Day 4 - 6 AM

Yena called him again that morning. She argued that she was giving him a slack by calling him at five thirty instead of five AM sharp. But Daniel was having none of her absurd reasonings.

“How’s Seongwoo? Is he doing well?” She asked him while brushing her teeth. Daniel contemplated on recording the sound of her gargling to be used in future blackmail attempts, but decided to let out a very disgustingly saccharine attempt at being cute instead. He was feeling a bit mean and Daniel knew Yena hates it when he tries to act cute.

“What about me??? You’re not going to ask if your own little brother is doing well???”

The sound of her dry heaving successfully brought about a smile to start off the day.

“I will call you at 4 AM tomorrow. Watch me.”

Like a fly being enticed by the smell of rotten meat, Seongwoo stumbled out from Daniel’s bedroom right after Yena terminated their call. Seongwoo somehow loves seeing Daniel act cute, even though for most people it was more comparable to mental torture rather than something that would entice a feeling of adoration. Although, the reason behind why he could stomach the massive wave of secondhand embarrassment might not be as romantic as you might think. Seongwoo’s favourite comedy series is Channel 4’s ‘Peep Show’. Cringe comedy is his comfort zone. And Daniel’s cuteness is cringe at its truest sense. No wonder why he loves it so much.

“You’re up early,” Seongwoo muttered out as he plopped himself unceremoniously onto Daniel’s lap.

“Do you really have to sit on top of me? The sofa is literally 80% empty.” Daniel casually reached out for the tv remote before turning on the tv and tuning it to a morning news channel, as if an occasion of the Ong Seongwoo snuggling his face on one's neck was a daily occurrence. Seongwoo, Mr. July on last year’s photography club charity male pinup calendar. Probably the most coveted unavailable bachelor before that first year Park Jihoon kid enrolled to the international relations program last trimester and took that torch away from him.

But yes, it was a daily occurrence. Daniel has woken up to this man’s dragon breath so often the novelty of it has worn thin so long ago.

Although, when he felt a sudden change on Seongwoo’s demeanor, even after everything they’ve seen and done, Daniel has to admit he still felt a little bit overwhelmed. Seongwoo’s mouth originally was just barely grazing against the skin of Daniel’s neck, an innocent gesture at best. But without warning, the innocence was thrown out of the window when Daniel found Seongwoo blatantly kissing that sensitive nook right beside his adam’s apple.

“Not now.” It was only because of sheer power of will alone that Daniel managed to say those words without finding any waverings in his voice, especially when he could feel Seongwoo’s kiss slowly traveling up, lazily tracing along his jaw.

“We have an hour for ourselves?” Seongwoo said it not intended as a question, but as a statement. A hard, indisputable statement. And as if he did intend it to be an answer to Seongwoo’s non-question, the sigh that escaped from Daniel’s lips when Seongwoo nipped on his earlobe was definitely not one of annoyance. “We can do a lot in one hour.”

Unfortunately, Daniel couldn’t argue with that. And so, when Seongwoo gained an upper hand and pushed him down so that his head was resting against the armrest of the sofa, Daniel allowed Seongwoo to have it his way.

They both knew they needed it.

“How long has it been?” Daniel mumbled deep into their kiss, the sensation of his lips rubbing against Seongwoo’s chapped pair sent shivers down his spine.

Daniel didn’t understand why Seongwoo had to push himself away to give his answer, still unsated from their quick make out session that he even picked up his head from the comfy cradle of a throw pillow just so he could follow Seongwoo’s lips a little while longer.

Seongwoo only wanted to see Daniel’s face more clearly, his first for today, now that the fog of sleep had fully lifted from his mind. His gesture of setting aside a stray hair away from Daniel’s face was sweet, but the words that came out from his mouth negated it all,

“Long enough for me to forget how awful your breath smells in the morning.”

Daniel hasn’t even finished his curse ladened sentence, said lovingly, of course, when a dreaded sound of an evil witch’s cackle boomed through the still air. Tainting the pureness of the morning, and leaving Daniel feeling hot, bothered, and mad. where.

“Tell Jaehwan to off.” This time, the curse word wasn’t said lovingly. Daniel doesn’t always understand the kid’s sense of humour, but in which world is it funny to hard wire your wicked witch of the west laughter as someone else’s ringtone (somehow, no matter how hard Seongwoo tried to change the ringtone to Jaehwan’s incoming message back to some sort of normal, default tone, they couldn’t).

Seongwoo was about to do that, before he read the entirety of Jaehwan’s message and suddenly his eyes grew to the size of a saucer.

“I gotta go.”

“Tell him to off!”

“The little managed to get a one day permit to shoot at the national gallery,” Seongwoo half muttered and half wheezed as he dashed around the apartment, doing three things more than his two hands could handle.

Switching his pajama bottoms to jeans, Daniel’s decade old t-shirt to another one of Daniel’s decade old t-shirt, a frantic tooth brushing and a quick splash of water on his face, a snatching of an apple from the fruit basket alongside his bulky backpack and Seongwoo was ready to run out the door.

“I don’t know when, or even if, I’ll go back here tonight,” Seongwoo said while hopping around trying to get his foot to his running shoes, “you know Jaehwan.”

He knew Jaehwan. A perfectionist through and through. (“He wants to be Korean Stanley Kubrick.” “Just tell him to be Korean Kim Jaehwan, I swear to god, that pretentious .”)

“Don’t wait for me. Oh, and! Tell Woojin I love him.” He gave Daniel’s cheek a sloppy peck and the door closed behind him with a bang too loud for the morning’s stillness.

(Not long after, the front door swung open once more and Seongwoo yelled out an I love you too before he was permanently gone for the day.)

Daniel was not given any chance to tell Seongwoo that he was still wearing his purple fuzzy socks.

Well, what can you do.

Thursday, Thursday, Thursday. Four days down, three days to go. It’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay, We’ve done everything so well. We can do this. I can do this.

_ _ _ _ _

Day 4 - 12 AM

The day started off well.

Woojin woke up…

And that’s it. That was the only thing that went well on the beautiful, sunny Thursday.

Woojin woke up at the wrong side of the bed and it has been a nonstop barrage of wails, cries, tantrum throwing, food throwing, toys throwing, basically at this point it was a question of what he hasn’t thrown.

Daniel. Poor Daniel was caught in a cloudy, messy ball of panic that sat so deep within his stomach he no longer could tell whether it was an anxiety induced nausea or a full blown appendicitis.

The kid did fall asleep earlier that evening, probably out of exhaustion of crying a bucketload of tears. But Daniel hasn’t even managed to clean half of the mess Woojin’d made on his living room before he started to hear the now familiar sound coming from his bedroom.

He’d tried everything. Warm milk. Candies. A walk in the park, although that one only lasted for so long, as too many people were giving them the stinky eye and Daniel was too self conscious to trudge on further than a few steps out of his apartment building. Daniel even braved the potential wrath of Yena and called her for some desperate assistance.

It didn’t work. Her voice, her singing, her cooing, nothing worked in their attempts at calming Woojin down.

Even his own mother eventually had to admit defeat.

“I don’t know what’s happening to him Danny, he never acted this way.” Yena, for the first time since she was away, sounded very obviously worried.

“Should I go to the doctor?” Daniel didn’t want to say that. He really was trying to leave that option to the very last because the concept of doctors and this previously healthy baby possibly falling ill because of his mishandling was making his head spin.

“Yes. Yes I think you should,” she sounded like she was fighting back tears, and it only caused the knot in his stomach to curl up even tighter than before, “just to be safe.”

He couldn’t believe he has to also take a moment to have a deep breath before continuing on, “I’ll… call Seongwoo. He can take us to the hospital.” She was already worried for her son, no need to add on to that with a side of a crying sibling.

Daniel knew Yena didn’t want to hang up, but she also knew that he only has one phone and that phone was needed to make further arrangements. So with much unwillingness, she sighed out, “please keep me up to date.” The call was terminated in the middle of the word ‘date’, as in ‘please keep me up to da-,’ and then a sharp tap of nails against plastic. As if forcing herself away from the call was the only method she could’ve done such thing.

Woojin was cradled in his arm, and they were lying down in his bathtub while Daniel was attempting to call Seongwoo. The odd choice of their place to sit came from the fact that his bathroom was the most isolated point in his apartment. After Woojin’s constant crying for the past 2 hours, it was pure magic that nobody had came up and deliver a mad pounding on his door.

And with each calls that were missed, the harder he tapped his legs to the side of the tub out of impatience. It was a never ending cycle of him having to remind himself to calm down, before entering another inescapable room labeled ‘panic’ everytime his call went to Seongwoo’s voicemail.

By the time Seongwoo picked up, seven calls later, Daniel was on the verge of breaking down, joining Woojin on his wailings, most probably.

“Hey, sorry I left my phone outside the editing room. Is everything okay?”

Daniel wanted to say so many things, but the feeling that washed over him when he heard Yena choking on her tears suddenly came back with a vengeance. And to prevent himself from letting go of that tiny ledge of sanity, Daniel could only settle with a very short, very curt, “no.”

“No? What do you mean no? Is Woojin okay?” Seongwoo asked when his ears quickly zoned in on the sound of Woojin’s crying that must’ve been picked up by the receiver.

“I think we have to take him to the hospital. He’s been crying non stop. And I don’t know why he’s being like this.”

If previously he could hear the faint sounds of him walking around Jaehwan’s studio, after Daniel dropped the bomb on him, there was nothing but silence. Not even the sound of his breathing made it through to Daniel’s speaker. And he fully knew what silence means for Seongwoo.

“Why didn’t you call me earlier?” His brand of fury is silence, followed suit with a well calculated question that will leave you bathing in cold sweats.

Faced with that, Daniel had to shut his eyes for a little while to ground himself through all the guilt. And only then he realised that he’d unknowingly chewed a section of his bottom lip raw. They stung, they all stung. “Please don’t do this to me right now.” Please don’t be mad at me right now. I’m so tired.

“You should’ve called me earlier Daniel!”

The sudden raise of Seongwoo’s tone caused him to snap, “I’m sorry, ok?! I didn’t want to disturb you from your movie!” His voice was loud enough to surprise himself, but not loud enough to surprise Woojin, thankfully.

“ the movie.” Seongwoo has never stooped so low in his anger as to yell at Daniel. But that day, Daniel learned that Seongwoo was so far from being a saint because he could hear him screaming at Jaehwan, about how he was going to borrow his car for a day. It was not even said as a question. Just an undisputable statement which was punctuated by a loud slamming of a door. “ it all to hell.”

Taking care of Woojin was never supposed to be a duty of Seongwoo’s. He was only supposed to be there at the present, documenting everything with his tried-and-trusted camcorder. But somehow, he’d found himself becoming much too attached to the kid.

_ _ _ _ _
 

Day 4.5 - 12.30 AM

“You missed me, didn’t you?” Seongwoo was carrying Woojin around the kitchen, rocking him in his arms and bumping his nose against Woojin’s rosy cheeks, “you were upset I didn’t say good morning earlier, didn’t you?”

Daniel, on the other hand, has exchanged the hard surface of his bathtub to the plush surface of his sofa as the place for him to slump out his exhaustion, passively listening to Seongwoo’s mumbles over the loud ringing in his ears. Brought about by the long awaited silence. And peace.

“He wanted Seongwoo.” When he could finally call Yena back, the voice that came out from him was worth nothing more but a tired sigh. As long as Yena could still hear it, Daniel wasn’t planning on raising it any more louder. “He wanted Seongwoo, he’s stopped crying now that Seongwoo’s home.”

Yena also let out a sigh of her own. But for her, it was one of relief. It was followed soon after by a soft, understanding giggle.

“Danny.”

“What.”

“Will you please just go and marry that boy.”

(I need him to be Woojin’s permanent baby sitter.)