Subject: Guess what? I’m going to have a baby!

From: Nambasquiat@staygold. com

To: Hiphopbabylion@bbusan. com

Date: 21 April 2015 7:19 am

Did you freak? Hah hah hah.

                Hola dude, you didn’t actually think I’d get down in business with a girl did you? (Ew) But I’m kinda guessing you did. Anywhoos, were back from our trip to London! Oh, wait, I’m supposed to be getting ready for Paris. Bonjour, hot stuff. Nous returnez-vous from Londonez. Or something like that. You know, if I weren’t getting to spend two whole glorious parent-free weeks in Paris—city of loooooooooooooove—I would just give up trying this whole French thing. The grammar and stuff you have to learn! As if I have time?

                Anyways, when I got back from London, Jinwoo called and said he heard from the class rep (you remember her—the girl with braids and braces since primary school) that were getting our babies this week. (Her dad works for the company that makes the software they use in the babies, so she should know.)

                “Very cool and about time,” I told Jinwoo, cutting my toenails because it’s starting to hurt when I wear my converse. “I hope I get a boy, better to deal with a baby with a widdle-stick like mine. Frak! I just had a horrible thought! What if the baby is like a real one? What if it can pee on you? My mom once held our neighbor’s baby while cleaning the front yard and it peed all over the front of her!”

                “According to the pamphlet Mr. Kwon gave us, they don’t really pee, they just kind of whiz water they from the baby bottle thru its wee-stick.” Jinwoo said. “Class rep says the reason they were delayed getting the babies to us is because they were upgrading the software, so now well have HelloBaby version 4.75, which has the advanced behavior card, and a bigger memory chip so the babies can be used for up to a month without having to be taken in to have the care data downloaded.”

                “Ew. Who’d want a baby for a month? A couple of days is just fine with me. Short enugh to be fun then bye-bye to pretend parent-hood and hello to my y self in Paris having loads of fun with Seungyoon.”

                “I don’t think I’d mind having one for a month if it was a nice baby,” Jinwoo said, sounding thoughtful. He’s been doing a lot of that lately. It’s kind of worrying me, to tell you the truth. It’s like he’s become that woman in the opera your mom made us see last year—you know, the one where the woman had TB and was coughing up blood and guts and stuff, and was dying a lonely, tragic death. Rachel, that’s the name of it. Jinwoo has been Rachel-ing lately, acting very tragic and depressed, like he’s suffering from something really bad. “I think it sounds like a very interesting experiment, although Mum says if she’d had a HelloBaby when she was going to school, she never would have married dad and had us. Whatever baby I get, I just hope I don’t get a snotty one. Class rep said some of the babies are programmed to be fussy. I can’t deal with a fussy baby, not when I’m going to go to Japan for the weekend. You know how I break out if I don’t get lots of sleep, and what will Mino think if I show up all spotty with big black bags under my eyes?”

                “I’m telling you, apricot scrub is your best friend, Dara uses that too.” I eyed my toes and decided a deeper cut was needed. I have always been fond of blunt, short nails because I tend to scratch and injure myself with longer ones. “Donghyun told me he read up on the ‘show teens the horror of becoming a parent’ program, and found out that HelloBaby people set the babies to be really cranky so you never ever want to have . I think that’s cheating (though it won’t really be a problem for me since it’s not like I can get pregnant). I mean, some babies have to be good, don’t you think? Mum says I hardly ever cried. Course, she thought I was mental or something because I didn’t talk for a long time, but still, I was a good baby. So I don’t buy all this hype they’re feeding us about the babies being ultrarealistic and stuff t if they’re just really safe- propaganda.”

                “What do you think I should wear when I go to Japan?” Jinwoo asked, totally ignoring what I was saying, only in a nice way. I didn’t really mind—even though he is getting to leave school early to go—because she wasn’t sounding Rachel-ish when she talked about Japan. I have to stay through the end of the semester because I missed that week last month when I had the flu so bad that I puked my guts every time I got out of bed. Life is so unfair.

                “Tae, are you still there?”

                “I’m here; just thinking.” I sighed, but quietly (am I, like, the most considerate person in the whole wide world or what?) then put my fingers over my nose bridge (I’ve been picking out these various habits from Dara ever since she became my classmate in Geography).

                “Oh, good. So what do you think—the green and gray faux fur, or not?”

                “Not. You want to look sophisticated with a touch of y for Mino, not like a reject mascot auditioning for really bad seventies re-run. Go with the plain white shirt and skinny ripped biker jeans, that’s the look that says what you want to say.”

                “I’m not exactly sure what I want to say,” Jinwoo bawled. He’s been doing a lot of that lately, too. “But I suppose the white shirt and ripped jeans does give me the classic gamine look.”

                I know you were wondering how things are going between him and Mino the huge boy, but there’s not really much to tell. They haven’t seen each other except for the one weekend at the beginning of March when Mino came down to meet his mom and step-dad. Jinwoo said his mom kicked up a bit of a fuss ‘cause he was dating a guy who was younger than him, (Jinwoo coming out isn’t really a surprise for his parents, it’s like they knew all along. I mean, when I did it mom made a drama during dinner crying how she can’t get to have 6 little Taehyuns running in the house, then calmed down after I told her we can adopt as many as she wants, much to Seungyoon’s chagrin). But Mino just turned nineteen a month ago so it’s not really that big of an age difference, it’s only by a year! (Jinwoo is 20 same with Seunghoon, he just ended up being my classmate because of the constant changing of schools due to his step-dad’s work, England is probably the 8th country he’s been in). Seungyoon turned eighteen in January, and I will be seventeen in mere weeks (Can’t wait!), and I am very mature for my age and all.

                Moving on, Jinwoo and I talked about what he was going to wear when he went down to see Mino, and what he would say, and what he was likely to say back to him (which I think would just be long hot stares and growls), and how he should respond to that, and what would he would think of the latest snapback he got him (Mino has a collection and Jinwoo has given him five now. I’m still