Disclaimer: I do not own Kai, Baekhyun, or Monggu

“Umma?” three-year-old Jongin say as he stands and waits at the edge of his parents’ bed. When he turns his little head to check the time, the digital clock flashes bright red numbers at him. It is two in the morning, and the previously brilliant and dazzling Jeju sky is pitch black. It is almost darker inside the Kims’ hotel room. “Umma!” Jongin calls out again. He hugs his teddy bear closer and pokes his umma’s buttocks to wake her. 

She groans a little, but at the small sound of her son’s beckoning she forces her eyes to flicker open. Umma turns in the bed to face the young boy. Jongin’s eyes are wide awake, and a puffiness around them suggests that he has spent some time crying in the bed he shared with his younger noona. She sighs and motions for him to join her on the bed.

Jongin doesn’t smile or laugh or hop excitedly on the bed. He remains standing beside her and Umma isn’t sure what is wrong. She is, however, slightly annoyed that her toddler has woken her at this ungodly hour in the night. While they are supposed to be on a relaxing family vacation, no less. 

“Umma,” Jonging says again in a whiny voice. “I wanna go home.”

Umma widens her eyes at the boy and scratches her head.

“Jongin-ah,” she whispers. “Go back to sleep, it’s still dark outside. We’ll go home in one more week, okay?”

Jongin stands his ground and pouts. He even stomps his foot. “I wanna go home!” he yells, and his voice causes his father to stir in his sleep, too. Umma checks on him before turning back to her son. She tries to persuade him to get into their bed, but Jongin refuses firmly. Umma wonders where this rock-hard stubbornness was inherited, and she silently curses her mother-in-law. 

“Shh,” she says quietly. “You ahve to be quiet, baby. Your appa is sleeping.”

“Wake him up, umma!” Jongin whines again, his eyes b up with tears again. She reaches out and grabs her sleeve and gives it a tug. “Let’s go home, Umma,” he says and he immediately bursts out crying. At the sound of his violent sobs, Umma reaches out and scoops young Jongin into her arms and switches on the lights. Appa wakes up at the commotion and almost angrily asks why his son is crying.

Jongin’s noonas awaken, too, and they run into the room complaining about the noise. Umma rocks him back and forth, cooin and asking him to quiet down. But rather than that, Jongin just cries more and more loudly and more violently, begging to go home. Appa pulls on his hair in annoyance.

“Why does he want to go home?” Appa asks. “We’ve been planning this vacation for years. He was having fun at the beach, wasn’t he? Just make him go to sleep!”

“I wanna go home!”

“Quiet, Jongin! Just wait one week, we’ll go home then.”

“No, NOW!” 

Appa’s eyes begin to darken dangerously. From the start, he’d always had a horrible temper, but bothering someone at 2 in the morning is never a good idea for anyone. His cheeks begin to flush in annoyance. “Why?” he asks and Umma asks Jongin the same thing. Jongin wipes his eyes and finds a pause in his crying and hiccuping to utter just one word:

“Doogi.”

The entire room goes quiet except for his sobs. His parents and his noonas stare at him in utter amazement and he repeats it again: “Doogi.”

“Doogi?” his appa repeats incredulously and then bursts out laughing in utter despair. “Doogi, as in his dog?”

“I miss my him,” Jongin says crying into his mother’s neck and crying out the dog’s name over and over again. Appa just laughs, unable to believe the total ridiculousness of the situation.

“Do you mean to say,” he says. “That he wants to go home and throw away a whole week in Jeju because he misses his puppy?” Umma tries to reason with her husband, insisting that with some tender loving care that Jongin will be able to stay away from the puppy they left at home for the rest of the week. But in response, their young son just cries even louder, yelling that he wants to see his puppy, that he misses his Doogi. 

The nonsense goes on until three in the morning when Jongin’s crying makes him tired and his sisters carry him back to the bed to sleep. But it happens again the next night, and the night after that, and the night after that. Three days before their vacation is scheduled to end, the Kims pack up their bags early and return to Seoul, where Jongin is finally reunited with his puppy and is happy for the rest of the week while his other family members grumble over his near-obsessive attachment to that dog. 

But little three-year-old Jongin is happy with just his dog. His little puppy, no matter how small or irrelevant he seemed to others taught him fidelity, and faithfulness, and friendship. And no one’s love for Jongin surpassed the love his little puppy held. 

Author's note: Originally, I was not going to include this little foreward, but I recently went on vacation with my three-ear-old nephew to Sequoia National Park and he was crying all the time and just so angry and when we asked him why, he said it was because he missed his puppy. It was so cute, I had to include it~