__

Minhyun balances along the edge of the pavement, his arms spread in the air with his tongue sticking out. School ended for him thirty minutes ago and Jongdae had come and collected him, the taller man walking behind him, carrying the child’s red backpack.

“Minhyun, stay away from the pavement. That’s dangerous,” Jongdae hissed a little, picking the child by the arms and hoisting him away. Minhyun pouts and blew the older man a very obvious raspberry.

“Dae-dae is not fun,” Minhyun murmurs under his breath, before holding his hand to his mouth to his thumb. Jongdae simply rolls his eyes behind his glasses.

“Better not fun than falling, Minhyun. It’s for your own benefit,” Jongdae cluck his tongue. They take a turn around the corner and Jongdae stops to a supermarket, deciding to grab a few snacks since he knew his own cooking was terrible.

“We’re having burgers for dinner,” Jongdae stops at the freezer aisle, picking up two packs of ready-meals, before mulling it over and picking up another one just in case Baekhyun stops by, and he knows that the latter didn’t really have time to make meals since his schedule was busy. Jongdae turns around to find Minhyun eyeing the confectionery station with this childish, longing look.

“You want some sweeties?” Jongdae nudged him. Minhyun looks up with the biggest pair of eyes.

“I can?”

“Pick one.”

Minhyun squeals and stumbled over his own shoes over to the rack full of colorful packaging, each one filled with sugary goodness. Minhyun cocked his head, looking as if this was a decision that would completely alter his life, before he went on his tip-toes and picked up a single lollipop.

Minhyun joins Jongdae on the check-out counter, paying for the packaged meals, and the bespectacled man had picked up a newspaper, too. Minhyun hopped up and places his lollipop carefully on the conveyor belt, watching it travel with his nose sliding against the surface as he followed it to the scanner, happily snatching it from the check-out once the scanner beeped.

“You like lollipops?” Jongdae laughs, paying for the items before they left. Minhyun shook his head and Jongdae frowns.

“Nope.”

“So why did you pick it up if you don’t like it?”

“Daddy doesn’t have enough money to buy lollipops. I never had one so I don’t know,” Minhyun answers primly, unwrapping the pink sweet. Jongdae looks at him sympathetically and ruffles his hair.

“Poor thing.”

“It’s okay. Daddy tries his best to take care of me and he gives me enough food and loves me and I think that’s enough and lollipops aren’t important,” Minhyun nods his head with his eyes full of dignity, his chest puffed out with fondness and pride as he spoke of his father. Jongdae looks at this child, who recognizes things that other children couldn’t—it was so easy to see why Baekhyun would be so hysterical to let go of him, even if—

Minhyun gave the lollipop a single, tentatively , before he brightened up and shoved the lollipop in his mouth.

“I like it,” he says immediately.

__

Jongdae sat in front of his laptop, typing away at his thesis, the pixels reflecting on his glasses. Minhyun sat comfortably on the bed, munching on a bun, the rest of the burger separated and abandoned on a plate. He had been playing with Jongdae’s figurines ever since they’ve came home, Thor and Sherlock Holmes currently riding on the yellow digger and trekking through a Hot Wheels track. Minhyun eventually grew bored and he hobbles to the spare seat next to Jongdae, peering at the bright screen.

“What’s that you’re typing?” Minhyun looks at the letters appearing on the monitor.

“A thesis.”

“Thee-sees.”

“A very long piece of writing. It’s for my PhD,” Jongdae elaborates. Minhyun simply cocked his head more curiously.

“Phb?”

“P-H-D. Doctor of Philosophy.”

Minhyun seems to think about it a little, before he frowns and shook his head.

“But that sounds wrong. The letters are all on the wrong places.”

“Well—it stands for Philosophiae Doctor, probably Latin or something. But we like things the easier way and we say Doctor of Philosophy. And in order to get that you have to write a lot of things.”

“And… what do you have to write, Dae-dae?”

“How when a robot resembles and functions like an autonomous organism, a human being doesn’t think it’s talking to a robot anymore because the brain thinks the robot is capable of social communication—err—basically, if you talk to a robot, you don’t really consider it’s a robot anymore because it can talk.”

The little boy his thumb fervently, trying to make sense of all the big words in his head, before he finally puts the pieces into one picture and he sighs, shaking his head.

“That’s weird. Why talk to robots when you can talk to other people with real feelings and real faces and real eyes and real noses? Dae-dae’s pee-eich-dee thee-sees is so boring,” Minhyun grumbles dramatically, with a rudeness of a child. He skittered out of the room before Jongdae could scold him, his tiny body disappearing through the door.

Jongdae sighs and took off his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Minhyun was just exactly like his father in his college days—too honest and too critical. The fact that Minhyun was a child makes it worse, too. Jongdae chuckles at his reminiscence of his longtime friend; Baekhyun, with his numerous piercings and that ridiculous pink hair… he looks so different back then.

Deciding to take a break, Jongdae yawns and saved his file, before he leans back and the chair creaks. He picks up the newspaper he bought at the supermarket and threw a careless glance at the cover before he peeled off the pages and read it, scratching at the corner of his eye.

Minhyun came back with a half-peeled banana enclosed in his tiny hand, on the process of munching the soft fruit. He takes his seat next to Jongdae, looking at the front cover, his beady eyes poring over it observantly.

“Ooh, look, it’s daddy.” Minhyun whooped, nudging at the front cover with the tip of his half-bitten banana. “Who is he holding hands with, Dae-dae?”

“You what?” Jongdae says lazily, turning over the page so he could look at the front cover again. He hadn’t really paid attention to the front cover, so he looks at it with unexpectant eyes—before he chokes and rubbed his eyes, wide-eyed at the big feature spread across the thin grey paper.

Baekhyun is clearly recognizable, wearing his suit that he’d donned a few days ago. Jongdae averts his eyes to the hand his friend was holding, following the line of the arm until it leads his sight to a man that had borne his bane existence to Jongdae’s memory.

Park Chanyeol.

“Is that his cousin?” Minhyun spoke with his mouth full of mush. Jongdae stared at both faces imprinted on the cover until it blurred to dots of pink and blue and yellow, his mouth opening and closing.

“.” Jongdae whispered.

“Oh no, you’ve said a very bad word. Naughty Dae-dae.” Minhyun gasps, pushing the banana onto Jongdae’s cheek until the fruit squashes. But Jongdae didn’t really give a piece of mind about the sticky substance that he has to clean off from his face—it was the fact that, after a devastating seven years, Baekhyun was once more willing to play with fire.

__

“This place looks even grimmer at night,” the man called Chanyeol says, standing near the space where Baekhyun had parked his borrowed car from Jongdae. Chanyeol his head and pocketed his hands, “Are you sure you don’t want a lift home?”

“No. Absolutely sure.” Baekhyun grumbled, his fingers tightening on a plastic bag, before he gr