Chapter Text
“Please tell me that’s not yours.” Wai says, sighing for the fourth time in the barely a minute he has been in the room.
“I know what a condom is.” Korn brilliantly adds with an infant in his arms that is looking at Wai with big, wide eyes.
“Would you lower it?” Wai tsks and gestures to cover the kid’s ears. “Then why do you… ” He keeps gesticulating toward the child. “ No, why are you calling me?” He finally asks, crossing his arms in his chest in what Korn has already learned is pure facade.
Korn lifts his eyebrows and nods towards the kid again, like it’s that obvious. The kid who apparently is bored of their exchange and is starting to grab at Korn’s arm hairs.
“Ouch, ouch, take her will you?” And before Wai can even start to process he has his arms full of a giggling little girl, delighted with the movement and not afraid at all of the new face.
Korn rubs his forearms and goes to sit on his bed, sighing. He’s silent, thing that unnerves Wai -maybe the unknown infant climbing him has to do with it, too- because Korn is never silent. He always has a film he recently watched, a soccer game to comment on. God, even when everything fails, he talks about ants.
“Korn.” He tries to be serious for the first time ever in front of him. Wanting to bang someone’s head everytime you cross paths is not exactly serious. And nothing about the construction of the bus stop was serious, well, okay, it was fun. But that was it. The consequences of it not being done would have been serious for Wai, though. But the point is, the sooner they finished the sooner they could forget about everything related to the engineering faculty. He thought all his friends had the same opinion. Pran didn’t. But that’s in the past, has to be. Wai will stomp it down until it stops trying to break free. Whatever. There’s a kid, this is serious. “Who is this, why is she in your dorm and why am I in your dorm with her in my arms?”
Korn sighs and rubes his temples again, reminding Wai of his own mother. “My cousin. I have to take care of her for a month-”
“A month?!”
“-while my aunt is in the States.”, “Yeah. I tried but it’s too much, she needs so… much.”
“Call home, man.” The kid starts to get uneasy because Wai is holding her like she’s a dirty puppy that would stain all his clothes with mud any moment. “Is there no-one else in your family who can take her?”, “Oh, Lord.” He says when the girl starts to pout and sniff.
“Rock her.”
“Huh?”
“You know, up and down.” Korn illustrates the movement himself and Wai wants to scream that no, he doesn’t know and that if he’s so clever he should fucking do it himself, but the child is starting to cry.
Wai looks at her closely for the first time and yeah, she’s absolutely Korn’s family. The same coal-black, thick hair in two little buns that could fall apart any moment. Something in the mouth also looks similar but the eyes are different. These are so shiny and round and fuck, no, okay she’s really crying. Rock her, rock her. He does, trying to not panic further. He places one arm under her and another on her back, bringing her closer to his chest and starting tiny up and down movements. She smells of baby powder and apples. Korn always drinks apple juice, Wai remembers.
“Wait, you really know how to take care of kids?” He asks impressed when the girl has stopped crying.
“Yeah, that’s why I offered.”
“You offered?!” He scoffs. “You offered.”
“Yeah! I had to take care of my siblings a lot back home. So first, I know the basics and second, I know how busy my mum is with them now that I'm not there, I wanted to spare her of, well-” He finishes nodding at the kid, who is starting to fall asleep with Wai’s gentle movements.
Wai looks around, trying to find a spot where he can drop her to have her nap. His arms are starting to feel numb, too. There’s a portable cradle in a corner, a bit small for her already, but he’s guessing the circumstances are what they are.
“But it’s harder than I thought.” Korn keeps talking and Wai, back to him, hushes him.
He lets her down trying not to wake her and brushes the hair off her face. She’s cute, like every child. Like Korn.
Fucking hell. Scratch that.
“Call Pat then.” He whispers. Korn’s dorm is pretty similar to his own, small but cosy, -his is cleaner, though- so unless they hide in the bathroom, there’s nowhere to go to talk properly without waking the kid.
“Nah. I was to but he’ll come with Pran.” Korn answers also whispering.
Wai frowns. Of course he’ll come with Pran. Why is that a problem? “So?”
“Isn’t Pran with his finals?” That’s the final straw.
“I am with my finals!”
“Shush!” Both stay silent looking at the cradle, the kid moves but keeps sleeping.
“Fucking asshole, we take the same classes and you know it.” Wai whispers-shouts.
“You can study here.”
“Sorry?”
“C’mon… All my t-shirts smell of baby food and vomit.”, “And look! You made her sleep in minutes, you have a hand with this.”
Now that Wai is looking, Korn looks a little paler than usual, duller. There’s bags under his eyes and stains in his clothes. Strands of hair that break free from his ponytail all over his forehead and temples, just like his little cousin. He curses inwardly.
“What exactly are you asking me?” He crosses his arms again, just to keep the pretence a little longer. He can’t be that easy. Well, at least, he can’t look that easy.
“Nothing! I… I don’t know, just- Help?”, “I skipped the last three days of classes because I can’t leave her alone. And okay, I'm done with my exams and it’s the end of the semester but attendance is compulsory…” Wai tsks again, a bad habit he’s developed recently, and sighs, an old habit this one.
“Go take a shower. You really smell of vomit.” With that Korn lits like a flower in the sun, hugs him before he can’t protest, and disappears in the bathroom. He’s already used to Korn’s exaggerated, out of place and inappropriate displays of affection. Almost.
The shower is short, but not short enough for Wai to not use the speed-dial contact on his phone. Would be a lie if he told he’s not pissed of being second option after Pat. He doesn't even want to be here in the first place but well, if he was going to be called, because apparently now architecture and engineering are best buddies, then it would have been nice.
For once.
Scratch that.
And he gets it, he truly does. Why is he here before Pat. And it’s not because Korn is worried about Pran’s academic performance. Wai observes his surroundings in the minutes he’s alone with a sleeping child, while Korn washes and the couple arrives. He sees filth and disarray, dirty clothes and dirty dishes, some toys and a stack of diapers. He sees rugby gear and posters, action figures, two windbreakers in the hanger behind the door, an ant farm, a PC with pulsating purple leds. A pic of Korn with a woman -his mother, probably-, two kids that look like twins climbing all around him and a baby in the woman’s arms. They look happy. The doorbell rings.
When Korn exits the bathroom, Pran is already trying to tidy up everything while Pat observes the kid without even blinking.
“She’s sooo cute.” Pat whispers fascinated.
“Help me out, will you?” Pran says to him with his arms full of laundry. “Take the bedsheets.”
Wai busies himself doing the dishes. Before Korn can ask them what are they doing and why, they are out the door carrying his dirty clothes to the laundry room downstairs, presumably.
“Why did you call them?” Korn approaches him in this little corner that can be called the kitchen. He sounds pissed. Wai gets it.
“We can’t do it alone.” Wai gets it, why he’s been called. It’s because Korn hates to ask for help, but Wai doesn’t count. And he gets it. It doesn’t hurt his pride, not anymore, not that much. Not in this case. He’s a bit pissed, yeah, well, but he gets it. Wai, despite being an only child, is used to messy kitchens, to study in unconventional places with lots of noise around. Maybe Korn can sense it in him the same way Wai can see it in him.
“Course we can! Four people here is too much-”
“Eight.”
“Eight?!”
“Mo is on his way too, Chang and Louis said we update them by message and Safe is coming after work. We made a groupchat, you should check it.” That Wai gets why he’s here doesn’t mean he’s dumb enough to think that he and Korn can take care of a whole person by themselves without dropping out of school.
He doesn’t like to ask for help, either, but he’s learnt to do it on the few occasions his friends aren’t there before he can’t even think he needs a hand. Just like he did when-
Doesn’t matter.
Pat was already worried about Korn before he called, or so says Pran. It was only a matter of days that the kid was a communal problem.
“How long have I been in the shower?” Korn asks ironically, chuckling a little bit in surrender. He grabs a cloth and starts drying the dishes.
“Not enough, you still smell.” Wai smirks.
“Oh, yeah? Well you stink. Maybe I have to teach you to shower.” Korn quickly blocks the tap, splashing Wai full front and face with water.
“Korn!” Wai squeaks. Korn guffaws too loudly too, reminded of a stray cat who hated rain that always wandered around the restaurant where he worked in his teen summers. The kid must’ve been startled, because her cries are in tune with Wai’s screams and Korn’s laughter. When Pran and Pat come back, the whole kitchen floor is a puddle, there’s soap bubbles floating around and Korn is shirtless trying to calm down his bawling cousin.
“Where’s Wai?” Pran asks first.
“Shower.” He says not looking up from the cradle, little plushie in hand. “Eh… It’s really not necessary for you two to be here. I mean, thanks but I can manage just fine. I just asked Wai if he could take a look at her while I’m in class since he’s the one who lives closer but- Uh…”
“What are you on? I’m your best friend.” Pat slaps him in the back, and the fucking idiot never knows how to control his strength because the slap sounds too loud with Korn’s bare skin and the little child cries even harder.
“We’ve been gone for five minutes and look at the mess you’ve done.” Pran tells him with a smirk. Korn is starting to understand Pran too, what he says without saying. There’s a lot of times when only Pat seems to get it, there’s others where Wai is. Korn doesn’t always understand but he always knows when there’s something to understand. Or so he thinks, there’s no way of knowing for sure but he has a hunch.
“Okay but what are eight grown ass men gonna do here?” Korn finally stands, the kid busy and silent with one of the plushie’s ears in her mouth. He looks around trying to say it with his eyes. The bed-slash-sofa takes up almost half the room, with the other being in dispute by his desk, the wardrobe and now the crate, the folding stroller and all the things necessary for an almost two-years-old. He’s never gotten self-conscious of his little den, it’s a palace compared to sharing a room with two identical gremlins, but well, his friends always crash on Pat’s for a reason, or on Pran’s more recently. More people, more space. It was a natural thing to happen.
Just to prove his point, apparently, Mo knocks on the door and Wai finishes showering, dressed in Korn’s last clean tee, the worn out Bulbasaur one. He hasn’t dried his hair properly, with strands sticking together and out and he’s still glaring at Korn for making him a mess of dish soap bubbles. Korn winks at him and wins himself a mouthed ‘fuck you’.
The point, Korn is getting a bit side tracked, is that there’s too much people already in here.
“We need a system. You all remember the bus stop shifts, right?” Pran says, successfully shutting up everyone.
—
“Shh sh, Dao please… Just another spoon okay? Please…” Korn begs to his little cousin that keeps crying and refusing to eat. “We ran out of the apple one, but look! Carrot is yummy too!” He nibbles at the spoon full of orange pap and hums like it’s the tastiest thing his humble buds have ever tasted. It’s awful, Korn agrees. “Just a bit more…” But he has an empty fridge and it’s too late to go out. “One spoon more and I’ll let you sleep with me, okay?” He tries his last ace, knowing that Dao’s crate back home is bigger and that she doesn’t like the small provisional one. He gets answered by a splash of dense carrot porridge that tickles down his chin.
“Dao!” He screams when the doorbell rings. “I'll have a word with you later, young lady.” He threatens while getting up to answer, Dao simply pouts.
“What are you doing here?” He asks Wai, still dressed in his Bulbasasur t-shirt. It hasn't even been two hours since everyone left with a meticulous shift schedule under their arms. And it’s not Wai’s turn. No-one has a night shift.
“Delivery.” He says swiping his index finger by Korn’s cheek and taking some of the carrot pap that still remains there. He walks in and Korn watches by the corner of his eye how Wai licks his finger and grimaces. “Ugh, how dare you give her this.”
Korn closes the door and observes a bit dumbfounded, or a lot, how Wai walks in like he’s been here all his life, dropping a backpack on the desk chair and a plastic bag by the kitchen counter. He then greets Dao, asking her if she's hungry.
“Oh I think your cousin got confused… That’s his dinner.” He says smiling and Dao cheers and laughs.
“Hey!” Korn has something to say about how no-one steps on his authority, but it dies on his tongue when Wai takes the infamous carrot mash to the kitchen and starts to take food containers out of the bag he brought.
“You like chicken?” And the little girl nods excited. “Yeah, bet you do after days only eating blend.”
“Hey!” Korn eloquently says again. Somehow he feels like he’s the guest in his own dorm. They’re teaming up against him and that can’t happen.
“You know she can eat solids already, no?” Wai says placing two recipients on Korn’s fridge, leaving another one by the stool on the counter and placing one in front of Dao in the toddler high chair. Korn walks by them to check the new addition to his fridge and sees how Dao tries to prick a piece of chicken with her clumsy hands and the rounded plastic fork. It slips away until Wai helps her get her prize. She chews messily while Wai picks another piece for her.
“Oh, mister ‘I don’t know about kids don’t ask me’ suddenly knows? What, have you googled?” He tries to mock. Wai laughs and flips him the bird behind his back where Dao can’t see.
“Google? She has teeth, you moron.” He says, still laughing and poking chicken and rice for the kid that honestly seems too happy with a total stranger feeding her. Where are the survival instincts?
He throws a balled napkin at Wai and turns around to clean the pap bowl. It’s not that he didn’t know, it’s just that between ‘Yes, aunt, of course I can take care of her’ and having the literal child in front of you, so tiny and vulnerable, all to yourself to keep alive- There’s a huge difference.
And Korn, well, okay, he panicked. A bit. He barely knows how to boil an egg and the baby mix bottles said that it had all the nutrients for a healthy and strong development. Easy, stockable and she seemed to love the apple one. So Wai can shut up for a hundred years because it wasn’t that bad.
He sighs and looks back. Dao is almost finished with the plate, she must have been really hungry. He feels the churn of guilt and sighs again.
“You don’t really need to eat the pap. I was joking.” Wai says not turning. “That’s for you.” He points to the forgotten food container by the stool with a thumb over his shoulder.
As if on cue he feels his stomach rumble. He fishes a fork from the drawer and marvels with the wave of delicious smell that invades his nose when lifting the lid. Korn knows this smell, he has stolen a few bites from Pat’s lunchbox sometimes.
“Man, Pran is a saint!” He exclaims with his mouth full.
Wai keeps quiet, feeding the kid the last bite.
Korn finishes his portion quickly, feeling like he could eat another full one. It even was still warm. He really needs to make up to Pran, not only he and Pat made his laundry and now fed him and the kid, but organised a full month taking care that the engineering students skipped classes no more than two times a week and the architecture ones had time to study for their finals-
“Hey,” He starts. Wai is now sitting on the desk chair looking bored at his phone. “Don’t you have an exam tomorrow?” He asks, knowing that he definitely has. Wai flips the phone, showing him the screen full of text and a pic of an old temple.
Korn takes Dao, who was starting to get uneasy on the high chair now that she’s finished and places her on the crib. “You can go home.”
“I was going to be awake all night anyway.” He says not looking up his phone. “Might as well make the most of it and… keep an eye.”, “You said I could study here.”
Well, yeah. But not today, not right now. Not the full night. Not while I sleep.
Korn yawns as if trying to mock himself. “Make yourself at home.” He finally says. Dao gives trouble at night too, not that Korn blames the poor thing, but he’s not going to reject a night of sleep when gifted on a silver platter.
He showers again and when he comes out Wai already has his desk covered in notes and pencils. The room is dark with only the desk lamp turned. It gives a very warm light because of the old bulb. Korn hates to study with that light because it makes him sleepy.
Korn checks that Dao is fast asleep and covers her with the unicorn themed blanket before heading to the small corner that is the kitchen. He doesn’t know how to cook but his coffee is the best.
Wai looks so focused he doesn’t seem to even notice he’s out of the bathroom. He’s frowning, like usual. And his skin looks unfairly good under the yellow light. He doesn’t have a single pimple, a single scar. Thing that Korn finds intriguing, with how prone he is to punch everyone and how bad he’s at fighting. He’s sure he’s broken his lip before, -or was it Pat?- on that alley last year, but now his mouth looks perfect. Perfectly healed.
After a few minutes he places a cup by Wai’s book on the desk. “Thank you for today.” He speaks softly to not wake Dao when Wai looks up from the book. Neither of them says a thing and Korn’s talent of knowing when there’s something to understand pinches at his nape “History of Architecture?” He asks, trying to break the awkward silence. Wai hums back to reading. Korn gets the message. “There’s more coffee on the stove. Wake me if something happens.”
Korn gets inside the sheets and sniffs them. He can’t blame Dao for his dirty bedding, that was his fault. But now they smell of flowery softener and he realises how awfully tired he is, his back muscles aching. He’s so tired that doesn’t find it in him to feel uncomfortable with Wai, of all people, here. Wai doesn’t look uncomfortable either. Focused, maybe worried about the exam, a bit sleepy but not uncomfortable. Korn knows Wai’s face when he’s disgusted. Has seen it countless times. It makes him almost start giggling, remembering how they met and now having him here.
The desk is attached to the side of the bed, forming an ‘L’ on the corner, so he’s able to hear the faint scratch of the marker on the textbook, the rustle of clothes against the chair, the barely there murmur of music coming from Wai’s earphones.
When he wakes up it’s not by his alarm, but Dao’s crying at three in the morning. He wipes his eyes trying to clear the sleep off of them to see Wai hunched over the crate making shushing noises.
He yawns and Wai turns, “I-I don’t know what’s wrong. She’s clean, I checked. And I tried to tap her in case she has gases but nothing-”
“It’s probably she’s just unfamiliar with the surroundings. She’s been doing that every night. Sorry, I should’ve warned you.”
“What do I do?” He says a little panicked and Korn smiles. Who knew Wai was a softie for kids.
“Maybe sleeping here with me would help but she could fall.” Korn says between yawns, stirring and straightening up, ready for another round of probably 45 minutes to an hour of rocking Dao until she falls asleep again.
“Don’t get up.” Wai orders. He gets the child in his arms and brings her to the bed. Korn scoots closer to the wall to let her space. “No, idiot. You need to be closer to the border so she’s between you and the wall.”
“You know she could perfectly climb me and smash her head on the floor, idiot.”
“I still have the whole industrial revolution and twentieth century to study so she’s not gonna fall on my watch, idiot.” He places the crying little girl in Korn’s arms, there’s a contrast there, in how Wai held her like a jam hours prior and how he handles her now, but Korn is too sleepy to notice. “So now calm her before your neighbours kick us out and go back to sleep. You’re prettier when you have your mouth shut.”
Korn can’t help the loud cackle at that. Wai scoffs and sits down again on the chair, his ears painfully red. He bites his own tongue and tries to focus on the text about the Eiffel Tower and cast-iron architecture. He can’t read a damn shit, his eyes unfocused.
When Korn's laughter dies down Wai starts to hear him calming Dao.
“Shh, don’t cry, mh? You’re a big girl already. Look it’s me, you know me, right? I’m your favourite cousin… I gifted you that dress you like so much.” Dao sniffles and keeps crying but barely audibly now. She nods and clings to Korn. Wai reads about the structure of Pagodas in the chinese Tang dynasty.
“Want to wear it tomorrow? And we can go on a walk… Shh, did you like the chicken my friend cooked? Was tasty, right? We can ask him for more. He’s fun, you’ll see next week when he comes to play with us.” Korn whispers. Wai reads about the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct in North Wales.
“Mommy will be back very soon, I promise. But we have to go back to sleep so Wai can study… Very good, lie down. Are you okay?” Korn sounds deep but soft with sleep. Wai reads about Mimar Sinan, about Ustad Ahmad Lahori, about Antoni Gaudí, Le Corbusier, Mies Van der Rohe and about Zaha Hadid. He reads so his eyes are busy. So they can’t look.
When Korn wakes up again it’s by a knock on his door. Dao is back in her crate, there’s a second empty cup of coffee on the desk and no trace of Wai. The exam was early, after all. He scratches his ribs and goes open the door to Pat.