Day 5 - 7 AM

Daniel wished that he could just have a good night sleep after the whole mess of yesterday and wake up refreshed at 10 AM. But his biological clock said, ‘no’ and he found himself blinking out the rust from the corner of his eyes, the display of his bedside table alarm clock telling him that it’s only 7.02 in the morning.

‘Woojin should not wake up until 9,’ he thought, or hoped. Mostly hoped. Because he needed this two hours to set some things straight with Seongwoo.

They didn’t talk at all since last night. Not about anything important, at least. The last thing Daniel remembered was Seongwoo waking him up after he unknowingly dazed off on the sofa, and telling him to sleep in his room. Daniel asked Seongwoo to join him, but he declined. Citing the need to do some last minute edits if they didn’t want Jaehwan to show up on Daniel’s doorstep with a pitchfork.

Well, there’s no going back now.

Daniel then gingerly stepped out from his room, and after seeing Seongwoo slouching off in the dining room, his tussled hair highlighted by the glow of his laptop and a sad shadow of stubble growing along his jaw, Daniel guessed that Seongwoo hasn’t gotten any ounce of sleep at all.

“Still not done yet?” Judging from his reaction, Seongwoo totally didn’t expect Daniel to wake up this early. With one touch on his shoulder, Seongwoo quickly ripped off his earphones and swivelled on the chair, the sound of his backbone cracking caused Daniel to let out a discomforted cringe, “you should rest.”

After knowing that the unexpected presence was just Daniel (and not say, a ghost), Seongwoo let out a long, tired sigh and invited him to take the seat right beside his.

“I’m sorry.” He gave the back of Daniel’s hand some hesitant pats, “I didn’t mean to… snap at you last night.”

“Well, same for me.” Daniel felt like it should be him who apologize for everything that’d happened, for the disastrous day and his failure to take care of Woojin. Even for the simple act of leaving Seongwoo alone while he himself went to sleep. What an unloyal partner.

But they were both tired beyond belief and Daniel had a feeling that unending attempts of trying to apologise will just waste their precious time. More time arguing over who was more at fault means that there would be less time spent sleeping.

“Come,” Daniel stood up and dragged Seongwoo along with him as he made his way back to the bedroom. “Sleep. You’ll thank me for it.”

When he heard Seongwoo’s mouth opening to let out a protest, Daniel essentially slapped his palm over Seongwoo’s prickly chapped lips (Daniel made a mental note to tell Seongwoo that he really should start to hydrate himself more), before he sternly said,

“I will tell Jaehwan off myself if he dares do anything stupid. The kid should learn a thing or two about patience anyway.”

_ _ _ _ _

Day 5 - 10 PM

Seongwoo was off having his first shower of the day after they got Woojin to sleep, or maybe it was his first in two days. From the overpowering scent of his deodorant that clung around the air long after Seongwoo has left the room, Daniel guessed it was the latter.

‘Being a father is hard,’ he sobbed earlier today, eyes red and hair disheveled after clocking in only 2 hours of sleep the day before and after he told Daniel that he was about to do it again today.

“Why can’t you just postpone your youtube videos for a day,” Daniel was sounding pretty tired himself when he couldn’t seem to succeed in finding a place to hide his jar of instant coffee. He was just afraid Seongwoo will have a sudden heart attack from how quick he was guzzling down cups of overly sweetened black coffee. Having to edit his project with Jaehwan alongside his vlogs was clearly taking a toll on him. The baggage under Seongwoo’s eyes were so heavy he would’ve needed to check them in if he was suddenly called for an overseas shoot.

“A promise is a promise.” His barely coherent mumble was cut prematurely by the sound of water running down the shower head and Daniel reluctantly decided to leave him be. If Seongwoo got sick because of this, he’ll be holding Woojin hostage. I’ll release him only if Jinki gave me a full-kneel apology. But Daniel quickly erased that thought from his brain because he couldn’t stand living with that much amount of pettiness.

Daniel was tidying up scrap papers from his earlier arts and crafts session with Woojin, which was more like crayon mayhem and paper tearing competition than art (but nobody was born an instant Leonardo da Vinci, don’t they? Picasso, maybe. Pollock, most probably. Brown on white, brown on white, and yellows), when he heard the satisfying ping sound effect coming out from Seongwoo’s laptop. And suddenly, he was awashed with a strong pull of curiousness.

His new vlog ‘series’ has been running for more than half of its allotted time now, as their fifth day of trying to keep a one year old alive was almost coming to an end, and Seongwoo hasn’t been able to stop babbling to Daniel about it. (“Watch it watch it watch it, they’re my magnum opus.” “Seongwoo you’re only 22.” “Mozart composed his first symphony at age 8.” “But that was not his magnum opus, stupid.”)

Daniel hasn’t watched any of his Woojin’s vlog series. Truthfully, he never actually watched any of Seongwoo’s vlog. Not from start to finish, that is. Daniel found the act of watching one’s own recorded reflection, and listen to the captured sound of one’s voice, to be the most bizarre, dissociative activity he could ever done. And he has tried LSD.

But he was curious for what kind of filler did Seongwoo chuck in to fluff for day 4, not only because he was away for most of the day, but that Daniel didn’t see him with his camcorder anywhere near all the panic and sleep deprivation.

Not seeing the harm of just scanning through the footage and skipping all the part where he could see his face or hear his voice, Daniel settled down at the dining table and gave Seongwoo’s mouse a little nudge.

1:38

That’s odd. Seongwoo never published anything shorter than 5 minutes. ‘That’s just what lazy cop outs do,’ he’d say. So, seeing a final edit of his video that has less than two minutes of run time was well, a blessing for Daniel.

It took him a few seconds after he clicked the play button to notice that the video has already started. The faint piano sound was the only thing that gave it away, as the window was showing nothing but a static pitch black background.

But then he realised, when he saw the hem of his pajama pants as it moved into the path of a sliver of light seeping in from an unknown source, that the video was not just one minute and thirty eight second of darkness and piano music.

It wasn’t just a black background, it was him in his bedroom, sitting down beside Woojin’s little mattress. Nothing more but a faint silhouette outlined by the fuzzy glow of streetlights. A faint silhouette singing a faint lullaby, softly swaying with the rhythm of his song and the slow tides of exhaustion.

The piano was still there when Daniel started his humming, a welcomed transition that held the viewers’ hand while it took them from whatever outside noise was riddling their mind and slowly eased them into the serenity of an almost silence, until they could finally catch his mumbled words a little bit easier.

When the rain falls, slowly on the roof

When the cloud parts, and the dark sky makes you cry

I will hold you, my love

So sleep, sleep my only child

It was a minute and thirty seconds undisturbed shot of him gently overlooking Woojin who was fast asleep, and his hums, lilting out of the speaker.

Just like he didn’t know when it started, Daniel didn’t notice he had been staring at a truly black background until suddenly he sensed that Seongwoo was back with him, sitting at the chair right beside his, hands fiddling at the knees of his sweats because he was too afraid to reach out and potentially scare Daniel out of his wits.

“Are you okay?” Seongwoo finally asked aloud when he saw Daniel breaking out of his stupor.

It only took them one exchange of looks for Seongwoo to know Daniel’s answer to his question.

As usual, Daniel always wanted to have the last words, even when he was practically ugly-sobbing his eyes out in Seongwoo’s arms while the latter was busy trying to find a way to calm him down.

“I hate you so much, you bastard.”

And this is why he tried to avoid watching Seongwoo’s videos as much as he could. Even in days when he felt brave he would still be afraid to watch them. Because sometimes they felt like a choke hold, forcing all of his emotion to bubble at the back of his throat. But then, sometimes, they would gently pick you off your feet and whisk you away with the beauty he somehow unearthed out of the mundaneness of human life (the 1:38 video was definitely in the first category, judging from Daniel’s reaction to it).

In the end, the tinted frames and slight gaussian blur will just make him fall in love with Seongwoo even more than before. And Daniel wasn’t sure if he could handle anymore of that.