My heart was thumping loudly against my chest when I knocked on the door to Luhan and Xiumin's house. Kai just smiled and examined every square centimeter of the wood, the white paint that also decorated all the houses on this street, and the old and yellowed plastic doorbell that hadn't worked in years (why hadn't they taken that thing down already?).

“Come on in,” Xiumin warmly greeted us, ducking inside immediately when a beeping, I assumed was coming from their stove, went off.

We stepped in and sat down to take off our shoes. Kai had a little trouble. Although I'd taught him once, he never got the chance to practice since this was the first time I'd taken him out of the house. Hoping they'd think I was just being helpfully affectionate, I undid his laces and slipped the sneakers off his feet for him.

Standing and looking around, I found the inside of their home to be very clean and tidy, which didn't surprise me. These two were only a couple years older than me and when Xiumin used to tutor me, I remembered him to be very picky about the organization of his backpack and binders. After they graduated, Luhan's mother, who was also a bit of a neat-freak, welcomed Xiumin as part of the family quickly, letting him move in as soon as her son had asked. I couldn't blame her; no one could dislike him. He had such a cute face, which when paired with Luhan's equally cute baby-face, got them out of trouble more times than I could count.

We hadn't talked in a long while, even though Luhan had been my neighbor for nearly my entire life. We had ignored each other growing up until he got himself a smart, well-rounded boyfriend that he just couldn't stop showing off. Recently, he would greet me and send playfully snide comments meant to jump-start small talk and silly bickering when he saw me, but I hadn't responded. I just liked being alone and this new Luhan was very foreign and strange. The reason why I stopped having Xiumin tutor me had more to do with Luhan hovering around us than his boyfriend's ability to teach.

And now I was bringing an alien, who was pretending to be my boyfriend, into their home to meet them.

I felt nervous beads of sweat gathering at my forehead and I wiped it away with my wrist quickly before they'd see.

“Here, buddy,” Luhan threw a towel at Kai, who caught it deftly in the air. “Your hair's still wet. I don't mind the drips, but Minnie here is a little-” he twirled a finger at the side of his head, the universal sign for craziness.

“I saw that!” said Xiumin, coming up to him with a knife raised.

“I meant it with love-” Luhan amended.

“Yeah... right.” Just as Xiumin turned away rolling his eyes, Luhan sent a pat to his behind, causing his boyfriend to jump and hide a blush.

“What?” he grinned. “They understand. They're part of the club, right?”

Kai nodded and I yelped in surprise when he copied Luhan's action and pat my in front of my neighbors.

Don't learn from them!

Especially not Luhan!

“I like you,” Luhan told my alien, steering us both towards the kitchen. “Tao Tao, I think you found a good one. He's hot too.” After a short cough from his “Minnie”, Luhan added, “Not as hot as you, of course.” He sealed this with a peck to his boyfriend's cheek, who proceeded to to fail at scooping out intact pieces of the second (cherry!) pie onto a dish.

“Wouldn't it be easier if you let it cool down first?” I offered.

Xiumin paused. “Ahh... That must be what we're doing wrong!”

“And if you cover the edges with aluminum foil, they won't burn like that.” I added, pointing to the blackened bits of crust mixing into the red mush.

“You're a better gay than Minnie,” laughed Luhan admiringly. “I never thought I'd see the day... Oh! Hey, I forgot to ask your boyfriend's name. I'm sorry, Boyfriend. What is it? I bet it's something cool and y. Am I right?”

“Kai.”

“Kai. Awesome nickname, but come on, what's your real name?”

Crap.

Crap crap crap.

“Kim... Jongin.” I had used a mix of names I knew from Korean dramas. It was the best way to explain his limited vocabulary anyways.

“Korean, okay. You know, Minnie's Korean too.”

Oh . They're going to find out and I won't be able to explain it-

Luhan continued on, “His real name is Minseok. Minnie, say something to him in Korean! I love hearing you speak in strange tongues.”

I knew it! I panicked and wondered if running away would be viable option right now. Making a grab for Kai's hand, I was about to pull him away while coming up with a bull excuse to get out of here when Xiumin complied and spoke in simple Korean.

Based off of what little I picked up, Xiumin introduced himself to Kai and asked if he was hungry. And just as I started tugging him back, Kai responded. My pet alien could speak Korean?

Has he been watching those dramas too? Is this what I've been letting him watch? It would explain how he learned to smirk. Too many dramas featured a smirking and the poor girl who had to break that shell for the good guy behind the mask.

I started to regret teaching him how to change channels when thoughts of crime dramas came to mind. What if he learns to murder because I was stupid and left him in front of the electronic babysitter? TVs were dangerous. I made a mental note to put a parental lock up on the worst channels.

“Cherry or apple?” asked Xiumin, back to Mandarin.

Glad that the Korean ordeal was taken care of, I smiled and answered with apple.

***

Xiumin was really nice and Luhan was just as silly as ever. Thankfully, they never showed any signs that they thought of Kai as abnormal. They sincerely believed he was my boyfriend who I had snuck in the house to live with me without my dad knowing. They were at least partially correct, but Kai was not my boyfriend. He kissed me once, but you know, pets give kisses to their owners too...

That's a weak excuse.

My alien pet was hot and my body was very much in favor of calling him my boyfriend. If only I could shut off the part of my brain that kept supplying the image of him being created from galactic space goo or whatever that stuff really is, then maybe I'd give in.

In any case, my neighbors wanted me to teach them more about cooking, blackmailing me by saying they'll tell my dad about “y Guy Kai” secretly living at our house. They were joking of course; I don't think they'd have the heart to go through with it.

Just in case though, I agreed. Kai really enjoyed the visit anyways.

“Apple mush is good!” he exclaimed as we walked back in our own home together. In my home together.

I smiled at him before I could scold myself for thinking of an alien as family. “You liked it? What about Luhan and Xiumin? How do you feel about them?”

“They are nice and... weird!”

“Weird?” It's true, but Kai never called something weird before. I think he understood that out of everything, he was the weirdest thing there. “Weird how?”

Kai took his shoes off like a pro and even put them neatly side by side in my room (where my dad wouldn't see them) all by himself. I shouldn't feel so proud. I shouldn't, but I did. And seeing him sit comfortably on the floor and think seriously about my question, he didn't feel like a doll or an alien or even a pet.

He felt like a human friend, like someone who came home with me after school to hang out and talk about useless things for the fun of it.

And what surprised me the most was how normal I felt.

I'm a loner, an introverted person who feels tired after too much social interaction. I like being alone and don't feel the need to meet up with friends intentionally over the weekends or any other time, because I was just fine on my own. This made me the weird one in our group of friends at lunch that they couldn't quite trust with everything because they weren't fully sure just how far they could act around me. I had long ago accepted that I wasn't quite like everyone else and I wasn't going to ever have a close friend.

But Kai made me feel normal.

Which he shouldn't. He really should not be the one to make me feel normal, because he's an alien made of goo, and that is not normal.

Also, he was looking at me with a concerned expression.

Ah, I asked a question, didn't I? “Sorry, I spaced out. What did you say?”

“Xiumin is smelling weird.” he said seriously.

“Do you mean he has a weird smell or is he doing the act of smelling something... weirdly?” Did that make sense? I might have just confused both of us with that.

“Xiumin...” Kai looked like he was trying to figure out how to phrase what he meant. I had no idea how to help. Sometimes we just couldn't communicate like this. “Xiumin smells weird.” he spoke in Korean this time.

I sent a silent thanks to the past me for becoming interested in South Korean media when my mom moved there after my parent's divorce. Getting into the dramas and movies she used to watch all the time when they were together made me feel closer to her even though it's been six years since she left and a couple months since she last called.

“What does Xiumin smell like?” I asked him. I was curious to see how far we'd be able to carry this conversation until we came across something that couldn't make it through our language barrier.

Kai hummed and breathed out through his nose, thinking. “Like this,” he picked up the cube from the desk and stuck his arm out to show me. “Like this!” he repeated.

I plucked the object from his palm and turned it over in my fingers. “Like... metal?” Was Xiumin wearing any cheap metal jewelry? Those things tend to smell a lot, but I couldn't remember seeing anything like that on him. He didn't seem to be the type to wear them either.

The alien shook his head, a little frustrated.

In the end, he couldn't properly explain what he meant. I told him not to worry about it; it could always wait until he's learned more human words.