The old man parked the car in front of the school building and turned off the engine. He didn’t get off the car.

The three kids stood there, staring at the car without knowing what to do, until Junghwan felt like he had to do something.

“Guys, let’s go”

“I said there’s no way I’m going in the car with him” said Baro stubbornly

“Baro-yah…” said Junghwan weakly, he didn’t like to argue with his brother, but they couldn’t stay there all day, right? They had to have lunch and eat dinner and all those important stuff.

“Hyung, let’s do as Deullie hyung says” Gongchan hurried “We can’t stay here all day, it’s freezing”

“Fine, but I won’t talk”

Gongchan sighed “fine”

They got cautiously into the backseat and fastened their seatbelts. Their grandfather looked at them for the rearview mirror and nobody said a word for a while. Junghwan was starting to feel uncomfortable again.

“Uhm, where’s grandma?” he finally dared to ask

“She couldn’t come. She wasn’t feeling alright”

“Is she okay?”

“I said she wasn’t feeling alright didn’t I?” the man said abruptly

“Right…”

Gongchan glanced at his brother, that boy was absolutely hopeless sometimes

“Haraboji, where are we going?”

“I gess you must be hungry, so to have lunch”

“Great, thank you”

They didn’t spoke a word while his grandfather was driving and Gongchan thought that the whole “you could cut the air with a knife” thing finally started to make sense in his head when it never really did before.

After half an hour of driving in circles the man stopped the car.

“I don’t know what kind of things you eat”

Junghwan saw the opportunity and took it

“Pizza” he said fast.

“I highly doubt it”

“That’s what we want. We won’t eat any other thing”

The man started the car again “You are such brats” he muttered. Ten minutes later they were in a pizzeria.

It always seemed like forever for Jinyoung to hear the dial tone when he was calling Shinwoo and he didn’t pick up right away. He counted the seconds before he could hear the voice of his spouse at the other side of the line, ‘hello?’ it said, and the only sound of it reassured him lots.

“Hello baby, how are you doing?”

“I’m missing the kids”

“And not me?” Jinyoung joked “not even a little?”

“Of couse I miss you, is just that I’m used to have lunch with them everyday”

“Don’t be a softie Shinwoo, is just one evening” Jinyoung laughed “You’ll be just fine”

“If you say so. Anyway, do you know why the kids keep writing all these useless things in the super list?”

“What kind of things?”

“Crayons, glue, legos and a variety of snacks”

“Don’t buy it all”

“I wonder what they want the glue for”

“Only God knows” Jinyoung said “Hey, are you picking me up? We could go for a beer”

“Do you want to get me drunk, Jung Jinyoung?”

The man sighed “I wish I could but we have kids”

Shinwoo laughed “I’ll pick you up”

The old man was disgusted by what he had de displeasure to see.

Those three kids were tearing the pizza apart. The cutlery was left unnoticed by the plates and the tiny hands were all covered in tomato sauce. So were the faces.

He used to like kids. He used to dream about having grandchildren, but that dream went away like sand falling between the fingers of a fist when he found out his kid was gay. He started disliking kids since; if he wasn’t going to have any kids around, he might as well not enjoy them.

Now he was having a hard time spending time with those three.

He had been observing them since they sat at the table. The kid with the funny teeth wasn’t talking at all, he remembered him being very chatty at the house but he seemed sulking and stubborn, like he even was biting the pizza with rage. He didn’t look like a delinquent though. The other two kids were more talkative, specially the youngest, and he thought maybe he might even like him, he seemed more civilized than his brother, with more manners. The oldest kid was entirely focused in the pizza; he already knew this would happen, a week sharing the table with him was enough to notice a pattern. He ate like a beast.

“Hey, kid, would you at least use a napkin?”

Junghwan looked at him confused “Me?”

“Yes, you, the one who has pizza all over the face”

“Let me finish first haraboji, there’s no use in cleaning myself up if I’m going to get dirty again”

The man rolled his eyes and passed a napkin to Gongchan.

“Yah, haraboji” the kid said, cleaning his face “Are you going to the play tomorrow? Are you going to see my hyungs?”

Baro and Sandeul looked at him curiously. Baro was trying to appear uninterested but he wasn’t doing a great job, if he had to be honest.

“I have to go, don’t I?”

That was not the answer Gongchan was expecting.

They were sitting in their room, playing with dolls after coming back from the pizzeria. Eomma and Appa weren’t back yet and their grandpa had left to his bedroom leaving them all alone to play or do whatever they wanted. But they were bored.

“We wasn’t as nasty as you thought he was going to be, right hyung?” Gongchan asked Baro, who was making his cap spin with his finger.

“He even brought us pizza” Sandeul added

“Deullie hyung” Gongchan said smiling “your opinion doesn’t count, you like anyone who gives you food”

“That’s true, you can’t say anything you sold your self for pizza, so typical of you” Baro agreed “Anyway” he added before his twin could talk back “you’re right, he wasn’t that bad”

Gongchan nodded “At least he talked to us”

“Maybe he likes us just as grandma does, uh, wouldn’t that be great?”

“Deul-ah, I think you’re dreaming too much, you have too much sugar on your brain”

“I say we give him an opportunity. He hasn’t been nasty to eomma lately so maybe he’s turning good?” that was Gongchan

“I say we ask him to take us to the park. I’m deadly bored” Sandeul said

“For the first time in like your whole life you have a good idea”

Spend a day with the kids. Give them an opportunity, you’ll like them. If he only didn’t listen to his wife so much. And he thought he had been freed from those kids after buying them food… but no, they wanted to go to the park, and the voice of his wife was an echo inside his skull, so he had no scape.

He had to push them on the swings, and help them go on the top of the slide and then wait for them at the bottom so they wouldn’t hurt they butts.

The last thing he would admit was that he was enjoying it.

Baro was shouting like a madman sitting in a swing “Haraboji! Higher! HIGHER!”

It didn’t matter how high he’d push him, he’d keep asking for more “I WANT TO MAKE A COMPLETE LOOP”

“Sunwoo-ssi, I think it’s high enough” the man laughed “You’ll fall down at this rate”

“But haraboji!”

He kept pushing him a little more until Gongchan and Junghwan called him to play on the slide. Sunwoo joined them too.

Those kids were such disasters. They ran in every direction and shouted and screamed like madmen; they were exactly like the grandchildren he once dreamed to have.

“Kids” he said after two hours of playing around “it’s getting cold, let’s go back home”

“But it’s too soon!” Sunwoo complained

“We’ll come back some other day”

“You promise?”

“I promise” he said, and he smiled, which felt strange on his face, but good strange, for a change.

A chubby hand pulled his sleeve “Haraboji” Junghwan was looking at him with puppy eyes.

“He’s going to ask you for food” Baro said, getting ahead of him

Sandeul stepped on his foot “BARO-YAH!”

“AAHGGG! You!” he got his brother from the shoulders and gave him a knock on the head

“LET GO! LET. ME. GO!”

“Say you’re sorry!” Baro demanded

“Kids! Stop!” the grandfather was trying to separate them “You’re gonna hurt yourselves”

But baro kept smacking his brother’s hear while the latter struggled for an escape. Junghwan’s face was bright red and he was biting his brother’s arm but the tallest boy didn’t let go of him. Their grandfather had to take them apart using force.

Baro and Sandeul walked the whole way back home walking side by side in a tense silence. The old man and Gongchan walking a little behind.

“Should I tell your parents?” asked the man to Gongchan. He knew that that wasn’t the type of thing you asked a child, but he didn’t know the family dynamics and he didn’t want to screw anything up. Not when his son was so predisposed to be mad at him. That wouldn’t please his wife for sure.

“No. They’ll be okay, they always fight but make up in the end” Gongchan told him and then he laughed a little

“What’s so funny, kid?”

“He was going to ask you for food. Sandeul-hyung, you know, he always makes that face when he wants something to eat.”

“So Sunwoo called him out”

“They do that all the time” Gongchan kept saying “My hyungs are very troublesome”

The roar of the engine always made Shinwoo calm, he liked to drive in silence with the windows closed and the heather on. Now, Jinyoung was by his side humming a song and scrolling through his phone absently minded. He didn’t care about not being able to have a beer because he had to drive, they just had coffee and headed back home, and anyway, Shinwoo still didn’t feel so easy with the idea of leaving the kids alone with Jinyoung’s parents.

“Uh, Shinwoo, hold on a second” Jinyoung told him after he was done parking outside their house “Don’t leave the car just yet”

“Why?”

“Enjoy the last seconds of silence and peace”

Shinwoo laughed but was shushed by Jinyoung leaning onto him, he smiled and kissed him. They went on for a while, they had learned to refrain their impulses –a necessary thing when you had kids at home- but that didn’t made the make-up session any less satisfactory. Jinyoung gave him a last kiss on the neck, but before Shinwoo could pull back, the skinny man turned it into a hickey.

“Jinyoung!” Shinwoo said, amused “What are you doing?”

“I couldn’t help it”

Shinwoo was extremely embarassed “It’s going to leave a mark”

The other man laughed and kissed his forehead “You’re so cute, bear boy” and that said, he went off the car.

Shinwoo had to wait until his face had gotten back to its original color before entering the house.

Gongchan and Jinyoung’s mom were setting the table for dinner, Jinyoung, his dad and Sunwoo were outside trying to finish a soccer match even if it was already pitch dark and they couldn’t see a single thing. Shinwoo was finishing dinner and even if normally Junghwan would be by his side –he was always there when he was cooking- and now he was nowhere to be seen, his eomma thought that he probably was playing somewhere else.

At dinner it was obvious that he was upset. It was not only him but Sunwoo. They weren’t speaking and the youngest of the twins was frowning. Gongchan was looking at both of their parents alternatively.

It seemed like they weren’t the only ones who noticed because in that moment the grandfather chose to speak.

“Sunwoo, I was thinking, would you like if I go to your play tomorrow?” he asked “I know you only want your grandmother to go but it’d be great for me if you let me there”

Baro looked at him surprised but ended up smiling “Sure. You sure can go, than you haraboji”

Shinwoo looked at Jinyoung strangely, since when did they get along? Since when was the man human? Jinyoung just shrugged.  

“I’m glad you’re getting along” Jinyoung’s mom said “Are you nervous, Sunwoo?”

“No, not at all” he said proudly “I know all my lines”

“You’re going to forgot them all because you’re dumb” Junghwan muttered looking angrily at his twin, he didn’t meant to be heard, but his father had a super sense for their fights.

“What did you say, Junghwan?” Jinyoung asked warningly

“Sunwoo’s dumb”

“You’re dumb. You’re the dumbest dumb in dumbland” Baro replied

“Well then you have horrible teeth and you’re ugly!”

“At least I’m not a fatty!”

“Sunwoo, Junghwan, stop right now” Jinyoung said, unheard

“Take that back!”

“I WON’T BECAUSE IT’S TRUE!”

“THEN I DON’T LIKE YOU” Junghwan yelled at his brother

“I DON’T LIKE YOU EITHER”

“I HOPE MISS CHO NEVER LIKES YOU”

Sunwoo’s mouth dropped open, like he couldn’t believe what his brother had just said. Jinyoung wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw a tear falling from his cheek when he left the table.

Junghwan seemed as shocked as his brother about what he’d just done.