Chapter Text
The plane, of course, is delayed.
It’s also ass o’clock at night.
Jihoon shifts his travel pillow and laptop into the crook of his left arm, pressing them close to his chest, so he can scrub at his eyes with the heel of his right hand. “Of fucking course.”
Sleep is going to have to wait.
The past four days had been torturously monotonous. His company had tossed him into a plane - they didn’t even have the courtesy to book him business class - and demanded that he attend mindless conferences, which Jihoon had endured with grace and temperance (in his opinion) because as a lowly supervisor, he did not have the latitude to say no to the people who can fire him at will. If he closes his eyes, he can still hear the dull drone of the business men’s voices. To make things worse, societal pressures and obligations had coerced him into accepting invitations to socialize with the other employees, with locations ranging from expensive restaurants to sketchy bars. The amount of social interaction he has suffered has definitely far surpassed his usual capacity. All he wants is a long, hot bath and then to be unconscious for a minimum of twelve hours. But right now, the universe seems to enjoy generally inconveniencing him in any way possible.
Jihoon groans and lets his hand fall limp from his face. He glances ruefully at the harsh cold structure of the airport chairs and trudges towards an empty one, settling into the uncomfortable metal. It’s going to be a while, so he pulls out his phone and plugs in his headphones and aggressively selects a song while he waits for deliverance.
When Jihoon boards the plane at last and flops clumsily onto the seat, sleep reels him in immediately. He’s out before he even can listen to the flight attendants’ riveting safety presentation and, god, is it a blissful few moments.
It’s while Jihoon is in the middle of savoring the glory of black nothingness that he is rudely woken by something akin to the painful feeling of being stepped on; he peels his eyes open and ah , he thinks through the sleepy haze. That makes sense. There is a child. Clambering on top of him. And digging her tiny, red sneaker clad feet into his legs with a surprising amount of force.
She stops in her tracks, snapping her head toward Jihoon like a deer in headlights and her hand poised to reach across him and grab the other armrest (which, mind you, is on the opposite side). He blinks dazedly and raises his hands to rub the tiredness out of his eyes and figure out what the hell to do, but his sleep addled mind clearly miscalculates and Jihoon smacks the little girl’s outstretched arms; He watches in horror as she loses her balance and topples backwards.
Of course, they’re on a plane so even if she had fallen, the most realistic injuries she would’ve sustained would be a couple bruises but Jihoon isn’t about to risk the possibility of her suffering a head injury and he is definitely not going to risk the possibility of a lawsuit by some pretentious, overprotective parents. With reflexes he never knew he possessed, he grabs her shirt and pulls her forward so that she ends up tumbling bonelessly into his lap.
The child, Jihoon observes incredulously, squeals gleefully and makes grabby hands towards him. “Do it again!” she demands, wriggling wildly in his lap. Her hair is gathered into two bouncy pigtails, secured by bright orange hair ties, and an assortment of hair clips with bunnies and flowers also adorns her head (a vague attempt to control her flyaways, he supposes). She’s got a short sleeved shirt pulled over another long sleeved shirt and striped socks peek out from under her denim jeans. There’s even a little rilakkuma embroidered onto her shirt. It’s violently cute.
He’s also still very disoriented and this whole situation is just all too much for him to process right now.
Jihoon squeezes his eyes close hard and sighs.
“Where did you come from?”
“A stork! It dropped me at my home ‘nd I went ‘whee!”
Ah. Of course. He should’ve known better.
Jihoon tries again. “Where are your parents?”
“Daddy!” She points towards the aisle.
It’s then when he notices the man sprawled on the aisle seat. Her dad appears to be around his age (which makes Jihoon a little bit nauseous because he can’t begin to imagine the burden of taking care of a tiny little human when he can’t even remember to eat sometimes) with a shock of black hair and his arms draped over the armrests in what must be an uncomfortable position, mouth hanging open a little bit as he lets out quiet snores.
The child blinks at him owlishly, unperturbed, and expecting some sort of reaction even though she had just almost given Jihoon an aneurysm mere moments ago.
His mind is grabbling at what to say but with no avail, so instead he opts to lift her up as gently as possible and set her down into the middle seat of the row (presumably where she had clambered from).
The child’s stare persists, despite now having to crane her neck to keep her eyes trained on his face. It’s seriously off putting and it prompts Jihoon to say something. Anything.
Although it goes against the entire image that Jihoon has spent his life forming, he tries to soften the scowl on his face and look less menacing. “What’s your name?”
The little girl hesitates for a second, losing all of her bravado from before, and clutches her plushie (when did that materialize out of nowhere?) tightly. “...Kwon Suhyang.”
A bit uncertain, Jihoon fidgets with his hands and says in a voice that he hopes is somewhere near friendly, “It’s nice to meet you, Suhyang. How old are you?” She pauses again, and carefully holds up four fingers. “ ‘m going to be five on April twenty six.”
Suhyang plays nervously with the stubby arms of her blue lizard sumikko gurashi plush and mumbles out an apology. “Sorry about stepping on you, ahjussi, I was trying to see out the window cause the clouds looked real fluffy.”
Ah.
A pregnant pause passes. He unsuccessfully tries to decide whether or not he should offer to be clambered on again and instead he desperately hopes for her father to wake up so that he doesn’t have to deal with the terribly obvious fact that he is Not Great with Kids.
The silence is interrupted when Suhyang tilts her head, “ahjussi, why is your hair pink? Did you get some paints stuck in it? Got that happen to me before- it took a real long time to wash it out. Hey! You can use my soap if you want.”
Jihoon raises an eyebrow, unconsciously bringing his fingers up to card through his damaged fringe. He’d dyed it the atrocious color when he’d lost a bet with Seungcheol about how long it would take Hansol and Seungkwan to realize their disgustingly not-platonic feelings for each other. Damn them for not being more emotionally constipated and managing to get together so quickly. What kind of k-drama shit is that, liking someone and having your feelings reciprocated?
“No, thank you; it’s pink on purpose. It’s supposed to stay in,” Jihoon tells her patiently. “Thank you for offering your soap, though.”
Suhyang’s eyes get impossibly wider and she whispers, “You can get your hair colored forever ?” as if Jihoon had just revealed the nation’s greatest secret to her. He suppresses the urge to squish her cheeks because the face she’s making is just too adorable.
“Well, not forever, but it does stay for a long time.”
The little girl gapes at him and squishes her plushie tighter. She seems to mull over this newfound information for a few moments, before a stream of excited words bursts from her mouth. “I’m gonna get so many colors! Maybe I’ll even get pink, like you, ahjussi, cause it makes you look like a fairy! Oh, d’ you have any paper and crayons? I wanna draw it!”
Suhyang draws out the “oh” and pronounces “crayons” like “crowns”- a poster child for cuteness. To be honest, it’s so alarmingly adorable that it makes Jihoon want to vomit.
It turns out that Jihoon does not, in fact, have any crayons in his very adult and boring laptop bag, but he does have some scrap papers and a few highlighters, which he offers to the little girl who seems very close to vibrating out of her seat with excitement.
She immediately grabs the stationary, hands clenched into a tiny fist around the green highlighter, and starts marking up the paper, appearing to be placated for the moment. Jihoon prays that it’ll be longer than that, or that maybe she’ll tire herself out and fall asleep (he really doesn’t have the slightest idea of how to calm a four year old), so he can slide back into the sweet embrace of sleep.
Unfortunately, it can’t be more than a few minutes after he slips on his headphones and shuts his eyes that he is prodded by tiny little child fingers, demanding his attention. He blearily indulges the little girl and turns towards her, just as she shoves her new masterpiece into his limp hands.
He squints at the paper for a bit and, gradually, the lines and blobs form images.
It’s him, with neon pink hair and a body drawn with crude lines. Beside him, is little Suhyang (or what he presumes is her) with green, yellow, pink, and blue lines streaming down from a smiling face to resemble her hair.
Jihoon kind of wants to frame this in his room. Instead, he awkwardly says, “this is lovely,” carefully smooths out the paper, and hands it back to her.
Suhyang chirps out a bright “thanks,” punctuated by her lisp on the last letter. The bobbles of her hair ties bounce around as she replies. Then, she peers curiously at his phone.
Before he can even retract his hand completely, she asks, “ahjussi, do you have any fun games on your phone?”
He knows he doesn’t, but he unplugs his headphones and unlocks his phone for her to explore anyways. Watching discretely, Jihoon sees her straighten up upon finding something interesting and tap on the screen happily.
Of course she’s opened the selfie app with the godforsaken filters (he knew he should’ve deleted that app before he even came out of the womb) and excitedly informs him that her papa always uses this app and that she really loves the various bunny filters.
By the end of twenty minutes, Jihoon has a new collection of over two dozen selfies- most of them blurry, but each of the depicting a Suhyang-shaped blob with a different filter.
There’s one clear picture though. Suhyang had insisted that he take one of both of them with his steady, fully developed motor skills; they’ve both got two cute cat ears floating above their heads and a pair of whiskers etched onto their cheeks. Everything is bright and airy and Suhyang looks adorable with her cheek squished against Jihoon’s and a peace sign thrown up carelessly.
(Something pinches tight in his chest when he looks at the image)
Eventually, she does tire herself out and she curls up into the blue cushion of the airplane chair, conking out almost immediately.
Jihoon is immensely relieved that he no longer has to figure out how to Deal With Children, but sleep is beyond him at this point, so he resignedly slides his laptop from the bag and opens up his most recent composition.
Suhyang’s father is still dead to the world when they land in Seoul. Despite Jihoon’s natural inclination to avoid interacting with strangers as much as possible, his need for some shitty beer and a nice, comfortable bed far outweigh his instincts. And access to those two items requires him to get out of his aisle and off of the plane as fast as possible.Thus, he begrudgingly steels himself before reaching over to shake the black haired man awake. Unfortunately, it seems that he’s a heavy sleeper (Jihoon envies him for that) and gives no indication that he will awake within the next century.
Sighing, he shoves the man a little harder and - voilà - the latter comes to with a start. “Huh?”
Kwon Suhyang’s father blinks wearily for a few seconds. “Suhyang-yah?” Suddenly, he seems to shake off the tiredness from before and muster the energy to flail around, looking for his daughter. Relief floods his face when he notices her curled up in the middle seat, still grasping the lizard plush.
Jihoon would love to stay and chat, except he needs to be laying horizontal as soon as possible. Awkwardly, he clears his throat, drawing the attention of other man.
“Do you mind, uh, moving?” Jihoon winces at how cold his voice sounds. His brain to mouth filter is lagging a little bit.
The other man, however, is unbothered and begins hastily gathering his belongings. Jihoon isn’t really in the mood to chat with anyone - as much fun it was to talk to Suhyang, it definitely sapped the energy out of him and by now, he’s definitely running on his reserve batteries - but the former clearly isn’t on the same page as him.
“Ahh, sorry. I completely conked out the minute I dropped onto the chair.”
When he speaks, his Gyeonggi accent lilts and curls in a pleasantly, but Jihoon is all too tired to appreciate it.
Suhyang’s dad (for lack of a better name) runs a hand through his mussed hair, hoisting a bulging duffle bag on one shoulder and, hilariously juxtaposed, a pink ass, sparkly Hello Kitty backpack on the other.
Jihoon manages to grunt out a “don’t worry about it,” although a little belatedly, and tries to suppress his growing impatience.
Eventually (after nine painstaking minutes, six of which he had spent gracing the other man’s incessant chatter with half hearted replies), Jihoon’s feet touch the earth and his body shifts into autopilot.
After all, he is in familiar territory, back in the concrete jungle of Seoul.
It's good, it's familiar, and most of all, it means a bed and a fridge stocked with a copious amount of cheap beer and instant ramen.
The sun has yet to ease past the horizon. Rather, bronze pigment bleeds from Seoul’s skyline and into curling rose and lavender, dyeing the clouds a pretty, saccharine hue. The faint light laces everything with a hazy, golden edge. It’s dangerous, Jihoon thinks, as his heart pangs thinking of the beach sunrises he had fervently admired when he was a child. It’s dangerous in that this is the time, the cusp between the witching hours and daylight, that people’s protective cocoons are peeled back and they’re left vulnerable.
He gets through customs fairly smoothly and before he knows it, he’s standing outside on the concrete of the airport with the crisp winter air biting at his cheeks. Jihoon pulls his parka around him a little tighter, glaring into the weak morning sunlight and glances at his phone for the time. An unforgiving 7:18 AM taunts him from the screen.
Eventually, though Jihoon has little recollection of his own actions, he makes it back to his apartment building and trudges up the stairs to the second floor. The key doesn’t fit into the keyhole the first four times he tries, but the fifth proves to be a success. He toes off his shoes at the door and haphazardly tosses his jacket and laptop case onto the loveseat and leaves his luggage for a-less-sleep-deprived-Jihoon to deal with.
In the meantime, he morosely flops onto his couch, which is striped with the sunlight filtering through the blinds, and forgoes a hot shower for a long, long nap.
The Pinwheel is a quaint café that sits snuggled between a used bookstore and an herbal medicine store. It is equal parts hell and heaven, because it’s the only place Jihoon can get his caffeine fix, but as retribution for his finicky tastes, he endures the insufferable company of his friends.
The day is still early, however the corporate schedule couldn’t be any less concerned with Jihoon’s terrible sleeping habits and so he finds himself standing in front of the decaled door of The Pinwheel. A sigh escapes his mouth, misting the cold air and he begrudgingly pushes the door open.
The light tinkle of the bell sounds, followed by an exuberant “good morning” ringing through the air, too.
“Ah, Jihoon-hyung!” Seungkwan greets gleefully from his spot behind the counter. Hansol grins and waves, situated, as always, by the former’s side.
“Hey, assholes.”
Seungkwan lets out an undignified whine, face pulling into a pout.
“You’re not cute,” Jihoon tells him flatly.
Seungkwan huffs in exasperation, “Hansol would beg to disagree.” He sends his boyfriend a pointed if-you-don’t-wanna-die-you’d-better-compliment-me look.
Before Hansol can open his mouth to spout some cheesy bullshit, Jihoon swiftly pulls out his water bottle and sprays him with a jet of water
“What the hell, hyung?” Hansol sputters indignantly. “You can’t just do that.”
“Hell yeah, I can. And I’ll do it again if I have to.” Jihoon wields his water bottle in front of himself, poised to ward away any unwanted declarations of affection, if necessary.
He inches towards the counter, making sure to keep the nozzle trained on Hansol. “Just give me my caffeine.”
“Fuck you, I swear you only ever talk to me when you need coffee.” But Seungkwan nonetheless makes his way towards the coffee machine.
Jihoon eyes the chocolate chip cookies and quickly snatches one. No one’s going to miss it anyways. Jeonghan’s probably already baking another batch right now. He ambles towards an empty table and sets his stuff down, leaving his water bottle out in case of any future incidents. Soon enough, Seungkwan saunters over to his table with the drink of the gods. Instead of leaving Jihoon be after he delivers the drink, he plops down into the seat across from him, resting his chin in his palm and crossing his legs daintily.
“So, hyung, anything interesting happen lately?”
“No.”
“You gotta make things happen then! Venture outside of the dark hole that you call home. Explore everything that the world has to offer! You’re youth is slipping away right before your eyes. I can’t, in good conscience, let you do that for yourself.”
Jihoon glares at him. “Stop trying to meddle with my life. How can you assume that I’m not happy with what I’m doing right now?”
“I’d believe you if you were some wrinkled old man with five dogs and no will to live, but you’re twenty-five and single as hell.”
Jihoon sips his coffee, resolutely ignoring Seungkwan. The coffee is good. So good, in fact, that he can almost pretend that Seungkwan isn’t sitting next him, trying to dig into his completely unremarkable life.
Seungkwan groans. “Hyung, you’ve become a boring corporate bitch.”
“Grade-A, just-about-to-get-a-raise corporate bitch, so yeah, I think I’m pretty happy with that title.”
Seungkwan sighs dramatically. “You’re lucky I love you so much, if it were anyone else, I’d have given up on you by now.” He swipes Jihoon’s phone, taking advantage of his focus on the drink in his hands.
To Jihoon’s unending dismay, Seungkwan punches in his password perfectly (he’s going to have to change it again) and begins furiously typing something in.
“I swear to god, if you subscribe me to some disgusting, furry text alert thing again, I will end you.”
From across the room, Hansol raises his head from his phone in alarm. “A what text alert?? Come again?”
Jihoon snorts. “You’re in for a wild ride if you don’t know about your boyfriend’s nasty kinks.” Hansol ‘s face contorts into one of pure distress.
Seungkwan reaches over the table and smacks his arm hard. “Hey! No turning this café into a temple of lies. Besides, hyung, even if I were into that weird shit, it’s 2017, you need to be less parochial in your views.” He turns around for emphasis and calls out to Hansol, “Babe, don’t listen to him. He’s just cranky because we’re in a loving relationship and his only company is cheap ramen.”
He turns back to Jihoon, and scoffs, “Which - by the way, hyung - can change. Your piteous state of single-ness is not perpetual.”
“I’ll have you know that I have the best kind of ramen,” Jihoon informs him, mulishly ignoring the topic at hand. It’s fine though, because Seungkwan’s gone back to snooping around in his phone and Jihoon can finally savor his coffee some more.
His joy is short lived though.
“Oh, what’s this?” Seungkwan says triumphantly. He turns Jihoon’s phone around in his hand to wave it rudely in Jihoon’s face.
“What the hell? How am I supposed to know what you’re referring to if you keep shaking it in my face.”
Smugly, Seungkwan slides the phone over to Jihoon. To Jihoon’s chagrin, it’s the goddamn selfie with Suhyang. Feigning ignorance, he innocently says, “What?”
“Don’t play dumb, hyung. It’s not a good look on you. Now explain this disgustingly adorable image that I want framed in my apartment.”
“There’s nothing to explain,” Jihoon says coolly. “What were you doing on my phone anyways?”
“Well, at first I was setting you a calendar notification to get the fuck out of the house and come party with us on Friday - time and location already put in there - but then I wanted to grace you with some tokens of my undying, ageless beauty in the form of some selfies. I found this priceless gem instead.” He’s so fucking smug, Jihoon wants to smack in back to the fourth grade.
Jihoon tells him this, to which Seungkwan laughs, “You must be getting softer, hyung.”
Thankfully, his phone chimes, a notification popping up. It’s from his colleague, reminding him to be at the office on time for the meeting. Jihoon grins and begins gathering his belongings, chucking the now empty coffee cup into the trash bin. “I gotta go, duty calls. The office is calling for its bitch.”
Seungkwan glares at him, but doesn’t make a move to stop him. “This isn’t over, hyung.”
Jihoon hums knowingly and makes his way to the door, waving bye to Hansol. “Tell Jeonghan, Jisoo, and Seungcheol that they suck.”
Hansol nods. “So...tell them that you love them, right?” Jihoon flips him off and reaches for the door.
“Ah, and hyung,” Seungkwan calls from his seat at the table, wearing a shit-eating grin, “Be there or be a fucking loser.”
Jihoon throws his head back and lets out a sharp laugh, “I don’t think that’s how the saying goes,” and steps back out into the noisiness of Seoul’s busy streets.
The next time he sees Suhyang and her dad is so jarring for him that he nearly drops the carton of eggs he’s inspecting. It’s surprising because he’d dismissed the memory of the plane ride as some freak dream of his, in which he actually liked children.
It had been a week and a half since he last went grocery shopping and it could probably be longer if Jisoo and Jeonghan hadn’t shown up at his front door today and eyed the state of his apartment with pronounced disgust. Okay, so maybe he has a huge project due soon and he really can’t afford to lose any time, which means cutting out some self-care stuff. But Jeonghan had strolled in, nose upturned, with Jisoo trailing behind him and the two of them had boorishly pushed him out the door (his own apartment! The audacity...) with a grocery list shoved into his hand.
He had wandered down the street to the corner store, kicking at pebbles and cans and feeling especially like a pissy teenager.
Eventually, he had combed through the aisles and checked things off the list and had just been in the process of choosing a nice carton of eggs when he had spotted them at the end of the aisle.
Ah, fuck. Should he leave? Or maybe he should stay and just hope they don’t notice him. Or they’ve probably forgotten him already. After all, he is just a random stranger they met on a random plane.
By the time Jihoon’s finished outlining his possible options of escape, Suhyang has already noticed him and is, to his horror, waving vigorously in his direction. Within the next moment, she’s dragged her father by the arm and stopped herself in front of him.
“Hi, ahjussi!” She’s bouncing on the soles of her feet, this time adorn with tiny red converse highs. Her hair is down today, but the clips are still secured on her head.
“Suhyang-ah, what did I tell about tugging me really hard,” Her father scolds.The tips of his ears are slightly red. She still has a furious grasp on his hand though.
Jihoon, in the meantime, awkwardly places the egg carton back onto the shelf and gives a hesitant wave.
“I’m Kwon Soonyoung! It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He extends his hand to shake it. Jihoon does so. “This is my daughter,” Suhyang grins up at him again. “Who I’m sure has already introduced herself rudely, like the gremlin she is.”
“Oh, no, she was nice. I’m Lee Jihoon.”
Suhyang turns around, suddenly a bit shy, and lightly tugs on the fabric of Soonyoung’s pants. “What is it, sweetie?”
She motions for him mutely, and Soonyoung bends down; she cups her hand around his ear and whispers something. Jihoon watches this exchange, intrigued and slightly concerned for the ice cream that sits, melting, in his cart.
Soonyoung laughs a little, eyes gleaming, and pushes her forward lightly. “Go ahead, ask him.”
Jihoon raises an eyebrow, curious at her uncharacteristic display of timidity. What could she possibly have to ask a stranger? In fact, he’s faintly impressed that she still remembers him. He doesn’t remember being this attentive at four.
Still, she peers up at her father, who wears a small, encouraging smile. It’s a charming smile, eyes crinkling up at the edges and lips curled upward softly. One that is exactly mirrored on his daughter.
“Mmm, ahjussi, can you send my daddy the nice selfie? I want to have it so I can show my friends that I met a real life fairy.”
Oh, Jihoon thinks faintly, but he manages a smooth “of course.”
Soonyoung’s smile widens, and he pats her on the head before pulling out his phone to prompt Jihoon to put in his number.
Jihoon, the cynic and all, knows that he really shouldn’t be giving out his number to random people on the streets, even if this random person is the charming father of an adorable child who is requesting a very embarrassing selfie of him. But who is he to deny her of what she wants?
“All right, go on and thank Jihoon-ssi.” Suhyang chirps out a small “thanks, ahjussi,” accompanied by a wriggle of her fingers, and darts off to clamber back into the shopping cart at the end of the aisle.
Soonyoung watches her go. “I’m sorry for the trouble. She’s so demanding.”
“It’s really nothing at all.”
“Ah, well, definitely more trouble than enough. Thanks again, Jihoon-ssi. I’ve gotta go make sure she doesn’t get herself into any trouble, but maybe I’ll see you around?”
Jihoon’s unsure of how to respond to the last cryptic phrase, but he offers what he hopes is a kind smile (nowhere near as pleasant as the other man’s, he’s sure). “Uh, yeah. Maybe.”
He doesn’t watch him leave, instead, turning back to the eggs. He wonders how different Soonyoung and Suhyang’s life must be. Do they buy baby carrots and little applesauce containers? Is the spot currently occupied by beer in Jihoon’s fridge stocked with boxes of apple juice with disposable straws instead? Are Suhyang’s drawings pinned up by alphabet magnets to the fridge?
Jihoon gives his head a little shake. It’s never good to dwell on these kinds of things. He turns back to the eggs.