For two weeks it felt like Jaeha had stopped living. She didn’t talk to her dad nor Youngjae, didn’t answer any of her father’s text messages or phone calls and she strictly refused to go out and see her friends. She just went to the university and went back home to lock herself up in her bedroom as soon as she was done with classes.

Of course Jaebum was the most worried about her, he hated seeing her in such a state. He became twice as worried when watermelon ice-cream was not enough to convince her to go out with him for a short while. He faced a wall, strong and stubborn, but also hurt and heart-broken, and as a father it pained him to see Jaeha like this.

But it all suddenly changed on Friday night, when she came back from the university. Instead of her expressionless face she displayed a concerned look, with furrowed brows. She let her bag in the living room, next to the sofa, and reached the kitchen to grab a can of coke, which she had not done in days. Youngjae and Jaebum, who were in the living room watching TV and talking about babies’ names, turned silent for a while and watched her do with bewilderment.

She emptied the can in a few swallows which had her wincing and then she came to them.

“I have something to say,” she said, looking at the two of them.

“Y-Yeah? What is it?” Jaebum asked, feeling somehow slightly concerned.

“Our school is organizing a basketball match against the team of Seoul National University in three weeks. It’s a charity match, spectators can come and give for example food or you know, goods families in need need, and it will all be gifted to charities under the name of the winning school.”

“That’s a really good idea,” Youngjae immediately said and Jaebum confirmed it by nodding vigorously.

“Yeah, it is, but they want me to play.”

She sighed and sat on the nearest armchair.

“I don’t think I can do it.”

“Of course you can, you’re a good player,” her dad explained calmly with a smile. “And it’s not about winning a competition, it’s for charity. You should play with a light heart and not think about the competitive aspect since it’s not the aim of this match.”

“Yeah I know but the real thing is that… they’ve asked me if I could ask appa to come and be among the spectators. And they want me to ask him if he could even perhaps do a bit of publicity for the event…”

“Oh...”

She looked up at him and sighed.

“He won’t come, will he?”

“You should ask him,” Youngjae said with a bright smile. “I mean it’s also a great opportunity for him, he could come and see you play!”

“But I’m scared he is going to feel like I’m using him and that I don’t want him here in reality...”

“Is that the case? Do you want him to not come?”

“No it’s not that, I don’t mind if he comes really. Of course you can come too, if you want. I also want to invite you-”

“We’re coming!” Youngjae said excitedly. “Of course we’re coming!”

Jaeha smiled lightly, the first smile in days.

“Great, okay, thank you then… at least you will be here so I can play… I’ll buy your tickets tomorrow then…”

“And now you’re going to call your father and ask him to come to,” Jaebum completed her sentence.

She cutely scrunched her nose and to force her, Jaebum grabbed his own phone. He found Jinyoung’s number in his contact list and called him before handing their daughter the phone. She took it and nervously waited for her father to answer. Without surprise, he picked up almost immediately.

“Hello?”

“Appa, it’s me, Jaeha.”

There was a short moment of silence.

“Jae? Why are you calling with your dad’s phone? Is everything alright? Did something happen with your phone?”

“No everything is fine-”

“Really?” he continued. “How are you doing? Your dad told me about you and Yugyeom, I was really worried Jae, I-”

“Appa, it’s fine. I’m fine,” she assured. “I don’t want to talk about it, okay? I’ve got something to ask you.”

“Of course, you can ask.”

She threw a glance at her dad and he nodded, telling her that way to go ahead and speak. She gathered her courage and explained him the situation. At first she didn’t ask him if he’d accept to do some publicity, she just asked him if he could come and see her play the charity match. He didn’t even check his schedule to see if he already had something planed, he immediately accepted.

“Of course I’ll be there! Can Mark come too?”

“Yes of course.”

Youngjae was invited so she couldn’t not invite Mark. Actually, she was now thinking about asking him for a few training sessions so that she could at least be of any use during the match.

“That’s great. Thank you very much, Jaeha.”

“And appa… there’s something else.”

“Mh?”

“You don’t have to say yes, alright? It’s fine if you don’t want to do it. I won’t get mad or anything, don’t worry-”

“What’s going on?” he chuckled.

“The planning team of the event has asked me if you could perhaps, you know, post something on SNS and Instagram saying that there’s a charity match and that it’s going to be fun so that more people could come, you know...”

She nervously bit her lips, expecting a negative answer from him.

“I can do that of course. I don’t even know why I would refuse.”

“Thank you,” she sighed, feeling really relieved.

“Just send me the information when you have them and I’ll ask Mark to do the post for me so that I don’t make any mistake, I’m still bad with social medias and all.”

“Alright, I’ll send that to you as soon as I know more.”

“What about the tickets?”

“I’ll deal with it, don’t worry,” she was suddenly smiling brightly.

Now that she had a positive answer, she was more relaxed and she answered some of his questions as long as it didn’t concern her break-up. They talked about her classes and the fact that exams were coming soon, in four weeks exactly. Jaeha was not really worried about it, she was quite confident, but she assured her father she was going to work hard to have the best grades as possible, and since he had her over the phone, he wondered about her schedule for her holidays.

“I don’t have anything planned yet,” she admitted, thinking about it in the meantime. “I guess I’ll think about it in details when I’m done with school, then I won’t have anything to think about other than what to do with my spare time.”

“You could come here, you know,” Jinyoung offered. “I’ll be here all summer, just so you know. So you’re more than welcome to come when you want it.”

“Alright, I’ll think about it appa.”

Then they quickly exchanged greetings, with her promising she would call him soon, and she hung up.

“See, it was not that hard,” Jaebum gently mocked her.

She tsked and gave him his phone back before going to her bedroom with her stuff to call someone from the planning team to tell them about the great news.

*

It took another week before Jinyoung was allowed by his daughter to post something related to the event. During the week the box office was closed to the public so that people from both schools could have tickets for themselves, their families and friends first. Yet, there was quite a lot of tickets remaining for spectators.

The box office opened officially on Sunday evening, Jaeha sent a text to her dad saying he could finally post about the event, and on Tuesday, when she arrived on the campus, Jihoon, the head of the planning team, rushed to her.

“It’s all sold out,” he smiled, looking very excited. “We sold all the tickets in one day!”

He told her to thank her father, to which she answered he could thank him in person during the match since he was coming. Jihoon blushed and said he would be too shy to do so and left when she starting to gently make fun of him.

Jaeha was glad her father was coming but she knew in the eyes of the others people he wouldn’t be her dad, he would be the famous actor and it was kind of scary. There was going to be a huge crowd, people may want to take pictures with him or have an autograph, maybe there was going to be paparazzi and reporters coming just for him and not for the event itself. She was scared at some point the situation would degenerate and create a big issue.

But she tried to put her worries aside to just focus on the main point here: her dad and her father would both be here with their respective partners to see her play and to support her team. And it was really scary.

It was because first, her dad had never met Mark and her father had never met Youngjae. Second, her two fathers would be gathered for the first time in ten years in the same room for more than an hour, so she really hoped everything was going to go well. Third, she was not sure her father knew about Youngjae’s pregnancy, and she didn’t know why but she feared his reaction. There was no way he couldn’t not see it. Even though Youngjae’s stomach was small for a seventh month of pregnancy (apparently the baby was on the smaller side), it was yet too big to be hidden.

On a brighter side though, Jungkook and Bambam were also coming to see her play. When Jungkook first told her they had bought tickets, she had panicked because it meant Bambam would finally met her father and he would certainly fanboyed over him and get really annoying, but Jungkook had promised her he would keep their loud friend in check, so she was not too worry about this.

Needless to say, she was not really approaching this match with a light heart and mind. It was just really fortunate this match was about charity and their actual play didn’t really matter. She really hoped the friendly atmosphere was going to help her unwind.

Hello guys! How are you doing?

Here's another chapter and I must say I was really excited to write it :D I've already got the second part written, so it should be out before December I hope!

Mark/Jinyoung and Jaebum/Youngjae are finally meeting, Bambam will be finally meeting Jinyoung, so this chapter is kind of a big deal! I really hope you'll enjoy it!

Thank you for all the comments, subs and upvotes!

Until next time, take care of you :)

xx

Mae