Kai sits quietly, playing with a rubber band and fidgeting in his rickety white folding chair. The grass is starting to look healthier. Summer is reaching its peak and he can see that the green is returning. He begins smashing the blades under his shoes, bored out of his mind.

“How can this be considered a real funeral,” he grumbles under his breath but just loud enough so that someone sitting next to him could hear and agree with him so he doesn’t feel alone. Instead of hearing a chuckle or a comment similar to his own, he thinks that his ears were met with silence. Or rather, on second thought, he thinks it was the wind, but instead the person sitting next to him had shushed him. Shushed. He automatically turns to look at where the sound had come from, preparing his best glare, but it dies quickly like an ember from rubbing too sticks together. When he sees the face of his shushing neighbor, he instantly can’t find it in himself to be angry. He’s cute. His face is round and his lips are pink. His skin is pale and his hair pitch black. Kai is instantly intrigued by him. But he follows his neighbor’s orders and keeps quiet until the speech was over.

Once the so-called eulogy comes to an end, there is supposed to be a reception inside the house. The funeral had been held in the backyard and now the (very few) guests are putting their folding chairs in a stack near the porch. Kai decides to make a move while everyone is still distracted.

“I can take your chair for you,” he offers, reaching his hand out to take the other boy’s chair.

“I can carry it myself,” he replies and walks towards the other chairs. Kai frowns to himself but figured that frowning is wasting his time. He quickly shuffles after the other boy ready to make his second attempt.

“What’s your name?” Kai asks as he took hold of the other’s wrist to keep him from entering the house just yet.

“Why?” he replies. He pulls his wrist from Kai’s grip slowly.

“Because.” Kai puts his hands in his pockets and rocks back and forth on his heels. The other boy stands still, staring straight into Kai’s eyes. Kai averts his gaze at this momentarily but quickly realizes this is a bad move if he wants to hold the other’s attention.

“Because? That’s all you’ve got? Because what?”

“Because I have the right to know the name of the person who shushed me in the middle of my sister’s funeral.” Kai crosses his arms feeling smug. “Oh! But it wasn’t my sister’s funeral but she planned it but it was for her fish. You probably already knew that though.” The other boy chuckles at Kai’s long explanation and Kai’s heart does a thing at seeing the other boy’s smile for the first time. Currently, Kai is still unable to put his feelings in words. He’s interested though. Very interested.

“Ah, so you’re the infamous brother. Jongin, right?” The other boy laughs to himself and Kai feels left out.

“How do you know my name? Now I really have to know yours,” Kai pushes.

“Fine. It’s Kyungsoo. And I’m your sister’s babysitter. She talks about you all the time,” Kyungsoo explains. Kai’s heart flutters at that because he wasn’t expecting that his sister would say anything about him. There’s a big age difference between them so they don’t exactly talk much these days as she is growing up so he is thankful for even being mentioned.

“Good things, I hope?” Kai asked, inviting Kyungsoo to repeat the compliments straight to him.

“Nope. You guessed wrong.” Kyungsoo laughed and looked up to see Kai’s reaction. Kai just frowned more at his sister than anyone else. He chose to ignore the fact that his possible new crush was laughing at him right now.

“What does she say?” Kai inquires, figuring he can’t guess what she could have said. He might as well ask.

“She says you walk around shirtless all the time like you think you’re attractive and that you bother her sometimes.” Kai scrunches his face (cutely though Kyungsoo would never admit that) at his sister’s comments. He doesn’t think he’s that goodlooking but he isn’t bad-looking either. Especially with his shirt off. He figures it’s an opportunity for him to tease Kyungsoo a little bit.

“That’s all you remember. The shirtless part? She must talk about other things than that” Kai questions. He smirks to himself so that he doesn’t seem too cocky. Just a little bit is okay, but Kyungsoo isn’t fazed.

“Well, I don’t know. Is there more things I should remember to not like about you? Why don’t you ask her?” Kyungsoo would have stuttered a little had Kai’s little sister, Julia, not come to save him. Kai looks down and sees her holding onto Kyungsoo’s shirt and pulling to get his attention.

“Sí, Julia?” Kyungsoo replies in Spanish. Kai is impressed as his lack of accent and his fluency.

“Quiero ir al patio de recreo. You promised,” Julia whines in Spanish then in Korean. Kai pushes down the jealousy of his trilingual sister as quickly as it came up. But Kai knew those words. His sister wanted to go to the playground. She always wants to go to the playground so Kai had learned some Spanish for himself.

“Vamos!” Kyungsoo exclaims as he smiles down at Julia, about to leave without saying goodbye. But Kai is quick.

“Can I come?” Although Julia probably has some stake in the decision, Kai keeps his eyes focused on Kyungsoo, wanting to know how he feels about the idea. Kyungsoo feels pressured under the weight of Kai’s gaze and attributes that to the reason he gives in. He ignores the way his heart is racing, the way that he can feel the perspiration on his hands and his forehead.

“I don’t see why not,” Kyungsoo gulps, trying to sound nonchalant but failing completely and miserably. Kai notices Kyungsoo’s change in demeanor but finds it endearing and really he can’t point fingers because he is nervous as well.

Kai follows after Kyungsoo quietly through the house towards the front yard while Julia gets her bicycle. When Julia returns, he watches how Kyungsoo helps her put on her helmet. He’s not sure how to feel about that so he just stares instead. Kyungsoo has already noticed that he does that a lot, staring. He doesn’t know how to feel about it either so he just avoids the subject all together.

Julia takes off on her bicycle, leaving Kyungsoo behind with Kai. They stay silent for a while and that would have been okay with Kyungsoo. He’s a quiet person. But for Kai, it’s killing him. He doesn’t know when he’ll get to be alone with Kyungsoo like this again so he seizes the opportunity.

“So, you speak Spanish?”

“Uh, yeah. Well, I lived in Brazil my whole life actually. Born there too.” Kyungsoo looks up at Kai to see if he can continue. He concludes that Kai looks interested in what he’s saying so he tells him more. “I learned Portuguese and Korean at the same time. I learned English in middle school through high school. And I learned Spanish most recently in the last couple of years. It’s kind of similar to Portuguese so it didn’t take very long.” As Kyungsoo spoke, Kai listened but he also paid attention to some other things about the other boy. He talks with gestures, small ones but they’re there. And he’s always checking to see if the other person is listening in fear of talking too much, looking up into Kai’s eyes and catching him off guard. He is also finally starting to notice the little accent Kyungsoo has, Portuguese he guesses, not Spanish.

“How did you end up in Brazil?” Kai asks. Kyungsoo looks up at him again and Kai urges him with a nod.

“My dad works for the South American branch of some Korean company. He was originally planning to go back to Korea but he moved up the ranks and now he’s an executive.” Kai can tell that Kyungsoo wasn’t exactly fond of talking about his father so he changes the subject.

“Well, did you like it there? What was it like?” Kyungsoo takes a few moments to think of what to say.

“Sorry, I’m not really used to talking about myself,” he laughs awkwardly. Kai doesn’t mind though and waits for him to start up again. “Well, different language obviously. I’m thankful that my parents taught me the language at birth. I was one of the only Asian kids and people didn’t really understand me or why I was in Brazil.” Kai holds onto the way the way “Brazil” rolls off of Kyungsoo’s tongue, smooth and sensual unintentionally. The way his accent returns whenever he says a word in Portuguese or Spanish.

“If I hadn’t known the language, they probably would have made fun of me more.” When Kyungsoo goes to look at Kai’s expression, he sees concern and immediately switches the tone of the story. “But I’m okay now!” He smiles as he watches Kai’s face return to its attentive expression. “It wasn’t terrible. I went by Elian. Elian Do. I kind of like going by my Korean name now though, with you and your family. That’s nice. Even your stepdad calls me Kyungsoo. He still speaks Spanish to me most of the time though. I’ll have to work on that.” Kai laughs at Kyungsoo’s first attempt at a joke since they’ve met barely an hour ago. Kyungsoo laughs as well but it’s different from earlier when he was laughing at Kai. It’s sweeter, lighter and makes Kai feel warm inside.

“I don’t have any siblings. There was lots of diversity, just like here. Going to Korea is a little weird for me since I’m so used to seeing a lot of different people. That’s really about it about me.” Kyungsoo lets out a breath as if had been holding it in. Kai nods.

“That’s probably not all but I’ll find out later,” Kai responds. Although he had been noticing it all along, with that Kyungsoo realizes Kai really does want to listen, that he has an interest in getting to know him. He feels kind of bad for profiling him as a player immediately and being a little cold toward him in the beginning just because he’s handsome. “By the way, how did you get to be Julia’s babysitter?”

“Ah! Oh, my family met your parents a little after they’d just met. I didn't get to meet him that time but later on, while your stepdad was in Argentina wrapping things up with work, he would keep in touch and help me learn Spanish. So when my parents moved here earlier this year, they decided to move near your family and then your parents just so happened to need a babysitter. They also wanted one that speaks Spanish to help your sister learn so… I happened.” Kai laughs at how Kyungsoo holds his hands out and shrugs to end his short story. Kai thinks that Kyungsoo is adorable and that it’s even better that it seems he doesn’t know it.

They’re approaching the park. Kyungsoo now remembers where they were going. He had lost track because he was talking so much. Kai, however, made sure to check on his sister’s whereabouts multiple times as he listened to Kyungsoo talk. Kyungsoo notes that Kai is good at multi-tasking. He picks up Julia’s bike where she threw it down and took it with them to place it by a bench on the side of the playground. He sits down on the bench, leaving room for Kai next to him. Kai sits down but then immediately gets up. Kyungsoo looks up at him surprised.

“Benches are boring. Swings?” Kai holds out his hand. Kyungsoo doesn’t answer, he just takes the hand held out to him and follows Kai to the swings. He notices that Kai smiles before he turns away. He caught some glimpses of what he thought was Kai’s developing crush on him. Once again, he’s not sure what to think of it yet. He’s not really sure about a lot of things. Kai has that effect on him so he just goes with the flow. They sit on two swings next to each other.

“I haven’t been on a swing in years,” Kyungsoo bites his lip as he holds onto the chains and looks at the sky. He flips off his sandals somewhere and tries swinging back and forth a little but it seems he’s forgotten how to get the swing going. “Could you…? My weight doesn’t actually do much for this swing.” Kyungsoo jingles the chains a little and Kai gets the picture. He gets up and gets behind Kyungsoo’s swing.

“I get it. These swings are old as anything anyway.” He begins pushing Kyungsoo on the swing slowly. “Now when you go forward, your legs should go forward. And for back, your legs should go back. But don’t kick me.” Kyungsoo laughs at Kai as the swing goes higher and higher. He’s moving his legs and it feels familiar again after a few repetitions. Kai has stopped pushing now and Kyungsoo is still swinging back and forth next to him. He sits on his own swing and just watches Kyungsoo pass him by, blowing wind through his hair.

“Wait! How do I stop it?!” Kyungsoo yells so that Kai can hear.

“Just stop swinging your legs!” he yells back. He sees the exact moment Kyungsoo follows his orders. He goes completely still as the swing is high in the air. Kai looks for Kyungsoo’s face as the swing comes lower and begins to slow down. Once it’s safe to get off, Kyungsoo gets up and sits down in the mulch in front of Kai.

“Tell me about you,” he says and crosses his legs. Kai looks down at Kyungsoo with a confused expression but speaks anyway.

“There’s really not much. I got to the arts high school about half an hour from here. I live in a dorm there so I’m home for the summer. I have a little sister but you know that. It’s really nothing. You’re more interesting,” Kai admits waving himself off. But Kyungsoo won’t allow it. He used to be like that. Now, at least when someone asks like Kai had, he can talk for a good amount of  time.

“Nope, I’m sure there is. What about your new family? Your stepdad? Julia? Do you get along with them?” Kyungsoo realizes how personal that is. “I’m sorry, you don’t have to answer that.”

“No, it’s okay,” Kai assures him and kicks the sole of Kyungsoo’s foot lightly as a joke. “I like them but do we get along? I don’t know honestly. They talk to me when I’m alone with them separately but when they’re all together, I become kind of invisible.” Kyungsoo tries not to show the sadness he feels inside on his face as Kai might interpret it as pity. He nods and Kai continues. “My parents divorced when I was younger. My mom met my stepdad almost 7 years ago. They dated for a year. She got pregnant. My stepdad traveled back and forth between Argetina and here for a year before moving here officially. Julia came. When I was in middle school, he was here with us. And then I escaped to boarding school.”

“Why do you say escaped?” Kyungsoo asks and Kai thinks that he sounds like some kind of counselor. He doesn’t comment on it though.

“Well, since we moved from Korea, we have no Korean family here. So now all the family events are with my stepdad’s family members who happen to live around here. Everyone is speaking Spanish including my mom and my sister so, I just linger in the background or go to my friend’s house.” Kai looks down at his feet as he admits this. It’s a sensitive subject for him. He feels like the outcast of the family when he used to be the only person his mother worried about. After his parents divorced, it was just him and his mom. And his mom loved him like he was the only person on earth. Now, her husband replaced him and erased him. He wishes that he was at least pushed aside rather than completely stepped on.

To interrupt his thoughts, there are arms that wrap around his torso and he sees Kyungsoo’s pitch black hair near his shoulder. He hugs back but only a few second after he does, Kyungsoo pulls away.

“I’m sorry. I don’t usually hug people but I really wanted to...comfort you? Well, on the Korean family part, you have me now. And my family. And when your family has events, you can come to my house. Even though my family might be invited.” Kai can see Kyungsoo’s train of thought on his face as he babbles. “But I’ll skip it. For you. And I can teach you some Spanish. If you want?” Kai looks up at him as he stands in front of him on the swing.

“I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? Sorr-”

“No! It’s cute,” Kai confesses but regrets it soon after. He watches the flush wave over Kyungsoo’s face. “Sorry. I-”

“No, it’s okay. Um...but can we be friends?” Kyungsoo finally asks.