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Kim Jongdae was this vivid boy, a complexion of olive skin and a head that sprouted curls that did not tame even as he grew up. Skinny, slightly knock-kneed and never seen without the round glasses that sits on top of his nose, taped together at least a dozen times from the many occasions he glued the spectacles together and split them in half. He was lively, as people say, and his energy comes out in bursts before he’d fall into a nap in the middle of lectures.

He was a funny little man, unexpected in many ways—he spends his time looking up useless facts and memorizing the biggest animals to ever exist on earth, obsessive of all things mechanics, and his favorite pastime was to craft Goldberg machines for entire afternoons. His slight tinge of ADHD made him somewhat incompetent if the lectures were not about mathematics or robotic engineering, and so he usually skipped them if they were not to his interest.

The hour was supposedly a time slot for his minor subject—psychology—but Jongdae had taken fancy to skip it instead, sitting on the mowed grass within the campus grounds, lying down on his belly. He had a screwdriver on one hand and a small android-like robot on the ground, his hands clumsily prising it open, taking it apart one by one. He seems entirely lost in his own little world, not noticing a spectator that had been watching him from nearby.

This particular spectator approaches him until he was directly next to Jongdae, and decides to take a seat next to him. Jongdae, sensing disturbance, looks to the side, pausing a little.

Bubblegum hair, soft-faced, skinny jeans and clothed in dark-blue bomber. He was the big hotshot around college—apparently he’s enrolled in two; one for art and psychology, funded by scholarship by that one big posh academy; and then this dinky community college to catch up on general work, because only barely made it in high school on every other subject. Apart from that, Jongdae’s heard rumours about him being exceedingly clever and good-looking, but Jongdae never considered the option that this particular person would set an eye on him at all.

“What’cha doin’?” he says, his monotone voice tinged with mild interest. Jongdae held up the tiny robot—well, pieces of it—and his attention alleviates back to his previous ministrations, taking apart the shell of the robot.

“Taking it apart,” Jongdae stuck his tongue out in concentration as he tries to pull the plastic covering, “I’m going to replace some parts of the arm so it has more DOF.”

“What?”

“DOF. Degrees of Freedom.”

Jongdae demonstrates and swung his arms around like a windmill, looking a little comical.

“The human shoulder has pitch, yaw and roll—“ he rotates his arm by the shoulder, then flexed his elbow, “—elbow for pitch, and wrists also for pitch, yaw, and roll. So the human arm, excluding the hand and fingers, has about 7 degrees of freedom.”

The pink-haired boy seems to stare at him for a second, and Jongdae looks away sheepishly since he probably sounded weird. He returns to taking apart his robot, before the other suddenly piped up.

“So then the human hand has 27 degrees of freedom,” he says a little blankly, “The wrist actually has six, if you count moving the wrist in all planes of space.”

 Jongdae whips his head around, surprised.

“How’d you know that?”

“Each finger has four. The thumb has five. The wrist has six. We have four fingers to count out the thumb—four times four, four degrees of freedom for four fingers, makes sixteen. Add them all up—sixteen, five, six, that makes twenty-seven.”

Jongdae looked at him rather admirably, open-mouthed.

“You take physics, then?”

“No,” the boy said shortly.

“Then how did you—well, did you know anything about DOF, then?”

“No.”

“Then how did you figure that out if you didn’t know anything about it?” Jongdae said incredulously, his eyebrows almost reaching up to the roots of his curly hair. The boy simply shrugs, seemingly uninterested in asking himself how and why he knew it. Jongdae, remembering the rumors that floated around the boy, frowns and looks back at his robot.

“Hm. I guess you’re one of those people who pick up things easily from what they hear and learn quickly from it by logic,” Jongdae shrugged. He pops off the arm joint from the robot and rummaged through his bag for a new part, the new arm looking identical to the last.

“So… what’re you doing?” Jongdae clears his throat, seeing as the other person didn’t really carry on conversations, “Is it free period, or…?”

“I’m skipping lecture,” the boy said simply. Jongdae scoffs a little.

“Me too,” Jongdae sighed, “They forgot that I’m dyslexic. And I haven’t got the attention to try to read. They gave me textbooks and they expect me to read off of the presentation and take notes like other people do.”

“What do you hope to do in the future?’

“Mmhh, something like—“ Jongdae shrugged, “A PhD. You know, writing a thesis and stuff. But like, they got me in community college because no other colleges would accept me because they have no hope for people who can’t read and write.”

The boy had looked a little dull now, but his eyes seem to spark up curiously.

“I’ll teach you how to read,” he said, scooting a little closer to Jongdae. The latter looks at him, blinking behind his glasses.

“That’d be good,” Jongdae nods a little and attached all the cables to the new arm, fixing it to the ball, “How much?”

“Nothing,” the boy says, “Just be my friend.”

Jongdae looks at him, open-mouthed, before he smiled and nodded. He finishes attaching the arm and placed all the plastic covering back, holding up the robot before he rotates the arm, a mechanical sound whirring as the joint moves.

“My name is Kim Jongdae,” he says, offering the robot’s arm. The boy seems to simper a small smile and shook the robot’s hand, the wind ruffling his pink hair.

“Byun Baekhyun.”

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“No,” the answer is short and simple.

“No?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Chanyeol sighs, pushing his hair back, and Baekhyun hated the fact that he still liked how that hair adorned the taller man’s face. Chanyeol puts his fingers together, pushing against them like a web, and this was usually the beginnings of Chanyeol getting a little pissed. Spoilt child, Baekhyun thought. If he doesn’t get what he wants he becomes the devil.

“We had a deal, and part of that deal is that you don’t see my son and you don’t interact with him. And if we’re going to live in the same place, how are you going to fulfill that part of the deal at all?”

“Seven billion humans live on the same planet and the majority of them don’t see each other for their entire lives,” Chanyeol raises his eyebrow. Baekhyun had this look of Are you ing stupid clearly displayed on his face for his ex-husband to see. The shorter male sighs, already exhausted from this morning’s ordeal, and now he has to deal with this child in a grown man’s body.

“So let me guess,” Baekhyun crossed his arms, “If I persist on my decision to say no, you’ll probably just go ahead and change the contract yourself because you’re a crafty bastard and I end up moving in anyways regardless of my answer. Am I correct?”

There is a small silence before the room resonates with a slow clap from Chanyeol, a look of amusement painted on his face. He gave a grin and he rests the side of his head to his hand.

“No wonder you got into that college.”

“Look. This deal is only for a month. And we’re already in for about a week. What’s the use?”

“Then move in for the rest of the month—what’s wrong with that?” Chanyeol frowns.

“Chanyeol—“ Baekhyun sighed, leaning on the doorway. He opens his mouth, struggling to find the words, his eyebrows raised, “Why—what’s the point of all of this? What’s your end goal of the deal? If you wanted revenge, I don’t see the reason why, because you’ve clearly left me suffering for seven years, and ignored the fact that I was to bring up a child in illness and poverty and you were the first one to propose a divorce. And love is clearly not the reason why you brought up the deal, because if there is a heart in your body at all, you wouldn’t’ve treated me like—like this.”

Chanyeol got up from his seat, approaching the shorter male, stopping just a few inches away from him. Chanyeol raises his hand and touched Baekhyun’s cheek, murmuring and smiling as he feels the warmth of his skin, dragging his fingertips down to the jaw. Chanyeol simply grins and kisses his nose, before he walks through the hallway, brushing the wall with his hand, not answering the question.

Baekhyun takes a sharp breath in and turns around, teeth bared.

“I’ve just had enough of you acting like a spoiled brat,” Baekhyun snapped, “When will you grow up and become a man, Chanyeol?”

“Pack up your stuff, Baekhyunnie, we’re leaving,” Chanyeol sang, clearly ignoring him—or maybe he was feigning ignorance, because when Baekhyun sees his face again, Chanyeol had a look of hurt in his face.

__

Jongdae picked Minhyun up from the school gates, though the boy seems a little more moody than usual. Jongdae greets him with a ruffle of his hair and opens the door of the car, the little boy climbing in, struggling a little before he gets onto his seat. Jongdae gets in shortly after, revving up the car, clicking both of their safety belts before they zoomed off.

“How was school?”

“Ugly,” Minhyun grumbles, “Ugly ugly ugly.”

“Ugly?”

“The grown-ups talk to you like, like, like you’re a baby and they teach you to count from one to twenty, a-and I could count to one thousand and two hundred but when I did they got cross and told me to count to twenty and the class is stupid,” Minhyun pouts crossly, scrunching his face up.

“Well—you’re not like other children, Minhyun. You’re very clever. But you can’t call other children stupid,” Jongdae smiles, chuckling a little. Minhyun simply blew a raspberry and sank back to his seat, arms crossed against his chest, sticking his feet up to the dashboard.

“But the grown-ups are stupid. They put me outside the class because I can count to one thousand and two hundred and they told me to stop it because I might make my friends sad just because I’m very smart and I told the teacher they’re being stupid but then they said they might call Daddy and tell him I’ve been very very bad,” Minhyun grumbles. Then he starts to look a little worried and he sidles his thumb into his mouth to it, chewing on the pad of his finger.

“Dae-dae…”

“Hm?”

“Will Daddy be angry that I called the teacher stupid and I could count to one thousand and two hundred?” Minhyun mumbles, “I don’t ever ever ever care if the teacher gets cross with me but I don’t want Daddy to get cross with me, ever ever ever.”

Jongdae looks at him before he laughed, shaking his head. He rubbed Minhyun’s shoulder with one hand.

“No, why would he be? In fact—he’ll be so proud of you because you’re very clever,” Jongdae smiled, “Your Daddy was very smart, too. He used to be very naughty sometimes and skip his classes but he’s very clever. He’s just like you.”

“I’m just like Daddy!” Minhyun chirruped, giggling, but later he shook his head, “But Daddy always tells me that I’m like you, Dae-dae.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. He says stuff like “You’re just like Jongdae” and gets sad sometimes.”

Jongdae frowns, but nodded in understanding all the same.