi smiles and winks at him. “I’m not sure yet,” he says, bending down and scratching one of Jadu’s ears. “Ah, but I’m hopeful.”

“What?” Yunho says again. That’s not fair. He wants to know what the surprise is. “What is it?”

But Mr. Choi just smiles that smile and says, “It’s a secret,” and then starts walking back towards home.

“Yunho,” umma says again. “You want to play with your friends before school, don’t you?”

“Uh-huh.” He does. He wants to find Jaejoong and tell him how Jihye almost crawled yesterday and then maybe they can play something or build a desert with big cracks in it to explore.

“Then let’s go.”

When they get to school, Yunho tugs away from his mother and heads for the doors. He knows where to look for Jaejoong now. Then he gets closer.

Yunho stops and stares. Jaejoong is standing by the doors to the school, staring at the other kids running around. And his eyes are wider than Yunho’s ever seen and his fingers are twisting into his jacket, but he’s outside.

“Jaejoong!” Yunho doesn’t mean to yell. Jaejoong doesn’t like noisy and Yunho doesn’t want to scare him or make him mad, but he’s outside.

Jaejoong jumps and whips around and his eyes are still so wide, but they focus on Yunho and Yunho waves and runs over, smiling so big it makes his face hurt.

“Jaejoong! Jaejoong! You came outside!” He skids to a halt in front of his friend and he thinks he knows how Jadu feels because he wants to jump up and down to see him. Jaejoong shifts and looks at the ground.

“I—” His eyes flick up to Yunho’s face and then back down again. “I waited. I waited but you didn’t come,” he says.

“Sorry,” Yunho says. “There was a dog and I stopped to pet her. Sorry.” He didn’t mean to make Jaejoong wait.

“I thought—” Jaejoong stops and then starts, his eyes flicking up and down again. “I though maybe you forgot about me.”

Yunho stares.

“That’s stupid,” he says and Jaejoong’s head snaps up and Yunho thinks maybe he looks hurt so he rushes to explain. “If I forgot about you, then we couldn’t play anymore. That would be stupid. I don’t want to forget about you. You don’t forget about friends.”

Jaejoong blinks and says nothing, but his expression is different now. Less like something hurts and more just like he’s waiting. And Yunho thinks about his umma and what she said about confidence and how being patient with helping might be hard but she thinks he can do it. And he thinks maybe she’s right.

Yunho looks around. Jaejoong probably won’t want to play with the other kids, not yet, but maybe they don’t have to go inside either.

“Want to go swing on the swings?” he asks. Nobody else is playing there. “I’ll push you.”

Jaejoong hesitates, his lower lip into his mouth and looking across the playground to the swingset. Then his eyes go back to Yunho.

“High,” he says. “You have to push me high.”

Yunho beams at him and grabs his hand. “High like a plane,” he promises. And when he tugs Jaejoong’s hand to run for the swings, Jaejoong follows him.

--

A/N: not edited yet. sorry if mistakes...