IV

"Are you and dad married?" Mei asks Minho after school. It’s a warm, spring afternoon and Minho is holding her hand, swaying it cheerfully, Mei chuckling, happy. Today he has come to collect her alone because Jinwoo couldn’t avoid a meeting with a client – and now that Minho is more available, he is confident about spending time with Mei alone. "They ask in school but I didn't know", she explains, looking at the floor, ashamed, feeling that she should have known it.

"No", is the answer. Simple and easy is telling the truth, Minho thinks while watching his daughter reaction. She looks a bit perplex, the idea sinking to her mind.

"Don't you want to?" She wonders, her head jumbled with what she knows and the revelation Minho has just confessed to her.

"There is nothing I would like more" Minho replies, smiling brighter than the sun that comes to bath them from between the green leaves from the trees, painting the streets in glass-stained colours.

Mei seems lost in thought but when she looks up at him, she is giggling, gleaming.

"Dad doesn't want to marry you because he will marry Mei!" she proclaims, delighted. This time Minho let it slip.

He remembers clearly when he asked Jinwoo.

"I don't need anything special to remind me that I’m willing to belong to you. Everything and everywhere, it's a display of it", Jinwoo kissed away the sadness off his face, held him to his chest. "Also I can't give you my heart, I need it to be alive" he smiled and Minho, too. He was right. Even if his negative broke him, he understood. Jinwoo was committed to him, no need a prove when every day was one, every moment a reminder of his absolute love for him. No grand gestures, no announcements, Jinwoo liked to keep it in between themselves. He wears his love engraved inside his heart like art, he didn’t need a ring when it was all written in the stars of his eyes, the way he beamed at Minho, following him as if he was the axis of his life, the force that kept the stars apart.

Jinwoo was so clearly devoted to him, since the beginning, when he asked him out. His eyes felt always on him, whatever that Minho was doing, Jinwoo loved it. And Minho loved being bather by Jinwoo’s pure adoration towards him, being the one always lingering inside his mind, owning his precious heart – he still feels blessed even after all the years to be Jinwoo’s first choice, the person he loved the most.

Jinwoo isn't home when they arrive. Mei is so excited, she runs to her room and gets changed into a white, lacey dress, very fancy and pretty. She looks like a tiny spring-fairy, with her fair curls falling down her shoulders and her smile wide and glossy.

"I'm going to marry dad!" she announces, bouncing around and Minho doesn't have the heart to split up her fantasies. He can't tell her. Jinwoo will have to – from them, he is the one with his feet on earth, the one strong enough to set boundaries, rules, grounding zones.

She is so happy, there is so much joy gleaming inside her pretty eyes... How can he break down the news on her? That Jinwoo is her dad and, therefore they can't be married - and then Minho will never allow that, even if it was possible. So he lets her fantasize over it, braiding her hair, putting little white flowers on the gaps

When Jinwoo opens the door, Mei jogs to him, twirling with her skirt swirling around her, a halo of white, shimmering, beaming at her dad. She is a blur of revel and exultation, the embodiment of happiness while dancing around Jinwoo, petals falling to the ground.

"Marry me! Marry me dad!" she keeps saying elated, sing-songing. Jinwoo's face contours in surprise and awe. He raises a brow towards Minho, inquiringly: Minho doesn't know what to reply, how to explain this situation; he can’t voice that the reason. Jinwoo is on his own in this - nothing really new when it's about Mei.

Jinwoo kneels down and holds Mei tightly. He, then, very carefully, explains her the reason why they can't get married.

"I'm your father, you can't marry your family," he says, both hands covering her cheeks. He tries to convince her with reassuring words, tries to explain her the reasons – even though she is so small she doesn’t understand it fully, she nods at it, still giggling.

"But you are not my real dad!" she blurts out, smiling brightly. Mei knows well that she is adopted, she still remembers the orphanage, still in touch with the carers there.

“It doesn’t matter, I’m legally your parent,” Jinwoo says and, this time his voice is stern and serious to the point that Mei shudders, worried.

"It is because you don't love me?" she asks in a pout, her bright eyes now filled with stardust tears. "Of course it's not that, hon!" Jinwoo hurries to assure her, he presses her small frame in a hug, his chin rubbing her curls. "Not that at all". Mei sobs, squishing Jinwoo's waist with her chubby arms, salty drops raining on Jinwoo's shirt. He holds her lovingly, hands her neck and back to ease the pain, to halt the crying. Minho can only watch it unfold, in shock: this is not going as he imagined – in his mind Jinwoo just had to tell Mei that they were going to get married soon to end all this drama, all the tears falling down.

“Then, why? You aren’t married and you aren’t my real father...” she notes, still upset, partly opened in disgust.

“I love you, Mei, but it’s a different type of love. You have to love the person you want to marry the right way,” his eyes are focus on her and she breaks from Jinwoo, staring at him back, assimilating what he is explaining. “You love Nayeong, right?” he asks and Mei quickly nods, smiling a bit at the mention of her best friend, “but you also love auntie Danha,” he continues. Mei, again, nods enthusiastically. “But you don’t want to go to school with Danha and you don’t want Nayeong to do your make-up, right? But that doesn’t mean you don’t love them”. Minho is amazed at how good Jinwoo is describing things to Mei, how he carefully elucidates concepts and ideas in an easy way for her to follow, for her to comprehend. “You can love a lot of people, but it’s not always the same type of love,” he continues, pinching Mei’s cheeks. “Do you understand butterfly?” and he rubs his nose against Mei’s in an Eskimo kiss that makes her sniggering, hands clasping against Jinwoo’s neck, heads bouncing, both of them giggling in a bleak of confusion and hair.

“So dad loves me but it’s not the marriage kind of love,” she resumes after the laughter subsides. Jinwoo nods, approvingly, messing with the little braids of her hair. “That means that dad doesn’t love Minho dad that kind of way,” she notices, giggling again, happy that Minho doesn’t have what she can not. She retires to her room with her school bag, ready for her homework of painting in between the lines.

Minho doesn’t look content, Jinwoo can tell. He has been reclosed inside his office, doing work – which is not unusual but he has been trying not to bring work home to spend more time with his family. Jinwoo tries his best to pretend he isn’t aware of the reason behind. He goes to Mei’s room and helps her with her studies – they draw together and Jinwoo reads her a book, takes a bath with her while untangling her terrible knots. He is drying her hair when Minho comes over. He looks dejected, his face the same as an abandoned pet. Jinwoo wants to laugh at his silliness but says nothing.

Minho takes a bath without saying a word and doesn’t come to have dinner, with the excuse that he still has work pending. Reaching this point, Jinwoo wants to smack him for being so childish, but Mei is still awake and he doesn’t want her to see them arguing. She will, one day, hear them fighting, but if Jinwoo can save her from it for a few more years, a few more days, he will do all in his power, even if that means letting Minho get away with his hiss fit, even if that means that he believes he is right and correct when he is clearly not.

It’s not until Jinwoo leaves Mei’s room, closing her door, sure that she is deeply in dreamlands, that he addresses the issue to Minho.

He is still in his office but is, obviously, doing nothing but killing time until bed-time. The laptop is open and shows a video of how to play the violin – something that, luckily, Minho has stopped doing at home.

“Spill the beans, Song Minho,” and Minho hasn’t heard this threatening voice in so long, he shivers, recalling its power, the way last time nearly broke them up – when he did something stupid like lying to him about wasting their saving to start his own business. He had been so stressed, then, so obviously out of character that Jinwoo thought he was having an affair (as if it could ever happen as if someone could come closer to be as wonderful and heart-fluttering as Jinwoo).

He knows that he better tell Jinwoo the truth if he doesn’t want things to escalate if he wants to preserve what they have, all they have built together – if he doesn’t want to lose Jinwoo (and Mei, by extension).

“It’s something Mei said, that you don’t love me enough to marry me,” he says in a husky, low voice, ashamed of Jinwoo’s reaction, ashamed of his own stupidity now that he has voiced it out.

Jinwoo’s hands tremble and his face is a shade of red, the colour of anger. His eyes are a straight line of fire. He sees him exhaling, calming down his temper, trying to relax, trying not to hiss at him.

“Do you really think so, Song Minho?” he spells his full name and it hurt as much as a knife. No love, no pet names, nothing but his blare name. Minho feels vulnerable, feels like crying, like open up – like telling him that he wishes he would marry him though he understands and respects his beliefs, his convictions.

“No, but... It hurts the same,” he explains, tears on the corner of his eyes.

Jinwoo sighs. He comes closer, holds his hands.

“I will marry you,” and his voice alone is so reassuring, soothing away all Minho’s fears, all the torments inside his mind.

"Have you changed your mind?" Minho asks, expectantly. He is so surprised he can barely begin to feel joy creeping from beneath his heart, breaking off until reaching his smile.

"If marrying you means so much to you, yes, of course, I will", Jinwoo says, staring at his soul, piercing it with his love. How could he ever, for a split second, consider that Jinwoo didn’t love him enough? Stupid Minho, he wants to punch himself hard – for hurting Jinwoo, for forcing him to do something he is not comfortable about.

"It's enough that you are willing to. It's enough that you want to do it for me,” he says. He doesn't need Jinwoo to put a ring on his fingers – he already has many, - he doesn’t need to claim him in any way or form, he is just merry that, from all the people, Jinwo stuck with him, chosen him as the one he wanted to share his heart and home.

"You know I would do anything for you, my love," he says, cupping his face with the palms of his hands, his thumbs dancing on his cheeks. Jinwoo has already done everything for Minho. He was there for him when he opened his business, he was the one cheering him, telling him how good his ideas were, how proud of him he was, for his courage to start his own enterprise. He didn’t break things up when he spent his money; instead, he has encouraged him further, helping him set up Paracosm – he was the one coming up with the cool design.

"I will always support you, silly", he had promised him and, like always, he accomplished it. Minho wasn't sure he deserved Jinwoo, he was too good to be true, more than a dream, Jinwoo was his all. He wasn't sure if he would be able to exist without Jinwoo: his pilar, his heart, the song of his heart, the music of his life, the source of his strength and the owner of his unwavering love, his universe, all the seasons of the years he wanted to be with him.

“But it will be good for Mei, not for her but to comply with the legal forms and papers,” Jinwoo notes and this is the less romantic proposition ever but it makes Minho’s heart expand with joy, with expectations nevertheless. Because this is real because Jinwoo is serious, because he has been waiting for it for so long he can’t put a number on it – because he has dreamt a dream of being together, of building a home filled with all that lingers and live between them both.

“So? Are you going to marry me, love?” He doesn’t kneel down, he doesn’t have to. Instead, he kisses him slowly, kisses him sweetly, kisses all the freckles and all his moles, all the skin and all his bones.

“Maybe one day... Just you, me and a judge. We sign the papers and that’s all,” Jinwoo proposes, grinning shyly.

“What about Seunghoon and Seungyoon? Mei? Our parents?” Minho laughs, already winning, already owning the best thing the world has to offer.

“Maybe them, too,” Jinwoo concedes, smiling.

“Maybe we can do it soon,” Minho concludes, “nothing big and nothing fancy, we can order food and have our little celebration home,” he says, Jinwoo encircled in his arms, his lips caressing his hair, drinking in the smell of his perfume.

“Maybe...” and it’s a promise.