Jongin didn’t eat before I dug in, which, for once, was very unlike him to do. He watched as I swivelled the noodles around my chopsticks until they were completely wrapped around it, then stuffed it into my mouth. After a couple seconds, Jongin dug back into his fried rice.

“Thanks for the meal,” I managed around a mouthful of food. “On what occasion, though?”

“For the solid fifty percent you got on your chemistry test,” he said drily.

“Hey, I got over eighty for math—”

“Do you want me to bring up physics?”

I snapped my mouth shut with a groan and took another huge bite of the noodles. “Thanks for the meal,” I said again dutifully, and Jongin gave a satisfied nod at that.

Chapter 35

By the time we had finally gotten to the restaurant, the skies had started getting darker, clouds slowly moving to cover once-blue sky. I didn’t necessarily mind the change of weather, at any rate, but Kai insisted on going faster so we wouldn’t get caught in the rain. The downpour opened just before we got to the restaurant, and both of us ran for the rest of the way. I was even more grateful for the hoodie by the time we got inside, spots of dark color splashed over the fabric.

I was out of breath when he pushed open the door and we headed inside, but the running apparently had no effect on him. I hadn’t had time to look at the outside of the restaurant or even read the name, but the interior was nice, quiet, decorated prettily. I glanced towards Kai, and he raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

I dropped his hand. “Nothing.”

Before I could go on further embarrassing myself, a waiter hurried to the front desk. He nodded politely at both of us as Kai told him his name, mentioned the reservation, and soon after, he was leading us upstairs.

“You got a private room?” I demanded as soon as the waiter left, leaving behind two sets of the menu as I settled down in the chair. Apparently it felt more like a regular outing than a date, because I wasn’t nearly as ruffled as I had felt in the beginning. It couldn’t feel like anything else, really, when everything I had done before with Kai seemed so similar. Of course, there were aspects where I could point out, think about, and send myself back to the loop of confusion and bewilderment, but I preferred not to.

The room wasn’t large, but, like the rest of the restaurant, it was decorated nicely, clean, and the atmosphere was a quiet sort of comfortable. A decorated light hung from the ceiling, dangling low over the table. “How long did you plan this for?”

“How long do you want me to say?”

“Day one,” I joked. “You’re supposed to say, ‘saw you fall asleep in class and instantly I was—’”

I snapped my mouth shut, the words actually catching up. Kai stared for a couple more seconds before he cleared his throat and took one of the menus, avoiding the topic (and my answer) completely as he flipped to the middle of the book. “I suppose you want noodles.”

Face red, I nodded. “Spicy.”

“Yeah,” he echoed. “Uh… there’s sushi. Take your menu and see what side dishes we can order too.”

Ten seconds later, both of us were flipping quietly through the menu. Occasionally, Kai would turn his towards me and point at a dish before continuing, and it wasn’t a couple minutes later that we actually lapsed into a proper conversation.

“You know,” he started. “Jinyoung said you liked me when we were in eleventh grade. So… a year and a half ago already?”

I nearly spat the glass of water out, went with choking it down and lapsing into a fit of coughing before I managed to set the water down, then the menu, and look up at him. Kai continued staring at the book in front of him, though his face had gone slightly pink. “My brother did?” I finally got out. “He lies about everything.”

“Tenth grade, then?”

Briefly, I contemplated throwing my menu at him, decided it wasn’t worth it, and went with sipping my water again. “You’re delusional,” I told Kai, and he laughed slightly before turning back to his food.

The conversation went back to what we were to choose for appetizers, then dessert. By the time we’d gone through the whole menu book, there was a whole list waiting to be cut down, because there was no way we could finish anything.

“Why are you getting so much food?” I asked as he tried finalizing the dishes. “And this stuff isn’t cheap either.”

“I heard girls barely eat anything on first dates.”

I squinted at him. “I eat lunch with you everyday, Kai. And you're like, ordering everything on the menu.”

“Exactly,” he said. “It’s not a problem. And you’re still a stick despite how much you eat, so it’s not a problem anyways.”

“You eat more than me.”

“That’s because I train everyday, so I work it off anyway. You slack even the little amount you do train.”

“You’re a show off.”

Before anything else could be said, there was a knock on the door before the waiter stepped inside again. Kai listed off everything, double-checked it with the man, and then there was silence in the room again. Sometime along the way, drinks were brought, but for the longest time, I sat across from him with my chin propped in my hands, unsure of what else to say, an awkward sort of tension beginning to settle.

Talking with Kai had always been either lighthearted or just… nothing at all. He wasn’t talkative, for all the two and a half years I’d known him, he didn’t exactly initiate conversations either. Given the fact that it was supposed to be a date, I was at a loss of what to say that would make up as smalltalk, especially since he was the one person I’d been friends with all of my highschool life.

Kai broke the silence first. “I didn’t grow up in Seoul, you know.”

I blinked at him, surprised and slightly confused, but then it hit me. He never talked about his childhood, and I didn’t grow up in Seoul was actually the closest I got to hearing about it.

“Where, then?” I asked, slightly hesitant that he’d shut it off again.

“Suncheon. It’s down south and a lot smaller than Seoul.”

His expression was indecipherable. He wasn’t meeting my eyes anymore, but swirled his straw around in the chocolate drink he had gotten. And while Kai wasn’t the sort of person to keep his eyes on the person he was talking to the whole time, I was pretty sure there was a whole other reason he was looking down in such a way. I didn’t reply, unsure of what to say, a nervous sort of anticipation rising.

“I was an only child.” He took a drink from his straw, still not looking at me. “My parents were… pretty normal, except my dad had PTSD from when he went to war when he was in his twenties, and at times, it would get the better of him, or old wounds would start aching again. It wasn’t… it didn’t happen a lot, and my mother knew how to deal with it every time he relapsed. I guess you could say we were a pretty happy family.”

If Kai looked at me right then, he probably would’ve stopped talking. I had to remind myself to snap my mouth shut. He never talked about family. It was a closed topic, a dead end every time it was brought up, but hearing him actually speak about it without being asked—something he hadn’t told anybody, not Kyungsoo, not Baekhyun, not Eunhae’s mother nor any of the Athanatoi—why was he telling me? It was a strangely personal moment, and I felt almost as if I were an intruder, someone who shouldn’t have witnessed what I was seeing and hearing.

As if he were talking to himself, Kai took a deep breath and plowed on. “My powers started showing when I was seven.”

I couldn’t picture it even though I tried. Kai—no, Jongin—seven years old. Was he all grins and laughter like most children his age were, or was he a quieter child, reserved like he was now? A boy with untamed hair that nearly covered his eyes, a loud laugh, scrambling to run off to play with friends, going home with dirty hands that his mother would shove under the sink to rinse, or a boy that liked to read way beyond his age level, the one that asked his parents if they needed extra help, the one that just listened to his friends talk instead of yelling his own ideas? Or maybe he was both.

“And then?” I managed. It came out as a whisper.

He took a deep breath. It quivered—I could hear the shudder, and his knuckles were white around the cup, but he braved on, eyes trained on a spot I couldn’t see. “My dad didn’t understand. He couldn’t. And he couldn’t accept it, either.”

Was it even something I could imagine? We were a happy family. Not only was that something I’d never really experienced, the way things had ended up—how had it started from something completely fine, to turn into whatever it was at this point? “I’m sorry,” I managed, but the worlds felt hollow, lacking the substance they should’ve. There was nothing else I could say.

“There’s nothing to apologize for.” I was pretty sure he’d break the glass if he squeezed it any tighter. “My dad didn’t know what was happening—none of us did, really, but my mom tried to pretend it didn’t happen. She knew, I think, but she tried to reassure him that it was nothing, that it wasn’t real. She tried to tell me to hide it if I could, but she was accepting about it. Maybe she knew that I had no idea what was going on. Maybe she had experience with Athanatoi power before.

“My dad started getting more and more out of control. Two months after my powers started showing, he refused to be in the same room as me. I think…I think it unnerved him, and combined with what he witnessed when he was in the army, it was really a breaking point for him. And I—” His voice broke. “I didn’t know what to do.”

A seven year old child. The age where boys dreamed of being superheroes, perhaps acted it out with friends, find himself to actually have powers, then being shunned and accused and yelled at by a parent for it. He refused to be in the same room as me. The words repeated in my head over and over like a broken record, not quite clicking, but at the same time, resounding a little bit too much. How had he managed?

I could say nothing to support him. Do nothing, really, except listen, watching him, the same boy who’d been told to be a monster by his father, the one who had thrown himself over me to shield me from what was a fatal explosion, the friend that had been there for me for two and a half years.

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