Jinki sat by Minho’s bedside in the hospital that smelled distinctly of disinfectant. Minho’s room was pretty plain, white walls and white sheets and white noise on the television. He picked up the remote and changed the channel, watching the white noise fade to black before switching over to the news. The news report was one he recognized: two subway cars colliding, plenty of injuries, no causalities. 

It’d had taken them hours to rescue them, mostly having to cut away from subway car to get to them. In the ambulance, they’d located the cut on Minho’s thigh that had caused his shock by blood loss. They patched it up quite nicely. His ankle was a different story. 

The doctor told him Jinki that Minho would have to wear a cast for a while. He’d have it off by Christmas, they hoped. 

Jinki elected to stay around because it didn’t look like Minho had anyone who could come immediately. He’d called the number in Minho’s phone that was saved as “Mother” and spoken with a very nice sounding woman. She and Minho’s father were in Zambia as missionaries but she promised she was going to try and find a way to get a flight. It would take a few days. Jinki told them it wasn’t necessary considering their circumstances. Minho was fine. He would call them back if things changed. 

The next person he called was Jonghyun. Jonghyun picked up the phone with the sound of hammering in the background. He yelled over it, initially taking the news of Minho’s hospitalization. He screamed and cursed and kicked over something. Jinki recognized his behavior as Jonghyun’s unfiltered way of showing how bad the news had scared him. It took another twenty minutes on the phone with him to get him to calm down. When he told him Minho was peacefully sleeping and in no danger, Jonghyun exhaled. 

“Take your time getting here. He’s not going anywhere.” 

That was hours ago. So now, inside this white room, was just him and this stranger. Jinki stood and looked into the mirror hanging on the wall, glaring at the gash on his head. It was almost invisibly under his bang, but he could still see it. It was more annoying than painful. They’d also treated him for dehydration, which he found ridiculous and unnecessary. He remembered the bottle he and Minho shared. 

Sometimes later, Minho woke up, blinking around the hospital room with uncertainty. He’d groaned as he tried to sit up. Jinki rushed to his bedside and Minho seemed startled that Jinki was there. 

“They said that you could go home tomorrow,” Jinki said as if it were an explanation. “ After they give you a lesson on how to use your crutches. The blood loss worried it them, but it was just enough for you to go into shock. You received a small transfusion.”

Minho glanced down at his leg and saw the blue casting tape staring back at him. He glared at it, a frown marring his features. “I’m the assistant foreman on site. How am I supposed to go to work like this?”

“Easy,” came a voice from behind Jinki. “You don’t.”

Jinki turned around and was greeted with the sight of Jonghyun’s shock of dark brown hair and casual smirk from behind the door. He pushed the door open and walked in, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his stiff denim jeans. Behind him, was a tall youth, not as tall as Jonghyun but it was easy to tell that in a few years he would be a head above the crowd. His chubby cheeks spoke to his age, but there was a maturity in his large brown eyes. Those same eyes darted past Jinki and to Minho in the bed.

“Dad!” 

Minho chuckled. “I’m alright.”

Yoogeun  darted across the room, shouldering pass Jinki, and hovered at his father’s side. “I told Uncle Jonghyun to hurry up and come get me out of school but he wouldn’t. He said you were fine and we would get there when he got off.”

Jonghyun shrugged. “After Jinki here scared the hell out of me,” he shot Jinki a playful look,”  but then subsequently calmed me down by telling me you weren’t on your death bed, I relaxed. A broken ankle does not constitute an emergency.”

“Yeah–yeah but that’s not all you said! Like… he’d fainted and blood…something?”

“Your father went into shock because of blood loss,” Jinki explained patiently to the young boy. “But Jonghyun’s right. He’s fine now.”

“Fine my ,” Minho mumbled. “What am I going to do about that?” Minho said as he pointed to his foot. “What about work?”

“Believe it or not, I can run a construction site by myself. We’ll play everything else by ear,” Jonghyun turned to Yoogeun. “C’mon, kiddo. Let’s get your Dad some real food. I’m sure the bull they serve here can’t be tasty.”

Minho shot Jonghyun a look. “Thanks for teaching my kid the new curse word of the day, jackass.”

Yoogeun scoffed. “New curse word, he says...”

Jonghyun grinned and held up his hand for a high-five, which Yoogeun immediately gave. “That’s my nephew. Mouth like a sailor. “ He looked at Jinki. “You want anything?”

“No, I’m fine, thank you,” he murmured right before the two of them began to file out of the room. When they were alone again, Jinki pulled up a chair to his bed side.

“You know, you don’t have to stay here. I think I’ll be fine with Thing 1 and Thing 2 watching over me. ”

Jinki shook his head. “I heard once in a movie, ironically where a subway crashes or something, that stress brings people together. It’s fine. I’ll stay until Thing 1 and Thing 2, as you say, come back.” 

Minho glanced at him, a strange look on his face before he relaxed back into the stiff mattress. “Yeah I guess. I know I just woke up any everything but I haven’t had a chance to thank you. For, you know, saving my life. I’m sure I wouldn’t have made it if I’d been on the train alone.”

Jinki tilted his head at Minho’s words. “You’re more than welcome but…is that something you have to say thank you for? Like…human nature should drive us to want to save our fellow man, right? It should be automatic, you know? You fall, I pick you up. ‘I don’ really need a thank you, I’m just glad you’re not hurt’ kind of deal.”

Minho’s brow rose. “Uh, that’s a pretty heave response to a thank you.” 

Jinki shrugged. 

“But, I will say, for you to feel that way, like deep down, is admirable. Damn near revolutionary. My parents are like that…what you just said. Selfless. So I get it. The whole give an arm to save the body way of thinking, you being the arm. However everybody else? People are much to self-serving for me not believe that a lot of people are out for themselves.” 

“Are you like that?” Jinki asked as he leaned forward and rested his chin in his palm, genuinely curious.

“No. But I am selfish at times.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“I’m having a hard time thinking that you are? It’ll take a lot for me to think you have that in your heart. Not with your I am my brother’s keeper attitude.”

The words ‘brother’s keeper’ resonated in his heart and Jinki shook the feeling away. Jinki’s feet knocked against the metal rungs of the hospital chair, wanting very badly to change the subject. He thumbed towards the door. “Your son is handsome and he cares a lot about you. That must be nice.”

Minho nodded. “It is. He’s a handful but you know with kid’s that age, there is more joy in watching them stumble around than anything. He’s a good kid though.”

A thought fluttered across Jinki’s mind. He saw a thirteen year old Taemin balling up a spelling text and throwing it away, hoping Jinki wouldn’t see it. That had been an argument for the ages as they tried to adjust from brothers to their new parent-child roles. Quickly, though, before thought became a feeling he couldn’t deal with, he shut it down.    

The thought stayed though and he stared at Minho warily for a few seconds. He wanted to ask him questions, more about his life, his kid but something was buzzing in the back of his head. He thought it had been something he’d made up…

Minho’s eyes rolled back forward again, except for this time, they were lucid. Minho’s eyes widen and Jinki felt his panic surmounting. Minho’s hand squeezed around his, hard and suddenly his eyes are filling with tears. They filled up the wells of his eyes and crest over his lids and down his face. Jinki wanted to pull his hand away, he wants to do anything to ease the feeling in his chest as if Minho was looking into his soul. 

It was so cold. 

Minho’s lips parted and Jinki’s gaze shift towards them.

“Taemin says it’s going to be alright.”

No. He wasn’t going to do that. He wasn’t going to believe or invest his energy in thinking that had been real. Because it wasn’t. It was stress…or something. He’d imagined that. 

The rest of the time they sat in silence. Minho’s focus on the television in front of him, Jinki’s focus on the man in front of him. Soon, Jonghyun and Yoogeun was back and Jinki couldn’t find a good reason to stay. He collected his coat and gave Jonghyun at friendly pat on the back as he made his way to the door. 

“Jinki?”

Jinki paused at the door, his brain still buzzing. Slowly he turned around and pasted a smile on his face. 

“I hope I see you around?” 

Jinki smiled, this one real, as he nodded at Minho and left.




Jinki had a rule. No one was allowed to say his kids were troubled. 

The case workers the Ministry of Health and Welfare would send over would sometimes slip up and say it a time or two. He usually got them reassigned after the third strike. His kids weren’t troubled. They were foster kids with attitudes, kids with records, kids who’d had one too many brushes with the law, sure, they had those issues. But they weren’t troubled. They were brilliant.

Most of the kids were high-schoolers who picked the Youth Center as a place to get away from it all: parents, school work, the constant questions about what they wanted to do with their futures. Jinki allowed them that escape. Between the gritty grey walls of this building, the kids were allowed to be kids. 

His favorite was Yixing, a transient from Changsha, Hunan, China. He’d been in foster care most of his life, and in a few months he would turn eighteen and no longer be a ward of the state. Yixing was a straight forward kid, easy to laugh, well liked. Jinki had cleared out one of the spare room for Yixing and he would bring his guitar and sit in the room, sometimes playing for hours. Chanyeol, another kid at the Youth Center would join him.

They fashioned together a small band with three other kids, Kyungsoo, Baekhyun and Jongdae. Called themselves XOXO and had a trademark where they would blow a kiss after each of their mini-sets. Krystal, Sulli and Joy just loved that. Minseok, however, hated it and he fake gagged every time they did it.  

He had two co-counselors; Kris, who’d traveled from Guangzhou seven years ago and found a home at the Youth Center. It drove him to go to school for psychology. He’d recently graduated and honestly, he still felt like one of the kids to Jinki, even with his imposing height.  The other was Kibum, a one-time case worker for the state, now full time babysitter or so he says. Kibum was well liked by all of the kids even if he inspired a little fear, while Yixing had taken a special place in Kris’s heart. It was probably the shared language. He’d caught them having whispered conversation, about God knows what, so many times that now he just leaves them alone.

The truth was he loved his kids and he loved the Youth Center. Helping kids was his calling although it didn’t leave much room for a personal life. You know, going out, meeting new people, bumping into tall dark handsome men. The last socializing he did outside of listening to teenagers tell jokes over pizza slices was helping a relative stranger stay alive on a derailed subway car. 

It had been two weeks since the accident. He thought about Minho a few times, wondering if he was doing okay, if he still smelled like aftershave and warmth when his life wasn’t in danger, or if he was getting along well with his crutches. He wondered how appropriate it would be to get his number from Jonghyun. Would it look friendly…or something else?  Three times he’d picked up the phone to ask and three times he’d put it down. They’d shared something…life…a glance at death maybe, but that didn’t mean they were friends. 

It was a Wednesday when he saw Yoogeun again.  The boy had walked through the doors of the Youth Center, looking around, unsure and lost, as he tugged his book bag up higher on his back. Jinki was surprised by his appearance, surprised that he even knew where the Youth Center was or that Jinki worked there. Standing, he waved the young man over.

Yoogeun was a lot like his father, tall, lean, heart shaped face and dark soft hair. He had the same mannerisms too, his eagerness to smile at strangers, polite way he bowed at everyone who passed him. When he approached the perforated steel door to Jinki’s office, Jinki pushed it back wide enough for Yoogeun to come through. The young man bowed once and Jinki smiled at him, warm like a father would a son before he pointed to the seats in front of Jinki’s second hand beat up desk. He frowned at the stack of papers in the chair. 

“You can put those papers…um, in a corner or something. Or sit on them. Whatever.”

Some of the tension left Yoogeun’s face but not all of it as he silently moved the papers to the floor. He took a seat and silently looked up at Jinki which, to be honest, unnerved him for a bit. 

“Um? Is there something I can help you with? Is your father okay?”

The youth bit at his lip, a habit Jinki was more familiar with, until he pulled his book bag off his shoulders. He placed it in front of him, ped it, and began rummaging inside. He must have found what he was looking for because a look of determinations crossed his face. He pulled his hand from the bag and turned it up, palm up for Jinki to see. A clear packet filled with small green capsules looked back at Jinki.  Jinki recognized the packet instantly and his alarms went up. 
“Yoogeun,” he said concerned. “Why do you have this?” He gently plucked the packet out of Yoogeun’s hand.

Yoogeun looked down at his now empty hands, picking at the skin of this thumb.  “Dad didn’t think I heard but they called Jonghyun in last week. For paying my dad under the table while he was out of work. His job is paying him benefits?  But it’s not enough. Dad borrowed some money from Gramps, but it’s not like they have a bunch of money. They like…feed the homeless in Africa and stuff…they don’t make money because it’s not like a job job. He tries to hide it but it’s getting hard. When we ate dinner last night, he only took a small portion and let me have the rest. I was still hungry…so I know he was. I’m too young to get a job…so today…”

Jinki stood up from his seat, circled around his desk and sat on the edge of it. He tapped Yoogeun on the nose, causing him to look up. There were tears in the boy’s eyes and Jinki felt his heart break. He felt his heart break for all kids put in a tough position like this.

“So…you thought you could start selling this to make money for your Dad?”

The boy nodded. “The kid said that if I sold all of these packets by the end of the week, his boss would give me a hundred thousand won. And that I could keep doing it.”

Jinki looked at the packet and then back at Yoogeun . “You know these are drugs, right?”

Yoogeun shrank in his seat but nodded all the same. 

Jinki sighed and leaned back, tapping a pen against the desk as he thought. One came to him.

“Kibum!” Jinki yelled into the open warehouse space. Moments later, Kibum arrived in his pale blond, hazel contacts, unreasonably fashionable glory. In one hand was a doughnut, and a stack of files were tucked under his arm. Before Jinki could speak, Kibum held a hand up.

“I know you have something important to say, hence your rude yelling but new news first. We got a new kid today. Named ZiTao? Sehun has called “extreme” dibs on him,” and Kibum tried to do quote signs but he ended up just wagging his one free hand, “no idea what that means, and although it’s a little…thick in here, I wouldn’t suggest trying for any alternative centers for him. I think the decision has already been made. I for one am not arguing with that little rainbow haired hellion over one boy.”

Jinki pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ve never won an argument with Sehun and I’m not pressing my luck today. If he says the kid stays, he stays. But I need you to do me a favor.”

Kibum’s brow rose. He maneuvered himself in the office, careful not to drop his doughnut or the files and closed the door behind him. “Yeah, sure but I’m not dressing up as Santa Clause this year, just in case you were about to ask.”

Jinki ignored that, used to Kibum’s antics and handed him the clear packet. “Have Yixing find out who is supplying these. I just need a name. They are passing out packets to kids.”

Kibum examined the packet before he pocketed it. “Sure thing.” His eyes jutted to Yoogeun  and then back to Jinki. “Who’s the kid?”

“This is Yoogeun. Yoogeun, this is Kibum, one of the co-directors here at the Youth Center.” Jinki reached for his car keys and stood. “And me and Yoogeun here are about to pay his father a visit.”

There was absolute fear in Yoogeun’s eyes when Jinki said that. He stood and glanced at the door, as if he were trying to find the best escape but Kibum maneuvered himself in front of the opening and eyed Yoogeun with interest. He took a step back into the room looking more like a frightened deer than a twelve year old boy. 

“P–please don’t tell my father! Please! I wouldn’t have come here if I knew you were going to do that! Jonghyun said I could trust you with anything!” 

“Yoogeun.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong!” Yoogeun said as tears began to fill his eyes. “I didn’t sell them, I didn’t give them to anybody. I just wanted to make sure my dad wasn’t hungry! I’m sorry!”

“Yoogeun,” Jinki said again, patiently.

By now Yoogeun’s face was wet with tears. He got on his knees and put his hands up as if he were praying. He closed his eyes and  began rubbing them together. “I won’t do it again. I promise. I’ll–I’ll…I’ll do anything you want. Just please!”

“Choi Yoogeun!” Jinki shouted. 

The boys started rubbing his hands together faster with his head bent. Sighing, Jinki walked over to the boy and put his hands on Yoogeun’s shoulders. “I’m not going to tell your father anything.”

The rubbing halted. He opened one teary eye and glanced at Jinki. “You’re not?”

“No, I’m not. I do need to ask him If it’s alright for you to help out around here. I need someone like you who is eager to work. Plus I’m sure you could teach these older boys some manners,” Jinki said with a chuckle. “However, I have to get permissions from your father. Labor laws and such.”

“You’re going to let me work here?” Yoogeun asked, wide eye. “Really?”

Jinki nodded. “Really.” Seconds later, Jinki’s hit the ground as he tried and failed to balance with an armful of Choi Minho’s child.

“Thank you, thank you! Thank you!” 

Kibum chuckled, one side of his lips quirking up. “Clean up on aisle six, got us a bleeding heart over here.” 

Jinki scoffed. “Your shirt’s a little bloody too, you hypocrite. I know about you writing Sulli’s English paper for her.”

“That’s different,” Kibum said affronted. “English is a…she was…okay. You got me.”

“Right.” He stood up and brought Yoogeun up with him. “You ready?”

“Absolutely.” 

“Good, but first, let’s go meet some of the boys first.”




Minho sat at the kitchen table, the thick ankle boot cushioned on top of a pillow as he looked over bills. The money coming in from Jonghyun had stopped and after a long conversation, where Minho had apologized over and over for the trouble he caused, and where Jonghyun waved him off, Minho needed to make some decisions. 

He was only getting a percentage of his wages now that he was injured and somewhere in his mind he wished he’d gotten hurt on site. At least that would guarantee him a full paycheck.  Short term barely covered his mortgage payment. He’d scrapped up enough money for the utilities so at the very minimum he knew they wouldn’t come home to a dark and cold house but still, he was broke and he didn’t know what to do. 

He thought about Yoogeun‘s Christmas gift–a new laptop–hidden in his bedroom closet behind a chest full of old pictures and mementos. Every time he opened the refrigerator and saw less and less food, the more his fingers itched to return it. 

He scrubbed his hand through his hair. He wasn’t going to sell his son’s only Christmas gift. He gathered all of the bills and stuffed them into the shoebox on the kitchen table, pushing them away from him. He would just have to find another way to put a band aid on this struggle. Other people had it worse. 

The front door swung open and a loud “Dad! I’m home!” echoed through the house. Minho’s mood brightened instantly and reached for his crutches. That reminded him he needed to pull something together for dinner. He hopped up onto his crutches and moved towards the foyer so that he could meet his son.
As he turned the corner, he spotted Yoogeun. Same baseball cap and sweater he had put on that morning. Then he spotted someone he wasn’t expecting.

“Lee Jinki?”

The man looked up, both brows raised. “Oh, hi.”

Minho’s brows furrowed and his mouth bobbed open and close like a fish until he remembered that manners were a thing and that he needed to exhibit them. “Oh, I’m sorry. Um, come in?” He looked down and saw Jinki’s arms were full of two overstuffed grocery bags. “Um. What are those?”

“Groceries, Dad. What does it look like?” Yoogeun said as he toed off his shoes and stuffed them into a pair of pink house slippers. “Mister Lee said he was going show me how to cook dak gal-bi. He said it’s something I can make myself so you don’t have to get up so much.”

Minho stuttered unintelligibly as his son rushed up to him, hugged him around the waist and continued into the kitchen, unbothered by his father’s confusion. Jinki was a bit more considerate. 

“He came and saw me today, so I thought it would be a good time to pay a visit.”

Minho frowned. “He knows where you live?”

“You can say that. I do live at the Youth Center but I’m thinking Jonghyun has something to do with it.”

Minho nodded slowly, still overwhelmed and a bit confused. Well, more overwhelmed than confused. His thoughts had strayed to Jinki a lot, like a song stuck in your head, where you sing the same lyrics over and over until you either drive yourself mad or you utterly fall in love with it. He couldn’t tell if he was going crazy or the other.

The catalyst was a mix of fascination–that a man who had no reason to, had decided to care for him–and wonderment, that Jinki had managed make an imprint on him, like the world revolved around the degrees of separation that made people strangers and destroyed that notion in one breathe. That fact alone made Jinki the most fascinating man he’d ever met. 

During the moments where Jinki floated around his brain like a bag full of air, he wondered if Jinki had a wife or a girlfriend. Who cooked his meals? Who greeted him at the door with a kiss at night? Did he have kids? Did he go to college. Did he have a favorite color? What was his favorite meal? Questions that could be easily answered by simply asking them. But just because a man saves your life, doesn’t mean he wants to be subjected to a Spanish inquisition of his life just to satisfy Minho’s curiosity. 

While Minho continued to stand in the foyer, confused, Jinki shouldered way into Minho’s kitchen and placed the bags down on the counter. As the brown paper hit the counter, Minho was seriously concerned as to why the man had them in the first place. 

“Uh, quick question,” Minho said as he hobbled into the kitchen, standing beside Jinki who was handing Yoogeun items to put into the fridge. “Why did you bring groceries over here?”

Jinki shrugged. “I wanted to make Yoogeun something delicious and I got a little shop happy at the grocers. Don’t worry about the cost. I get vouchers from the state to stock groceries at the Youth Center. They expire at the end of each week, and the ones I don’t use go to waste. I figured with you hurt, you wouldn’t be able to go grocery shopping.  Viola. Groceries, delivered to your doorstep by one incorrigibly handsome youth counselor.”

“Oh! Yeah! And Mister Lee gave me a job at the Youth Center–“

“Which is why I’ll need a letter of consent from you,” Jinki said as he closed the refrigerator door.

“–AND,” Yoogeun  continued, “They have a study room full of books and stuff, so I can get my homework done too. And there are these really cool boys there. I spoke to some. One asked me a bunch of questions about the patches on my book bag. He said they were cool. I told you there were cool, Dad. And he said there was a new kid there who had a skateboard. But I don’t want to learn that. I want to rap like Kris.”

Minho sputtered. “Rap? I could have taught you that.”

Yoogeun paused with his hand on the cutlery drawer, a look of incredulity on his face. “No,” the note of finality so deadly in his voice that Minho frowned.
“But, I mean I can. I rapped all the time in school. Watch,” Minho said determined. Minho moved both of his crutches under one arm and held his hand out. “Girl–“

Yoogeun raced across the room and put his hand across his dad’s mouth. “I believe you. Just…don’t.”

Minho frown deepened as he mumbled against his son’s hand and Jinki threw his head back in laughter. 




After dinner, Yoogeun moved to his room to finish his homework, leaving the adults alone for coffee in the living room. Jinki liked Minho’s house. It was charming, much like its occupants. It was multi-level with a balcony connected to the living room. It had a traditional feel, an open floor plan with lots of wood floors. There were pictures of Minho and Yoogeun all over the place, on almost all of the walls and crowding the mantle above the fireplace. They looked really happy.

“I know this is going to sound rude, especially considering the circumstances but…I could tell you were lying…about the food. Yoogeun must have told you…”

Jinki leaned back into the couch cushions.  “I know what it’s like,” he said simply. “So many people looked out for me that I couldn’t even begin to thank them. It was one of the main reasons I decided to buy the Youth Center. I felt I wasn’t doing enough, so I did more. This? What you’re going through? It’s temporary. You’ll be on your feet soon enough. And when you are, you can pay me back with good coffee or something.” Jinki took another sip. “Speaking of…what kind is this. It’s so good like…I’m amazed.”

Minho chuckled softly. “It was a brand Yoogeun’s mom liked. I hated coffee before I met her. But she insisted. It was the only brand that was stocked in our apartment for years. And I just…fell in love with it. Repetition and peer pressure I think,” he said with a laugh. “Now I won’t drink anything else.”

Jinki nodded before looking away. Minho’s laugh was…nice and at that exact moment, Jinki decided that he was attracted to Minho. Really attracted. It burned the tips of his fingers because it was a thought he shouldn’t touch. He’d done this before, tripped up over a straight man. That fact seemed undeniable. A kid. An ex-girlfriend. But still, it felt good, to abandon to the feeling–to be attracted to someone. It felt good. 

“She’s not around anymore, if that’s what you’re thinking.” 

Jinki tilted his head. “Do you mean around around or she’s…”

Minho laughed again. “No, she’s not dead or anything, although it kind of feels like she is. She sends me postcards from time to time, always without an address. She was my sweetheart all though high school, all though college. The only woman I’ve ever been with, really. She had Yoogeun when we were young, freshmen in college but she didn’t want fall into the pressure of getting married just because, so we didn’t.

“After Yoogeun was born, we made the decision that she would go to college and I would get a job.  It was hard, but we managed. For years, we managed. Then one day…she said she couldn’t do it. I never understood what she meant by that. I came home to an empty house and a note to pick Yoogeun up from my mother’s house.”

Minho paused like his lips were spilling water all over the floor. “God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to unload on you like that. I just…anyways. So yeah, that’s where I got the coffee from. I don’t know why I keep drinking it,” he murmured.

“It’s emotional. We hold on to things, forget things completely, bury them, form habits, form opinions…all around our emotions,” Jinki said, while tugging on his wishbone necklace. “Don’t feel that you have to abandoned those emotions, especially if they keep your head above water. Loss is loss.” 

Minho sat forward, his face cradled against his palm. “You’re good at this.”

Jinki’s brow rose. “At?”

“Talking to people. A lot of people don’t have that gift. I don’t. I kind of fumble around with words. I don’t say the important ones. The ones that make people stay or make them come closer. You? You make me comfortable. Completely. To be honest, I could tell you anything and everything.”

“I’m a counselor,” Jinki said with another small smile. “It’s my job to do that.” To talk to people about their problems. It takes all the space in the room. It’s safe that way, he didn’t say. 

“Ah,” Minho said, his head nodding sagely. 

Jinki put down his cup of coffee on the coffee table and stood, stretching as he did. “I burst into your house uninvited and now I’ve taking up way too much of your time. It’s late. I should get going.”

“Oh, right,” Minho replied. Minho reached for his crutches but Jinki put his hand on his shoulder to stop him. 

“Please don’t get up. I’m a big boy, I can let myself out.” He paused to fish his wallet out of his back packet. He thought about it for a moment before pulling out his card for the Youth Center. “Uh…here is my number at the Youth Center. If you need anything or…you know…someone to talk to, I’m here.”

Minho accepted the card. “Sure…” He stared at it for a moment. “Um…what about your cellphone? Just in case, you know…I don’t get you?”

“Oh,” Jinki said, inhaling. “Just…this is silly but just change the last digit to a seven. I do that so the kids don’t have to remember too many numbers.”

“That’s kind of sweet.”

“Survival tactic. Plus, I live at the Youth Center. It’s kind of hard to not get me…”

“Ah. I’ll remember that.” 

“Good. Um…I’ll see you later?”

“Yeah, you will,” Minho murmured as he continued to stare at the card.

Jinki collected his coat and left. It wasn’t until he was outside did he exhale.