A stripe of light fell on Kyungsoo's face from his window, and he couldn't go back to sleep after that. Dragging himself out of bed, he trudged out of his room and into the living room. He saw that Yuwon had somehow rolled off the couch and ended up right under Jongdae's chin, and Jongin was buried under his blanket, asleep. Kyungsoo sighed as he couldn't write off yesterday's events as a crazy dream.

He did his morning routine of brushing his teeth, washing his face, and texting his mom good morning before moving to the kitchen to find something to eat. He moved his school stuff back to his room when he saw it on the table still and started microwave warming a bowl of rice for himself. Halfway into the two minutes, Jongin shuffled into the kitchen, rubbing the back of his head and his eyes.

"Restroom's down the hall, second door on the left."

He nodded and plodded down the hallway. Kyungsoo pulled his bowl out of the microwave and started making one for Jongin. He came back into the kitchen just as the food finished, and Kyungsoo set it on the table for him. He mumbled a thanks and took a seat. Kyungsoo joined him and ate, and never had he had a more silent brunch in his life. Even when he spent his mornings alone, he usually distracted himself from the silence by reading the news on his phone or putting on some morning music. He didn't feel that either of those were appropriate with a guest in front of him and especially not after almost having a mental breakdown in front of said guest.

He wouldn't say that having such a quiet brunch was bad though, and he kinda enjoyed that quiet, but he wondered if he was supposed to do more. Mom had told him that he should always be a good host to any guests he had over. He had the food and general courtesies covered, but he wasn't sure if Jongin wanted to see anything else. Then again, Kyungsoo was the host and could give or not give whatever he wanted. He decided that he would just try his best to host the enigma that was his currently only awake guest.

Finishing his food, Kyungsoo stood just as Jongin did. He had finished too, and Kyungsoo held out a hand for the bowl.

"I'll wash it for you."

"I can wash it."

"Yeah, but you're a guest, so I'll do it."

He plucked it (gently) out of Jongin's hands and moved to the sink, soaping and rinsing the dishware. Jongin came up to his side to watch, and Kyungsoo tried not to let his movements turn robotic as he watched him. Under Jongin's gaze, the self-consciousness drew itself out of Kyungsoo. He couldn't figure out why, but he was pretty sure it had something to do with the way Jongin watched the world.

When he was done, he wiped his hands on the hand towel, playing with the strings of the cloth. He didn't know what to do now. They had to wait for Jongdae to wake up to ask him anything, and he doubted that Jongin had brought his homework with him when he went to the party, so it's not like he could offer to help him with math. Kyungsoo also needed to avoid any and every mention about the questions that he had asked him last night. As Jongin moved to sit back at the table, Kyungsoo put the hand towel back.

"What should I say when your parents come home?" Jongin asked.

"What should you say?"

"As a cover up."

Jongin pointed towards the living room, and then Kyungsoo understood what he meant.

"Mom has weekends overnight this month, so she won't be back until Monday. She won't see them."

"Overnight where?"

"Miyoung Hospital. She's a nurse."

"Oh."

The kitchen settled back into silence. Kyungsoo took a seat at the table again, tracing the patterns in the wood. He didn't talk about his family to anyone aside from Jongdae and Yuwon, and even then the talk was sparse. He was a little surprised that Jongin didn't ask about his dad, but maybe the boy was just being polite. Kyungsoo could appreciate that.

Glancing up at him and looking back down when he saw that he was staring at him, Kyungsoo wondered about Jongin. He wondered what his home life was like, if the leftovers Kyungsoo ate as brunch was different from what he usually ate, if his guardians were okay with him going to parties and staying over at someone's place. He remembered Yuwon's dad and Jongdae's cousin both telling him on separate occasions that they would roast (Yuwon's dad) or skewer (Jongdae's cousin) Yuwon and Jongdae if they ever did so without permission. 

Kyungsoo's finger squeaked against the tabletop. He slipped a little as he stood in a hurry and dashed to his room. He tapped his foot waiting for his phone to turn on and just ended up dashing to the living room. He had Uncle Bae's number but not Min hyung's number because of how briefly they had met—he picked Jongdae up from school once and Kyungsoo had met him then. He sent a text to Uncle Bae that Yuwon had just ended up crashing at his place after they all passed out from watching movies, which was pretty close to the truth. Last night he almost felt like he was in a horror film. Kyungsoo had to pry Jongdae's fingers away from Yuwon's waist to put in the finger recognition for his phone.

He heard the soft step of socks behind him and looked up at Jongin. He flicked his gaze from the phone to Kyungsoo holding Jongdae's thumb and then to Kyungsoo, a question in his eyes.

"I have to send a text to his cousin before he's skewered for not going home last night."

Jongin nodded then and moved to sit on the floor where he had slept, unfolding his jacket-pillow. Kyungsoo unlocked the phone and saw that someone had texted Jongdae. He couldn't read the language of the contact's name, which Kyungsoo thought odd. Jongdae only knew their country's home language, and the letters of the contact used one of the pinyins of Chinese. The number of messages though, blared a horrid number of forty-nine. Kyungsoo was pretty sure that this contact belonged to Min hyung from that amount of texts. Tapping on the contact, Kyungsoo felt his face scrunch as he read the message times. Jongdae had gotten thirty-four from between eleven to midnight and another fifteen from one to two in the morning. His cousin had been sharpening the wood sticks to skewer Jongdae with since last night.

Kyungsoo couldn't read most of the texts since they were still in the pinyin system, though he found it strange that the messages sent in the pinyin still. Wouldn't they have changed into the Chinese characters? Looking back at the message times, he didn't remember if Jongdae had a curfew, but he couldn't ponder the other reasons his cousin could have been mad since last night because another message popped onto the screen. This one Kyungsoo could read though.

Kyungsoo blinked at the message, then reread it a couple times. When he had met Min hyung, he had frozen up at how his gaze seemed to analyze him on the spot. After Jongdae called out to Kyungsoo, saw his cousin, and introduced them, Min hyung's grinned at him and asked if Kyungsoo had been the famous Kyungsoo who basically babysat his cousin. He had a friendly demeanor, a bit of cheekbone like Jongdae, and the same sense of strange curiosity. In the brief moment he had met him, he asked if Kyungsoo had ever thought about the idea of convergent evolution for the human race on an entirely different planet, and Jongdae had quickly shoved his cousin towards his car before shouting to Kyungsoo that he would text him later.

He couldn't imagine that the playful Min hyung he had met then could send his cousin a terrifyingly threatening text. Or curse. He also wondered if the Yifan he mentioned was Head Janitor Wu from school, but that was only because he had read Head Janitor Wu's nametag and he was the only Yifan he knew of. 

Staring at the text, Kyungsoo tried thinking of how to reply to Min hyung as Jongdae. Min hyung somehow knew that he had drank, but Kyungsoo didn't know what Min hyung meant by 'showoff of a ruwaugo .' He also didn't know what van Min hyung meant. He hadn't said where Jongdae was, but maybe he just guessed that he would be at Kyungsoo's. But then how would he or this Yifan person know where he lived?

There was a groan, and Kyungsoo looked down at Jongdae opening and squinting his eyes before they ballooned up at the sight of Yuwon. He sprung away from her, banged his head against the coffee table, and rolled back around with another groan.

"Now you have a sense of personal space?" Kyungsoo asked.

His friend whipped around to him, looked around the living room, looked at Yuwon, landed his gaze on Jongin, and turned back to Kyungsoo.

"Uh, what happened last night?"

"First, tell me what you remember."

Jongdae rubbed his temple for a bit, squinting at the floor.

"We got there, we met up with Jongin, I played a board game and kept losing so I had to drink, and then..."

He glanced at Kyungsoo before glancing down at Yuwon still sleeping. He rubbed his chest where her nose had been and covered his face, letting out a squeal. Kyungsoo might have been able to give him a stern bro-to-bro talk about consent of physical contact and then a teasing nudge if he had said something different.

"I was hugging Yuwon a lot."

A jumble of emotions hit him at once, but Kyungsoo recognized disappointment first. It slid down his chest harmlessly until it sagged on his heart, weighing against him. Relief fanned the disappointment up, trying. Then uncertainty  tightened everything as it wrapped around him. Seeing Jongdae reaction from last night's event, Kyungsoo couldn't. All the questions he had locked in his throat.

"Enjoy it while it lasts then, because she's going to kill you later."

Kyungsoo stood and turned for the kitchen. He just needed a moment to fix his feelings so that nothing seemed wrong. He had one step in when someone yanked on his hand. He slipped backwards but didn't crash entirely against the wood floor. Instead, he felt warmth as he landed onto something. He peeped open an eye that had shut out of instinct and froze as he realized what kind of position he was in.

He leaned against Jongin's right side, his head resting on his shoulder, his body cradled in his lap. Greatest common factor—his was seated on Jongin's thigh. He didn't know if the heat flushing through him was because of embarrassment or indignation, but the fact that Jongin just looked at him without any sense of shame or emotion or even a slight blush (wait—it might have been worse if he did) after causing him to literally fall into such a misinterpretable position made Kyungsoo lean towards the side of indignation.

Kyungsoo tried to roll off of him, but Jongin tugged him back into place. He shuddered and would have squirmed away if he hadn't already realized that his goddamn was on his tutee's goddamn thigh.

"What?" Kyungsoo snapped.

"Can you give me your phone?"

"Hey, did Yuwon say anything about me last— Oh my."

"For radians' sake, just ask instead of yanking people."

Kyungsoo shoved his phone to him and scrambled off, bumping his knee into the floor. He in a deep breath to calm himself. The jitters in his hands and the shaking in his legs and the blood rushing to his face was due to exasperation and indignation Kyungsoo told himself. He had never been subjected to that kind of treatment from his friends or the people who gossiped about him. Kim Jongin must had been in a class of his own.

Taking another breath to calm what most certainly had to be irritation, Kyungsoo realized that he just gave his phone to Jongin. He turned around to ask why Jongin wanted his phone when he saw Jongdae holding his phone, watching the video playing across its screen. Kyungsoo held his breath, frozen. Jongdae hit pause after a while, staring down at the screen. Panic, hurt, then confusion crossed his face. He sighed and when he looked up at him, Kyungsoo flinched at the conflict flickering through his eyes.

"You were in the video for most of it, so that means you weren't the one recording."

Kyungsoo shook his head, and Jongdae gave another sigh, looking over at Yuwon.

"Let's talk in the kitchen."

He stood and left the living room. Jongin followed after him, glancing back at Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo didn't follow right away because he wondered why Jongin showed Jongdae the video. For an instant, the thought of Jongin knowing the disappointment Kyungsoo had felt when Jongdae didn't remember flitted through his mind.

He quickly shook his head at it and pulled the blanket up Yuwon's shoulders. Jongin was probably just curious about Jongdae. In the kitchen, Jongdae and Jongin sat at the table. Kyungsoo joined them, watching Jongdae rub the tip of his nose. After two uncomfortable minutes, Jongin looked up from the tabletop and straight at Jongdae.

"So? Why can you move the landscape like a greek god?"

"I'm not a god."

"So what are you?"

Kyungsoo normally didn't result to violence, but from how Jongdae cringed at Jongin's words, he couldn't help but turn and flick Jongin on the arm. His eyebrows twitched in irritation at him, but Kyungsoo turned back to Jongdae.

"Just tell me if it's something I need to worry about, Jongdae. Then I won't ask anymore."

His friend looked at him, searching his face. Something like disbelief shaded over his expression, and fear trickled into Kyungsoo.

"Why didn't you say something first?"

"If you didn't tell me after all this time, then maybe you didn't want me to know. I could've pretended that I didn't know and just delete the video."

Jongdae frowned and looked away, and Kyungsoo panicked that he had said something wrong.

"It's not that I didn't want to tell you or Yuwon, but I wasn't allowed to. But I guess I also thought that it would be better if I didn't. But I should've known that you didn't deserve to be kept in the dark. You're too good to me."

That last sentence struck Kyungsoo, but he didn't have time to think about it as Jongdae took a deep breath. He pulled his arms around himself on the tabletop, fidgeting with the fur of his vest.

"Do you guys believe in aliens?"

Kyungsoo knew that the explanation had to be something huge, something beyond his comprehension, something wildly impossible but demanded his full attention and acknowledgement. And his best friend opened with the question of aliens.

"Jongdae, I was having a serious moment with you here."

"I am serious! Humans always talk about aliens in their movies and culture, but a lot of people don't believe they exist."

"There's also faeries, witches, and other supernatural and magical things that people made up and put in TV, but to answer your question, I do."

"You do?"

"The universe is so vast that other life is bound to be out there, but that's just my personal opinion."

Jongdae grinned at him, and for a moment, Kyungsoo thought that they were just having one of their usual conversations they had while walking home from school.

"Well, you're right, because I'm an alien!"

Kyungsoo had no other reaction than to look at his best friend with his best 'this is by far the worst joke you have ever made' look. Jongin just straight-up got up from the table.

"Wait! It's true! Well, to me, you guys are the aliens, but that's not the point. I wasn't born on Earth."

"Like hell you weren't," Jongin said, but he sat back down at the table.

"I really wasn't. I have my driver's license and tax returns with my address from my planet under my bed to prove it."

"If you weren't born on Earth, where were you born?"

"We call our planet 'Wumyexing.'"

"Womb-eh-shing?" Jongin echoed.

"Woom-yeh-ssing. It roughly translates to 'the fluttering planet."

"Why would you name your planet that?"

"'Cause our planet vibrates every so often, like your earthquakes. Hey, at least we didn't name our planet after a ball of dirt."

"Soil," Kyungsoo corrected. As a gardening enthusiast, he couldn't let that slide, and Jongdae rolled his eyes playfully.

"You and your gardening."

"Okay, so you're not from Earth. Why can you lift things from the ground without touching them?" Jongin said.

"I'm a qiao'uyi, and everyone back home has what humans consider like superpowers. Most people can control certain carbon polymers, and some people can control certain hydrogen polymers, and still some others have an entirely different power. I have all three."

He lifted his nose and put his hands on his hips, and Kyungsoo could only chuckle at how proud he looked.

"So you're a special idiot. Good to know."

"Hey, I'll have you know that to come to Earth, you have to pass a bunch of tests over human culture and history, human society, and controlling your powers, and I got the highest test scores the academy has seen in ten years."

"Did the test on controlling your powers have a drunk portion?"

"No..."

"Then you fail in my eyes."

Jongdae took Kyungsoo's arm and shook it with a pout, and Kyungsoo sputtered a laugh at his friend's childish antics.

"I'm really good at controlling my powers, Kyungsoooo. Believe meee."

"Yeah, uh huh. Wait, what's the 'entirely different power' you said that you have?"

"I can control lightning."

"Holy ." 

That explained the dark clouds and lightning flashing above them when they were at the garden pond. Jongdae lifted his nose again.

"Now you see that I'm special even among the special idiots. Oh wait."

"Yes, I see that," Kyungsoo laughed. 

"Jongdae," Jongin said. "Do you remember what happened last night?"

His smile faded, then he sighed and nodded.

"It's still being tested, but alcohol doesn't seem to affect us as much. With the amount I drank, a regular human probably would have out after the first thirty minutes. It does make our emotions even more... active though."

He turned to Kyungsoo, twiddling with his fingers.

"I'm sorry for making you handle that guy while I was drunk and angry, and for making you take me back to your house, and for trying to pretend that I didn't remember. I do remember, and I'm sorry that I almost let you handle something by yourself again."

"Jongdae, it's fine. I know that this is big to you. I wouldn't force you."

He dropped his hands and shouted to the air, making Kyungsoo jump. He stood from his chair, stomped the step needed to stand at Kyungsoo's chair, heaved him up, and shook him by the shoulders.

"Stop being so nice to meee."

"Stop shaking me before I clobber you," Kyungsoo said, though his threat was much less threatening with the wobbles in his voice from being shaken.

Jongdae stopped but kept his hands on Kyungsoo's arms, pouting.

"You always do this. You always say it's fine and that you're fine when you could really be bothered by it."

"I do not. I am fine."

"You were worried, weren't you? Why I didn't tell you even though you're my best friend, if I would get in trouble, how you were going to keep it a secret whether I remembered or not, you were worried about all of those, right?"

Kyungsoo looked away. Had he always been so transparent? He thought that he had hid his emotions well enough. Then he recalled what Jongdae had said, and panic rose within him.

"You said 'again.' When was the first time?"

"Like when you covered for me after I accidentally broke the basketballs because I really wanted to be on the team, or when you cut school to drive Yuwon to see her grandma, or when I broke that man's arm for shoving you out of the line last summer. Yuwon and I sometimes feel like you take all the fault and then keep your worries to yourself."

Kyungsoo inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. They hadn't found out about the rumors the school whispered about him. What Jongdae said bordered on the line of revealing those whispers and confessing how wretched he sometimes felt. But if Jongdae didn't know the exact cause, then Kyungsoo could admit to him a few things.

"You're my friends. It's natural that I cover for and worry about you two."

Jongdae's pout sank down his face a little more.

"But you don't worry about yourself?"

Kyungsoo wiggled out of his hold and moved to grab a cup, filling it with water, buying time to think of his reply.

"That's just for me to deal with."

Above the rim of his cup, he cast a brief glance to Jongdae and Jongin. Jongdae was frowning, sadness in his eyes. Jongin still sat in his seat, staring at the space in front of him, his arms crossed, but his eyes narrowed, his jaw tight. Kyungsoo started washing the cup when he finished the water.

"Kyungsoo—"

Jongdae stopped as a ding sounded. Kyungsoo dried his hands and took his phone, thankful for the distraction. Tapping it awake, he checked the message and paused when no number displayed itself. Confusion and the beginnings of alarm shook within him when he read the text.

"Jongdae, does the government know about what you are?"

"Sorta. There's a special department. Why?"

"Will they do bad things if they find out?"

He showed him his phone, and Jongdae tilted his head at it.

"It doesn't say the number either."

"I think Min hyung also sent you a text about a black van."

"Min hyung?"

Just as Jongdae reached for his own phone at the table, Kyungsoo froze as something breathed on the back of his neck.

"Please pardon me."

An arm wrapped over his waist, and a cloth covered his eyes. He was propelled forward, his feet leaving the ground, and almost crashed headfirst into something, which he quickly realized was a someone when Jongin grunted. His face smooshed into something hard, and someone was clinging onto his shoulders, and he couldn't even struggle because his hands were trapped between him and another body who he assumed was Jongin.

He heard Jongdae shout in shock before he felt the motion of zipping through the air. The next thing he knew, he was thrown against something hard, smashing the back of his head into it, and someone landed on top of him, driving the breath from him. He coughed and groaned at the pain at the back of his head and as the someone on top of him clutched at his shoulders harder. 

A car door shut, and Kyungsoo feared the worst as he heard someone climb into the front seat.

"Please remain lying down. I believe that someone dangerous is around."

Before he could flip whoever was on him off and leap forward to strangle that person for saying something so ironic after he was just nabbed and tossed into the back of a car, Kyungsoo registered that voice, deep and curt, and he actually could not comprehend.

"Head Janitor Wu?"

The car and started driving.

"Hello, Kyungsoo."

"What the fuc—"

He remembered last second that Head Janitor Wu was an adult whom he respected and changed his words.

"What the function are you doing here? Wait, are you kidnapping us?"

"I'm a bit offended that you would think of me as a kidnapper, but I see why you would think that," the head janitor chuckled. "Someone was hovering around your house, and they looked dangerous, so I had to get you three into the car quickly."

"Wait, who are you? Head Janitor?" Jongdae asked. He sounded further away, like from the other end of the car seat. Kyungsoo also felt his friend squirm against his legs as he asked the question. Didn't that mea