Minho walked alone into the principal’s office, where his parents sat across a big wooden desk. He had been in here often—when he’d ranked first in his class like his hyung, when he’d won at the Math Olympiad while representing the school, when he’d been selected to intern at the lab, when he’d been accepted at Konkuk under a special scholarship. He was as familiar with it as he was with his own classroom, and the only surprising addition to it were the concerned faces of his parents.

“Minho yah, what is this about?” Choi eomoni whispered to him.

Minho didn’t know what he was following right now, but he carefully closed the gap between them. “They’ll be asking you to come in any minute. But I wanted to see you first,” he said and kissed Kibum’s dumbfounded mouth one last time. When he was forcefully shoved away, he looked at the other with all the sincerity inside him to say the most important words of his life.

“Admit nothing.”

Minho straightened his back and looked his parents in the eyes, fortifying his resolve with a deep breath. “I am not sorry I’m not the son you wanted, because you already had the son you wanted.” He pointed in Minseok’s direction. “He was always the ideal… everything. But you still pushed me around to do more, be more, achieve more. It was always more and more and more till I felt like I was going to blow up..." he shook his head. "I was never ungrateful for what you gave me. I’ve had more than most kids my age could boast about. And I’m really really thankful for that.” He thought of bowing again but he didn’t want to look meek. Not anymore.

“But I never felt like your son,” he mumbled to the floor of their quiet living room. “I was always slogging through schoolwork, always slaving through sports, I always did everything to make you proud but it was never enough. All those trophies and medals and certificates were for you to show off to your friends. To make you look good in front of them. I did everything I could to keep your name in the neighbourhood, just like hyung. I was always whatever you wanted me to be, but Pa…” he sighed. “When was it ever enough?”

“This ingrate…”

“Ma, answer the question,” he prompted his mother instead, even as Minseok tried to considerately drag him out by his shoulder, tried to quietly warn him from being too bold. Minho brushed the contact away. “No, hyung, I want to hear what they thought! Ma, tell me,” he looked to her with desperation. “When was the last time you saw me smile? Genuinely. When was the last time you heard me laugh? When did you last feel like I was truly happy?”

She shook her head and tried to take a step towards him, but her husband stopped her, held her back. “Minho yah, don’t say such things. That boy was just a phase you were going through and—”

He smiled at her. “So you know it, don’t you?” he nodded. “You know very well.”

When Choi Minho left his house behind him for good he left with his dignity glued back into one cracked whole.

“Happy birthday.”

Minho whipped around in alarm but relaxed once he saw who it was. “Sir…” he whispered, preferring not to use his roughened voice from many days of hunger and thirst. He his lips and turned back to looking at the bridge across the Han, not pleased with the fact that he’d been found within a short week. When the bench creaked beside him he didn’t bother looking at the man, just hugged his bag closer to himself. It didn't ease the cold in any way but it was all he had right now.

“Yah... this is really disappointing,” Professor Jinki said. “I had a party planned for you at the office and everything. There was going to be electron-shaped balloons and I had a gift packed for you from America. It was a rejected part from the Hadron collider there, you know? Ah, but it’s all ruined!” A pair of eyes brushed against the side of Minho's dirtied face. “I’ve been looking all over Seoul for you to come in and have your big strawberry cake too, and here you are sulking like a little kid. You can’t do that anymore, you know?” the man reminded him. “You’re eighteen now.”

“I’m sorry for always troubling you, sir.”

Cars drove past on the road, a few pedestrians walked along the footpath but avoided the two of them as if avoiding a disease. Minho must've looked exceptionally dirty to them. Dirty, filthy, trash, depraved, stupid... perhaps his father had been right to call him all those names. Perhaps he deserved to be called them, because looking back on his actions no one would compliment him for his smartness or his tact.

“You know…” Jinki said in a more serious tone. “You don’t have to call me sir if it means you'll keep secrets from me.” Minho frowned at that, but the other shifted closer to him, snatching the little bag from his unresisting grasp. “Ah, this is what you left with, eh? Hmm, let’s see,” Jinki rummaged through the contents with amusement. “A toothbrush and toothpaste, good~ Oh! And there’s even a comb!” he giggled. “Were you expecting the posh ladies of Gangnam to notice you when they passed by with extra change?”

“Sir, please…” Minho tiredly shook his head.

“OK, OK…” Jinki held up his arms and yielded, surrendering the bag back to its owner. But his gaze remained on the boy. “I’ve met your kind before— the quiet types, the nerdy types, the kind who keep their eyes lowered and don’t like to draw any attention to themselves. I’ve met your kind and I’ve seen them ruin their lives.” Minho recognized the words from what seemed like a long time ago, but thought nothing of them now. He leaned against the backrest of the cold metal bench. Lee Jinki was just another--

“Because I was like you once.”

The revelation would’ve meant something momentous, something earth-shattering to Minho. But all he wanted to do right now was be left alone. All he wanted was to stare at that bridge till the lights came on along its curving steel. This is what he'd done every night for eight days, and this is what he wanted to do for the rest of his remaining life.

Jinki took an audible, steadying breath before continuing. “It might not interest you anymore, but I was thrown out of my house, too. For being wrong, and stupid, and young and… well,” he smiled. “You know the rest of the insults.”

“You were wrong for another reason,” Minho finally spoke, remembering the little stalking he’d done under the pseudonym of research back when he was a fresh recruit to the lab; back when he was still worth something in the eyes of the people around him. “You were ambitious and ready to rebel for the place you wanted for yourself in this world. You were sent away for a completely different reason. Your family gave you a choice to stay and be dull, they didn’t call you sick for being you.”

Jinki turned to him with exasperation. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he started sarcastically. “I forgot only you’re allowed to have any misfortune ever.” Minho’s frown only deepened. “Yah, look at me,” his face was forcibly turned till their sights met. “You’re right, I had a choice and I made it when I ran away and never looked back. I raised myself to where I am right now. But you know what? Yyou had a choice too.” The elder nodded in comprehension. “You had the choice to use yourself as a bargaining chip and let the other boy hang. Anyone in their right mind would’ve done that. But you jumped all by yourself didn’t you?”

“How did you know—?”

“I found you because your brother called me,” Jinki revealed.

Minho wiggled in place, feeling smaller than ever and still shrinking. “S-so… you know everything…”

“I know enough to guess the rest, yeah.” The professor took another deep breath. “Look, I’m not going to try and imagine what you’re feeling right now. But I’ve felt somewhere close it, and I appreciated every scrap of help I could get along the way. Which is where you’re lucky—you’re smarter than I was, you’re more important than I was. And people still haven’t completely abandoned you. You have your brother, you have me, you have Taemin.”

Minho twisted to face the other better. “M-meaning…?”

“I mean to say that I… may have come off as a cold-hearted bastard at first,” Jinki tutted to stop Minho’s respectful dissent. “And I suppose I was. At the time. But the truth is I wanted you to come to me instead of suffering alone,” he coild his hold and patted Minho’s back lightly. “I always wanted to say that look--I’m worried about you. I’m not speaking as your employer, I’m talking to you as someone who cares. A friend, perhaps. Or a hyung, if that’s what you want to think of me. I’m worried about you. Can you help me not worry?”

A bus' engine rattled aloud near them, the professor bit into his bottom lip through the bought time. “That’s what I wanted to say," he continued hesitantly when the noise subsided. "That’s what I should have said. I should’ve called you to me and suggested, if you want me to help you in anyway. If you want to talk to someone, if you even just feel suffocated and want to run out in the open. Just come to me. I want you to come to me. If I can run next to you, I will.” Jinki looked out into the distance. “But I didn’t do any of that, and that’s my bad.”

Minho disagreed. “You didn’t owe me anything, sir. What you did back then was right. I didn’t deserve to be treated—”

“You didn’t deserve to be treated like garbage,” Jinki corrected before Minho could complete himself. “You deserved to be treated with respect. Like a human being. But I forgot all about that. I mixed my worries with yours and completely forgot that under all that hardworking genius you’re still a kid. How I could expect someone as young and inexperienced as you to be forthright or responsible when I’m often not is… is beyond me.” The professor sheepishly grinned at him. “I hope you don’t hold a grudge.”

Minho looked at his lap. “That still doesn’t explain why you’re here, sir.”

“I want to be your guardian,” Professor Jinki responded, jolting him out of his flatness. “You’re legal now but you’re not twenty-one yet. Which means you will still need a guardian to comb your hair before sending you out into the big bad world,” the elder joked, fondly ruffling Minho’s unwashed curls. "How long will you survive out here?" he questioned rationally. "A few days in the open and then a few more at a sauna... then what? What will you eat? Where will a kid like you be safe?"

"I-I'll work something out, you don't have to do something drastic like be my guarian or anythi--"

The elder jovially slapped his thigh again to shut him up, like always. “Now, don’t think I’m doing this out of pity, I’m a real opportunist, you know? You’ll be paying me back for it of course, as my employee. But you still have to finish school, and I’d like it if you went to university at least before you came back to work for me.”

“S-sir is… is that even possible…?”

“Of course it is~!” Jinki pouted. “See I have a lawyer friend who’s going to help us. He’s taken a special interest in you, I believe you left a lasting impression on him. You’ve met him, he looks after all the boring paperwork. You remember Lee Taemin, don’t you? That man who doesn’t shave for days and then shows up before me like a hobo in a suit—yah, don’t cry, you’re officially an adult now. What will people think?”

Minho didn’t listen, his head drooped onto Jinki’s shoulder and he let himself go. A strong arm closed around him, his side comfortingly. And as the sun began to sink in the sky, the lights of Banghwa Bridge came on one by one by one.

“So…” Minho said with some uncertainty, the certificate on the desk seeming unrealistic. “Should I call you Appa now, sir?”

“You shall address me as hyungnim and nothing less,” Jinki spoke in an old dialect and Taemin rolled his eyes, snorting loudly. “Yah, thank this unclean fellow first so he can leave to take a bath, he's been in court all week. Then again... he made everything possible.” They were supposed to be celebrating but there was a lot of work to do, and Minho needed to go back to studying for finals. So they met for a quick minute at Jinki’s home instead.

“Although why your family withheld your birth certificate this long is something weird…”

“Maybe they were hoping you’d go back to them?” The lawyer supplied. He’d finally been persuaded into shaving because it was a special occasion, and Jinki had endlessly about how much younger it made him look. “Or maybe they wanted you to apologize and ask to be taken back in?” he mused, shrugging it off after a few seconds.

“Cha, Minho goon, do you still talk to your hyung?”

He hung his head. “I do, but… he said things aren’t anywhere near normal at home. Not yet. Pa is still angry and… and some relatives have been gossiping about—”

“Hey,” Jinki reached out to take his hand, pressing it reassuringly in his own warm and puffy fingers. “This is your home now. Don’t think about what you’ve left behind because you’re safe here.” The professor tilted his head and smiled kindly; the sort of smile Minho had admired from faraway seats in darkened auditoriums all through his high school years. “You know that, right?”

Minho felt his chin tremble, but he laughed it away. “Neh, hyungnim,” he joked.

This chapter is stupid. I mean, knowing Minho's pious mind he probably didn't even write anything erted in that book but the family is losing its all over the place ugh. I hate when I can't make controversies in fic.

Meanwhile Kibum... ah you'll see, you'll see.

Final chapter coming up. So yeah. Fasten your seatbelts and prepare for landing.

~IQ