^{_{. .}} two ^{_{. .}}

A dog barks two floors above them.

Minutes have passed, but Hyukjae feels like he can't bring himself to stand up and do anything. Part of his mind still desperately wants to think that this is a joke, and not true at all. He decided a long time ago that he didn't want to belong into their life. He wasn't ready to be a father, and he still isn't. It can't be his daughter—who's now gazing at the floor and trying to look as small as she can—but unfortunately it seems like she very well is.

The girl shifts on her place uncomfortably. Hyukjae rises his eyes back to her, being the one to bite his lip this time.

She has denim overalls above a pink hoodie, a rip on her knee and a few dirt stains on her pant leg. Her eyes are round and dark, but not as single-lidded as Hyukjae’s. The cheeks are a little reddish, and she has lips that are quite full and plump—which makes the man cringe because there’s actually something that makes them look like they’re related. In his eyes she looks quite tiny, even for her age, but maybe he’s not the best to judge.

He takes a deep breath. They have been in the hallway for a while already, and Hyukjae would actually like to go back in—alone. He really just wants to leave and act like this never happened.

An awkward cough escapes from his lips at the same time he finally stands up. He his sweaty hands onto his jeans, and takes a step backwards to his apartment.

What the hell he’s supposed to do now. He doesn't like kids.

The girl glances at him cautiously, a little questioningly, but still avoiding any eye-contact. She doesn’t budge, though.

Does he need to say something? All words have disappeared from his dictionary.

Hyukjae takes another step, having a grip around the handle—a grip way tighter than is necessary.

“ing hell,” he mumbles, his messy hair in looming frustration.

Nothing happens. Hyukjae looks at her again expectantly. She takes a hesitant half-step forwards, tightening her grip on her dog. Maybe he could leave her there. If she doesn't even want to do anything, why does he bother?

He never gave a about this child's existence.

Jiah and he weren't even together anymore when she suddenly contacted him three months after their break-up. He didn't want this. When Jiah called then, he had clearly said that he was not going to be included in their life if she would choose to be stupid enough to keep the baby. Neither of them were parent material. Parties, drinking, getting wasted, fighting, getting high and doing other crazy stuff... None of those were a feature that went well together with raising a child.

It hasn't changed. Hyukjae is still as bad as he used to be.

Why would Jiah dare to do this now at all times?

He is lost. He doesn’t have the brightest clue to what to do with her. And he waits—but she doesn’t move further. Hyukjae bites his lips again—it hurts— and takes a long inhale to calm his burning brains. He's getting annoyed—mad even. His hand goes to scratch a nonexistent itch on his neck.

During his 23 years of life, Hyukjae might not have ever been more scared than he is now. And he’s gone through a lot—but all those fist fights, crashing with his motorbike, or even getting to know Jiah was pregnant have never gotten him this startled. Before, running away has been his best solution if nothing else worked—and it’s not that he doesn’t want to run away now, but he just can’t leave a kid—his kid—wander around alone without supervision.

Glaring at the girl, he fumes inside. He can't leave her here, can he? He just needs to find the damned woman and return this thing where it belongs in the first place.

He will not take this child to raise. Was Jiah out of her ing mind?

“Get in?” he says, trying a little softer tone, but it's forced. He doesn't trust his voice. How do people usually speak kid?

She stares at him, still unnerved to do anything, and it makes her father think if she’s always like this.

Stubborn like a darn goat.

Then, she suddenly hands her toy dog more towards him, eyes batting together in wonder.

Should he be able to understand...?

“What...?” he retorts, puzzled. His eyes roam from her to the dog and back, and she nudges the stuffed toy again.

The dog has probably been white and silver back in the days, but now it is in overall grey, and it looks like it has been with her for her whole life deducing from its shaggy appearance. The dog is probably her lifeline; the one she goes to when she’s feeling down, and no one else understands. The matter kind of strikes him.

He opens and closes his mouth, contemplating. It’s a little embarrassing.

“Yes...doggie can come too,” he mutters, stepping out of her way. It doesn’t show on her lips, but her eyes start to smile. At least Hyukjae thinks so. And then she enters, a little slowly for his liking, but he lets it go.

It’s only till he manages to find Jiah and return her—because he’s so not going to let her stay longer than is absolutely necessary.

The word ‘daddy’ keeps echoing inside his head with a menacing tone. Shivers run along his spine as long as he thinks about it, and between his ears it just sounds wrong. It makes him hope he only imagined the whole thing.

He’s sitting on his couch, elbows put on top of his thighs and fingers crossed under his jaw as he leans on them. She’s standing a meter and half away from him as they stare at each other. The kid hasn’t said another word, and the messy haired male wonders if he should start some sort of a conversation, but he’s still too busy to do anything else but think.

There has to be a solution for this.

The paper is scrunched into his fist when he takes a look at it again, hastily reading the scribbled words over and over.

In agony, Hyukjae pulls out his phone and searches for the last calls made. He finds the unknown number, and presses the green icon as if it would actually connect the line even when he knows it doesn’t. Clenching his jaw, he proceeds to browse through all of his contacts listed. He rummages around, looking for any possible person who could help him with this, cursing himself for deleting Jiah’s number from the list a long time ago.

Hyukjae stops to stare at his mother’s number, but it’s exactly as useless as the others. He’s nothing to his own parents anymore.

Desperately, he checks them again.

And again.

In the end he almost ends up throwing his phone into the wall in anger.

The realization hits him hard.

There’s no one he could ask for help. All of his so called friends are as useless as he is; not one decent person who wouldn’t laugh their off or knuckle sandwich him straight to the face if he dared to give them a call. Except maybe from his sister, but she lives too far away from Seoul and wouldn’t be any help right now.

Does he really not have a single soul who could lend him a hand now? He has tons of friends and acquaintances, but the further he thinks the more miserable he feels. There’s no one he trusts; no one who could come up with any good options. Even Taehyung won’t really do. He’s probably still having a hangover, as per usual. And he would probably come up with the weirdest ideas, so he’s a definite no-no.

Hyukjae hasn’t felt so alone since he was eighteen.

Sighing in exasperation—he’s already lost count how many times he has sighed already—he closes his eyes and brings his palm to massage his temples. The headache is more mental, but it doesn’t make it any less of annoying. Hyukjae eyes the girl, realizing that he barely remembers her name. Furrowing his eyebrows, he tries to focus and memorize it—but it’s hard; he hasn’t had anything to do with Jiah let along their daughter in almost four years. He has simply managed to sweep anything related to that part of his life under the rug.

He thinks it might start with J, but he might also be terribly wrong.

Hyukjae’s patience has already started to seethe. He wants to get rid of the kid as soon as possible, but before he can actually do anything about it, he has to find Jiah’s current phone number or address. As he goes through the contact list one more time, a name catches his eye. They’ve barely met before, but he knows that this guy is—or at least has been—Jiah’s friend, and he can’t let the opportunity go for waste.

The phone is placed against his ear as soon as he rushes to press the ‘call’ icon. Not two seconds pass, and he’s already standing on his legs and marching around his apartment, getting twitchy. He doesn’t notice, but the girl turns around to follow his steps with her gaze. The phone alerts, a bit too long, and Hyukjae’s already huffing and ready to blow his stack. What the hell is he going to do if he can’t reach his ex-girlfriend soon?

He’s already thinking about throwing his phone through the window, when someone actually answers. Hyukjae doesn’t know him well, but they at least recognize each other by names. He gets the number after a short persuasion. The number is scribbled onto the same piece of paper the girl gave her before, and the call ends. Right after that, he presses the numbers on his phone and dials. In a way, he feels nervous.

It soon changes into anger, when a monotonic voice speaks up.

"The number you are trying to reach is currently unavailable."

“Dammit!” He stomps his foot to the floor, pinching the bridge of his nose as he tries to calm down. How could he be able to calm down though when everything seems to be turning into disaster? In despair, he tries to call again, even when he knows the matter is not going to change. But then he feels a tug on his hoodie, and he turns to face his daughter who’s currently pulling the ribbing with an expression that mirrors Hyukjae’s. He stands there; his hand with the phone awkwardly held on the air, overwhelmed.

What is she doing?

Hyukjae gives his phone a glance, and then he drops his gaze to examine the girl; she shakes her head slightly, and looks at him in a way that he’s supposed to understand something. He doesn’t get it.

“We gotta get you back to your mom,” he says, matter-of-factly, although uncomfortable. He tears his eyes up and presses the icon again, only to hear the same words repeated.

She tugs his hoodie the second time, and a repressed growl starts to linger on Hyukjae’s lips. The girl demands his attention with more tugging and head-shaking. His eyes are glued to the child for a second. Her other hand is still tightly holding onto the stuffed toy.

There’s a wild guess on top of his tongue.

“You…don’t want me to call your mom?”

She obviously doesn’t need to think twice when she nods slowly at him. Her eyebrows are furrowed in concern. This look of pure worry distresses the man, and for a brief moment he hesitates everything. But truthfully speaking, it’s a rough fact that he’s not going to keep her with him. Anything else but that is an option to him at the moment.

The brown haired man gapes at her, not knowing what to say.

“I can’t…” Every word feels weird in his mouth. “I’m no good for ‘ya, kiddo.”

She purses her lips, biting the inside of it.

Hyukjae wants to disappear now more than ever.

“I’m gonna find your mom, okay? She’s…probably missing you already—yeah. You need to get back home,” he babbles, contemplating if it would be too mean to just say as the things really were. But then he realizes the last thing he wants to witness is a crying child, and he immediately shoots down the thought. He has to find an alternative for this.

Hyukjae goes back for the sofa, sitting down in an indolent manner. The girl follows the few steps after him, and then stops. He’s not sure but he could guess she’s pondering something. It takes a minute, and during the time the girl’s eyes are locked onto something, the man can’t quite put his finger on what exactly. She gives him a shy, expectant look, pointing his small finger to the couch’s way.

“What? You wanna sit down?” he asks. She takes one step closer. Hyukjae stares at her, mouth little open because he’s just so not into this. Trying to understand this creature is a struggle. “You can sit down, you know.”

She walks to the couch, and climbs to sit beside Hyukjae, on the other end of the couch that’s not even long enough for him to sleep on without dangling his legs over the armrest. The dog’s being hugged against her chest, and from the corner of his eye, the brunet observes her again. He feels like he’s done nothing but stare since she emerged behind his door. But children are something he’s never gotten along with very well. It has always felt awkward. They’re annoying and noisy, always demanding something. Although this one hasn’t uttered a word since ‘daddy.’

Why doesn’t she talk? Isn’t kids her age supposed to be able to talk? He’s pretty sure that it was almost four years ago when Jiah told him that he had a daughter now.

It was probably the oddest day of his life. It was supposed to be an amazing thing, but Hyukjae didn’t want anything to do with the child. There are some hazy mental images from that day. He remembers it being the beginning of June; it was unusually chilly for it being summer, and it was raining half the time. After Jiah let him know about her birth—it was quite late evening—he called Taehyung and asked him to accompany him for few drinks. Things escalated, though. The morning after must have been one of the worst hangovers he’s ever had.

He also got into a pretty nasty fight that night. The next day, Taehyung insisted that he should get the gush over his eyebrow checked, and he ended up sitting two hours at the closest emergency room and getting four stitches. It wasn’t his first nor the last time.

He has quite a temper, and from time to time he finds himself from there even these days.

Hyukjae’s train of thought suddenly stops when he thinks about the ER again.

It’s a stupid thought.

He actually met one of his old childhood friends at the emergency room not even so long ago—maybe six months from now—and after that, they’ve been on some sort of speaking terms again every time Hyukjae ended up getting new stitches or bandaged up.

They were actually pretty good friends when they were young. He was his neighbor when they went to elementary, and because of that they kind of started to hang out after they met at one of the soccer fields nearby. For years, he remembers, they hung out after school; playing soccer, biking, doing some chemistry assignments together and bothering neighbors by making ‘Cola Rockets’ with some cheap diet Cola and Mentos pastilles.

It lasted even till high school. But on 10th grade, they drifted apart. Hyukjae didn’t like soccer as much as he did, and their time together decreased drastically when his friend got into the school’s soccer team and therefore got a punch of new friends.

He doesn’t want to admit, but he was kind of bitter about it for years.

But then he met Donghae at the ER. It was kind of funny; they hadn’t met in years and both had changed quite a lot from the high school years. Donghae was a nurse on call—Hyukjae learned he is a part-timer there—and got to bandage Hyukjae’s opened knuckles and the stress fracture on his wrist. And since then, every time he had to go treat something again, it was Donghae who treated him.

Sometimes they chitchat a little, but it’s only that. They are light-years apart, and they have nothing in common—but they were still friends back in the days.

Hyukjae knows he’s out of his ing mind, but he doesn’t see another relatively good option here.

There’s no one else he could ask anything like this. Donghae works in the health care, so he’s supposed to care about people, right? It makes perfect sense in Hyukjae’s head.

He gives a look to the girl sitting quietly next to him, and their similar colored eyes stare into each other’s for a moment. Her name is still a bit in the shadows for him, but the thinks he might remember it soon. Was there something similar in their names…?

“Hey,” he starts, looking thoughtful. “We’re gonna go meet a friend, okay?”

The girl shyly nods. 

an 31/05: hello guys. another update for 'ya.
I hope you like it.
I guess it's kinda obvious who we're gonna meet next?

thanks for reading!