Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Yeonjun wakes up to a scream, high-pitched, grating, and containing all the misery in the world. He turns over to bury his face in his pillow with the hope of falling back asleep and that this will all have been a distant, foggy recollection reserved for the morning, but unfortunately, life has other plans. 

WAHHHHHHHHHH!

The wailing screech of a nearby baby pierces his ears again, and this time it does its job, slapping the sleep from his consciousness. This is the third time this week that the exact same thing has happened, and Yeonjun thinks of himself as a considerate person, but at yet another three in the morning he feels like this is too much. He drags himself upright and throws on a hoodie. He has a sneaking suspicion about the origins of his newly-minted sleeping problems. 

Yeonjun slips out of his unit, quietly shutting the door behind him and wincing when another wail echoes down the hallway, louder now that there’s less barriers between the source and his eardrums. He pads down the short distance to his destination — his new neighbors, who had moved in just this week and who prior to this he had only encountered in a few brief moments. He braces himself in front of their door, pressing down on his bedhead to make himself at least a little bit more presentable despite the hour, but it’s unfortunate timing that he knocks at the same time the baby lets out another ear-splitting cry. 

“Oh, shit,” Yeonjun hears faintly through the door, as well as the unmistakable sound of something thudding to the floor. “Shh, shh, I’m here… Wait a moment!” The last part is whisper–yelled, and if it hadn’t been the dead of the night Yeonjun probably wouldn’t have heard it. 

Yeonjun shifts on his feet. Even through the door the voice sounds so laden with guilt. It’s not like he came here to yell at a pair of new parents. 

The door clicks open, revealing a tall guy who looked about his age, unkempt curly hair framing his face. He was clearly exhausted, stark shadows under his eyes and what could only be described as a miserably sheepish look on his face. 

“Hi, I’m so sorry, I know we’re a bit disruptive and I’m doing my best to keep her quiet but she’s only a year old and we’ve only just moved in, she’s not very used to the place yet. I’m your new neighbor, by the way.” 

Yeonjun blinks. There’s a self-deprecating smile on the guy’s face as he says all this, obviously cutting off his potentially aggressive late-night visitor before he could say anything, and despite himself and the circumstances, Yeonjun can’t help but be a little bit charmed. 

“Hello, new neighbor. I’m literally just next door, so I came by to offer my help, in case you needed anything? I’ve dealt with babies before so I know every single spare hand counts.” 

“Oh! Thank you, but—” Even before Yeonjun had finished speaking he could see that his neighbor intended to reject his offer. But once again, life had other plans — the crying started once more, and this time it somehow sounded even more desperate than before. Yeonjun watches the guy’s face crumble into despair, and a split-second later he feels himself being pulled by the arm into the apartment, the door shutting firmly behind him. 

“Sorry, sorry, I wanted to minimize the noise for outside,” his neighbor cringes, swiping tiredly at his face and turning to the crib in the middle of the room. He lifts the baby up into his arms and rubs his hand in soothing circles on their back. 

“Shh, shh, I’m back,” he coos desperately. “It’s like I never left, right?” 

Yeonjun is so morbidly curious he could die. He blames what he says next on the late hour and the remnants of alcohol in his bloodstream from his night out with Taehyun. 

“Is it just you, then? With the baby?” 

“Um,” his neighbor says awkwardly. 

Yeonjun doesn’t immediately slap his hand over his stupid no-filter mouth, but it’s a close thing. He feels his face heat up at the faux pas. 

“I am so sorry, that was uncalled for, you don’t have to answer that! My name is Choi Yeonjun, and the offer to help still stands, please don’t mind my huge mouth.” 

His neighbor huffs a small laugh. “It’s alright, I’m the one who pulled you in here. I promise I haven’t taken any offense, but I hope it’s alright that I don’t answer your question?” 

“Of course,” Yeonjun nods, relieved but still embarrassed. 

“I’m Huening Kai, and this is Mina. It is just us in the apartment tonight, yes, and like I said, we just moved in so I haven’t had the time to help her get used to the place… I’m sorry for keeping you up the past few nights, Yeonjun-ssi, I know we must have been a bother.” 

He gives Yeonjun a small bow as best as he could, perfectly formal and polite, and the bundle in his arms snuffles, clearly still upset. Yeonjun’s sympathy skyrockets. He thought it had been bad enough when he had assumed his next-door neighbors were a pair of new parents to a newborn baby, but this situation seems infinitely more exhausting, whatever his neighbor’s circumstances were. 

“I hope you didn’t think I came here to yell at you, Kai-ssi,” he says with a smile. He hopes it comes off as genuine; he doesn’t want the guy to think he was making a dig at him. 

“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time,” Kai replies with a dry smile. Before Yeonjun could unpack that, Kai’s face turns serious. “I’m actually not sure what’s wrong. This isn’t the first time we’ve had to move to a new place before, but she calmed down easily enough back then. You mentioned you know babies, right? I’ve fed her, burped her, changed her nappies and clothes, wiped her down, checked for a fever, rashes — nothing. Is it really just acclimatizing?” 

Yeonjun hums, taking a few moments to consider everything. “I hope you don’t mind if I give some advice?” 

Kai shakes his head. 

“Okay. First of all,” Yeonjun says gently. “You should ask why someone would be good with babies in the first place. It’s just good information to have on someone you’d let hold your child.”

Kai’s face turns from confused to enlightened to guilty in a matter of seconds, and Yeonjun feels bad yet again. It hadn’t been his intention to frazzle the guy even more, but just in case , he’d felt the need to bring the issue of stranger danger up; nevertheless, he still hurries to soothe the other guy. 

“Not to insinuate anything, Kai-ssi! It’s just better to be mindful of it. In my case, I had a lot of younger cousins growing up and I’m used to babysitting them, plus I work with kids during weekends. Dance teacher at a daycare center,” he tacks on at Kai’s quizzical look. 

The baby wails again. 

“Would you mind if I held her?”

“Not at all…” 

Kai says this, but Yeonjun can sense the slight hesitation in his tone, and he’s relieved instead of offended that the warning took effect so quickly. “I won’t drop her, don’t worry,” but he positions his arms over the crib as a precaution anyway as Kai hands him… Mina, was it? — who is still crying big fat tears. 

“Hush, hush,” Yeonjun croons, rocking her gently. He watches as the scowl on her face slowly smoothes out and her eyes open wide to fix her gaze on him, staring up at him in utter fascination, foul mood completely forgotten. He keeps rocking her, adjusting his grip to envelope her body better, and pretty soon it’s like she hadn’t been screaming her head off just minutes before. 

“Wow.” 

Yeonjun looks up and meets Kai’s eyes. The taller boy looks as spellbound as the baby in his arms, and all at once Yeonjun feels slightly hysterical. What the hell is this… this kid doing with a baby all on his own? 

“That was like magic. How did you do that?” The wonder in Kai’s voice is unmistakable, but it’s also nearly overshadowed by his obvious exhaustion. 

Yeonjun hums, looking at his neighbors. “I think she really was just tired,” he concludes. 

Kai looks stricken. “I… I didn’t mean to wake her up… I thought she was hungry or something…” 

The last thing Yeonjun wants is to overstep any more boundaries, but this time he takes pity and his chances, and puts on his most ‘I am a competent grown-up mature adult, you can rely on me’ energy to exude more authority. 

“Kai-ssi, don’t quote me on this, but babies are extremely receptive to their external surroundings, and that includes people’s emotions,” he says as kindly as he can. He takes care not to speak too loudly lest he disturb the baby, whose eyes are beginning to flutter shut. “I’m sure you’ve already picked up on this and you’ve spent more time with her, but they don’t have any sort of filter yet, both for things that come from inside and out, and all they can do to express anything is literally just to cry, so if things are messy around her, she’ll get messy too. Like, literally. It goes two ways, of course — if you’re happy and smiling and calm with them, they’ll follow suit. It doesn’t always work, but it’s a good rule of thumb to keep with kids.” 

He really doesn’t want to overwhelm or offend the young father, but Kai only watches him intently, like if he had a pen and paper with him he would be taking detailed notes. The intensity of his stare makes Yeonjun feel warm, much to his chagrin. It’s not his fault his neighbor looks good , okay? He clears his throat to say something — anything — but Kai beats him to it. 

“Thank you so much, Yeonjun-ssi, I really appreciate it. I’ll take her now—” 

The baby seems to have settled down, and Yeonjun carefully transfers her to her father’s waiting arms. The movement jostles her awake and for a second the two of them hold their breath, but she only snuffles and pushes her face into Kai’s chest before finally settling right back into blissful sleep. Kai carefully lays her down in her crib, arranging her blanket and pillows around her, and with no other sign of movement beside the peaceful up and down of her tiny chest, the two of them exhale in relief. 

“I’m sorry if I sound like a broken record but I really can’t thank you enough, Yeonjun-ssi,” Kai tells him. Yeonjun’s attention gets caught on his awkward fidgeting, fingers tugging on the hem of his shirt now that there’s nothing to hold in his arms. “I’m sure you must think I’m, um, haven’t been doing a good job with her, I know, so any sort of help is really appreciated.” 

“Hey now, did I do anything that gave off that impression?” Yeonjun interjects good-naturedly, but the other boy still sputters. 

“Oh, no, sorry, you didn’t, you’ve been nothing but kind—” 

“I’m just joking, Kai-ssi, don’t worry about it. I’m glad I went to check up on you. Don’t hesitate to ask me for help on anything, alright? I’m just next door. Well, when I’m here, I mean, my schedule’s kind of fu— messed up, grad school and all that.” 

He is aware he’s being too chipper at ass o’ clock, but a huge part of him simply wants to ease the dejected look on Kai’s face. A smaller part of him starts whisper–yelling at him to reign it the fuck in, Choi Yeonjun. Unfortunately, all controls are off at this time of night. 

“Also, feel free to call me comfortably. I’m twenty-four, how about you?” 

“Oh. I’m twenty-one.” 

“I’m your hyung, then!” 

Kai nods. “I’ll work on it, Yeonjun-ssi. Can I have your number, then?” 

He can’t help the surprise that flits over his face, nor what he says next. 

“Of course, cutie.” 

Kai looks at him warily. Yeonjun prays for an anvil to fall on his own stupid fucking head. 

“Shi— sorry! Sorry. Force of habit. Here, I’ll type it in, no anything attached, sorry!” 

He feels his cheeks heat up. He’s such a fucking idiot. Thankfully, Kai lets it slide without actually saying anything and hands him his phone. Yeonjun types his number in with an impersonal “Choi Yeonjun hyung” as the contact name and hands it back politely, careful to not make skin contact. 

“Alright, I’ll get going now,” he says before he could commit any more social blunders. He waves at Kai as charmingly as he can, and shoots a little wave in the direction of the crib too. “Goodnight, neighbors!” 

“Goodnight, Yeonjun-ssi,” Kai says politely, closing the door behind him with a small smile. 

Once he slips inside the safety of his own apartment, Yeonjun resists the urge to knock his head against the door. Well. That happened.  

He climbs back into bed, determined to sleep the residual embarrassment away. He’ll have to tell Taehyun about this whenever they next see each other. 

The next time Yeonjun opens his eyes, it’s thankfully to the bright sunny morning light of his typical early Saturday. No, scratch that, upon further observation, it’s actually drizzling outside, the sun hidden behind a full layer of heavy gray clouds, but Yeonjun was grateful to still have had a solid couple hours’ worth of uninterrupted sleep. 

He goes about his usual morning routine. Even though this was supposed to be his final year in grad school, his schedule was still fully loaded up with a bunch of uncredited classes he enrolled in out of interest and extra-curriculars, which meant he started his days earlier than most of his peers. He also had a part-time position at a nearby daycare center, like he’d told Kai last night — he worked as a dance teacher for toddlers, which he enjoyed very much, despite it requiring him to give up his weekend mornings. He had already had a few weeks to settle on a routine, and he had resigned himself to the life of an early bird. 

As Yeonjun is sipping on his morning coffee, he’s surprised to see a bright yellow piece of paper right in front of his door. When he goes to pick it up, he sees it’s a handwritten note, likely slipped through the gap between the floor and his door. 

Thank you again for last night, hyungnim!
Let me know if your schedule allows for breakfast, I can make you a meal one of these days.
It’s the least I could do!

Your neighbor, Huening Kai ^-^

Yeonjun blinks. Huening Kai. His name sounds foreign, which seems about right. He thinks back on Kai’s stressed and subdued demeanor the night before and tries to combine the cute, handwritten smiley face on this note. The contrast was utterly endearing. 

Yeonjun… might be a bit fucked. 

He shakes his head. He doesn’t really have the time to chat right now, but — he takes out his phone. It’s only polite to let the other person know, no? 

He sends all of it before he could second-guess himself, though he spends a good chunk of time re-reading what he’d sent and agonizing over it. He hopes he hadn’t come off too strongly. 

His phone lights up with a new message, but it’s not from Kai. 

Yeonjun raises a brow at the text. It’s Soobin, the assistant teacher at the daycare he worked at. It’s not like he’s going to be late for his morning session, which starts at 10am. 

Soobin sends him a string of eye-rolling emojis back almost instantly.

Yeonjun rolls his eyes in real life. Beomgyu is Soobin’s boyfriend, and they’re unbearably clingy with each other. Yeonjun has seen them in the morning enough times to know Beomgyu is not a morning person, so Soobin probably means his shoulder is being used as a human pillow while they wait for the kids to arrive. 

Regardless, he sends a quick thumbs up before slipping his phone into his pocket and making to leave. Right as he’s about to board his bus, he catches a glimpse of a tall man on the other side of the street that reminds me of Kai’s physique, and after he settles on a seat, he whips out his phone again on a whim. 

He hits send and immediately wants to destroy all of South Korea’s cell towers. 

Who let him have a goddamn phone in the first place? This is horrible. This is painful. Yeonjun contemplates jumping out the bus and letting himself be run over by city traffic, but then who would buy Soobin and Beomgyu their breakfast? God. He has to move apartment buildings. 

He turns off notifications and turns up his music volume as loudly as his ears can take and resolutely doesn’t check for any more messages for the rest of the ride. 

On the other side of their text thread, Kai fails to stifle a laugh. What in the world was this? He decides he’ll reply after he’s fed and washed Mina, but the urge to engage another person in conversation definitely takes him by surprise. 

The warmth of the silly string of messages carries him through their disjointed morning routine.

Chapter Text

Huening Kai’s life gets completely, irrevocably, and devastatingly upturned at the age of 21. 

He divides it into before and after.  

Before, his life had already been unconventional enough. He recites his life’s peculiar story beats in the privacy of his own mind sometimes, because it’s hard to keep track of, even for himself: 

His parents were a mixed-race couple. His father, an American musician who traveled the world for his career, and his mother, a Korean English teacher he met and fell in love with in China. His older sister was born in Texas, Kai was born in Hawaii, and their youngest sister in Brazil. They lived in China until he was 7, when his parents decided to split up because of his father’s career. His mom packed their bags and moved back to her mother’s house in South Korea when he was 8. It was here, in Seoul, that Kai grew up as the weird biracial kid who could play a million musical instruments but didn’t know a lick of Korean and could never speak up properly. 

Then, his parents died. It was only when he was older that he got the gist of what happened — his dad and mom had been talking about getting back together or something, but on one of their dates, there had been an accident, and they had died. Just like that. 

Their maternal grandmother had taken them in without question and raised the three of them to the best of her capabilities, and their paternal relatives regularly sent gifts and letters from across the world to keep in touch, but ultimately, the tragedy made it so that it was just him and his two sisters against the rest of the world. His older sister became and then eventually quit being an idol trainee, and Kai himself resigned himself to a life of music as a hobby, knowing even as a kid that he would have to eventually step up to help as much as he could when the time came. They learned to count themselves lucky; they weren’t that alone. They had each other, after all. 

When their grandmother eventually passed, she left behind her house under his older sister’s name. Lea had been the only one that was of age by then, and she had already been taking odd part-times to help out with expenses. She decided on her own that she wouldn’t be going to college, but that Kai and Hiyyih were, and made the two of them promise to her they were going to finish getting their education, no matter what. 

She had eyed Hiyyih particularly hard during that conversation; their youngest sister had expressed the desire to be an idol and had already been looking into which companies would be best to apply as a trainee, but Lea had vehemently rejected the idea, much to Hiyyih’s chagrin. It had been a big fight. Kai tried his best to mediate, but he was privately on Hiyyih’s side. Their father had been a musician, and music and performance was all three of them’s first love. Why not have one of them carry on his legacy? 

When Kai opened up to Lea about his opinion, she sighed and called another sibling discussion. The ultimatum she gave Hiyyih was that she had to finish high school, at the very least. And attend hakwon at least three times a week. Hiyyih had been accepted as a trainee not even a month later. They had gone out for dinner to celebrate, and Kai remembers being very proud of both of his sisters. 

Then. Then. At almost 21, Lea had fallen pregnant. 

Kai hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry when Lea had broken the news to them. Their life was crazy, written like some horrible soap opera that played in the afternoons, nobody to watch it besides sleepy aunties. He had laughed at the thought, but not unkindly; he’s never seen Lea, steadfast, headstrong Lea–noona, look so apprehensive and fragile before. Hiyyih had been shocked, then betrayed, then worried, all in quick succession. Kai understood it all. The shock and the betrayal — neither of them had even known Lea was dating, and it should have been a happy announcement, a source of some semblance of conventionality; she would introduce whoever it was to them, they would tease her, and they’d get a taste of what it was like to be a normal family with normal things that happened to them. 

Instead, they had learned of their eldest sister’s relationship through an unplanned pregnancy announcement. It was laughable. At that point, Kai was strangely used to it. The best survival technique, he had learned, was to simply roll with life’s punches. 

Hiyyih had to take some time, though, and those first few weeks were particularly frigid. Again, Kai did his best to mediate. He understood why Hiyyih was worried — what would happen to her career if this kind of information got out? How were they going to raise a kid when they were barely even grown themselves? Because this was going to be a team effort, even without the issue of Lea’s (now) ex-boyfriend. 

She and Hiyyih had a huge fight about it, and for a few explosive moments Kai himself was also genuinely worried. He had faith in his siblings and trust in the bond they’ve forged through the years, but maybe this was going to be Hiyyih’s breaking point? Or Lea’s? He’d hovered between them in a sludge of worry. 

Thankfully, thankfully, they had pulled through. They reached another compromise — Lea was going to limit her social media presence, at least anything that contained hints to her situation, just in case anybody from the public entertainment side of Hiyyih’s life snooped too hard; Hiyyih had apologized for her reaction and promised she was going to be even more mature about it. They had hugged and made up, and once again, Kai felt pride in the way all three of them had gone about resolving their issues. 

Learning about the father of Lea’s unborn child was the only time Kai had felt legitimate anger and bitterness towards another person. Frankly, the strength of his emotions had shocked him, but watching his older sister struggle to hold herself together as she broke the news that her boyfriend had called it quits with her halfway into her pregnancy was one of the only times Kai had ever truly recognized the ugliness of human nature. All of the other misfortunes he had experienced were hurtful, sure, but in a way, they were… natural, unavoidable, accidents that were out of his or anyone else’s immediate control; he’s lost count of the number of times he had told himself that death, no matter how unexpected, was part of the cycle of life. 

This breakup, however, was purely out of human selfishness. He could be charitable about it and have sympathy for the guy’s predicament — according to Lea, he wasn’t ready to be a parent at such a young age — but then, wasn’t he leaving Lea in the exact same situation he didn’t want to be part of? A situation that was equally his fault? The guy’s family had agreed to provide support, at least until the baby was of age, but the guy himself had made it very clear: he wanted no part in his own child’s life. Kai was sure he would forever have a chip on his shoulder about this. 

It didn’t help that the breakup had left Lea so uncommonly heartbroken. It hadn’t been anything too brutal, all things considered, but she had truly loved him, she had confided in them in a whisper, and even though they had broken off on terms as mature as they could make them, the pain still remained. She’d never felt the pain of loss like this before, not even with their parents. Kai had contemplated out loud if he should visit the guy and give him one single well-deserved punch to the face, and though Lea had disagreed, she did so with a laugh. 

(“We agreed to be grown up about it,” she said, wagging a finger at him warningly.

“No, noona, you did. I didn’t. What’s stopping me from letting him know what I think about this grown-up agreement between you two?” 

“Me, Kai. Do it for me,” Lea fist-tapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Let’s let it go.”) 

Eventually, as Kai had grown to learn, time does work its magic. As the months passed by, Kai watched the heavy coat of pain and grief his sister wore around her shoulders eventually loosen its hold on her, and by the time her daughter, their niece, arrived, his eldest sister had grown into it – loss and independence and motherhood altogether. She’d held herself with the grace and elegance of a hard-worn regal queen, and he remembered thinking, as she told them her water had broken and they needed to pack up to go to the hospital quickly, that his noona looked strong and determined and more beautiful than ever. 

Then, his niece was born. 

Kai thinks of the first time he ever held her in his arms, the certainty that he had never felt such an overwhelming flood of emotion in his life before. He doubted he ever would again, really. It was like he was the one who had been born, thrust into a world where such clarity and strength of emotion actually existed, and that finally, he’d been honored enough to be privy to it, to participate in this new world and to be able to love someone as strongly and as wholeheartedly as he already did this baby. His niece was, unflinchingly, the start of another chapter of his life. He would do anything for this baby. Anything. 

He said as much to Lea when he handed her baby back into her arms, slowly, gently, utterly terrified of accidentally dropping the tiny swathe of blankets. He had cried, one of the few times he had ever done so, and Lea and Hiyyih had cried with him. 

He had been the one to name her, even. Lea had given him and Hiyyih the privilege, and they’d both thrown themselves into the happy task of looking up baby names, until he had eventually settled on Mina. Aaliyah was Hiyyih’s choice, which became the baby’s second name, following in their family’s own little naming tradition. For legality’s sake, Lea had wasted no time in making him and Hiyyih the child’s godparents. Just in case, she’d said. You never know.  

And then, as would be expected, the first few months passed by as a hectic, exhausting blur. Kai tried to be as present and helpful to his sister during this crucial time, but he was still a student in university working a part-time job at the campus radio, and there were only so many hours in a day. And to be clear — it wasn’t like they were struggling for money. Their grandmother had left them the means to live comfortably as well as a sizable place to reside in, and their own parents had been reasonably well-off, enough that Kai could even choose a college degree in the arts and live in an off-campus apartment. 

This didn’t mean they could slack off, though, now that they were all-in for raising another human being. Hiyyih had even started thinking about quitting trainee life to go to university and eventually work to help out, saying it was unfair for Kai and Lea that she was the only one who was working towards her own dream — a sentiment that Kai had vehemently opposed. 

It was fine, he’d assured her; he wanted her to live her dream, and besides, wasn’t Kai living his own version of his dream as well? He was a music composition major, after all. He was still doing music, and if it takes a bit longer, if he had to take a few semesters slower than the rest of his peers in order to make time for work and for family, then so what? Life wasn’t a race. 

(Hiyyih had punched him on the shoulder for that too. 

“That was pretty cool of you to say, oppa,” she’d said with a grin on her face. “I don’t like it.”) 

So Hiyyih had remained a trainee, and apparently she was good enough to be slotted into her agency’s debut lineup — she was slated to debut within the following year, and according to her, things were starting to pick up. She had to stay at the office–provided dormitories in order to focus on debut preparations. It was something she felt a measure of regret about because it meant she couldn’t be there for her siblings and niece, but Kai and Lea were always ready to assuage her guilt, and they always made sure to schedule lots of video calls and send her plenty of pictures. 

On Mina’s first birthday, Lea threw a modest party. She’d invited a couple of neighbors to drop by, even extended a polite invite to her ex (which he equally as politely but unsurprisingly declined), and told the two of them to bring along some of their own friends. 

Kai had brought Beomgyu, a senior in his own department, colleague in the campus radio, and the first and closest friend he had made in university; Hiyyih, after reassuring her siblings that these were the people she trusted the most, had introduced them to some of her closest trainee friends and future members, who had ooh’d and ahh’d over the baby and her cuteness. The celebration had been fun, memorable, and quietly heartwarming. Lea even cried, but they were happy tears, and Kai had felt so full of warmth and affection. He remembered thinking he had never felt so safe, and selfishly, he had wished things would only get better from here on out. 

And then. 

And then. 

And then.

And then his sisters were in an accident themselves .  

This was the — the breaking point. 

It had been Kai’s turn to babysit. His sisters had gone out — Hiyyih had insisted on taking Lea out for a well-deserved girls’ day out. It had been one of Hiyyih’s precious few days off. Kai had relished the opportunity to spend some bonding time with his niece; as much as he tried to visit often, the reality of college life meant he barely had enough time for himself, let alone his loved ones, so this was something he had been really looking forward to.

If only he knew. 

He received the call during naptime, the buzzing of his phone dragging him out from sleep. Mina was already shifting in her crib, obviously disturbed by the sound, so Kai hadn’t even taken the time to ponder the short, unknown number on his caller ID before swiping to accept it.

“Hello?” 

“Is this Kai Kamal Huening?” An unfamiliar voice responded to him, heavy and serious. The gravity in the man’s tone spurred him into answering the question, concern for privacy be damned. 

“Yes, who’s speaking?” 

“Sir, this is 119. There’s been an accident and you were listed as the primary emergency contact. I’m sorry to say but…” 

It was a drunk driver, he was informed. Some kid. Taken into custody, but he was young and contrite, so they were probably going to let him go. 

This is when Kai divides his life into after, because he had no idea how he had even made it through while it was happening. 

During was a blur. 

During was numbness and moving on auto-pilot. During, now that he was in the after, was something he’d had to wade through and cherry-pick what he had to forget and to keep, lest he be completely incapacitated even in the now. 

That was something he couldn’t afford to do, now that it was just him and a baby, barely over a year old. 

His sisters, by some miracle, didn’t die from impact, but it had been a close thing — a very close thing, the doctors told him — and for the meantime Kai was left to deal with his niece. Lea was in a coma with extensive injuries, and Hiyyih was unconscious but responsive and will remain hospitalized, greatly weakened from the physical and mental trauma of surviving a life-threatening car crash. 

Kai had never felt so alone in his life. His sisters were alive, and he was infinitely grateful for it; it doesn’t change the fact that he’d been left behind to take care of Mina, to take care of Lea and Hiyyih and himself too on top of it all. He remembers bits and flashes from that first day — 

Arriving at the ER, Mina strapped to his chest in her carrier. Waiting at the ER, watching Mina fall in a fitful sleep. At some point someone brings his sisters’ personal items to him, and Kai could only stare numbly as Lea’s phone lights up with a message. Her lock screen was a photo of the three of them cooing at Mina, fast asleep in his noona’s arms. He’d called Beomgyu; the boy had been equally at a loss as him but showed up anyway, bringing with him his boyfriend Soobin, whom Kai was friends with. Soobin had taken one look at him, hunched around Mina’s sleeping form and staring blankly at his sisters’ dirty bags, and had asked, ever so gently, if he could take Mina for the time being. Watching Lea’s unmoving form in the ICU, cables and machines arranged all around her. Watching Hiyyih fight her way to consciousness, only for her to fall unconscious again after just a few minutes of lucidity. 

Kai had also sent his noona’s ex a message to inform him of the accident. The guy ended up dropping by with his parents, who had gravely pulled Kai aside in the dimly lit hospital hallway, telling him that they were sorry for the accident and they were offering prayers for his sisters, and that if he wanted, they could— they could take away— 

“We could take Mina off your hands for a while,” was how they worded it, but this was one of the worst moments of clarity Kai had of that day.

“No. Absolutely not. My noo— She—”

Beomgyu, who he hadn’t been aware was by his side the entire time, had gripped his shoulder, and he’d used it to ground himself. 

“I am her legal guardian. So, thank you, but no. I’ll take care of her.” 

To the family’s credit, all three of them had looked embarrassed. Even then, they had been kind enough to reiterate to Kai that they will continue sending child support, and that they would help him in any way they could. He nodded. What else was there to say?

He remembers the doctors informing him that, while still being optimistic, there was no solid timeline they could give him for Lea to wake up, and that Hiyyih would take a few months to a year of recovery time. He’d nodded at that too, and after that, everything turned into a blur once more. 

Even the brief time he had spent tying up his old life’s remaining loose ends left no clear impression in his memories. He had to have emailed his professors, his university’s administration, his part-time job, various offices and institutions, all his other burgeoning responsibilities — he had to have, time had to have passed somehow, but for the life of him he cannot remember doing so. All he could chalk it up to was the innate drive to take care of his niece. After all, his sisters were alive, but for the foreseeable future, he was all she had left. 

Kai moved into a new apartment. He hadn’t… he hadn’t sold his grandmother’s place, yet, but his flimsy memory told him he had his niece’s grandparents to thank for whatever legal agreement they had secured for him in order to keep legal ownership of the house. He hadn’t really wanted to live in that empty house on his own, but to stay in his own tiny apartment while raising a child was equally out of the question. Kai also had a feeling that sometime in the future, he might have to face the burden of making the decision to sell it all by himself. So, he had stayed over at Mina’s grandparents’ residence for a few weeks — just enough time for the couple to secure for him a decently-sized apartment in an appropriately situated location in the city. 

Kai remembers nodding to their suggested place; it was close enough to his university as well as to other amenities, had a grocery store attached to it on the ground floor, was priced at a reasonable rent, and best of all, as they had eagerly informed him, the building was family-friendly, meaning the neighborhood was safe and easy to raise a child in. 

Kai really had a lot to be grateful for. 

If only he had the emotional capacity to feel even remotely anything besides bone-deep exhaustion. 

After, his life becomes almost completely unrecognizable. 

Two months, the date on his phone informs him. A little over two months… since. A week or so since he moved into his new apartment. 

The entire space is all Mina’s. She is, after all, only a little over a year old, and is essentially helpless. Every single flat surface in the apartment is overtaken by baby products. He can’t give her all the attention in the world, but he tries, he really does. He’d converted the bedroom into his workspace where he’d dumped his keyboard and guitar set, invested in a halfway-decent pull-out sofa bed, and situated the crib beside it in the common space that serves as the living room, kitchen, and dining room all at once. 

Everything he has now is to raise her, and his whole life has to break apart and reconstruct around Mina as the one and only focal point. His whole life has already been shattered beyond repair into a million tiny fragments. Kai may not have any idea what life wants from him (why make him go through all that, then take everything from him and leave him all alone?), but if it hadn’t been for Mina he would have let it take him along, so this is all he can do with the remainder he’d been cursed with. 

He was on an indefinite break from college. He visits his sisters as often as he can, but for all the free time he should theoretically have, the visits don’t happen as often as he suspects they would want. On top of finding his footing in this new space, he was also eyeball deep into tutorials and forums on how to take care of a baby. He couldn’t yet, but he knew it would soon be time to look into a job, any job, because he didn’t want to survive on the kindness of essential strangers alone. He wouldn’t call himself friendless by any means, but in a lot of ways, he was completely on his own. 

Kai is, by all intents and purposes, a single father at the age of 21. 

And then along comes Choi Yeonjun. 

Kai doesn’t know what spurred him to make a standing offer to make breakfast for a stranger who was only kind enough to help his obviously struggling new neighbor out, but he does it anyway. What’s the worst that could happen? What he’d told Yeonjun was true — he really needed all the help he could get, so he figured it was a harmless enough gesture of gratitude and potential friendship. He wasn’t expecting him to take it up anytime soon. 

So it’s a surprise when Kai’s phone buzzes the very next morning after their late-night encounter with what can only really be called a barrage of messages. Yeonjun’s texts are charming in their earnest awkwardness, and Kai thinks there’s a bit of a gap between how he is in person and how he texts, but he appreciates the gesture nevertheless. 

What’s even more amusing, Kai muses as he reads through the thread, is that Yeonjun evidently doesn’t even want to immediately take Kai up on his offer of breakfast or anything. No, his messages are simply more reciprocations of kindness. Which, if Kai is to be honest, comes off to him as a ploy for extended conversation, in a manner that was reminiscent of the giddy heart-fluttering sort of thing that Kai hasn’t felt since he was in high school and crushing on some cute senior in the band club. 

Well, it wasn’t like he minded, and making friends with kind neighbors, irrespective of whether said neighbors were cute and tall and had pretty eyes, was ultimately beneficial to Kai, so when he gets the time to spare after his morning routine with Mina (breakfast — burping — bathing — playtime — nap), he snatches his phone to reply. 

Yeonjun, expectedly, doesn’t reply until the proverbial lunch hour, and by then Kai is busy trying to make food while simultaneously trying to keep Mina busy. He had woken her up earlier than he’d planned by accidentally making too much noise pulling out a pan, and is currently reaping the consequences of his actions.

“Mina, Mina, baby, shh,” Kai tries to coo, but he knows he sounds desperate, miles away from being the source of comfort for his — daughter? — a part of Kai recoils from the thought — his niece. 

He waves one of her plushies in her line of sight and rocks her, trying to distract her from her grumpiness at being unceremoniously forced back into consciousness, but it’s very clearly not working; Mina’s tiny face is twisted in a howl, lungs working at full capacity in constant screams, and Kai’s own chest squeezes in sympathy, wanting more than anything to ease her discomfort.

“I’m sorry, baby, shh, shh, it’s alright. I know, I know,” he whispers, trying to soothe her, but to no avail. Kai throws all caution to the wind and simply tries to go about making her bottle with just one arm, the other securing baby Mina to his chest as she screams in his ear. It’s okay, he doesn’t mind, he completely understands the feeling of being flung headfirst into a world of chaos and unfamiliarity with nothing, absolutely nothing to shield yourself. He feels like crying himself.

Somehow, he finishes making Mina’s bottle, checking the temperature on the back of his hand like his sister had taught him. Mina’s heart-wrenching wails dial down to confused sobs, then to impatient whimpers as Kai nudges her lips with the nip of her bottle, then to satisfied snuffles as she latches and hungrily sucks at the store-bought milk. Kai sways her gently, holding her in one arm in the middle of their apartment. He’ll have to somehow procure some food for himself, but Mina is more important. 

At that precise moment, to Kai’s confusion, a knock sounds on his door. He hadn’t been expecting any visitors. It’s equally surprising when he checks the intercom and sees who it is. 

It’s Yeonjun, holding up a bag of what is unmistakably takeout food to the camera and a sheepish smile on his face. To add to Kai’s utter bewilderment, Soobin and Beomgyu are also at his doorstep, standing behind Yeonjun and looking like they’re as astonished as Kai to find themselves here. There’s also one other boy, a complete stranger to Kai, standing closer to Yeonjun and holding another package of food. 

What else is Kai to do? He looks down at Mina, cradled in the nook of his arm and sucking on her bottle in contentment, and opens the door, stepping aside to let them in. 

Yeonjun, with what appears to be the foresight of a god, steps inside and speaks in hushed tones. “Hi. Sorry for this. I brought food.” He even wiggles his fingers towards Mina, whose eyes are wide in what Kai can only call amazement. “Hi, Mina.” Mina stares back unblinkingly. 

“Kai!” Beomgyu, thankfully following Yeonjun’s cue, cuts in with a muted yell before Kai could say anything. “How the hell do you know this guy!” 

“He’s my neighbor,” he replies dumbly, watching as Yeonjun slips off his shoes, arranges them beside the door, and moves towards the modest table in the middle of his space. “What are you doing here?” 

“Well, you see,” Soobin pipes up from where he’s arranging the rest of their shoes. “That guy —” he points at Yeonjun unceremoniously “— wouldn’t stop checking his phone all day, and I , as you may or may not know, am incredibly nosy. So I swiped his phone. Imagine my surprise when I saw just who exactly he was waiting to text him back.” 

Beomgyu stifles a cackle from where he had been leaning down to greet Mina. Yeonjun purses his lips. “How the hell you guessed it from one text conversation is beyond me.” 

“Hyung, I know of exactly one person named Kai who uses emoticons like that. Hi, baby,” Soobin coos in Mina’s direction, resolutely ignoring Yeonjun rolling his eyes in response. 

“It’s a happy coincidence, no?” says Beomgyu. “So I told him we knew you, and after we screamed it out, hyung was like, why don’t we drop by? And Taehyunie here was already there to meet up with Yeonjunie-hyung so Taehyunie insisted we bring food because it was lunch time and it would be the polite thing to do, and so we got some take-out and it was all very easily decided, really.” 

He somehow says this all with one breath. 

“Erm. Yes. Hi. I’m Taehyun,” the last guy offers, extending his hand in greeting. His other hand still held the bag of food. “Sorry for dropping in on you unannounced. I hope it’s okay. Nice to meet you, and baby Mina too.”

Up until this point Kai hadn’t really said anything, but something about Taehyun’s shy, polite demeanor and the easy way he greets some stranger and his kid breaks him out of the strange, dumbfounded silence he had fallen into. 

“It’s alright, really. I just hope nobody expected a place that was fit for guests,” he laughs a touch deprecatingly, and reaches out to shake the still-outstretched hand. Taehyun smiles blindingly at him, the ice of a first meeting apparently sufficiently broken, and something in Kai’s chest cracks and thaws under the warmth of it. 

“Taehyun-ah, bring that over here,” Yeonjun calls from behind him, and Kai turns around to see that his neighbor had somehow wrestled back enough space from the mess of Kai’s apartment to lay out the food they had brought over on the table. He’d even unearthed the two chairs that had disappeared almost immediately one week into Kai’s move. Taehyun wiggles his fingers in Mina’s direction in greeting like Yeonjun had, before padding over to the table and bringing out even more food. 

Beomgyu and Soobin had made themselves comfortable on the floor by the pull-out sofa. Beomgyu gestures at him to come over and sit. Left with virtually nothing to do, Kai does so, moving carefully so as not to jostle the baby in his arms. 

As soon as his body hits the soft cushion, the usual surge of exhaustion washes over him, and it’s all Kai could do not to slump backwards sharply and disturb Mina. It would be a shame; Mina has settled down considerably, bottle almost empty. He’ll have to burp her soon. 

“Kai-yah,” Beomgyu murmurs. “How are you?” 

“I’m fine, hyung,” Kai replies automatically. Soobin clicks his tongue. It sounds almost… knowing. Kai opens his eyes — when had he closed them? — and meets Soobin’s gaze. His brows are furrowed, concern sharp and piercing. 

“I’m fine, hyung, come on,” Kai insists. “All things considered.” 

“Can I hold Mina?” is what Soobin says instead. Kai has no reason to refuse, so he hands the baby over. Mina goes willingly, sated and sleepy from her bottle. He watches as Soobin expertly maneuvers the baby’s tiny body against him. Soobin brushes a hand through the wisps of Mina’s hair, brushes a finger teasingly against her nose, and the three of them laugh quietly as Mina crunches her nose adorably. The difference in size between Soobin’s hand and Mina’s is so big it’s almost comical. 

For a split-second, the sight condenses into fear in Kai’s chest, permafrost spreading outwards from his ribcage. She’s so small. I’m supposed to be responsible for something that small?  

He sits there, suspended in that familiar icy cage of terror and realization, before Soobin makes Mina giggle and time starts again for Kai. Despite his best efforts, a small tremor runs through his hand; Beomgyu notices. Of course he does. The other boy reaches out and takes his hand, spreading warmth back into his fingers and entwining them in his own. Beomgyu leans his head against Kai’s shoulder. He’s pretty sure it smells like burp throw-up, but Beomgyu gives no indication that he minds. 

“You’re doing fine, Kai,” is what Beomgyu murmurs this time. “You’re doing fine.”