__

“Happy birthday to-o you…”

One-year-old (today!) Minhyun burst into a cackle, giggling as he clapped his hands at the sight of a small slice of cake that Jongdae produced behind his back. Baekhyun grins at his son’s enthusiasm, bringing his son close to the small lit candle before helping him blow it. The two adults cheered when the candle puffs out, Minhyun chortling before snatching the cake with his grubby little starfish hands, crushing it in his fingers into a mush.

“Oh no, naughty boy, you destroyed the cake!” Baekhyun tutted, shaking his head, but he smiles nevertheless. He sets Minhyun down on his lap and tries to clean the cake off of his hands, but Minhyun murmurs angrily and refuses Baekhyun’s hands, teething on the cake as if to claim it for himself.

“Nevermind. You were in for a bath anyways, aren’t you, you little tyke?” Baekhyun chuckles, pinching Minhyun’s cheek. The latter gargled in response, mouth full of carrot cake, his nose covered in cream. Baekhyun sighs and smiled at his friend.

“Thank you. For the cake, I mean. I couldn’t have afforded it myself.”

“Just a cake, don’t fret about it,” Jongdae waves his hand dismissively and smiles. He cuts a slice for Baekhyun and a slice for himself, before later proceeding to open Minhyun’s exactly two presents gifted from the two adults and finishing off with singing nursery rhymes at the end of the evening, filled with Minhyun’s giggly laughter.

Somewhere, in the distance, a man focuses his camera and a snapping sound ensues afterwards.

“Your son’s having his birthday it seems, Mr. Park,” the man mutters to the device in his ear. The device rustles back.

“Thank you, Namjoon.”

“Anything else?”

There’s a pause at the other end. Then Park Chanyeol the Seventh returns with a reply.

“I heard that he’s hunting for jobs again. I’ve set you up a restaurant—if all goes well, you can observe him under your employment. Please inform Hoseok that you two will be on the job. Obviously you won’t tell him that I’m watching him with your eyes.”

“Affirmative,” Namjoon nods. Then, with some consideration, he asks his boss.

“If you don’t mind me asking—why did you start this all of a sudden?”

There’s a murmur at the other end.

“What—do you mean I should’ve done this straight after Baekhyun and I divorced?”

“No, I mean…” Namjoon sighs, “Isn’t it creepy? This is stalker behavior. Your reputation can go up in flames if anyone finds out.”

“Then you won’t let anyone find out, then, would you?”

Namjoon snorts, and it comes out as if he choked on something in his throat.

“I’ll make sure your ex-husband won’t bat an eye,” Namjoon says confidently. The other murmurs and cuts off the line, Namjoon tapping the device before he climbs off of the tree he had been hidden in. The man nudges his nephew at the bottom of the tree, who has been at the lookout, before they both collected their equipment.

“Must be a tough divorce if the boss keeps an eye on his ex,” the nephew tutted wistfully, “Either it’s revenge or Mr. Park still loves this Baekhyun a lot.”

“Well, love can do a lot of stupid things to people,” Namjoon sighs, hoisting his camera equipment on his shoulder, “We’re his henchmen. I got instructions that we’ll be going undercover as his ex’s employers—it’s a whole other level of lovesick.”

“Undercover? So we’re getting new names?” the young boy said excitedly, and Namjoon smacks him lightly on the head, his nephew yelping.

“The name your mother gives you is fine, what’s wrong with Hoseok?”

“Nothing. I just want to try new variations. Maybe like—like Hobi…”

“As you wish,” Namjoon shrugs, before they trotted off into the distance under the streetlights. Hoseok gives a last glance at the lighted window of Jongdae’s house and caught up with his uncle with hurrying footsteps, his bag banging against his jacket-covered back.

“By the way—are you ever going to tell Mr. Park?”

“Tell him what?”

“That—you know…” Hoseok drops his voice into a whisper, just in case Chanyeol had some sort of bugging device to listen in on their conversations, “…the kid’s not his. The kid died, remember? Mr. Park just thinks it’s his child all along. He just reads what we report to him and you didn’t include the bit where you wanted to say that his kid died and Baekhyun adopted his friend’s one…”

Namjoon stretches his lips into a pressed grimace, realizing the heaviness of his nephew’s words. He sighs (once more) and shrugs, scratching his nape, clueless as to what to answer on that one.

“I don’t know. I feel kinda bad so I didn’t put it in the report,” Namjoon said, “Plus, it’s better if he doesn’t know. I feel sorry for this Baekhyun guy, I really do. Mr. Park’s been a real to him, as far as I know. I feel like if he knows that the kid’s not his, he’s going to stop going for his ex-husband. And you know about typical divorces—sometimes what keeps the family together is the kid. And if he finds out the kid’s not his, then…”

“Then he might decide it’s not worth going back?”

“Exactly,” Namjoon nods, “So we’ll stretch it out as long as possible. Let Mr. Park find out himself—hopefully when he’s already fallen in love with the child.”

“Okie-dokie,” Hoseok nods. They walk into a lone parking lot and dumps their equipment on the back of a truck, before getting inside the vehicle. Both of them discarded their black balaclavas they’ve been wearing before and drove off into the distance, their car disappearing into the darkness.

Some years later, they would act out a scene where they are workers of a certain restaurant who’d bargained with Chanyeol to let Baekhyun go—but really, they’ve been human cameras that reported back to its master every evening of Baekhyun’s mood and behavior.

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Baekhyun struggled to breathe.

Over the couple of minutes, he had become so rigid and pale, almost to the point where you could see the veins beneath his skin. It didn’t help that he’d been so fatigued and that the heaviness of the news had reduced him to standing in this slanted way, leaning on one leg completely, almost as if he were to fall sideways. His arms were crossed against his chest, trying to gain some structure in his standing position, but he genuinely looked like a puppet tied up on strings and someone had let him flop in mid-air.

The doctor—whoever he was—pressed his lips thinly.

“The valves in his heart are obstructed by thick tissues, and the valve itself is very small. Usually in children with similar heart conditions simply need some sort of balloon to dilate the valves—but in your child’s case, it’s severe enough to require open-heart surgery. Not only we need to open the valve, but we also need to remove the tissue… and when the results come back, we can also determine if he needs a transannular patch to block the hole. We already have an emergency treatment scheduled for today, and we’ll explain the surgery in further details.”

Baekhyun was silent, struggling to process the information, even if the doctor had dumbed it down to the simplest language.

The doctor lays it all out on the table.

“I’ll be brutally honest with you. There is no optimism in your child’s situation. It’s very, very unlikely that he’ll survive, Mr. Park. The surgery had been left a little too late. Complications may occur and he may not survive this treatment. However, we also offer you the option that you—“

The doctor pauses and his lips. This was never an easy line to say.

“—that you put the child to rest instead.”

Baekhyun blinked.

“To rest?” Baekhyun said dumbly, “To… To rest… a-as in…”

 The image of his burnt, scathed little baby came up in his head—then next to him was his six-year-old child lying motionless on the ground.

Baekhyun made this choked noise, as if something as stuck inside his throat. He tastes bile in his throat and he leans onto the wall, as if he was about to be sick.

Maybe he was going to be sick.

This whole thing is sick after all.

The doctor nodded, his face passive and blank. Baekhyun briefly thought whether if this was a professional look, if the doctor doesn’t really care about his patients at all, because this is only a job and you shouldn’t take i